Steven Wilson, the wizard of progressive rock: ‘125,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day. It’s absurd’

English singer, composer and producer Steven Wilson, 55, tells us that the other day he was walking through a London cemetery with one of his two stepdaughters. They were playing a game, looking at the tombstones for someone who died on the same day as their birthdays. Coincidentally, they found a headstone that had the girl’s birthday (October 5, 2011). It turned out to be the grave of Bert Jansch, the great guitarist and founder of the band Pentangle. Then Wilson and his stepdaughter went to the local record store, near Hampstead, and bought a vinyl Pentangle record. Now, the 12-year-old girl listens to it non-stop, combining her time on TikTok with contemplative folk rock passages from the 1960s playing on the record player in her living room.

That anecdote makes Wilson happy, “because my way of educating them is that they have an alternative to the current trend where everything happens onscreen and in just a few seconds,” he says. He is not bitter, but Wilson does somewhat melancholically contemplate the world of analog culture — which may or may not be faltering — but which many young people see as simply a fetishist environment. “I often wonder how to make songs when there’s a generation that only has an attention span of 20 or 30 seconds. I made an amazing music video for my new single, What Life Brings, which is four minutes long, but I know that only 5% of those who hit play will watch it to the end. [It’s the] same with the songs... It breaks your heart,” says the five-time Grammy Award nominee. “Now it’s all about the vocals: if your track has an instrumental intro or a solo, it’s impossible to get played on the radio.”

Dressed in a gray T-shirt, the fresh-faced Wilson is happy to be able to talk about music, no matter the genre, even though it is 10 a.m. and he took the redeye from London and arrived in Madrid in the wee hours of the morning. During our 45-minute conversation, mention is made of Robert Wyatt, Billie Eilish, Chic, The Cure, James Holden, Kate Bush, Sleaford Mods, Pentangle (of course), and the holy trinity of Wilson’s career: King Crimson, Prince and Pink Floyd. But — why not say it? — at this point, many readers will not know who the hell Steven Wilson is. There’s no need to feel bad about it, though: Wilson will go down in music history as one of the biggest fans of music ever and not as a rock superstar.

He is the creator of over 50 records for different projects; three of the most important ones are the atmospheric noise of Communion, the progressive rock psychedelia of Porcupine Tree and the trip-hop of No-Man. One can easily picture this Englishman — who has small, clear eyes, straight hair, metal glasses and an exquisite accent from the south of England — at the age of 10 composing songs with a guitar, hanging out with friends as nerdy as he was, buying vinyl records and fanzines. That process culminated in the late 1980s, when Wilson became one of the main modern standard bearers of progressive rock, a style started by groups like Genesis, King Crimson and Yes. With Porcupine Tree, the band he founded in 1987, he defended — almost like the acolyte of a religion facing extinction — dense songs with rich and sophisticated arrangements.

As Porcupine Tree became increasingly popular, Wilson began to experiment with other genres, until he reached what he himself has described as “conceptual rock,” eclectic music that has room for electronic pop, jazz improvisation and 1980s guitars, over which the melancholy of Pink Floyd always hovers. The Harmony Codex falls into this category; the album features 10 songs that leave guitars behind (during this interview, he admits to having grown “a little” bored of them) in favor of embracing keyboards and analog synthesizers. On the album, Wilson emphasizes a narrative that is a constant in his lyrics: the transience of life and alienation as the real pandemic afflicting us.

“There was a time, from the late 1960s through the 1980s, when music told a story and took the listener on a journey. Now it’s all immediate, bright sounding and pop. When I was growing up, there was alternative music. And alternative meant Pixies, The Cure, Nirvana... Now, alternative is what I do, because it provides an alternative to what has become mainstream,” he muses. He goes on to say that “there are more people making music than at any other time in history and almost everyone wants to share it, because that’s part of human nature. There are 125,000 songs uploaded to Spotify every day. It’s absurd. With this outlook, people my age tend to gravitate toward the familiar, hence the proliferation of deluxe reissues of classic albums with demos, live sets and remixes.”

Wilson has a podcast about music with Tim Bowness called The Album Years. It has a 4.8 rating (out of 5) on Apple Podcasts and laudatory comments from listeners, all of whom have male avatars, reinforcing the notion that, when you go to a King Crimson concert, there’s no line for the ladies’ room. “Let’s see. That’s based on real experience and there’s a lot of truth to it. Porcupine Tree did a tour last year and 20-25% of the audience were women. And that’s pretty rare for a progressive band,” he says.

Since he began his solo career in 2008, Wilson has been delivering different albums within his eclectic rock concept and polishing the music catalogs of legendary bands like Jethro Tull, Roxy Music, Tears for Fears and Yes. For example, he was responsible for improving the sound of King Crimson’s discography, a task he carried out in the studio working closely with Robert Fripp. As a result of those sessions, reissues of the British band’s legendary albums have been released: the latest, King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King (50th Anniversary Edition), was released in 2019.

Wilson has never attained the same level of popularity as the other musicians of his generation; in fact, the British newspaper The Guardian called him “Britain’s least starry musical megastar.” We read the verse “And when you turn the shit to gold it’s not appreciated,” from the new album’s Actual Brutal Facts track, in that vein. “I understand that it made you think that the lyrics are autobiographical. I don’t consider myself that good at making gold. But it is true that I often think, if I had been born 10 years earlier, I would have found recognition more easily,” he says.

For the new album, he was finally able to build a custom studio in the house he bought in London five years ago with his wife, who often appears in the photos the musician posts on his Instagram page. Wilson leads a healthy life and lives by and for music. “This is the first time I’ve built a studio with the surround audio system that I’m an expert at. At least I’m number one [laughs] in that. I’ve also filled the space with analog synthesizers instead of guitars. With them, I’ve gone back to that feeling of approaching music as an outsider, as an idiot... For me that’s being an experimental musician: when you don’t know what you’re doing and at the same time you can see when you have something that has potential,” he says, mentioning Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno and Roger Waters as his role models in this regard.

After learning that the writer of this article listened to his new album over the compressed sound of a phone, Wilson smiles, unbothered: “I don’t feel bad; what matters is that you’ve heard it. I like to think that it will still sound good, because I take care of that too. At the same time, I provide an alternative so that, if you have a hi-fi system, it sounds glorious,” he says. His eyes light up, like a true wizard of sound.

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