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.

Steven Wilson

We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction.

Steven Wilson

Technology World UN

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.

Steven Wilson

Work Art Yourself

Ever since I was a kid, I've always been interested in the poetry of melancholy, if you like.

Steven Wilson

Poetry You Ways

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.

Steven Wilson

Age Whole Who

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.

Steven Wilson

Music Love Wit

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.

Steven Wilson

Time Success Ways

I've always been the sort of person who likes to look forward and live in the present.

Steven Wilson

War Who Ways

I never wanted us to be an exercise in nostalgia, living in the shadow of other artists.

Steven Wilson

Art Wanted Want

When it comes to being in a band or going solo, one is collaborative, and one is not. But generally speaking, when going solo, I am the boss. People can contribute ideas, but I am the boss. When collaborating, you make compromises and look for a common ground.

Steven Wilson

You UN Tribute

I grew up with vinyl records and remember the pleasure and the kind of buzz that I got from buying a beautiful vinyl record with the sleeve and the lyrics - all that kind of tactile experience that you could get from an old vinyl record.

Steven Wilson

Experience You Yin

The definition of an artist, for me, is someone who is quite selfish about their creativity.

Steven Wilson

Art Who Tis

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.

Steven Wilson

Death Age Which

'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.

Steven Wilson

You Written Writer

I think there is something about the Internet which gives people almost an opportunity to role play and to create a facade, an image. I see that as quite a dangerous development because I think what we call social networking, Twitter, Facebook, etc., is actually quite antisocial.

Steven Wilson

Work Men Anger

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.

Steven Wilson

Years Year Writer

The whole notion of an alternative truth is a paradox. How can you have an alternative to truth?

Steven Wilson

Truth You Whole

My musical tastes are very diverse. I just never felt like listening to certain kinds of bands. There's too much great stuff out there.

Steven Wilson

Music Great Very

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.

Steven Wilson

Art Yourself Yours

In the mid- to late '70s, there was no one better than ABBA at writing and producing great pop.

Steven Wilson

Great Writing Tin

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.

Steven Wilson

Yourself Yours Your

It's a cliche that music rises above it all, and it's a cliche for a reason - it's very often true.

Steven Wilson

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!

Steven Wilson

We live in a world dominated by fear and paranoia.

Steven Wilson

When I did 'Hand Cannot Erase,' I didn't have a specific singer in mind.

Steven Wilson

I like artists that tend to be more interested in reinventing themselves, in experimenting.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

I've always wanted to make some kind of music that was universally appreciated.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

Human beings find change very difficult. They find change is something that can be quite an awkward thing to adjust to. It applies to music. It applies to life. It applies to everything.

Steven Wilson

What I do is I basically make records to please myself first and foremost, and so one of the most important things for me as a musician and a writer and a producer is to feel like there's always a sense of evolution and reinvention with each record.

Steven Wilson

The city can be the loneliest place of all.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

There's always something special playing in your home country in front of your home audience.

Steven Wilson

I grew up listening to a lot of very smart pop records by artists like Kate Bush, Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel, Prince, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, The The.

Steven Wilson

One thing I have found over years is that if you change direction, the initial reaction tends to be very polarized, but as the music gradually filters through and fans start engaging with it on its own terms rather than comparing it to what went before, the appreciation and acceptance of it increases.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

I've seen a fair amount of concert DVDs - some of them are great, some of them are not. If there are problems with them, it's usually because of budget limitations and camerawork.

Steven Wilson

It's possible that Israel will be my second home, but it won't be my only home.

Steven Wilson

People who like progressive music tend to sneer at the idea of a kind of punk aesthetic, and people who like alternative indie rock or punk rock tend to sneer at what they see as the pretentiousness and pomposity of progressive music.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

We had an extreme reaction to Storm Corrosion. We were proud of it, but it divided the audience. The metal fans were divided. Some went with it. Some hated it, since it wasn't the progressive metal supergroup they were waiting for.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.

Steven Wilson

You will hear ambient in our music. You will hear trip-hop.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson

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.

Steven Wilson