Steven Wilson was in a storm of change when he prepared his first solo tour in 2011. Having recently put Porcupine Tree on the backburner, he’d moved out of London back to his home town. He’d also received a crash course in music production by remastering King Crimson’s catalogue. All that fed in to his second solo album Grace For Drowning, as he told Prog before the tour began.
Over the past three years Steven Wilson has been remastering King Crimson’s catalogue. His exposure to the band’s tapes – and the forensic insight into their music that provides – has had a profound effect on him. “I cannot emphasise how much I’ve learned doing the Crimson records,” he says.
“What I thought I understood about them I really didn’t. The albums aren’t very layered. There’s something about the tone of the instruments and the interaction of the players that gives this wonderfully warm full sound that still has a lot of space around it.”
When Wilson was learning his trade in the late 80s, more was more. If you wanted a guitar riff, you’d multi-track the guitar five times. “The thing is you lose a lot of the character of the instrument and performance,” he says. “When Robert Fripp’s playing on those early Crimson records, it’s one guitar single-tracked – but it sounds monolithic. I tried to bring that to this record; stripping things down, not multi-tracking for the sake of it.”
Big, heavy guitars are noticeably rare on Grace For Drowning. “The heaviest music is produced by things like choirs and woodwind, and how the chords are voiced,” he says. “One of the heaviest things is the main riff of Raider II, which begins with two baritone saxophones double-tracked. It’s pure 21st Century Schizoid Man.”
He fully intends to carry his lessons into his future recordings. “It’s almost like I’ve unlearned something. I made records by layering and layering, but I’ve come to appreciate the tone of the instruments; the music gets to breathe more and you get more the character.”
Wilson’s lyrics, and his trademark thin voice, are just a little heartbreaking on the album. No Part Of Me In You is about a relationship gone sour; Postcard’s character sings: ‘The fire in my eyes has gone out.’ Elvis Costello once remarked that he doesn’t write songs when he’s happy, because he’s too busy being happy. “I’m exactly the same,” WIlson says. “You’re exercising that part of your personality in the writing, in order that your more well-adjusted positive elements can prevail in your everyday life.
“One of the most beautiful things in the world when you’re sad is to listen to a song that lets you understand you’re not alone feeling that way – we’re all part of the same human consciousness.”
The album features some notable players, and a very special guest on Deform To Form A Star. “I met Steve Hackett last year. I’ve never been a big Genesis fan, but I’m a huge fan of his first solo albums: Spectral Mornings, Voyage Of The Acolyte, Please Don’t Touch, Defector. He said those records came from his love of – guess who – Crimson and Van der Graaf! I was already in the process of writing Grace For Drowning and those two bands are touchstones for me, so having Steve on the record made perfect sense.
We hooked up for dinner, and I asked why he doesn’t play Shadow Of The Hierophant live. He said he would if I guested on it. So I did, at Shepherds Bush Empire in November. That was scary!”
The Empire will soon host the sole UK date of his very first solo tour. It’ll be 12 months since Porcupine Tree sold out the Royal Albert Hall on the last night of their tour for The Incident, so the venue seems a little modest. “In this business brand name is everything,” Wilson says. “I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone who buys a Porcupine Tree album will know the names of all the members of the band.
“A larger minority for us do, perhaps, but 80 per cent of people buy records because they heard a song on the radio they like, or they saw it in their local HMV. They have no idea who’s in the band. Just ask Roger Waters – he found out the hard way when he left Pink Floyd!”
He continues: “I don’t expect to reach everyone Porcupine Tree reaches. This is a tentative dip in the water. It’s such a huge financial risk for me; I have to employ a crew and a band, and I’m going out with a big multimedia show.
“I guess I’m overcompensating for the fact some people might think this is a side project. It’s isn’t – it’s as epic as anything I’ve done with any of my bands, and it took the longest time. I’m very proud of the album, and the fact that I’m taking it out on the road too. In so many ways this is my biggest endeavour.”
Robert Fripp was at the first playback of Grace For Drowning, at Air Studios. Did he pick up on his band’s influence on it? “No!” Wilson relishes the irony. “Everyone else I played it to picked up on the Crimson, Lizard element. The only person who didn’t was Robert Fripp! He told me that it sounded like me.
“I think I’ve got to the point in my career where it doesn’t matter what I do or how much I think I’m ripping something off; it’ll still ultimately sound like me. I hope that’s true.”
