Mountains Come Out of the Sky

by Will Romano

  From 1989 through 1990, Wilson (with the help of conceptualist /friend Malcolm Stocks) hatched his farcical Porcupine Tree. Some of the early material itself was a kind of satire, such as a track like “Hokey Cokey,” on the ridiculousness of pop music, and music in general, almost to the point of creepiness.

  Passing them off as long-lost relics of prog rock’s golden era, Wilson distributed three private cassettes of his music on a limited basis: Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm: Words from a Hessian Sack (featuring fan favorite “Radioactive Toy”), the rare (reportedly only ten copies were ever pressed) The Love, Death & Mussolini EP, and The Nostalgia Factory ... and Other Tips for Amateur Golfers.

  Wilson fed the mystique surrounding Porcupine Tree by creating an imaginary discography complete with band history and “band members,” giving them names such as Mr. Jelly, Sir Tarquin Underspoon, and the Evaporating Flan.

  “Delerium put out the first Porcupine Tree album, and I realized that there were a lot of people out there craving that kind of music,” says Wilson. “I said, ‘Okay, if I’m going to do this, if I’m going to carry on, it can’t just be a nostalgic thing. I want to do something genuinely progressive.”’

  The eerie thirty-minute antidrug single called Voyage 34, released in 1993, followed, and combined elements of the ambient trance club culture of London and progressive rock. With 1993’s Up the Downstair and 1995’s The Sky Moves Sideways, Wilson moved away from the trance field and into more of the ambient/prog arena.

  Stupid Dream (1999)

  Lightbulb Sun (2000)

  In Absentia (2002)

  Deadwing (2005)

  Fear of a Blank Planet (2007)

  We Lost the Skyline (2008)

  Steven Wilson in his home studio. (Courtesy of Steven Wilson)

  The Incident (2009)

  By 1997’s Signify, Porcupine Tree had begun working as a band unit and less as Wilson’s studio project.

  “We were all spending the same amount of time together onstage and in vans, and there was a sense of it being a collective and a cooperative,” says former drummer Chris Maitland.

  “With Porcupine Tree, it has been a slow evolution,” says keyboardist Richard Barbieri, formerly of Japan, who’d worked with Wilson’s pre—Porcupine Tree project No-Man. “The first couple of albums I was on I was just playing a bit on the album and then going home. Signify really marked the first time—and first album—to have a band sound.”

  Nineteen ninety-nine’s Stupid Dream (released on Snapper) and the live Coma Divine both had a much more classic progressive rock, even Floydian, feel. “You don’t hear many digital synthesizers in any of my projects, including Porcupine Tree,” says Wilson. “Richard [Barbieri] is very much someone who loves old analog sounds, and that’s somewhere where we really bond, in our love of Moog synthesizers and Prophet 5 and classic synthesizers. So a lot of that sound, what you might call sound design, comes from processing organic elements.”

  The band continued to explore and streamlined its approach with 2000’s Lightbulb Sun (some fans have even described the album as a pop effort) and 2002’s alternately dreamy and metallic In Absentia, the first PT record to appear on a major label (Lava/Atlantic), and the first to feature drummer Gavin Harrison, on the concept of “what makes serial killers [tick],” says Wilson.

  “I think the entire record hangs together very well,” says Barbieri. “In Absentia was a real turning point for us.”

  Two thousand five’s Deadwing was based on a script for a psychological thriller (initially titled “Lullaby”), which Wilson wrote in collaboration with art designer Mike Bennion, who’d been working with the band since On the Sunday of Life.

  “To Steve’s credit, he’s remarkably prolific—his credits are about as long as your arm,” says Bennion. “I think a lot of bands have a very short shelf life and they’re not nurtured by the record company. It’s a very unusual trajectory for a band these days, and I think he has allowed Porcupine Tree and Steven to get better at what they do.”

  Two thousand seven brought Fear of a Blank Planet, partly inspired by the Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park, the summation of Wilson’s view that our decrepit, reality-TV, and downloaded culture continues to be eroded by a technology that alienates us from society.

  “On Fear of a Blank Planet we are talking very much about the whole digital technology era and the fact that although information technology brings the world into our front room, it also creates more a sense of universal paranoia,” says Wilson.

  The four-track Nil Recurring (recorded during the Blank Planet sessions) appeared on the band’s own Transmission 5.1 label and is as powerful a socio-political statement as the record that spawned it. “There’s a sense that this ‘Nil Recurring’ implies a constant nullification of life experience,” says Wilson.

  The record’s themes of isolation and alienation are reinforced by the sometimes dark, penetrating, and eerie sonic textures created by both Wilson and Barbieri. “Richard is never going to give you a conventional sound,” says Wilson. “He is very much a sonic architect, a secret weapon, who creates strange soundscapes.”

