The In Absentia Tour Interviews
John Wesley - Cortemaggiore, 28th March 2003
Gavin Harrisson - Cortemaggiore, 28th March 2003
Richard Barbieri - Cardano al Campo, 29th March 2003
Colin Edwins - Cardano al Campo, 29th March 2003
Steven Wilson - Zurich, 30th March 2003 (soon)
My first interview in the PT tour bus, after the Cortemaggiore show. Everybody is sick with flu, Richard is eating pizza and Steven is relaxing on a couch. When I'll get back a few minutes later, I'll find him asleep on the same couch. Looks like they all need a rest....
A: You were with Marillion ten years ago, then
with Fis hand now Porcupine Tree, it’s like a familly thing. How did you have
your first contact with Steven Wilson?
W: I saw Porcupine Tree while I was working
with Marillion on the Made Again tour at the Forum in
A: How did you reaqrrange the guitar parts with
Steven Wilson on that tour? Because I saw that sometimes he has the lead,
sometime it’s you, so how did you decide that kind of thing?
W: Steven
sent me a list of the material, and so I learnt as many of the parts , the
guitar parts on the songs as I could, and we sat down at a hotel room one
afternoon, and he said ‘I’ll play this and you’ll play that, and now I play
this and you play that’ and that’s kind of the way it worked. We just sat in a
hotel room one day.
A: What kind of a challenge is it for you now
to be part of the live crew of Porcupine Tree?
W. oh, there are lots of challenges. It’s very
complicated music, and you’re playing with great players, so you always have to
be on your toes and you have to know, do your homeworks and know your parts,
and be on form everynight. And then one of the biggest challenge is just to be
away from home.
A: What are the highlights of the last ten years,
since you joined Marillion and now, what are the best memories you keep with
you?
W: Wow, there are so many! There’s a couple
moments on the first U.S tour I did with Marillion, that were so astounding,
and then laters tour, I remember the Ahoy in Rotterdam and La Cigale in Paris,
and so many different things, the Rome gig for me the other night was a
highlight, ‘cos I did a solo set and the crowd was just fantastic. So it’s been
solo like that, it’s been some good shows.
A: Do you think you’re going to do more solo
set acoustic on this tour? Why aren’t you playing every night? You should!
W: It wasn’t planned for me to play every
night. And I don’t wanna, you know… If I’m invited, I will play, the last two
nights, unfortunately I was sick! I would have played. I hope that if there is
no support act tomorrow, if I’m better then I can play. But if there is no
support act, the band has no problem with me playing. But I’ve been sick, it’s
just the fever and the throat, that kind of things.
A: What are your other projects, besides
playing with Porcupine Tree?
W: I’ve done a lot of things, mostly focused on
my own solo career. I’ve got a lot of writing done for a new album, which I
want to start recording through the summer and I just worked with a band in the
U.S called Sister Hazel and some other bands like that, so there are different
things going on. Mainly the new album.
A: What would you say are the most difficult
things for you to play on this tour from the Porcupine Tree material? The
trickiest parts?
W: Wedding Nails is always tricky, but it’s
funny, some of the trickiest things are just trying to match Steven, in some
parts you know, like Pure Narcotic we’ve done tonight for exemple: it’s always
difficult to really pay attention to the way he is playing acoustic, and trying
to match that, so that’s very difficult. And Strip the Soul could be difficult at
times, hard timing things, lot of counting, so it’s good!
A: One last thing, what are your dreams for the
next ten years?
W: To be able to keep doing this! I love
playing and I’d love keeping playing with Porcupine Tree, and I’d love to be
able to make some touring on my own, in
fact if I could do those two things I’d be a happy guy!
Wes get out of the room and go down the stairs, "Gavin! You're on!"
Unfortunately,
there was a problem with the recording, that has been mistakenly erased (sorry
Gavin! sorry sorry sorry!!!!). But
thanks to my list of questions, I’ve been able to retrace the interview. Please
just keep in mind than these are not the exact words of Gavin, and due to my
poor memory, the answers are considerably shortened from the originals.
A: What
were you previous contacts with Steven Wilson?
