< PreviousModern Drummer July 2022 18 Courtesy Gavin HarrisonJuly 2022 Modern Drummer 19 Gavin Harrison: Context and Contrast By Mark Griffith W ho is busier than Gavin Harrison? He is tearing it up on two new records that are coming out and is touring with those two bands within the next year. Porcupine Tree’s new recording Closure/Continuation is a welcome surprise to Porcupine Tree fans and drummers everywhere, and their new music has a surprising new twist as well. They are still recovering from their exhaustive last tour, so their limited amount of tour dates in 2022 are going to be very special events. The Pineapple Thief has a new record as well entitled Give It Back. This is an album of newly recorded and re-worked classic tracks from the band’s impressive catalogue. The new versions of the tracks now feature Gavin Harrison and are even better than the originals. The Pineapple Thief is touring North America as we speak, and Gavin is grooving hard. Between Porcupine Tree Closure/ Continuation and The Pineapple Thief Give It Back, we are treated to the complete spectrum of Gavin’s drumming. Modern Drummer was eager to talk to Gavin about the new records. We also talked about his lesser known (but major) drumming influences, his amazing drum sound, creating drum parts, British drumming, and his architectural approach to designing a rhythm. Get ready to learn from one of the modern greats!Modern Drummer July 2022 20 MD : There is a lot of drummers (and fans of Porcupine Tree) that thought they were never going to see another Porcupine Tree record. But thankfully we were wrong! How did we get to this place where Porcupine Tree’s amazing Closure/Continuation is being released? GH: We toured the last record for about 14 months, so by the end of 2010 we were all pretty burnt out. We all agreed to take some time off. Steven Wilson and I live pretty close to one another, and we frequently meet socially, and our conversations would often turn to the subject of Porcupine Tree. I mentioned to Steve that we had never really got together and just “jammed.” No preconceptions, just jamming. I think you have to be quite comfortable with someone to do that, it’s like taking your clothes off. You have to know that you can do things that might sound terrible, and everyone isn’t going to laugh, stomp off and go home. There has to be a high level of trust to do that. When you are improvising, you (quite often) have to first play through a lot of crap before you get to the good stuff. So late 2012 we got together in my studio, Steve picked up my bass guitar, and we just jammed. Within a few minutes we looked at each other and knew this was sounding pretty good, so we recorded it. Then we started putting verses and choruses together. We started shifting different musical sections from our jams around into shapes of whatever we thought they could or should be. We were shaping these ideas to inspire Steve create a melody, because at the end of the day, Steve is the one who has to write the melody and lyrics. We had these jams very sporadically, sometimes a month would go by, sometimes nine months, sometimes even a year would go by where we wouldn’t get together. When we did, occasionally we would start with an actual musical idea. I might say, I’ve got this rhythm in five, and I imagine this kind of rhythm from the bassline. Then he would pick up a bass and develop that bassline, and eventually it would come together. Of course, there were lots of jams where we really couldn’t develop anything we really liked. By 2019 Steve had written melodies and lyrics for all of the ones that we liked, except for “Population Three” which is instrumental. That is one of three bonus tunes that will only be included on a special edition release. From a writing perspective when there are only two people playing, you have a lot of freedom to be creative. If there is only one person playing a harmonic instrument, they can change keys and chords whenever they want to. If there was a bassist and keyboard player present, they would be falling over each other trying to all lock in harmonically. The same goes with rhythm, I can change time signature or tempo whenever I want to. So the two of us would improvise around each other until something noticeably good started to happen. MD: I know Steven plays a lot of different instruments, what would he be playing during these duet jams? GH : Mostly bass, and he plays the bass in a particular way because he’s a guitar player. He always plays with a pick, and he always hits the strings really hard. But that means he produces a really high level of energy. He has a real thrashing sort of bass style. In some of the Courtesy Gavin HarrisonJuly 2022 Modern Drummer 21 later jams he would bring guitars in and have them set in alternative tunings. MD: That’s really interesting that you say that about duets. I enjoy playing duets with saxophonists for just that reason. And in an interview with Gary Husband, I learned that he and Allan Holdsworth used to play duets a lot. I also interviewed Billy Cobham recently and I learned that Mahavishnu started with Billy and John McLaughlin just playing duets. GH: When there are too many musicians present for these type of jams, you can tend to get to locked in to a certain path too quickly. Steve and I are good improvisers, and it was a lot of fun to work like