  When Porcupine Tree came through New York City on their 2009 tour to support their double studio album The Incident, one was immediately struck by the band’s strange relevance. There were no great arena rock effects, no dazzling light displays, no flying pigs or gigantic cardboard bricks; instead, the crowd was captivated by the fifty-five-minute title song of The Incident, which occupies the entire first disc of the release.

  IQ

  Marillion’s breakthrough opened the door for other like-minded progressive rock bands to gain a little bit more credibility with critics and the public at large. Bands such as IQ, Pendragon, Pallas, Andy Glass’s folky-symphonic band Solstice, It Bites, Twelfth Night, Spain’s Galadriel, Poland’s Exodus, Mexico’s Cast (dating from the late 1970s), Italy’s Nuova Era (formed with the express mission of playing ’70s-style prog rock), Slovenian-Italian band Devil Doll, and others were slowly making prog rock a viable musical and commercial force once again.

  “It seemed all of a sudden some people just got tired of the punk movement,” says Pendragon guitarist/vocalist Nick Barrett. “When a band like Marillion were just starting to break, it seemed to make it okay for others, like us, who were closer to a band like Camel, to go out and perform.”

  Of the prog rock bands that emerged in the 1980s, IQ remains one of the most seminal. Formed from the ruins of the Giln and the Lens, inspired by the likes of Yes, Genesis, and classical masters, IQ initially performed many musical styles. Much like their contemporaries Marillion, IQ stood between two musical worlds: punk and prog rock.

  “We were a prog band, amongst other things, that was unquestionably working-class and therefore didn’t fit either social model of working-class punk or upper-middle-class prog rock artist,” says keyboardist Martin Orford. “My father worked in a factory that made yacht masts, as did I for several years, whilst [guitarist] Mike Holmes’s father worked in Southampton Docks, and neither of us attended any special music schools or classes. We were hardly brought up in poverty, but we were not living in the lap of luxury either. When the band moved to London, we survived for many years on only three and a half pounds a week each for food, which bought the ingredients for an ongoing vegetable stew, but not much else.

  “The effect this had on the music was an interesting amalgam, and we certainly played prog rock faster and harder than anyone ever had before,” Orford continues. “Punk had changed a lot of things in the U.K., and people expected hard-hitting, high-energy entertainment whatever the style of music. [I]f Genesis had sat on chairs while playing twelve-string guitars to some of the audiences we faced in our era, they would probably not have gotten out alive.”

  IQ: The Wake (1985)

  “All the bands were pretty competitive with each other at the time, and that was a real incentive for us to keep pushing forward,” says vocalist Peter Nicholls, who followed in Peter Gabriel’s footst
eps by donning greasepaint to help dramatize IQ’s songs onstage. “The Marquee in London was probably the focal point of much of that energy and attention. In the early days, we used to stand outside when our ‘rivals’ were playing there and wish we could play there too. When Genesis played a surprise date there in 1982, we spent the whole evening up on the roof listening to the gig. It was a magical club, very atmospheric.”

  IQ went on to release such neo-prog staples as 1985’s The Wake (a concept album that was inspired by and expanded upon Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” centered on “what happens to the central character’s

  IQ 2005. Left to right: guitarist Mike Holmes, bassist John Jowitt, vocalist Peter Nicholls, drummer Andy Edwards, and keyboardist Martin Orford.

  spirit after he’d died,” says Nicholls); 1993’s Ever, 1998’s concept double album Subterranea (on the subject matter of surveillance and an oppressive regime’s social experiment), which spawned a multimedia stage production; 2000’s The Seventh House (which sandwiches plaintive piano balladry in between Zeppelinesque heaviness); 2004’s Dark Matter (featuring the twenty-four-and-a-half minute cautionary tale “Harvester of Souls”); and 2009’s Frequency.

  Because of its musical and thematic ties to progressive rock past (in the earlier days, IQ often dropped the “G” bomb—sonic references to Genesis) the band has been dubbed “neo-prog”—a label that has ruffled a few feathers.

  “I was only aware of it cropping up in the U.S. in the ’90s, when it seemed to be used in a disparaging way, basically criticizing a band for not playing ‘legitimate’ prog,” Nicholls says. “In other words, not having enough Mellotrons onstage and daring to break convention by writing some shorter songs or using more contemporary instruments.”

  “It’s a convenient term that someone has invented,” says Orford. “I mean, when we were there with the Marillion guys and Pendragon in London, nobody called it neo-prog. It’s quite an insulting term as well, because it carries with it the inference that it’s somehow inferior to the proper prog. That’s interesting, because none of the guys from the ’70s bands that we have played with over the years have made that differentiation. You know, ‘No, I’m not playing with you. You’re only neo.”’

