Porcupine Tree

Thu 1st May, 2008 in Features

If there ever was a band that failed to be categorised it would be England’s Porcupine Tree – part progressive rock, part space rock and part legend. Their late April whistle-stop tour of the three East Coast cities in three days was nothing short of amazing judging by the reception the band received at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre. FL’s Jon Van Daal was there and caught up with drummer Gavin Harrison at the mid-point of their tour down under.

Firstly, some history – this quintet was literally started 21 years ago as a parody of all the excesses of progressive rock by singer/guitarist Steve Wilson and fellow joker, Malcolm Stocks. Over the course of time and despite Wilson’s best initial efforts to become an ongoing joke played on the prog rock genre itself the band has gone on to scale incredible heights all over the world including Australia.

“When we came down here we had absolutely no idea of what to expect,” a still jet lagged Harrison revealed. “Last night [in Melbourne], we literally saw fans of all ages in the audience – it was quite a surprise.” We came down here three days early because we hadn’t played together since December 17th but as soon as we started it all came flooding back,” the relieved drummer added.

Harrison had been a recognised session musician before joining the band in 2002 following the departure of original drummer, Chris Maitland. Born into a musical family, Harrison would often join his father Bobby, a jazz trumpeter and part time drummer during his youth. He picked up the sticks at the age of six and over the next ten years formal lessons and a childhood spent in this environment saw him take his first gig at the age of sixteen.

“I remember my first job was playing Dixieland music for the launch of a new brand of bread”, he recalled. “We went around from town to town playing on top of a double decker bus painted as a huge loaf of bread. We’d turn up at a supermarket 8.30 am and literally start playing in the aisles for most of the day. I wasn’t fond of Dixieland music and I am sure that most of the customers didn’t like it either when they came into a store at 8.30 am in the morning. It was my first job as a drummer and we did a 26 week tour of supermarkets across the country but hey my friends were working for five quid a day as a builder’s labourers so I was thrilled to be getting paid to play the drums”, he went on to say.

In the years that followed Harrison played on over 100 albums with over fifty tours under his belt. This has been with everyone from Iggy Pop to Level 42 to Banarama and Go West receive the Harrison brand of drums. With legendary bassist, Tony Levin (Seal, Peter Gabriel) he backed one Claudio Baglioni and played to crowds of almost 100,000 in Italy. Clearly in a career that has spanned some twenty five years he has done it all but lets focus on the progressive side of his musical voyage.

Gavin clearly remembers the circumstances his first real gig. “I was reading the classifieds in the music paper, Melody Maker and saw a job advertised for a drummer with the band Renaissance. They were going on tour and needed a new drummer and I was one of 250 applicants. In the end they cut that down to forty. They gave us a piece of music to play and I was the only one to play the whole way through it,” he stated.

From the age of eleven he received lessons in how to read and write music that obviously paid dividends as many applicants could not read music at all. This would be the start of an incredible career that finally saw him being invited to join the Porcupine Tree fold in 2002. for the recording of the album, In Absentia and has been with them ever since. In addition to being a session drummer, Harrison also has his own huge recording studio in the back of his London home and his tremendous knowledge of recording, as well as his drumming abilities, certainly were an asset in a band that keeps aiming higher and higher with each recording.

Around the same time that he came on board Porcupine Tree was making the transition from being a well kept secret towards more mainstream success. This came with the signing of the band to Atlantic label, Lava Records and In Absentia was followed by four tours of Europe and North America with one of those being with acclaimed Swedish metal band Opeth.

Aside from his Porcupine Tree project, Wilson also had a number of personal projects and also produced albums for other artists. It therefore came as no surprise that he produced the album Blackwater Park. This step ended up having a profound effect on the band’s destiny that would introduce Porcupine Tree to a whole new metal audience.

The album Deadwing came out in 2005 and all the time the band was selling more albums and started moving from smaller clubs to bigger venues. The following year saw the band move from Lava to Roadrunner Records and saw them go back into the studio to record their ninth album. 2007 saw the release of Fear of a Blank Planet which was an instant success, charting in nearly all European markets as well as rising to # 59 on the American Billboard 200.