that, just drums and Steven (playing guitar or bass.) It became very obvious when something clicked. When that happened, we would instantly look at each other and hit record. It was a very organic way of writing. Sometimes I would present different ideas as a musical challenge. I think if you are a creative person, you become very interested in solving problems. That can actually bring out new ideas. If you are presented with a rhythmic or harmonic challenge it can be quite invigorating. There are many songs that have a one bar rhythmic pattern, like for example “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. Sometimes you can have a two-bar pattern like “I Keep Forgetting” by Michael McDonald. When you listen to those songs, your brain starts to adjust and become comfortable with the repeat length of the pattern. For the new Porcupine Tree song “Rat’s Return” I started with a four-bar repeated pattern. I created a very syncopated (almost Morse Code) sounding groove. I wanted that rhythm to be there in various forms throughout the entire song. Sometimes I play the pattern subtly in the verse, which forced to me find alternative ways to play it. In the chorus the pattern comes to the forefront. So in the entire song (except for one small section) you could recognize that original four bar syncopated pattern. MD: By creating an initial “problem,” you are forced to think differently and more creatively which enables you to come up with a musical and rhythmic “solution” that you would have never thought of playing. GH : Exactly! If someone asked an architect to design a building with a huge hole through the center of it, their creative wheels would start turning. They would start to imagine how to design a functional and beautiful building with a giant hole in the middle. MD : Or maybe it didn’t even have to be beautiful? Yet without that initial request, which might have seemed “crazy” at the time, they might not have ever thought of designing such a building. GH : Exactly. That’s what we try to do in Porcupine Tree. I’m always considering how to create something that works as a song and connects with the audience. That’s why I often compare rhythmic design and architecture. I see rhythmic patterns like architecture, but they also have to work. People have to feel where the downbeat is, and have a sense of where the backbeat is. You should know that if you get too clever, you are going to lose the connection with most of the audience. Sure, you might be able to tickle a few rhythmically advanced drummers in the audience. But if you play something too clever, 99% of the audience is going to be confused, and they will be unable to relate to it. Odd time signatures can be hard for an audience to grasp hold of, so I am Courtesy Gavin HarrisonModern Drummer July 2022 22 always aware of when I have crossed the line and become too clever, just for the sake of being clever. MD : How did these jams evolve into songs and the new Porcupine Tree record? GH: After we developed something we felt had good potential we would bring it to (Porcupine Tree keyboard player,) Richard Barbieri. And that’s how a majority of the new record was written. MD: How was this process different from how you guys worked in the past? GH : Traditionally, most of the music in Porcupine Tree was written by Steve himself. The rest of our input was usually about what we could contribute with our instrumental performances to Steve’s songs. As Courtesy Gavin HarrisonJuly 2022 Modern Drummer 23 a drummer, it was somewhat like being a session drummer, but with the freedom to try whatever you wanted. Occasionally there were some songs that I wrote with Steve, but they would be based on rhythms, or riffs that I would send to him. Then he would develop them into proper songs. He would do that with the other guys as well, but in the past Porcupine Tree songs were predominantly coming from him. The main difference with the new record is that it’s all co-written. MD: What other types of musical problems-challenges to you guys create that you solved? GH : Out of difficulty comes opportunity. For instance, when you hear something for the first time and you don’t really like it, that presents a challenge. That challenge would simply be, how can I make this into something interesting? In collaboration, I might play something that I would have never played on my own if I wasn’t challenged by someone else playing something that I didn’t like. I’m always interested when I play something that doesn’t sound like me. I have been playing the drums for a long time, and I know what I sound like. So, when I play little elements or ideas that I have never played before, that is fascinating to me. MD : That’s what we are all looking for, right? GH : I think so. As musicians, (I think) we all become bored with how we sound. That’s why we are always looking for new inspiration. For this record, that inspiration came in the form of these duets that Steve and I had. It’s nice that it took several years for us to get here, this process sparked a lot of creativity between the three of us (Steve, Richard, and myself.) MD : What kind of things did you hear from yourself on this record that you hadn’t heard before? GH: If you sit down and improvise on the drums for 20 minutes, it’s very possible that you won’t play anything that you haven’t played before. If