Blistering.com: What about when you first started writing music? What was the breakthrough you had then? What was the impetus for setting Porcupine Tree in motion? Wilson: I think the breakthrough then was more of a feeling of vindication. Feeling the vindication in having done something that was extremely - as I said in the beginning of our conversation - extremely extemporaneous. At the time, everything was anti-guitar solos, anti-musicianship, anti-progressive rock, anti-space rock, anti-60s, anti-70s... everyone was all about oh... the great explosion in DJ culture, and it was the great explosion with grunge rock. So I was completely out of step with everything. And I think the big breakthrough wasn't a musical one, but a philosophical one. The vindication from the fans that wanted this music.
When I put the first record out ['On the Sunday of Life'], I had no expectations for it, whatsoever. It was really just a bit of fun for me. And I suddenly realized that there were people out there who were needing that music and were very obsessive about it. That was the real breakthrough for me, so the next step was to basically say to myself, 'well, I made this one record that was a bit of fun, lot of pastiches, kind of nostalgic... but now, let's knuckle down and try to do something interesting in a contemporary sense with some of these influences.' And I think that was an important moment for me, because I could have said at that point that it was just a one-off, and decided to do something else. But I think I felt from the reactions to the music that there was an opportunity to create something truly contemporary, not nostalgic, not pastiche, but actually something really edgy and modern, which still took its influences from those styles of music. And hey, I didn't realize that it was gonna take another ten, twelve years for it to become back in fashion, but finally it seems that there are a lot of bands out there that are feeling the same way, and doing the same thing now, which is great.
Blistering.com: When you were listening to music as a kid, did you get the sense at all that you wanted to do something creative, and express yourself musically - did you believe at all that you could make something of all that time you spent just enjoying music? Or was it just about bringing back a sound, or creating something with a new rendition of an existing sound, and carrying it on from there? Wilson: I think from that point on it really just became about pleasing. I think it came down to pleasing myself, and wanting to feel stimulated by what I was creating, and the music that inspired me in the 60s and 70s, which was always a kind of bedrock. But there was a sense that I wanted to feel like I was doing something unique. And the idea that I would create something that would be in the shadow of something else was an ugly idea to me. I wanted to feel like Porcupine Tree would be known for creating something special, something unique - something uniquely Porcupine Tree-like. And I think that's always been my main motivation ever since then. Being inspired by the past, but looking to the future.
Blistering.com: You have this new project now called Blackfield. Tell us a bit about that. Wilson: Blackfield is a collaboration with an Israeli singer/songwriter, actually. It's almost like some of the more song-oriented aspects of Porcupine Tree, without a lot of the rock aspects. The songs are quite short, self-contained, very melodically strong. It's still very much influenced by the kind of great 70s pop and rock records. Lots of harmony vocals, lots of acoustic guitars, lots of mellotron. It's been very well received. It's been very successful because people, I believe, relate to the strength of the melodies and songs. But it is very different from Porcupine Tree, because that's basically a big rock 'n' roll show at the end of the day, and Blackfield is much more laid-back and mellow.
Blistering.com: You've toured for that project as well, right? Wilson: We've toured with Blackfield. We didn't make it to the U.S. for a proper tour. We came over and did some 'unplugged'-type shows in March of this year. But yah, it's a touring band as well.
Blistering.com: How does a Blackfield show differ from a Porcupine Tree show? Wilson: I think the fact that it's more mellow, more laid-back, more about... Put it this way, Porcupine Tree are lucky to get through ten songs in an hour, Blackfield will get through twenty in forty-five minutes. It's much more about the song. The great art of writing pop songs and great pop melodies. While Porcupine Tree is much more about the instrumental side, the longer pieces, the sense of taking on a musical journey of some kind.