G: In fact
I played with Richard Barbieri in the early 80’s, and as the former drummer departed,
Richard proposed to hire me for the album, first as a session musician, and
then Steven proposed me to join the band.
A: What
kind of a challenge is it for you to be part of Porcupine Tree?
G: I was
always a session man before, and it’s the first time I’m part of a band. So
that’s kind of challenging. And I like it, it’s fun
A: How is
it to play with Colin? He is such a melodic player, he has such original lines!
G: It’s a
nightmare! (laugh) In fact I knew his teacher a long time ago, and the
first time I met him, he was learning how to play the bass! I’m a few years
older than him, and that’s fun to play now in the same band than him!
A: How was
the collaboration between the four of you during the recording of In Absentia?
G: Steven
left us much freedom to do our things, even if everything was already written,
we had space to experiment.
A: How is
it to play the back catalogue? You bring songs like Waiting or Hatesong to a
new level!
G: Steven
made me listen to a live recording in Warszawa, because the songs evolved
during the tour, and I decided just to do my things and not to imitate Chris’s
drumming, so that’s how it worked.
A: What are
your other projects?
G: I’ve
released a DVD, a drum teaching course, and I do a lot of sessions. Particularly,
I’m doing a new Claudio Baglioni album.
A: What are
the highlights of the tour so far?
G: Well, in
fact, every night when we can sleep at a hotel is a highlight for me! (laugh)
A: What are
the trickiest drum parts of the current tour?
G: Strip the
Soul is a bit tricky, because there are a lot of changes, and Creator has a
Master Tape is difficult too, physically, because it’s very fast and you have
to keep this speed all song long.
A: A dream
for the future?
G: My dream
is to play the music I want to play, and why not making another solo album.
I arrived at Cardano al Campo at around 6, and the crew was setting the
stage for the show. The Nautilus is in fact a discotheque, with low ceiling
(which is good), but the soundboard was far away. Anyway, they made miracles
and had a killer bass sound. Wes was playing as the opening act. Anyway, in the
end of the afternoon, I climbed into the tour bus again, in order to interview
the lord of strange sounds, the ghosts provider himself, Mister Richard
Barbieri…
A:
First question I want to ask you is about Porcupine Tree’s sound getting
heavier as years go by. Still you find places to put your layers. Is this new
for you?
R:
Yeah, I mean, it’s more difficult now. It’s more of a challenge to find space
because the sound sonically is very kind of dense and the guitar is a lot more
prominent. So I have to kind of pick and choose the spaces and try to find ways
to combine keyboards with this. So yeah, it’s more of a challenge. But maybe
the next Porcupine Tree is completely different.
A:
Yes, maybe! I think that when there were the first heavy songs, maybe songs
like Even Less, there were still lot of places I think . Yesterday I saw
Wedding Nails, and I was surprised to hear that you could still find those
places in such a piece of music.
R:
Yeah, what can I say, it’s more difficult. But then in the beginning, songs
like Up the Downstairs were very electronic and ambient, and Voyage 34, so
things change.
A:
Would you like to participate in a kind of jam like the Moonloop one?
R:
Yeah, I think we should do this more often. We used to maybe once a year going
to studio and just jam, and tracks like Tinto Brass, and, er.. what was that?
Returning Jesus? No, I cant remember the name of it now (Richard is probably
thinking of Intermediate Jesus), I think that Moonloop, this kind of tracks
happened, Buying New Soul, happened from jams. So I think it would be good with
this set up to try to do that more.
A:
Maybe on the next album, maybe Gavin would be interested to participate in jams
like that?
R:
Yeah, I think so, because for Gavin, every night he plays something different.
So he is bored with playing the same thing. So for him it’s very important to
improvise.
A:
And also, I understand that the new album was completely written, right?
R:
Yeah! Yeah I mean we went to a mall studio in
A:
The way Steven Wilson plays on the demos, he plays keyboards already, and you
take this as a basis and you find your…
R:
It’s kind of 50/50. He plays keyboards, like kind of pad keyboards or some
Mellotron organ on the demos, which I don’t like. I’m never happy with this
situation but for him, when he’s doing a demo, he has to have a complete sound.