you play long enough, you might eventually get to something new, and that’s the time to hit record or grab a pencil and write it down. One of the last tunes we wrote was a song called “Herd Culling”. Steve asked me if I had any odd time rhythms up my sleeve. I found a rhythm in 11 that doesn’t sound awkward to me. It sounds more 4/4 plus two groups of 3/16. The placement of the backbeat is always a very important thing to me, it really puts the attitude into the groove. If you place a backbeat on 2 and 4 you get that “normal” feeling rock/ pop groove. If you place the backbeat on 3 you get a half-time feel (as we drummers are all aware) but there are places to put it that can be surprising. I was really influenced by a drummer named Steve Jansen (who was the original drummer for the band Japan). He would put backbeats on the ‘and’ of 3. Even though there would only be one backbeat per bar, because of its unusual placement, it wouldn’t give you that feeling of halftime. On “Herd Culling” I put back beats on the ‘e’ of 1 (which is unusual as it’s straight after the downbeat), and then on 3, so it created a quasi-halftime feel, but then by adding the two groups of 3/16 it created a feel that I really liked and gave the groove an interesting angle. Another other possibility when you are playing in 11 is to make it feel a bit like 6/8 with a downbeat on 1 and a back beat on 4 and then a downbeat on 7 and a back beat on 10. That sounds like two bars of 6/8 with just the last beat missing. At the end of the song, I play the 11/8 with a 4/4 attitude - so it feels like 4/4 plus three eight notes. I enjoy manipulating the backbeat feel and creating a rhythmical design so it’s an integral part of the composition. MD : Like Ringo did on “Come Together.” GH: Precisely. What I am trying to do is find a uniquely identifiable rhythm that I can play in a song that gives the song a character that if you heard the drums on their own you would know which song it was. There are a million songs where the drummer is playing back beats on 2 and 4, and the bass drum on 1 and a few notes around beat 3, and that’s fine. I’m happy to play like that and get my satisfaction from trying to make that feel good. It is everything I like… except it’s not original. I can get a lot of satisfaction from playing a classic groove on a song, but when you’re in a band where you have the chance to do something more creative why not try to find something new? I got lucky in my career path, I have played in many bands that allowed me to create my own rhythms and grooves. I was given the opportunity to contribute and design rhythms that were unique to the songs. MD: You mentioned Steve Jansen, I have been a huge fan of his ever since I heard Japan’s Tin Drum. I always thought that he must have had some influence on you, but I wasn’t sure. He’s a bit of an unsung hero, can you tell me about Steve? GH : When you are between the ages of 15 and 20, I think the music you discover in those five years has such a long-lasting impression on you. You are so ready to absorb music in that moment of your life and it forms an important part of your musical personality. I was lucky that a lot of drummers that I heard during that time of my life were very musical. I was less attracted to super technical drummers. However, when I heard Tin Drum, I wondered where Steve Jansen came from? He was some kind of alien. I didn’t recognise any of the usual paths of influence. The first time I heard Stewart Copeland I felt the same way as well. To sound “original” I think your inspiration has to come from a pretty obscure place. If you find inspiration from things that are outside of music, people will never know where you are coming from. When I heard Steve Jansen and he was playing backbeats in all sorts of unusual places, I just got it. He is actually quite minimalistic in his drumming. When I finally got to meet him, I thanked him for his Modern Drummer July 2022 24 minimalistic approach and he said “it’s the least I could do”. MD : But he’s minimalistic in the most creative ways. GH : I’m glad to be able to call him a friend, and I have actually tried to coax out of him where he drew his musical inspiration, but I’ve had no luck. When I heard him play, I heard a drummer who was designing a rhythm. Before that I thought that drummers “just” played time and fills but Steve’s playing sounded much more “considered,” like an architect’s drawing. That is not to say that it didn’t have feel, because he has a great sense of feel, and a great sense of time. But he’s also got a lot of taste, and that comes from his character. A person’s character definitely comes through in their drumming. For example, it’s easy to tell that Steve Gadd is a nice guy from hearing him play, even if you have never had the opportunity to meet him. You can tell by the way he plays that he is really listening and supporting the other players. Jansen, Gadd, Porcaro all had immaculate taste, and you could hear that in the way that they played music. There were other records after Japan’s Tin Drum that I really liked Steve Jansen’s playing on as well. I loved David Sylvian’s Secrets of a Beehive, Brilliant Trees, Mick Karn’s Bestial Cluster. When I sit at the drums and am trying to compose drum parts, I can feel a little bit of him saying. “Why don’t you do something that is a bit simpler