Steven Wilson
Owning vinyl is like having a beautiful painting hanging in your living room. It's something you can hold, pore over the lyrics, and immerse yourself in the art work.Collection: Art
It's possible that Israel will be my second home, but it won't be my only home.Collection: Home
We live in a world dominated by fear and paranoia.Collection: Fear
We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction.Collection: Technology
Ever since I was a kid, I've always been interested in the poetry of melancholy, if you like.Collection: Poetry
You cannot please everyone, and I think that what's important, ultimately, is to make sure you please yourself. If you start trying to please other people, you'll just go around in circles.
Certainly for some time, people used to think of my solo career as somehow a side project to Porcupine Tree. No. If anything, the opposite would now have to be the case.
I think there's something very peculiar about living in the city and not part of the major metropolis; that actually makes it remarkably easy to disappear.
The whole notion of an alternative truth is a paradox. How can you have an alternative to truth?
Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.
Every time the mainstream media talk about progressive rock, they wheel out a clip of Rick Wakeman in a cape. For me, it's one of the most ambitious forms of music. The problem is that when it doesn't work, you end up with Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing symphonies with 60-piece orchestras and revolving pianos, which I think is ridiculous as well.
One of the beauties about going solo was being able to start from scratch and say, 'What do I really want? What kind of band do I really want? What kind of live show do I really want to stage?' Without any of the baggage of being something with history.
We live in the physical world, the age of the Internet, and it's very easy to disappear from view and isolate ourselves from the rest of world and become invisible.
If you want to be an entertainer, then go be an entertainer and give people what they want. If you want to be an artist, then you have to be true to yourself, and you have to be prepared to confront expectations - and you have to be prepared to disappoint your fans, too.
'Routine' was written on piano, and you can hear that. But then you listen to 'Happy Returns,' and you can tell it's definitely been written on guitar, with that singer-songwriter-y strumming quality.
Jazz drummers traditionally are not always prepared to just hold down the beat; it's like they're soloing the whole time.
The city can be the loneliest place of all.
I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.
I never wanted us to be an exercise in nostalgia, living in the shadow of other artists.
Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.
I've always wanted to make some kind of music that was universally appreciated.
Porcupine Tree is a band, and it's not up to me where the band goes - it's between the manager, our agent, and the band as a whole.
I grew up listening to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance - these are the bands that I actually grew up with, and I always had these things in my taste, too. And I always loved industrial music as well: I listened to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire. And shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.
I myself lived in London for 20 years, and I never knew my next-door neighbors. I never knew what they did. I never knew their names. They didn't know what I did for a living, and they didn't know my name.
Israel is a wonderful country, especially Tel Aviv.
There are certain topics that I've come back to time and again throughout my career. On 'To the Bone,' there are certain subjects I have touched on before.
It's one thing to fail with something you utterly believe in, but to fail with something you don't believe in? You just feel so sordid.
I get really frustrated - actually, it almost makes me angry - when I see, sometimes, magazines will publish a musician's playlist. They'll go and they'll ask, I don't know, somebody from Aerosmith or whoever, Coldplay, to list their five favourite albums. And it's always the same stuff!
When you're in a band, you're all in it together. You're always available. You're always available for the albums; you're always available for the tours. There's no question of that.
You will hear ambient in our music. You will hear trip-hop.
There was a time when pop music and rock music were really reaching for the stars and were not ashamed to be experimental. You think of a song like 'Shout' by Tears for Fears. That's a massive global No. 1 hit, and yet the subject matter is very dark.
I think my fans are much more open-minded than some other bands' fan bases are.
I've always been the sort of person who likes to look forward and live in the present.
If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.
I am a great believer that you should record more than you need and then use the absolute best.
I loved disco music, and I still count Donna Summer as one of my favorites of all time.
When I was a very young kid, the first music that really turned me on was a new wave of British heavy metal - big, dumb rock music. There was a band called Diamond Head - they were basically the band that inspired Metallica. But I also liked bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden.
It's a cliche that music rises above it all, and it's a cliche for a reason - it's very often true.
You forget, living outside of a country, that the actions of the government are not the actions of the people.
Being English, we're polite and reserved, we don't express our opinions; we're very private people.
If you want to be an entertainer and just keep your audience happy, that's one thing. But to be an artist, I think, means ultimately primarily pleasing yourself, and in that respect, you constantly have this sense of confronting the expectations of your audience.
I never claimed to be a generic artist, period. I never wanted to be a generic artist.
I've put out records over the years, whether it's with Blackfield or No-Man or Bass Communion or Porcupine Tree, that are pop records, ambient records, metal records, singer-songwriter records.
People have asked me about doing an autobiography, but I don't think my life is that interesting.
My autobiography would be 'Loves music, loves art, works hard, writes music, tours the world, makes records.'
I grew up at the very tail end of the vinyl era, and at the time, I remember, we couldn't wait for CD to come along because vinyl was so frustrating. You would buy the record, take it home, and it would have a scratch, and you would have to take it back again.
Pink Floyd, the most successful progressive rock band of all time, have stood the test of time because the emphasis was always on melody and atmosphere.
The truth is I got rid of 100% of my vinyl in the '90s. All the vinyl I have is re-bought.
I think I've become a better storyteller over the years.
It's something I've recognized in the careers of those people who have been inspiring to me over the years - Neil Young, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Prince. These are all people who constantly redefined themselves, and had to deal with the difficulty of trying to take their audience with them when they did that.