Steven Wilson: on listening to a broad range of music
As a person who has an appetite for all kinds of music, this echoed exactly what I feel.
“I think people are surprised by that (the fact that Wilson listens to ABBA) and they kind of smirk when you say it and I’m not joking (laughs). These guys, yes, they wrote cheesy pop music compared to say, the serious music of Frank Zappa and King Crimson, but they did it at the very highest level and you can learn a lot from listening. And I think you can always tell, and it irritates me, but I think you can always tell when a band have a very limited listening diet.
It kind of gets boring for me quite quickly if they just listen to death metal all day or they just listen to hip-hop all day. What’s nice is when you hear a band and you think, ‘Fuck knows what they listen to!’ (laughs) I like bands that really confront your expectations and that really comes from having an interesting listening diet, and not just listening to prog rock. I think people think we just listen to Yes and Genesis records all day. Yes, there was a time when I was a kid and you know I did completely immerse myself in that world but I haven’t really listened to that music a lot over the past 20 years and that’s what you hear when you listen to Porcupine Tree.
You hear those death metal riffs and those industrial rhythms and those pop songs and those harmony vocals and those ambient sections because I don’t just listen to prog rock and I think it’s great - I think it’s very important - ..”