and unusual?” I like how he used toms as a part of his rhythms and beats, he wasn’t all kick, snare, hat, and the toms weren’t just for fills. Steve used the toms a lot as a part of his grooves. MD : Jansen hit me in the same way, and at the same time as Budgie (from Siouxsie and the Banshees.) What were some of the other drummers that you noticed at a young age? GH : I heard Steve Schaeffer on a few records in the late the 70s that really knocked me out. Simon Phillips too. MD : What Gadd records drew your attention? GH: I love the records where he is playing swing. I loved his minimalistic swing time feel. There are times where he is only playing quarter notes on the ride with only an occasional skip note without any other sounds, just ride cymbal. He was really showing us what a powerful statement minimalism can be. MD : I think that approach came from the tradition of the jazz organ groups. Gavin’s Gear Blue Tribal Sonor kit. From the left to right: 7 custom designed ‘log drums’ all double headed all 8" diameter. Depths are 9", 11", 13", 15", 17", 19", 21" (with Remo C.S heads) Rack toms: 8 x 7, 10 x 8, 12 x 9 (Remo Emperor Vintage top and clear Ambassador bottom) Floor toms: 15 x 13, 18 x 15, (and a special custom order) 20 x 16 (Remo Emperor top and clear Ambassador bottom) Bass drum: 22 x 17 (Remo Powerstroke 3) Snare drum: 14 x 5 Protean signature drum (Remo C.S) Zildjian Cymbals 5 custom mini bells ranging from 6" to 4.5" 14" Session hi hats 20" K Sweet Crash 17" A Crash 22" K High Definition Ride 19" K Sweet Crash 12" Oriental China Trash 22" Swish Knocker (no rivets) Tama Speedcobra pedals Porter and Davies BC2 tactile monitor system Vic Firth SHAR 2 signature drum sticks Courtesy Gavin HarrisonJuly 2022 Modern Drummer 25 Sometimes you have to play like that with an organist. GH: I also like how he played jazz swing time with the butt of the stick. You can get a wonderful sound by playing the hi hats with the butt end of the stick as well. If you are playing 16th notes on the hats with the butt end of the stick, they really jump out in a way that they don’t if you are playing with the tip of the stick. I am convinced that on some of those Paul Simon records Steve is making a deliberate “sound choice” by playing the hi hats with the butt end. MD : I saw Elvin do that a lot on the ride cymbal too. It’s just a wider and thicker sound. That’s an interesting observation. I am always intrigued by the English drumming tradition. It seems that many Brits seemed to break a lot of the drumming “rules” in some wonderful ways. I am also very interested in the English drummers that don’t get as much attention as others, guys like John Marshall, Michael Giles, and Clive Thacker. You might not be the guy to ask about this, because in many ways, you don’t sound very British in your approach, can you speak about the tradition of English drummers? GH : If you mean the tradition of English drummers like John Bonham, Carl Palmer, Ginger Baker, and Keith Moon. You are right, I don’t think that I sound much like those guys. It’s because I spent my early and impressionable years listening to American drummers. My dad was a jazz trumpet player, and he would listen to American jazz trumpet players like Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, and Miles Davis. So that exposed me to American drummers. I also got the feeling from him that the English jazz musicians looked to the American scene for a higher standard of jazz players. When jazz music got funkier in the 70s, it happened in the UK in a more “rocky” and “proggy” way. I was just more attracted to the American sound. I liked the way that those drummers played time. I really liked Rick Marotta too because I loved the way that he could lay back on the time. It seemed to me that a lot of British drummers were pushing the beat and playing on the front edge of the time, and I preferred the sound of the guys that played on the back end of the time. That became something that I aspired to do, which (as you said,) probably doesn’t make me sound particularly English. MD : How about my observation of hearing many of the early British drummers as not conforming to the drumming “tradition” as much as Americans? GH : I think that was more of a schooling issue. Up until very recently, we didn’t have any tradition of snare drumming at school, there were no marching bands or drum corps here. We also didn’t have anything that would be comparable to schools like Berklee or Musicians Institute. When I was young, if you went to music college in the UK you could only study classical music. That meant we had no modern drum set schooling here until relatively recently. When I was young, the drum set really wasn’t even recognized as a “proper instrument” here in the UK. That left many of the British drummers to listen to American records and make up their own stuff that sounded like what they were hearing on records. That can (occasionally) produce some interesting variations of approach to the instrument. If you have never had a drum lesson in your life, you can (occasionally) end up with great drummers like Steve Jansen or Stewart Copeland. But you also end up with thousands of other drummers that we never hear about because they aren’t very good. It all depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to become a professional working drummer it would