As my history is more, if you work with the demo you work from something small
and you start to arrange. In your mind you know the finish but you still… So,
something we change a little bit and then I say 50% I do new things, new ideas,
electronics atmospheres, texture sounds. So yeah, it’s not perfect for me but
it’s kind of a little bit of each.
A:
Did you write some new material lately?
R:
I’ve just started writing some new things, maybe towards the end of the year we’ll
all put some music together and see. The Porcupine Tree sound is from Steven
because it’s a style of writing. But we all put around music and some ideas
come through with usually one, two or three co-writes or group compositions.
A:
Have you been working with Jansen lately?
R:
No, not lately, he went to America, together with David Sylvian. So they’re
together making I think an album together. And I’ve been so busy with Porcupine
Tree the last two years have been really busy. So at the moment, this is my
kind of life but I hope to do a solo album and to do some other things, because
for me Porcupine Tree is not enough. I have to express more.
A:
And I think you have a new keyboard called Indigo. So what can you tell us
about it?
R:
It’s just a little kind of virtual analogue synthesizer.
A:
Prophet V like?
R:
erm, yes, the idea is it’s not analogue, it’s digital, but it’s modelled on an
analogue, so you work with it in the same way and the sounds are very similar,
close. So I wanted something new for just inspiration on stage. Now I have a
kind of sponsorship with Roland, recently, so there is a new synth that I have
at home, just two days before we came on tour. They gave me, so next tour we’ll
use this very special synthesizer.
A:
and when you’re on the studio, do you work the same way you play live?
R:
In the studio I improvise. I like to improvise. I used to arrange parts. But
the problem is if you have a part you become very close to this part, and when
you play in the studio, if somebody doesn’t like it or if there’s something,
then you feel like a loss for this. So for me lately the best way is I go to
the studio with nothing in my head and that day I react to the music, and I
work all day and do something and that is kind of an instant emotional response
for that day so I work for maybe a week or so on the album, every day, just in
this way.
A:
And once you’ve chosen some layers and stuff, you learn and you keep them
forever? Do you happen to change things live?
R:
I do change things live, yeah. Because I don’t often keep my sounds. Because if
you keep the sounds, then you never change so for me it’s more of a challenge
to recreate something live. Sometimes I keep them all the time or I just move
on to something next.
A:
Last night I heard like if you had sampled kind of what Steven Wilson played,
or maybe it was just my imagination. Do you happen to do that?
R:
No, I don’t sample. I use a lot of distortion with the keyboards. So I think
the sound is similar to guitar a lot of the time, I know that sometimes I’m
playing a solo with distortion, and everybody’s watching Steven!
A:
And you take sometimes a line of what you play and put it on loop?
R:
Ah, yeah, I’ve got some loops going, yeah. Not sampling but long delay. At the
beginning of Dark Matter, usually.
A:
Maybe a few words for the Israeli fans?
R:
Yes, yes! We hope to get over there sometime; soon, it was fantastic when we
were there for the first time! We couldn’t believe the response from the
people, it was really great. We had a really good time. We’re looking forward
to get back there soon.
Colin
Richard
goes out and get Colin, black hat on, and smiling widely as usual! He was very
friendly and didn’t hesitate to answer lengthily to my questions.
A: Before I
heard your own solo music, I heard from some people that you had the reputation
of a world musician. Listening to Porcupine Tree, I never understood why!
C: Right, I
don’t know, it’s something that… One of my hobbies is travelling. So I go to
foreign places, just for a change, and it’s how I got into world music in the
first place. It’s because I like to go to different places, some opportunity to
do it, you know, in a band. And I was never really interested in music, it all
changed when I went to Morocco for a holiday, for a couple of months, quite a
long time, and I got really into the whole music thing. I was really interested
in the literature of people like Paul Bawls, and Jack Keruack, and this kind of
people. Now I went to
A: So you
hadn’t an interest for that music before?
C: No, I
had a few records but I never really got into it big time, and then because I
met, you know, I went from having an instrument I couldn’t play, didn’t have
any idea how to play, to meeting somebody
who could teach me tunes, and who knew exactly where that instrument is coming
from, which was really lucky.
A: So who
is playing the percussion on Ex-Wise Heads?
