Interviews
Steve Rothery talks to Britsound
(Photo:
myspace.com/thewishingtreeband)
Interview with Steve Rothery from The Wishing Tree, December 7, 2006.
RQ: In 1994 Marillion released a single called “The Hollow Man” with a B-side written by you called “Winter Trees,” which was – for the first time on a Marillion release – had your name only as the composer of the track. Two years later you released Carnival of Souls and a lot of people were very surprised at how different it was from your work with Marillion, because it was mostly songs played on acoustic guitars. Would you say that “Winter Trees” two years previously was basically a clue as to the direction of the material that you were going to record on your own?
SR: Possibly. The way that the “Winter Trees” track came about, it was literally just a writing sketch I did. The original acoustic guitar part was recorded straight onto DATS which I then took into a very early Protools system and just added some little atmosphere and then the bits of guitar to. So it was never actually recorded with the idea of releasing it even, it was just literally sketching an idea out. But I suppose, yeah, it’s the same as The Wishing Tree, in respect of it is just my musical ideas. It’s not a collaboration as I work in Marillion, it’s purely me taking an idea and developing it myself.
RQ: And how important was it for you to do something completely different from Marillion?
SR: Well, that’s difficult to explain, really, because the thing is, an awful lot of what I write is used in Marillion anyway, but what I really wanted to do was have something, the same as The Wishing Tree to a certain extent, which is more guitar-led. You know, I love keyboards, but sometimes I just think there’s something you get with having the focus more on guitars. To me, I find it still a little bit more exciting.
RQ: Now, when you say “focus on guitars,” are you talking acoustic guitars? Because the majority of the songs on Carnival of Souls, which was released ten years ago now, are obviously acoustically written on there, they’re acoustic-based songs.
SR: Not just acoustic. When you sketch out an idea, there are loads of different personalities and different approaches you can take with the track. It could turn out half a dozen different ways. But just the idea of not swamping the idea with keyboards, if you know what I mean, and just keeping it more guitar-based. You know, I’m in a band with two keyboard players … what can I say! (laughing) You know, sometimes I just like to develop things in that way, like I say, more guitar-based.
RQ: How did you met Hannah Stobart? When you have her voice with your guitar, something magical happens. How on earth did you find her?
SR: I actually met Hannah on the Brave Tour. I was chatting to her and saying that I was basically looking for female singers. But originally our management at the time had approached Julianne Regan from All About Eve. But she wasn’t interested at that time. I’d met another girl singer whose voice I liked, but whose personality I just couldn’t get on with. And Hannah said that she sang and offered to send me a tape. So she sent me a tape which funnily enough had an All About Eve track on it and a Tori Amos track, and I loved her voice. I think she was studying down in Brighton University at that time, and I went down there and we tried working together for a few days. You know, we had a great chemistry. She’s very, very easy to work with, that’s the thing. She’s kind of one of my oldest friends now, she’s got a great sense of humor, doesn’t take herself too seriously, no ego whatsoever, and just a lot of fun to work with, basically.
RQ: Now seems to me then, if you approached Julianne Regan from All About Eve, you knew in your mind what you were looking for?
SR: Kind of, yeah, I mean there’s always quite a few female singers whose work I really love, I mean, you know, people like Kate Bush and Tori Amos, and All About Eve, and Joni Mitchell. So, you know, I was trying to do something different from Marillion. Originally in the mid-80s, I had an idea of doing like more rock-based project with a male singer, and that didn’t come off. And the way that the whole idea originally started was when we were making the Brave album, I was approached by an American label at the time, which was I.R.S., to make an instrumental guitar album. They had a label at the time called the No Speak label and they basically offered me, I can’t remember, $20,000 to make an instrumental record for them. And I thought, “Well, that’s not exactly what I’d ideally do.” So I put my hand in my pocket and built my own studio with the idea of doing something a little bit more … kind of song-based, really. And I thought, “Well, ideally I’d like to work with a girl singer because a lot of the music I like listening to is that kind of music.” So that’s really how it came about.
RQ: So you recorded Carnival of Souls. What was the intention of the album when you released it, did you think, “Well, this is just fun to put out,” or did you think it would really find a big audience?