  “I have the same conversations with journalists when we tour,” adds Marillion’s Steve Rothery. “We’ve been called progressive, neo-prog, and symphonic rock—whatever the hell that is—and for some [people] it’s a compliment. For others, it’s the worst possible insult. It implies a regressive, stuck-in-a-’70s-time-warp type of music. In fact, it’s music that isn’t easy to categorize. Giving it a label, at least in some people’s minds, is shutting you up in a little box. I could use Taurus pedals, play in 7/8, use a Minimoog. But who gives a damn, you know? The question should be, ‘Is it musically interesting?’”

  It was hard to shake the notion that one was witnessing prog rock history in the making. (Perhaps a bit like seeing Genesis perform The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway for the first time?) Though “The Incident” references Sgt. Pepper’s—a nod to prog rock’s origins—it was obvious that the crowd was “listening to the future,” to steal a phrase from author Bill Martin, proving that Porcupine Tree are at the forefront of progressive music in the twenty-first century.

  “I shouldn’t be making music for anybody else but myself,” Wilson says. “Myself and [vocalist] Tim [Bowness] definitely reached that point when we made [1994’s] Flowermouth record [as No-Man], because until that moment we had been making music to try to please the record company, try to please the management, to try to sell records. It hadn’t worked anyway. We weren’t selling any more records. Finally we said, ‘Fuck it. If we’re going to go down, let’s go down in a blaze of glory and at least we can be proud of what we’ve done.’ I’ve never looked back since with Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Bass Communion, Blackfield, or anything I’ve ever done.”

  Acknowledgments

  FOR YEARS I’VE KEPT IN MY MIND A STORY JOHN WETTON TOLD ME ABOUT AN ASIA SONG he penned with Geoff Downes in the early 1980s, called “Daylight.”

  Asia, a progressive pop rock supergroup formed in 1981, had spent a long and gloomy winter toughing it out in the Great White North completing their self-titled debut.

  “The big event of our day was looking out the window to see how many moose walked past the lake,” Wetton said. “When you’ve been in Canada for six months in darkness and suddenly the dawn breaks, it’s gorgeous. It started to look clear again and that’s when I wrote [the song]. I’ve never been so glad to see daylight in my life.”

  “Daylight” encapsulates the private thoughts of the songwriter ruminating on the dawning of a new day, but also something much more universal: Wetton, in clear, bold language, imparts illuminating lyrics of survival, revelation, and spiritual transformation.

  The song’s positive message (and the courage it instilled in me) was one of my motivations for writing this book. Because “Daylight” has been a beacon, I say, thank you, prog rock.

  These acknowledgments wouldn’t be complete without mentioning some of those who’ve given me their valuable time and wisdom (ushering in their own form of “daylight”) for this work. These include Bill Bruford, the Moody Blues, Ian Anderson, Derek Shulman, Kerry Minnear, Beppe Crovella, Annie Haslam, Greg Lake, Eric Woolfson (R.I.P.), Steve Howe, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Gianni Leone, Danny Brill, Ian McDonald, Gustavo Moretto, Hugh Hopper (R.I.P.), Phil Ehart, Eddie Jobson, Jonathan Mover, Paul Northfield, Jordan Rudess, Lori Lousararian, Peter Sinfield, Mel Collins, Ray Bennett, Carol Kaye, Brian Kelleher, Terry Ellis, Lori Hehr, Peter Morticelli, David Hadland, Dan Hanley, Leonardo Pavkovic, Anne Leighton, Patrick Moraz, Billy Sherwood, Pat Mastelotto, David Rohl, Lee Jackson, Keith Emerson, Trey Gunn, Iconic Music, Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri, Bruce Pilato, Andy Leff, Eileen Craddock, Michael Farley, Lindsey Nutter, Martin Orford, Peter Nicholls, Peter Noble, Graham Smith, Peter Banks, Erika Tooker, Kaitlin Lindsey, Wil Sharpe, Dale Newman, Nick Davis, Michael Lavigne, and the hundreds of other generous interviewees too numerous to name here. I thank you.

  I also want to thank my wife and soul mate, Sharon; George and Judy Bailey; my brother, Michael; Tony “Long Distance Runaround” Romano; Jim Kelly; my boyhood neighbor Dave Penna (now a full-time musician and multi-instrumentalist with the band Ad Astra); Vincent Tallarida (remember spinning ELP and King Crimson?); Anthony Bernard (a keyboard whiz and Genesis fan); longtime friend Gary Jansen; Jim Goodin; Polly Watson, this book’s excellent copy editor; Marybeth Keating; Carol Flannery; and my patient editor at Backbeat/Hal Leonard, Mike Edison. Thanks for seeing this through to the end.

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