Contents Issue 52 05.01.15
it’s on here
greg russell
if it’s in there
Cover
feature
The live version of A Passage To Bangkok... The drumming is not of this world.
Rush p34 A very rare glimpse into the mindset and lifestyle of Neil Peart.
FEATURES Pallas________________ Pg 46
REGULARS BLOODY WELL WRITE Regulars
pg 10
THE INTRO
pg 12
Missives, musings and tweets from Planet Prog.
Steven Wilson unveils details of his brand new album , Beardfish reconnect with prog and Renaissance head to the UK on a rare tour. Plus Arcade Messiah, The Contortionist and more…
RECORD COLLECTION
pg 30
Star snapper Mick Rock talks about his old flatmate Syd Barrett, and his own record collection.
Q&A
pg 32
Dave Kilminster tells us about his new solo album, and how he survived playing Comfortably Numb on top of a wall…
THE LABELS THAT BUILT PROG
pg 52
Our brand new series takes a look at the labels that helped build a progressive new world in music. First up, we profile the legendary Harvest…
THE OUTER LIMITS
pg 72
They were men. And they were Devo. But were they prog? This is the question we put to the band’s co-founder Gerald Casale this issue…
THE MUSICAL BOX
pg 96
Brian Eno’s solo reissues get a critical reappraisal, as well as releases from Beardfish, Peter Hammill, Colosseum, Soen, Dave Kerzner, Supertramp, Rush, Yes, Moody Blues and many more…
TAKE A BOW
pg 116
TesseracT’s return to London leads our live reviews this issue, along with Threshold, Steve Rothery, Lazuli, Sólstafir, Pendragon, John McLaughlin, Bigelf, Henry Cow and lots more.
BRAINSTORM
pg 130
Bigelf mainman Damon Fox certainly knows his way around a retro keyboard rig . But how does the top-hatted one fare with his prog knowledge?
“Our promotions guy said: ‘Marillion are a pop band. You’re heavy metal.’ And I thought, ‘Oh dear, we’re in trouble.’”
Faust_________________Pg 56 “This album is like a flower that grew on a hump of shit.” Krautrock legends still aiming to defy categorisation.
Trojan Horse________________ Pg 60 We sent Steve Davis and Trojan Horse to a pub together. This is what happened!
Blueneck____________________ Pg 62 “This could well be the last album like this we make.” West Country boys plan some future changes…
Lunatic Soul_________________ Pg 66
“This is very strange music.” Riverside frontman journeys to the dark side.
Thomas Giles_______________ Pg 76
“It can be big and theatrical.” BTBAM mainman plans grand solo gestures.
United Progressive Fraternity___________________ Pg 80 “This isn’t the end of Unitopia.” New Anglo‑Aussie prog collective won’t lay to rest Down Under’s classic prog rockers.
Colosseum __________________ Pg 84
“We’ve made the decision to go out on a high.” The classic jazz-infused prog rockers decide to call it a day.
Stewart Bell_________________ Pg 88 “The human mind is such a mystery.” There’s some heavy conceptual thinking from the Citizen Cain man.
Critics’ Choice ________________ Pg 90
Anathema? Opeth? Pink Floyd? Martin Turner? So just what was the Prog writers’ top album of 2014?
A group who have always done things their own way, neo-prog survivors Pallas holed up in their Aberdeenshire studio to create their crowdfunded new album, Wearewhoweare – a fine prog rock record, and a defiant statement of intent. Words: Johnny Sharp Images: Paul Mackie
Brave Hearts
46 progmagazine.com
Pallas, from left: Paul Mackie, Ronnie Brown, Niall Mathewson, Colin Fraser, Graeme Murray.
“Our promotions guy said: ‘Marillion are a pop band. You’re heavy metal.’ I thought, ‘Oh dear, we’re in trouble.’” Graeme Murray
I
f ever a band needed to pursue the traditional route to musical inspiration and ‘escape to the country to get their heads together’, they’d be well advised to check out The Mill Recording Studio, a few miles west of Aberdeen. With no neighbours but cows and sheep to complain about the volume, little noise nearby other than the gentle trickle of a stream, and the snow-capped Cairngorm Mountains on the horizon, it’s quite some bolthole. It’s owned and run by Pallas guitarist Niall Mathewson, and when it’s not being hired out by local musicians, it serves as the neo‑prog survivors’ unofficial HQ. Better still, when Prog visits, it’s just in time for elevenses, and they’re treating guests to cups of tea and a plate of rowies, an artery-busting Abderdonian delicacy resembling a flattened, deep-fried croissant. Despite having the lean, elegantly emaciated physique seemingly only ever found in men over 40 when they’re rock frontmen, Paul Mackie tucks in to several of these as he sits down to introduce himself. He is, of course,
still the new boy of the band, having joined in 2010 to replace long-time singer Alan Reed in time to finish off the following year’s XXV album. Just don’t call him Iggy Prog, right? “I know, I know,” he nods wearily when I note his resemblance to the evergreen punk icon. “I’ve had it for years.” It may be something to do with his weatherbeaten features, which reflect his penchant for spending days and nights camping in the mountains, pursuing his love of landscape and wildlife photography. In contrast, bassist Graeme Murray is every inch the urbane elder statesman of rock, his jet-black hair and aviator shades belying his day job as a court solicitor. Meanwhile, Niall Mathewson’s bearded, avuncular figure and specs on a string can’t help but remind you of Steve Coogan’s fictional music industry veteran Tommy Saxondale. Absent today are keyboard player Ronnie Brown and drummer Colin Fraser, but you get the impression that the introduction of the new frontman has made Pallas a considerably happier camp, cracking jokes back and progmagazine.com 47
With Rush mulling over their future plans, Neil Peart gives one of his most personal and revealing interviews ever, discussing himself, his passions and his thoughts on Rush’s future. Phil Wilding is all ears… Image: Matt Scannell
T
he low clouds and mist have only just burned off as the Los Angeles sun struggles to assert itself along the Santa Monica coastline. The air still smells like rain and Neil Peart is just back inside from admiring the garden. The house is still quiet – like most days, he’s the first to rise – and as we talk the intercom occasionally buzzes into life to check which part of the house Neil’s in. His office, as it turns out. Neil’s on the author trail, his new book, Far And Near: On Days Like These – a companion volume to 2011’s wellreceived travelogue memoir, Far And Away: A Prize Every Time – is on the stands. There’s also the matter of the day job as drummer and lyricist in Rush – stories and reflections from their Time Machine and Clockwork Angels tours make up the bulk of the book – and life as a dad the second time around. For someone so infamously guarded (he did write the lyrics to Limelight, after all) he’s surprisingly open about his daughter, five year old Olivia, and the life he lives now out in California. Constantly restless and consumed by wanderlust he may be, but Neil Peart sounds like a man who’s found home.
This latest book seems more reflective than the first volume… I suppose it’s all about me as an audience. More and more I realise that’s my presence in the world; I like to observe, especially in a moving vehicle and on the motorcycle, the world comes towards you like a show and I’m very tuned into that. A writing exercise that I always do, is that whatever I’m looking at, I think, how would I put this in words? A lot of Ghost Rider was written directly to a friend of mine who happened to be temporarily incarcerated at the time, so I was always looking at the world around me and discussing my feelings with myself in terms of a letter to him.
Run To The Hills: Peart rides his motorcycle to pastures unknown to relax.
The new book reflects Ghost Rider in tone: it’s a very honest, almost exposed read in some parts. I do try and talk about my grief and what happened to me in the book because it helps people. Ghost Rider is by far my most widely read book and that kind of puzzles me, because the others are an awful lot happier to read, but there are certain people who have endured the same kind of experiences and loss as I have and found it helpful, so I do make the effort to share. I try to
neil peart
How’s California this morning? It’s very good, we’ve had a bit of rain and so it all feels better.
That’s very much the character of the book; I describe the writing as being a series of different letters to someone.
share those things to try and help people know they’re not alone, because it helped me to know that I wasn’t alone then. You first started cycling while on tour in Utah in the mid-80s. What spurred that decision? That was just a day off on tour and I thought, what can I do? I know, I’ll get a bicycle! And that was the beginning of the two-wheeled world for me. Most people would have just gone to the bar. I can divide my touring life into two phases because I realised on the very first tour in 1974 that this was no kind of life, and there was much hanging
progmagazine.com 35
out time and it was potentially so selfdestructive. And I started reading then, I filled all the empty hours with the education that I missed, delving into all the genres. There was the book period and then in my thirties I got into bicycling and then into motorcycling and they became the escape from touring and the injection of life, freedom, engagement with the world, and it’s still something that I love. Do you remember making the transition from bicycle to motorbike; was it very clearly defined? I was always afraid of motorbikes! I always said that when I grow up, I’ll get a motorcycle and it’ll be a BMW and it wasn’t until my mid-forties that I decided I was as grown up as I was going to be and I started riding and then I started to realise that, oh, this would be a nice way to tour because bicycling had been great. On a show day I’d be jittery as I had to perform so I’d ride my bicycle around the city and go check out the local art museum, I had an outing and got an education along the way, so motorcycling was just a way to take that up a notch. So instead of art, I could reach national parks and get out in the desert and the mountains, even the prairies. The world that I experience on the motorcycle is the real world. Between shows, I averaged it out, I travel about 500 miles riding and none of it is freeways or motorways.
You’ve become quite the accomplished travel writer now. I’ve been interested in prose writing since the 70s. I went to a shop in Little Rock and bought a typewriter and set out to write; I tried a novel, I tried a screenplay, I tried everything and then in the early 80s, I did a bicycle trip to China and I consciously decided not to take a camera with me but to try and capture the journey in words and came back and made that up into my very first travel journal. I realised that it was what I wanted to pursue and so it was fortunate. I worked on writing for 20 years before anyone saw it, which was 36 progmagazine.com
neil peart
Motorcycles, cars, an incredible Aston Martin like James Bond used to drive… I showed people pictures of that and they say to me, ‘oh, that’s my dream car’, and I say, ‘It’s mine, too!’ I’m far from jaded about any of that and of course I appreciate it totally. I spend a lot of time around my cars and I’ve been doing a lot of racing this year in a series called the 24 Hours of LeMons. The cars have to be worth no more than $500, essentially it’s a junker and you go endurance racing. Our racing team’s called Bangers and Mash!
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