C:
Basically, there are three of us on Ex-Wise Heads. There’s me playing the bass
instrument, I also play double-bass and acoustic bass guitar and stuff, and the
guembri which is like a Moroccan three strings bass thing. And Geoff plays all
the things you blow down basically, flute, saxophone, that kind of stuff. He’s
got a few weird wonderful things, he’s got a harmonium-like melodica, and he
plays the zither, and just sounds he likes, you know, he’s got electronic stuff
as well that he mixes with it. And on the percussion there’s a guy called
Vincent Salzfaas. He’s basically a bougs player,
which is a Senegalese, er, I don’t know how much you know about (laugh),
you know it’s like a djembe, a bigger djembe, but you have a set of four, so he
stands before like four drums, and he plays with both hands, it sounds like
more than one person playing. He’s actually studied in
A: Ex-Wise
Head’s music is very textured music, but sounds very raw with lot of soul into
it, and how do you compose considering your involvement with Porcupine Tree?
C: The
music is composed in lots of different ways, some of it is improvised, and
there’s a few tracks on both of the albums that are completely improvised, and
some of the other things come from an idea for a tune, and it’s normally quite
a simple melody, and we just play on the tune, and what we tend to do is we’ll
play the same tune six or seven times, and what will happen is if it’s a good
tune, we’ll gradually get refined so it grows from it’s own… I know it sounds a
bit pretentious (laugh) but it will grow in its own way because we get
ideas from playing it and it’s almost like what you eventually hear is like a
filtered kind of thing, we’ve filtered it through the fact that we jammed on it
so many times. But of course it’s live music, it’s not big studio production
music, it’s very live so it’s very raw, and you know I’m happy to admit there’s
plenty of mistakes on the records, but it doesn’t bother me because I think that
what you can hear is the interaction between the three of us, so you have to
open yourself up to the possibility of a mistake to come up with something new,
something like that.
A: And that
brings me a question about Porcupine Tree, because you’re part of that mythical
jam, Moonloop! And would you be interested in doing this again? I’m sure
Richard would like to do it, and probably Gavin.
C: Yeah, I
actually remember when we did Moonloop, it was a very… there was something kind
of magical about it when we did it. It was great, I remember the day when we
went to jam in the studio, I mean it was nearly ten years ago now, you know… I
got a friend of mine, Rick, who plays percussion to come down, so there was me,
Steve, Rick and Chris, and the really weird thing was, after we played the
session, I went next door and there was a TV in the room next door in the
studio and they were actually showing a documentary about the moon landings. I
don’t think Steven knows that, I’ve never told him. (laugh)
A: spooky!
C: that was
really weird, yes, when Steve came up with the title... Because it was like the
25th anniversary of the moon landings at the time, it’s very
strange! But my own thing with that is very understated at the beginning on how
the whole thing built, you know, and I remember actually while we were doing it
our manager was sitting watching us with a friend of his, and I was thinking
that the whole thing has to be done for the listeners, so that while we were
jamming, we had to keep in mind that it’s something that people wanna…
Automatically we want people to listen to it again and again. So I was
deliberately underplaying, and leaving out some gaps, I just didn’t want
listeners to that listen to line of bullshits that lots of people do in their
jam you know… And gradually when we had the tune, that’s a good example of like
with Ex-Wise like I was saying earlier, when we came to play live it kind of
got filtered, you know, because we played it so many times that we ended up you
know, the version on Coma Divine is totally different to the version on the
original Moonloop. It kind of developed, and then what happened I think was
that it developed to a point were we couldn’t go any further with it, and now
we don’t play it anymore, which is fine.
A: It
reminds me a bit of the way King Crimson was playing a few pieces of music,
improvising every night and maybe you have regrets not to have material
available of that kind?
C: Yeah, it
would be good to put more of these improvisations back in the set! But I guess
that’s something we’ll have to work on. It’s been very focused on the
compositions, so things have change a little bit but I have no problem with
that. I think maybe we’ll go back to do some more improvised stuff. There’s
quite a lot of material to stretch out anyway, so… we have to change things, if
not you go crazy playing night after night.
A: And I
think of the Signify tour. How did you feel at the end of the tour?
