The 49-year-old Hemel Hempstead resident has also been heralded as the king of progressive rock. As well intentioned as this may be, it does a disservice to Steven’s extensive and wide-ranging musical output.
Indeed, little which might truly be regarded as ‘prog rock’ can be heard on Steven’s current smash hit album, To The Bone. Most of the tracks owe their genesis to his love for straightforward pop music.
“I think of the album as progressive pop rather than progressive rock,” he remarked. “The songs were inspired by albums of my youth, Peter Gabriel’s So, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, Talk Talk’s The Colour of Spring and Tears For Fears’ The Seeds of Love.”
Critics have suggested other influences such as Depeche Mode, Radiohead and Todd Rundgren might have been involved. But the variety of Steven’s output over a career which now spans 35 years, allied to the music he has enjoyed hearing throughout his life, means more or less any artist from the pop or rock genre could be quoted as a possible influence.
The one definite influence was his mother and father’s record collection.
“My parents gave each other albums as Christmas gifts one year when I was a child. They were Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby. I loved both albums. My dad was the Pink Floyd fan. He also enjoyed artists like Mike Oldfield. Mum was more of a pop fan. She absolutely loved ABBA.
“I had this incredibly diverse musical taste. It wasn’t until I got to secondary school that I realised there were snobberies around music. Other kids were so insistent about what was supposedly good and supposedly bad. I didn’t fit into the pattern because I liked pretty much everything.”
For someone who became so enmeshed in music at such a young age, it is surprising to learn Steven’s initial involvement was not welcomed.
“My parents paid for me to have guitar lessons. I was probably too young and wanted to do other things during the times that I had to go to the lessons.”
Aged 11, Steven began to play a classical guitar he found in the attic at his house. But he did not simply teach himself to play. He also experimented with the instrument creating unusual sound effects by scraping microphones across the strings, feeding the resulting sound into overloaded reel to reel tape recorders and producing a form of multi-track recording by bouncing between two cassette machines.
This developing interest prompted Steven’s electronics engineer father to build him a multi-track tape machine and a vocoder so that he could experiment with studio production.
“I immersed myself in the world of overdubbing, multi-tracking and the whole process of studio recording. I was able to learn how to do these things at a much younger age than I should have been able to. Studio recording has always been my first love.”
Steven’s early bands, Karoma and Altamont, were electronica and krautrock outfits who released material on cassette. He has since performed in a number of bands or created side projects such as Bass Communion, Blackfield and No Man Is An Island (Except the Isle of Man). But Steven was best known for his work with Porcupine Tree.
Founded in 1987, Porcupine Tree began as a musical joke. They were a fictional legendary rock band with a detailed back story. But if their supposed career was fabricated, Steven’s music was not. It caught the attention of magazine editors who were generous in their praise. With a number of critically acclaimed Porcupine Tree releases behind him, 1993 saw Steven recruit three other musicians to form a live band.
“We were once called the most important band you’d never heard of. But enough people did get to know us over the years. I’d earned my living from having my music used on television and in commercials. I didn’t need this income long before I ended Porcupine Tree in 2010.
“I was recording my second solo album by then and really wanted to concentrate on my solo career. But there was also the factor of some Porcupine Tree members not wanting to play the kind of music that I was developing for the band. I wanted to take Porcupine Tree in a direction they didn’t want to follow. I knew this and didn’t want to be on stage playing songs that I felt the others might resent.”
As things have transpired, Steven’s solo career has blossomed. That second solo album, Grace for Drowning, sold well throughout Europe, hit number 34 in Britain and number 85 on the Billboard 200. His three subsequent albums have all achieved progressively higher chart positions and seen Steven’s popularity spread throughout the world.
To The Bone has debuted at number three in Britain and given Steven his first mainstream chart-topper by shooting straight to pole position in Finland.
“It’s nice to have the chart success but I really hope the album becoming so popular will act as an introduction to my music for new fans. I hope those people who have discovered me through To The Bone will be interested in listening to my back catalogue.”
Katy Perry
“The most absurd basketball game of the century.” This is how Katy Perry describes the video accompanying her latest single, Swish Swish.
Many of Katy’s fans will already know the song, which also features Nicki Minaj. The third single taken from her Witness album, the house-inspired electronic dance music and hip hop track was initially issued last May as a pre-album release teaser.
Katy says Swish Swish is “a great anthem for people to use when someone is trying to hold you down or bully you.”
The video takes up this theme with Katy’s overmatched team being taken apart by their opponents. But a remarkable turn of fortune eventually sees them emerge triumphant. It features a host of famous faces, some on screen for barely one second, and also harks back to Katy’s Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) video with a brief appearance by her Kathy Beth Terry character.
The Swish Swish video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGk5fR-t5AU
Katy and Nicki recently performed Swish Swish live at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. It was arguably the highlight of Katy’s night. Her hosting of the show has been roundly criticised. Others were responsible for her script but many observers were critical of Katy’s presenting skills which were described as wooden and dull.
DNCE and Sir Rod Stewart
There was a time when Sir Rod Stewart was at the cutting edge of pop music. He notched up a string of hits including six UK chart-topping singles and eight number one albums. His US chart figures were only marginally less successful with four singles and albums taking pole position.
In more recent years, Rod has become something of a balladeer performing classic songs from times past such as I’m in the Mood for Love, Cheek To Cheek and Someone To Watch Over Me. It therefore comes as a surprise to hear Rod’s latest release is a reworking of his 1978 US and UK chart-topper Do Ya Think I’m Sexy. What’s more, the new version has been created in partnership with Joe Jonas’ band DNCE.
“They twisted it about a bit,” Rod remarked. “They added a new verse and put in a middle-eight. They’ve just made it different so I thought that was fine.”
Rod and DNCE played the song during the MTV Video Music Awards. Their performance can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDT_EZHiBaA
DNCE and Bonnie Tyler
Another DNCE collaboration was with Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler on her 1983 US and UK chart-topper, Total Eclipse Of The Heart. They performed the song on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis Of The Seas ship during the “Total Eclipse” cruise which gave passengers the experience of witnessing the full solar eclipse on August 21.
A video of their performance can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMZnVY0jNFg
Bonnie has recorded several versions of Total Eclipse Of The Heart in varying lengths. The original recording lasted almost seven minutes but was edited to five minutes 32 seconds for the official video.
An audio posting of the long version is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcVdQXwjQcw The music video can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo
