Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison

Interview by Cameron Edney

British born drummer and percussionist Gavin Harrison knew at the age of six years old that he wanted to spend his life behind a drum kit, playing music and seeing the world! Over the years Harrison has worked with a long line of amazing musical artists that span many different genres, adapting to each and every style of music has certainly helped shape Harrison into the amazingly talented drummer we see before us today! With a career that spans more than twenty years Gavin has worked with artists such as Paul Young, Sam Brown, Iggy Pop, Lisa Stansfield, and more recently Backfield, King Crimson and Porcupine Tree to name just a few! Joining progressive rockers Porcupine Tree in 2002, Harrison bought a new element to the groups sound with his signature style drumming and has recorded some of the bands finest work including ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’ and the most recent album ‘The Incident’.

Harrison has been long admired by aspiring drummers from around the world. He has also released two instructional drum books and Dvd’s ‘Rhythmic Illusions’ and ‘Rhythmic Perspectives’ as well as winning Modern Drummer’s Best Progressive Rock Drummer Poll three years running. Almost two years ago Gavin made his first trek to Australia with Porcupine Tree playing to large crowds night after night and leaving his mark on the Aussie fans, with thunderous drumming and an onstage presence which hasn’t been matched since! 

Australian fans were thrilled to recently learn that the band would be returning in February to play a series of shows across the East Coast, showcasing tracks from the band’s latest album! I had the pleasure of recently catching up with Gavin at his home in London to discuss Porcupine Tree’s most recent album ‘The Incident’, the bands upcoming Australian tour, joining the legendary King Crimson and much more!

Inside Out: Firstly Gavin, I want to thank you for taking the time out to speak with me tonight, it’s a true pleasure… how’s everything going?

Gavin Harrison: I’m good Cameron thank you! It’s been going really well actually we’ve just done fifty two shows, had a week off, and then we went over to Mumbai, and were back home for Christmas.

Inside Out: Mate congratulations on the latest Porcupine Tree album ‘The Incident’, the album charted very well in various parts of the world, no doubt you guys have been thrilled with the exposure the album has had and the responses from fans and media outlets!

Gavin Harrison: It’s been great, easily our biggest album yet & we can see that in our concert attendances too! 

Inside Out: As most people would be well aware by now, this a concept album that was written surrounding a number of different incidents that were shown on the evening news and so forth, why did you guys feel it was so important to cover the various issues that you did on the album?

Gavin Harrison: Well actually, that’s something that struck Steve [Wilson]. He writes the lyrics for the records & it struck him when he actually came face to face with a fatal accident on the local motorway. He got caught in the big traffic queue & he saw the “incident” sign which is something that the police just put up as a standard routine here. It turned out that someone had died a few feet away from Steve’s car as he was creeping by it. I think that was the catalyst that sparked the idea & then with that idea he started looking at other incidents & dispatching the view that people associate with the word “incident”!  

Inside Out: When you guys sat down back in February and began the writing process for the album, did you go in with a clear vision of what you wanted to do or was it created more from spontaneous moments in the studio?

Gavin Harrison: Well yes, musically some of it is written by Steve, some of it is written as a band, in the past sometimes we’ve written just two of us at a time. Last December in fact we went into a studio in England for two weeks & played through a lot of ideas rather than the traditional way of jamming. We bought seeds of ideas to the writing sessions; there could be twenty ideas which could be drum rhythms, bass lines, guitar parts and sometimes three & four sections all together. We would play each other all these pieces, we’d get up in the morning and someone would say “okay let’s start with Richard” and he’d play us three ideas & we’d pick one, work on it all day long until we think we’ve either exhausted it or it’s is actually in a somewhat finished shape, then maybe later that evening we’d work on one of my ideas & so forth. We generated about seventy minutes of music that way, a large amount that no one will ever really hear because we didn’t think it was up to scratch.

Inside Out: How about the drum tracks, how much time did you spend on those in the studio?

Gavin Harrison: We developed the songs quite well before the recording process… I had a chance to sit at home and just practice it on my own before I went into the studio! I spent two and a half days in the studio but really I spent three or four weeks at home getting ready for that! This time I went into a really expensive studio in London, so rather than going there to dick around as I would do in my home studio, I decided that I would get up to speed & rehearse it! When I got into the studio I was aware of the amount of money that was ticking by every minute, I just got on and did it. Whereas my studio at home where I recorded ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’, and ‘Deadwing’, I tend to be much more relaxed with the time! It’s very easy to just stop, go down the shops, have a cup a tea, it’s easy to get distracted at home & the days wither by! 

Inside Out: From a drumming perspective, besides spending a few weeks rehearsing the album before laying down the tracks, did you approach it in a different way to albums you have worked on in the past?

Gavin Harrison: From a drumming perspective it wasn’t really different, but it was nice to be in a different atmosphere. Your frame of mind is different, when we recorded in the centre of New York I got up every morning and I walked through Manhattan to the studio and that puts you in a slightly different frame of mind, you feel buzzed, energized about being in the centre of New York, and likewise when I’ve done sessions in Paris or Rome. You walk out the room and see Rome and it really puts you in a different frame of mind! Your frame of mind is quite a big factor on how you perform. I guess it was nice to have an engineer and an assistant sitting there, you feel like someone’s listening. When you record at home you’re on your own & you have to deal with the engineering side of recording & there’s a total lack of feedback.    

Inside Out: Gavin, now that the album has been out for a couple of months and you’ve had time to digest it, looking back over the process is there anything you would have liked to have changed or wish you did differently?

Gavin Harrison: No I’m very happy with the way it was recorded; I don’t have any regrets or issues! If there are any issues we normally sort them out straight away, we don’t wait til’ the end of a tour to say “I don’t really like that song & don’t want to play it live”! 

Inside Out: Gavin, I’d like to talk to you a little about touring and life on the road… it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago that you guys played in Australia and already you will be heading back here next month for a whirlwind east coast tour, no doubt you guys are thrilled to be returning to Australia?

Gavin Harrison: Absolutely, it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago… in actual fact I guess it’s going to be about two years by the time we get there. We were delighted that there was a very good response, some of the places we played had about 2000 people attending and that was amazing! To come to a country when you have no idea how popular or unpopular you are, it’s a great surprise to suddenly do a show & have two thousand people there. We’ve played places in Europe & in America several times and still not managed to pull that amount of people! 

Inside Out: Really… I have to say mate that really surprises me! I would’ve imagined that those countries having larger populations that the crowd attendances would be much greater than those which are seen in Australia!

Gavin Harrison: Yeah, I mean you play in places like Belgium, and we’ve been playing in Belgium for quite a few years. Normally you start off with a few hundred, you play in a small club, and the next time you play to a few more. It takes several visits before you really get up to a thousand or more attending. I guess coming all the way to Australia there’s an element of the Australian audience thinking well, they don’t come around here every couple of weeks, it’s not like they live around here, so if I want to go to Porcupine Tree I better make the effort. If you live in England or mainland Europe you may think well they’re always coming through here…

Inside Out: I guess that’s one way you can look at it! What fond memories do you have from the last Australian tour Gavin? 

Gavin Harrison: Personally it was the first time I’d ever been to Australia, and it reminded me of how my childhood in England was. It seemed like England but a lot cleaner [laughs]. It felt like how I used to remember my childhood in the sixties, sunny, glowing, safe and clean. You meet so many people in England that say “I’m going to immigrate to Australia one day”, and I always thought… “Wow do you really want to live on the other side of the world”? But when you get around there, it’s amazing! With so many similarities to England itself, I loved it, I actually stayed on another week after the last three shows to play some drum clinics and went to Adelaide, Sydney and Geelong just outside of Melbourne, so I got to see a little bit more of the real life rather than the chaperoning life going in and out of concerts and press meetings.    

Inside Out: Over the years you guys have played to many adoring fans across the globe, how do the Australian Porcupine Tree audiences rate, when compared to the rest of the world?

Gavin Harrison: Oh as good as anywhere! Very enthusiastic, and they seem very pleased to be there. We didn’t feel like it was an audition or that the people had come to check us out, it felt like they knew the songs and was pleased to have us there. It’s weird to fly from the other side of the world, set up your instruments & play and there are people singing along to songs that you had only written a few months before, it’s a bizarre feeling really! 

Inside Out: Although you joined Porcupine Tree in 2002 you’ve been touring for years now… how does touring now compare to when you were first starting out? I would imagine along the way you have learnt many valuable lessons on how to survive the road!

Gavin Harrison: Well actually when I first started touring, it was mostly touring around England, and when I started playing with some more successful artists, I started touring around the United States & Europe. Porcupine Tree was the very first band I’d ever been in that toured on a bus and I never understood what bus touring was all about. Even though when I was playing with Lisa Stansfield or someone we had a bus to get around & then we’d go to a hotel & had our own hotel rooms. The level of touring that Porcupine Tree does and the financial practicalities of touring on a bus are just about the only way you could do it. I didn’t realize that it meant sleeping on the bus virtually every night & it’s a shock to the system, especially if you’re not old and think it’s hilarious & think it’s a great party; it’s quite tough living on a bus. It’s not that we can’t afford hotels, it’s just that we can’t afford to take a day off between every show to travel the distances. When we’re touring in the United States, the distances are huge so you end up driving for twelve hours. It’s weird… you get on the bus you go to bed, you get up ten hours later & the bus is still moving, it’s pretty bizarre. On this last tour there were thirteen of us living on a bus! Unfortunately one person catches a cold and we all get it, it feels like living in a submarine & being on big brother at the same time! 

Inside Out: Gavin, we have hit the part of the interview where our readers get to find out more about the real you… growing up did you always envision yourself as someone who would be doing music professionally or were your goals different?

Gavin Harrison: Oh no, as soon as I was six years old I told my dad I wanted to be a professional drummer. My dad was a professional trumpet player and as soon as I fell in love with playing the drums that was it, I thought that school was a big waste of time. What I really wanted to do was stay at home and practice drums, & I did that as much as I legally could. I was determined from the age of six that it was what I was going to do! 

Inside Out: Mate, last year you became the drummer for the legendary King Crimson, tell us how that came about?

Gavin Harrison: Well Robert Fripp had been opening for Porcupine Tree in 2005, 2006 and in 2007 as well & he got to see me play quite a lot. We got to know Robert quite well & then out of the blue he decided that he wanted me in the band. He called me up and said “I know that you’re in Porcupine Tree, & I don’t want you to leave Porcupine Tree, but I know when you’ve got some gaps and I’d like you to come & join King Crimson”!    

Inside Out: Before joining Porcupine Tree, you recorded and played with some great artist like Paul Young, Iggy Pop, Lisa Stansfield and Sam Brown to name just a few, when you find yourself in a position where you are able to play with so many talented artists that are from various musical genres, as a musician what the single most important lesson you learn?

Gavin Harrison: Well I guess to be adaptable! It’s one thing to be six years old & declare that you want to be a professional musician, but the practicalities are extremely different. It’s not an industry where they’re desperate for new people & where they’re offering work, it’s very much the opposite. If you’ve got rent to pay you want to eat something you’ve got to get out there & earn some money. Earning money in the music industry, especially if you’re not known, you’ve got to be versatile; you have to be able to read music, play as many different styles as possible because the jobs come in very random, odd ways. I used to play in the orchestra pits in the west end of London in the theatres where you need to be able to work with a conductor. I guess when I declared to my dad that I wanted to be a professional musician; he schooled me into the reality of what that possibly would be. I had lessons from an early age & I came up in the music industry in quite an old fashioned way, playing in different bands and playing in different situations, anything I could do in the beginning to make a living out of it! 

Inside Out: Gavin thanks once again for your time, it’s been a true pleasure, I look forward to seeing you guys in Feb, do you have any last words for our readers?

Gavin Harrison: I just hope they will come along & see us, we were so delighted with the amount of people that came along to see us last time that I hope we’ve kept their interest with the new album and hope they will come along and see the shows in February! 

© Cameron Edney Jan 2010

Not to be used in any form without permission.