C: The
Signify tour... I mean, yeah … it’s a difficult question because what happens when
I come off a tour is I catch up with all the things I miss while being away you
know! And I’m always looking for the next thing to do… But our tours have got
longer, since we’ve started touring. Our first
A: A bit
the same that in
C: Yeah,
the first time I think was 1997. Poland is a great place, it was a real
surprise to me, because I was expecting some gloom kind of ex-communist terror block
kind of country, and actually there are some really fantastic countryside, and
so many beautiful medieval kind of places, you know, places that weren’t
concreted all over or destroyed, actually cracked off or stuff, it’s quite
nice! So it’s really an interesting country and the people are very warm, and
it’s a great place to go!
A: Gavin
told me yesterday that he met you for the first time while you were learning to
play the bass!
C: Yeah, we
have a mutual friend called Martin, and he used to play with Gavin many years
ago, and Martin’s really responsible for a lot of my musical education in the
early days. He taught me a lot of things. I come from quite a musical family,
but I never took it seriously when I was a kid, I just pissed about and
eventually I persuaded my father to buy me a bass, which he didn’t want to do,
because he didn’t believe I would ever do anything with it, and about two weeks
after I bought it I met this chap Martin, from a friend of somebody else, and I
remember meeting Gavin a few times, yeah! This is like late 80’s. A long time
ago. It is very strange! But I’ve learned, you know, you can never predict the
future, I never thought in a million years I’d end up in a band with Gavin, you
know, so it’s unpredictable… I never thought when Steve first asked me to do
Porcupine Tree that we would come to
A: It’s
unpredictable, yeah… And Considering Gavin’s Dizrhythmia, would you be
interested in collaborating with him and musicians from
C: Gavin
has a very very fantastic bass player with him named Danny Thompson and I don’t
think I would ever fit his shoes! (laugh). Danny Thompson is like an English
legend, I don’t know if you know him. He’s an old double-bass player, he’s been
around for years, and he’s basically played with everybody on earth! He’s been
a session double bass player for years, he’s been doing some folk music as
well, and he had his own trio, doing folk music, or folk-influenced jazz, he’s
very English, it’s great stuff! So, I don’t know!
At this
time, somebody’s calling Colin from downstairs, TEA TIME!!! Well, it’s time to
accelerate the movement…And I choose to drop a few questions in order to finish
the interview in two minutes time!
A: Here are
two funny ones, you’re not obliged to answer! The first question is about the
hat, (laughs), it’s been like since 1995 that it didn’t leave your head
anymore, so! We were wondering if there were some religious things or
something?
C: They are
saying, “If you want to get a head, get a hat!” (silence) You don’t know
about that? (laugh) No, I just like hats, I collect them, it’s one of my
obsessions.(laugh)
A: It’s all
we’ll have, right?
C: yeah
yeah!!
A: OK, then
the other thing is the smile! Because the precise question is: What do you
know… That we don’t??
C: (bursting
laugh) ah, it’s all for show! No, I don’t know, I have lots of people
telling me I smile a lot, but sometimes it’s just concentration! Or you know,
it’s good to see people in the audience and see them makes me smile… err.. (laugh)
A: Yeah,
because somehow, the music is very dark sometimes! … Yeah, in someway, it
reminds me a bit of, you know, the Indian dancers or something, …
C: yeah
yeah yeah!!
A: they’re
really deep in their mind, and what goes out is a smile!
C: yeah,
yeah…. I think that the big thing about playing music is the state of mind you
get into. That’s something I really enjoy about music more than anything else,
more than any other aspects. It’s a state of mind you can get into sort of…
it’s totally in the moment. And nothing can bother you. If it’s happening, you
know… because you’re just doing what you’re doing at that time, and there’s
nothing, no past, no future, it’s just that moment, you know that kind of
thing… that’s what I like…
A: Last
one: Your favourite tracks on the new album, the ones where you feel you are
the most involved?
C: I was
most involved with Strip the Soul, because I’ve kind of wrote that with Steve,
and I really like Gravity Eyelids, I’m very happy with my performance on the
record, and Sound of Muzak I think, those two, I’d say those three..
A: Great
line! When it comes into the choruses!!
C: yeah,
that’s… that’s nice, thank you! (laugh)