Blistering.com: What do you think is the next step for rock music? In other words, what sound do you know of that exists now that you think will begin to become 'the next big thing'? Not necessarily in terms of commercial success, but in terms of becoming a sound that people begin to explore in droves. Wilson: Well, we've already touched on this in a sense. I believe that what's going to change a lot in the next few years is that generic music will become less important. And what I mean by that is, with the explosion in download culture and the record companies losing a lot of their control over the distribution of music, that actually, generic music in the sense of bands that sound like all the other bands will hopefully become less apparent. And bands will actually develop unique hybrids and begin to develop cross-generic music like Porcupine Tree. Bands that appeal to metal audiences, as well as all sorts of other audiences. I think - I hope - that those bands are gonna have more of a shot. And I hope that some of the major record companies will be more prepared to get behind those kinds of bands.
I do see a lot of evidence of that already. You do have bands like The Mars Volta coming out, selling a lot of records, playing music which is incredibly hard to categorize. And it's a kind of music that is not about singles, but about albums. I think we're just beginning to enter that phase, and I don't believe that, by any means, that phase is already peaking. I think there's a long way to go before it peaks and what's gonna happen is there will probably be that one album that's really going to break through in a big way, and kind of be the 'Nevermind' of its generation. I hope so, anyway.
There needs to be more ambition in music. It's become so tired and so generic and so formulaic in the past ten, twenty years.
Blistering.com: This genericness, do you think that it's more caused by over saturation or do you think it's more of an industry issue, where in recent memory music has become more and more packaged and more about being marketable than about putting real effort and real passion into what you create? Wilson: I can't really answer that, but I think that now... With the internet, you can actually now have the opportunity to listen to music that you enjoy without buying it, and it makes it much easier to discriminate with regard to what you want to actually spend money on. And I think that these commercial, generic bands are nervous about it because with this opportunity granted to fans, they can no longer necessarily do what they did in the past, which is put a bunch of vacuous tunes on a record, put a nice picture of the artist on the cover and sell that as an album. When people get sick of one kind of pop music as quickly as they do, they'll know from having downloaded something that they won't want to listen to it in a year or less, so they don't throw their money at it.
So really, when a band like Metallica goes and tries to stop the download of their albums, it's really quite disingenuous, because they think they're speaking for all musicians, when it's really only their own interests they're looking out for. The bands that really rely on the old fashioned hierarchy of the music industry to sell albums are the only ones that the downloading of music really hurts. The ones like Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Tool, Mars Volta, etc., it actually helps because the people who seek out this kind of music are much more likely to want the whole package because they're generally much more interested in actual ownership of a record. And I believe, or I hope, there will be more music like that emerging into the mainstream, which actually has new ideas and is really worth investing in, as opposed to this generic stuff that you see everywhere now.
Blistering.com: One other element that's emerged on the internet now is fans having much more access to artists, and being able to talk back to them. As opposed to in the past, when a lot of bigger names were virtually inaccessible. Do you find this to be a positive thing, this having the opportunity to level criticism at bands? Wilson: No, I don't really think this is a good thing, because frankly, most of the criticism you see on the internet is horseshit. You go on a band's message forum, and all you see is stuff like 'This new album is their best one ever!,' "No, this new album sucks, it's too heavy.", "No, it sucks because it's not heavy enough." or shit like, "Mikael Akerfeldt should be killed for ruining Porcupine Tree", "No, Steven Wilson should be killed for what he did to Opeth." And really, I don't need to see that shit. It's so rare that people come online to talk to you who can seriously dissect music and have a deep conversation about it. Most of it is really shallow, and it's basically just 14-year-old kids shouting at you.
I think in principle, the chance to readily get feedback could be a great thing, but the reality is that 99% of the feedback we get is worthless. And I understand it's fun to get to talk to your favorite band as a 14-year-old kid, because I used to be that 14-year-old kid myself, but it's very difficult... actually, impossible to stay true to what you want to accomplish as a musician if you're seriously giving heed to people saying that you're selling out from the other side of the world. [END]