This saw the band play at London’s Download Festival to obviously a much younger metal audience. As mentioned the band toured right up until the end of last year as Gavin recalled. “We were seeing younger and younger audiences attending our shows with some as young as ten being able to sing along with all the words. Our association with Roadrunner Records has also seen Fear Of A Blank Planet realise much greater recognition than any of our previous album cycles – we had never been offered to tour Australia before signing with Roadrunner,” the drummer told me in a thick British brogue.

And so to the Australian tour and even more success it seems. For a person who has been a fan of progressive rock since the late sixties to a see band like Porcupine Tree was to be the zenith of my forty years of listening to this complex, often maligned genre. Playing their own particular blend of progressive rock meets psychedelic metal the band literally blew everyone in the audience away in a three city tour de force.

The evening of Anzac Day at Melbourne’s Palace nee Metro, saw a set list of mainly newer songs that was well received by a mix of older and younger fans. “We were still a bit jet lagged and we ended up not going on stage until 11 pm and played until after 1 am,” Harrison told me. “Despite not playing to an audience for nearly six months, the rehearsals helped and we picked up where we left off.” That was except for one minor incident.

“Steve [Wilson] tends to be forgetful and this saw him leave his moulded in ear monitors at home so he ended up getting some generic ones. Anyway halfway through the set he had pushed one of them so far into his ear that he could not remove it. We had to have the guitar tech try and remove it with a pair of tweezers and while it wasn’t pretty we managed to finish the show,” he continued with a slight chuckle.

The evening started with Mr Wilson apologising to the audience for the “500 years it took for PT to get to Australia” – it seemed they were working on the misapprehension that no one at all knew of them down under. The set list opened with Fear of A Blank Planet followed by the equally brilliant What Happens Now from the Nil Recurring EP. Other highlights included the simply stunning Anesthetize from the new platter while the older Hatesong and Smart Kid left some of the more seasoned tree huggers with a smile on their faces. When Halo finished the encore it was after 1 am but all left happy and seemingly fulfilled.

I met Gavin the following afternoon and he was clearly happy with the way the concert had gone and was eager to make his way to the Enmore for the sound check. I was doing double duty this day as I was also gathering info for an upcoming story for a local drum magazine. As such I had to go on stage to photograph his Sonor / Zildjian set up during the sound check.

With at least 100 eager fans outside waiting for the doors to open I snuck in through the side entrance to be ushered on to the stage to quickly take my snaps. Jason, Harrison’s tech was gracious enough to show me around this monster kit as Gavin pounded each drum head to obtain the right drum level.

What Harrison lacks in “over the top” equipment like a bigger bass drum and deeper toms he picks up in superb miking and a sound that makes his kit the sharpest tool in the band’s arsenal. “I started out with this sized kit and I’ve used the same basic combination ever since. I originally had different considerations back then including whether it would fit in my car but I’ve never felt that it was undersized in any way,” he freely admitted.

Directly in front of me was keyboard player Richard Barberi who with so many, keyboards, knobs and buttons looked like a “not so mad scientist” waiting for a big electric charge. His amazing soundscapes really add depth to the signature PT sound. As I waited for Gavin to finish guitarist John Wesley was also attending to his instruments but was way over on the other side of the stage.

Once finished I walked around the drum riser as Gavin ran through a simple routine so I could obtain my photographs. Standing in front of the kit was Colin Edwin who was playing around with his pedal box doing last minute adjustments. Through the course of the night he would pump out phat bass chords with a perpetual smile on his dial. Once I had the photos out of the way Jason thanked me and I went down into the empty, cavernous lower level of the Enmore to watch the rest of the sound check. Prior to leaving the hotel Gavin told me that they usually have a very quick sound check, however this was to last for some 35 minutes.