SR: I think the thing is with The Wishing Tree, as a concept, it has a huge amount of cross-over potential. I mean, we’re finding that now with the new songs. But even back then, I knew that it could cross over to a lot more than just the existing Marillion fans. At the time, I decided to try to do it on my own label (chuckling) with hindsight was a bit of a mistake because as an artist, you don’t want to be spending half your life chasing people up for money. But it taught me an awful lot. It taught me a lot about the business and what I didn’t want to do with my life. And after making the record, I recorded quite a lot of it as well as obviously writing it, so it’s a little bit a sort of home grown kind of approach to recording. But there’s a sense of satisfaction that you get from doing that, that you wouldn’t get if you were working with a proper engineer and producer all the time.
RQ: Some of the songs you wrote with Hannah made it onto the first album, didn’t they?
SR: Yes. The way the first album really came about is I pretty much wrote all the music and I wrote most of the vocal melodies. Most of the lyrics are actually by John Helmer just with one of the lyrics that Hannah wrote. So, you know, I was pretty much guiding her in terms of where the record was going and, you know, obviously using John’s lyrics because I thought he’s a great lyricist. I mean, the new music we’re working on isn’t like that at all, really. It’s a lot more of a 50/50 collaboration. I mean, Hannah’s developed an awful lot as a singer and as a writer since the first record. So, yeah, there’s been quite a lot of growth there.
RQ: You’ve described the album on your website as having a more contemporary edge. Is that because of Hannah’s input?
SR: Not really, it’s just, like I say, the way that the first record came together because I had a vision of what I wanted it to be. This one is down to the chemistry between the two of us. I mean, case in point is The Hollow Hills track which originally the musical idea was something that I came up with in writing the new Marillion album. But nobody in the band got excited about it, but I thought that it had some merit, so I sketched it – quite a rough sketch, really – in my home studio here and sent it over to Hannah and she basically did the whole vocal arrangements based on what I’d sent her. So when it came back, it sounds like these two people have been together in this room carefully crafting this track, but it doesn’t really kind of work like that quite often. But we have a very good chemistry, really. We like most of the same things musically. So even working like that way, you know, she’s based over in San Francisco and I’m here in England, we can still have a sort of chemistry.
RQ: I suppose this is an obvious question. It’s been ten years since Carnival of Souls. Why has it taken so long for a second album?
SR: Well … (laughs). That’s complicated, really. I mean, it’s partly complicated by the fact that after the first record, Hannah had to finish her studies because she was at university for four years. She then moved to the States, so we haven’t had that much time to work together. Usually I’d see her two or three times a year when she was over. And there was almost a second album about five, six years ago.
RQ: Almost. What happened?
SR: Well, we had a lot of interest from Sony and our guy in London really wanted to hear some more tracks with the idea of us signing to Sony, which I felt a little bit uncomfortable about anyway because obviously Marillion is my day job and this is something I do for fun. So it was a little bit scary, the idea that it could turn into some sort of monster that could make everything very difficult! But as it was, I think we tried to please him, if you like, by the sort of material that we were writing, kind of, if I could describe it, partly like a cross between Portishead and an Alanis Morissette, really, which obviously is quite a large jump away from what the first record was.
RQ: That’s a big departure.
SR: But some of the ideas were really good, in fact, there’s a couple of them that are probably going to be on this next record. But for whatever reason, the interest at Sony sort of dwindled, and we gave up for a couple of years, I suppose. We still kept in contact, because I feel we are very good friends. But it was only about three years ago, that we started talking about having another go. And then actually, while we were writing the Marbles album, that’s when we worked together for a week over Christmas and some really good things started to come out of that session.
RQ: You said that you didn’t want it to sort of turn into a ‘monster’ when you were approached by Sony. What does that mean? Does that mean you were reluctant to achieve massive commercial success with The Wishing Tree? Is commercial success something that you really don’t want? (SR chuckles) Is this something that you wish to keep almost like a secret?
SR: It’s so difficult to give an answer to that, really, because I suppose the way I feel is that my first loyalty is to Marillion, so I would never want to do anything that would jeopardize the band. And I think the problem is, when you have a major label like that and they’re talking about investing a lot of money in an act, they want a certain level of commitment, which might have been difficult if not impossible for me to give anyway.
RQ: Right.
SR: So it might have just been that they wanted to sign Hannah as an artist and not The Wishing Tree, so that’s the kind of potential problem in that situation. On one hand, you’re very excited because you get the impression from the feedback that you get from people that it does cross over to a wide variety of fans. Just from our MySpace page, it is literally everybody from fans of Kate Bush and Tori Amos and Fleetwood Mac to Evanescence and all sorts, like 14 year-old kids to people in their 60s. So you kind of sense that it does have this quite frightening potential cross over. But really, we’d be happy if we can sell 10 or 15 thousand albums. We’ll feel like it’s been worthwhile. Any more than that would be a bonus, really.
RQ: That’s kind of interesting, because obviously when we play some of your Wishing Tree material on the air here in America, it’s received a massive response and people saying, “Who is this band? When are they coming to America? When are they playing live? Where can I buy their CDs?” And the response has been phenomenal.
SR: Right.
RQ: So in many ways, I consider The Wishing Tree as one of Britain’s best-kept secrets, really.
SR: It’s always gratifying, actually, whenever I’m on tour with Marillion around the world, and we do these various after-the-show signings, the amount of people that come up to me and say how much they love The Wishing Tree album, which is good because when it first came out, there was a certain percentage of people that didn’t get it, that were kind of, I think, slightly disappointed that it wasn’t just Marillion but with a different singer…
RQ: And that there weren’t guitar solos in every song…
SR: Exactly, yeah. I could do that, and there’s a certain part of that that I will probably do at some point, I mean, I’ve done loads of recording over the years that haven’t seen the light of day, but with The Wishing Tree, I’ve got a sort of clear idea of what I think it could be, given half the chance. So that’s what I try and be true to, if that makes sense.
RQ: Absolutely. The actual sound of The Wishing Tree is in many ways timeless. Carnival of Souls, recorded in 1996, hasn’t dated one bit. You’ve gone for a timeless sound and you use words such as “haunting” to describe it. Hannah’s voice has also got a certain shimmering, timeless quality to it, hasn’t it?
SR: It has, it’s got a lovely texture and an emotional quality. I think that what works is the same way that I’m not. I’m not bothered about being a technical guitarist. I’m more concerned with conveying emotion and melody, and I think she has that sort of approach as a vocalist as well. You know, I’m sure there are loads of singers with stronger voices, but nobody as individual.
RQ: Don’t you think that at times, she’s got almost the emotional frailty of Kate Bush in her voice?
SR: Yeah, definitely.
RQ: Okay, so let me ask you then, if I can get you to commit on record, (SR chuckles) when is this album coming out?
SR: (Chuckling) That’s a very good question! Next year some time. My original plan was to have it out kind of early March, but there’s just too much coming in now to make that really a viable option. But I think what I’m going to try and do, I think we’re going to try and finish four of the songs and have a four-track EP that will hopefully be available from early February, with the idea of that generating a bit of money for us to market and promote the album properly when it comes out, hopefully sort of March/April time.
RQ: Right. And of course in March/April is the new Marillion album anyway, so you’ll be doing promotion for that.
SR: Exactly. Yes. In an ideal world, I’d have a gap of a few months where I could just promote The Wishing Tree, but unfortunately my life is too full (chuckling) for that to be an option.
RQ: But it seems to me that you deliberately want to keep it like a secret almost. Sure, you want to sell records, but you don’t want it to become a ‘monster’.
SR: (laughs) Oh God, I’d love nothing more than to sell a couple of hundred thousand albums. I think any more than that would … it would be a monster. And I think too much success could destroy something. It's almost like I say, it’s quite a fragile creature, you know. And too much attention would change it, I think. I think the pressure that that would introduce would make it more difficult for us to do what we do. You know, I’d be happy with, like I said, with 15,000 sales, but we’ve been sensible. If it were successful in any territory, in any country, then I wouldn’t be upset about that, but at the same time, I wouldn’t want it to turn into a monster.
RQ: So what’s the name of the album? Have you come up with any names yet?
SR: No, still too early. We’re knocking ideas back and forth about that!
RQ: Right. Well, if we’re going to keep this the best-kept secret in England, will you allow us to play “Hollow Hills” on Britsound?
SR: Of course, and anybody who wants to keep track of how things are progressing, probably our MySpace page would be a good place to start. We will have thewishingtree.com website up as well, hopefully, in the next couple of months, but yeah, it would be great to get some feedback from people!
Links:
http://www.myspace.com/thewishingtreeband
http://cdbaby.com/cd/wishingtree