The band reacquainted themselves with Hatesong, The Sound of Muzak, Open Car, Trains and Halo. All the time the crowd numbers outside were growing and once I received my photo credentials I went back out into the cool night air to grab a quick bite to eat. I only had a few minutes when I returned before Melbourne support band “Sleep Parade” came on.

The first thing I noticed was the huge number of fans who were already near the stage to hear this trio – at least eighty percent of the final crowd. Though I was unfamiliar with their work Sleep Parade were not to disappoint as they tried to put their own stamp on “Muse like” inspired tunes. After the first three songs in the pit I returned to the foyer at the back of the lower level to meet my son, Kiel and the other members of his band, Marlow who had come to watch The Tree.

Trav, the guitarist was off buying a copy of Sleep Parade’s Things Can Always Change album after being more than impressed with their set thus far. I settled down behind the sound booth to watch the Parade’s drummer Dan Teng showing no mercy on his DW drum kit. Earlier in the day while his band was waiting for PT to finish their sound check he introduced himself to me. “Last night my mother sat to the side of the stage and had watched Gavin going through his paces and was duly impressed,” he revealed.

Back to their performance and guitarist Leigh Davies was doing a Jimi Hendrix impression deftly picking the guitar strings with his teeth. The large crowd were also very impressed with one wag stating the obvious “You’re good,” he shouted to rousing applause. As the punters streamed out nothing but good comments were uttered as they streamed past the booth on their way to whetting their whistles as the bar.

A good half an hour must have passed as the capacity crowd waiting patiently for Porcupine Tree to make an appearance and in chatting I had found that fans had come from Townsville, Hobart and even America to see the band. Just after 9.30pm the lights were dimmed and the quintet filed on stage to uproarious applause. A few guitar tweaks here and a bang here and Steve Wilson strummed the opening bars to the title track from their new album and they were off. After doing my photo duties for the first three songs I moved back from the very front of the stage to just beside the mixing desk to gain the best sound I could.

As it turned out the band were to perform a set list that was almost a carbon copy of the night before with most in attendance mouthing the words to each and every song. Halfway through the Sydney set the band played the additional Mother and Child Divided with Wilson commenting afterwards that “Sydney seemed more like a metal crowd”. It certainly was a rousing rendition of this prog-metal masterpiece and through out the night the signature projections of Lasse Hoille’s dark movie creations screened behind the band adding a meaningful exclamation mark to all before it.

My personal favourites were the awesome Anesthetize and a particularly passionate version of Hatesong from the Lightbulb Sun album. On the trip home my son commented that the song was one that was written and played with a high level of angst. Lazarus was a good glimpse of the work from the Deadwing album. I would have loved to have heard more including Arriving Somewhere But Not Here and Mellotron Scratch but Open Car and Halo in the encore had to do. In all it was a very memorable concert and with the entire rig pulled down in some fifteen minutes it was all loaded into a big white truck outside and was on to Brisbane’s Tivoli for the final stop.

From the feedback I received from friends and acquaintances that attended the Brisbane event it seemed that many were expecting some more of the older “space rock” material. This and the fact that some thought the sound was poorly mixed to start with could have been were brushed aside when the skill and dexterity of the band members were taken into account.

I am told that the sound quality did improve and like the slight change seen in Sydney set list so too was the final Brisbane bill. This saw Lazarus dropped for Sentimental from the latest album and the older A Smart Kid was set aside for Even Less. The last five songs were the same as before with Trains and Halo being a fitting encore yet again.

The band might have thought that no one knew about them before they set foot on our shores but from all reports good crowds were seen across the tour. I would have to say that while I have been going to concerts since 1969 that the last three years has seen some of the best gigs I’ve ever seen with Yes, Tool and more recently Dream Theater being on a par with Frank Zappa from the mid-seventies as far as my prog (rock/metal) roll of honour goes. In closing -like those mentioned above – while they took years and years to finally get here, I am sure that we’ll be seeing a lot more of Porcupine Tree in the near future.