help to develop skills like reading music, playing in different styles, and having a good understanding of the drumming and musical tradition and that requires good education. If you just wanted to play in a punk band and you have a beat-up drum set - you might come up with something very original, but you also might not. Today, Britain does have dedicated drum schools but that wasn’t happening in the 70s. Back in my day you either found a private drum teacher to teach you some ideas and concepts or you just had to fend for yourself. MD : Sometimes fending for yourself can produce wonderful results. GH: Sure, and conversely just because you learn how to hold the sticks properly and learn music doesn’t mean that you will be creating anything original either. Originality comes from the inside; facility comes from education. Some people think they can use a lack of education as a path to originality - which is not necessarily true. Originality and facility are not mutually exclusive. MD : What were some of you favorite Steve Gadd records when you grew up? GH: I frequented a record store that was run by a drummer, and he made sure that I heard all of the new recordings that Steve Gadd did (he was a Gadd super fan). When you hear music without seeing it, it makes you imagine things about how they played something that might not be realistic. Today when I listen to a record from the 70’s it transports me back to when I was hearing that music for the first time and discovering a whole new world. The Chick Corea records are pretty easy to point to (Mad Hatter, Friends or My Spanish Heart), but the records that blew my mind the most were two Art Farmer records Big Blues and Crawl Space. Steve plays so beautifully on those, and they are wonderfully recorded. There are a couple of tracks on Crawl Space where he is playing funky with brushes, and so his ghost notes are even more exaggerated. That was the first time I had heard those paradiddle-esque interplay ideas between the hi hat and the snare drum and they just blew my mind. I have probably listened to those two records more than any other Courtesy Gavin HarrisonModern Drummer July 2022 26 records in my whole life. They really are a lesson in art. MD: Were there any English drummers that did influence you that we might not be aware of? GH : In the early 80’s the hottest drummer in London was a guy called Tony Beard. He played rock/funk but with a lot of subtlety. He was playing with the band Go West, and there are some great clips on YouTube. He had this really beautiful Moeller thing going on too. Tony had a beautiful time feel so it was easy to see why he was so popular on the session scene. He played in some other bands like SFX and Morrissey Mullen. I used to go see him play in pubs around London, and the places were always filled with drummers who were there to watch Tony. They were great bands, and Tony really influenced me a lot. In the 80s he was the guy you had to see play. MD: I just went through a Jimmy Copley obsession. He was a great English session drummer too, did you know him or his playing? GH : Yes, Jimmy was a really nice drummer, he was in Tears for Fears for a bit. I liked his playing. When I was about 17, I remember going to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and there was an organ duo playing with a young guy on drums. The kid was 2 years older than me, and he was just ridiculous! That was Gary Husband. He really knocked me out. I like Phil Gould a lot too, he has such a nice groove. MD : You mention Jeff Porcaro a lot, what are some of your favorite Jeff recordings? GH : I really love the two and half records that he made with Randy Crawford, Secret Combination, Windsong, and half of Nightline. Toto’s Kingdom of Desire is absolutely amazing of course. MD: He got such a great drum sound on that. GH : And such great grooves! With any drummer, the thing I hear first is the groove. If it’s a great sound with a great groove I’m extremely happy. If there’s something rhythmically interesting going on as well - I’m in love! MD: Let’s talk about a few more tunes from the Porcupine Tree record. The first song from the record is called “Harridan” are you thinking of that in 10 or 5 twice? GH: Absolutely 5. In fact, that rhythm came to me on a plane returning from South Africa. It was floating around my mind, so I wrote it down on my boarding pass. A few weeks later Steve Wilson was at my studio, and I told him that I had a new rhythm in 5, and I sang a bassline rhythm to him. He picked up my bass, and within 30 seconds we were playing what is the beginning of the song. We looked at each other and knew we had something good. That song was really easy to write, we wrote the whole song in a few hours. MD : What about “Of The New Day?” That’s a beautiful song. GH: Steve had this idea to write a song where the time signature changed almost every couple of bars. He then created a melody which made perfect sense of it. We didn’t want it to sound like a lot of different time signatures, we wanted it to be very organic. Once he wrote the melody, I didn’t even need a chart, I could just follow the melody, hear the hits, and feel the downbeats. I think we successfully made it sound smooth. I wrote a chart out for it after we recorded it just for reference. MD: We are including that chart below, for people to check out and follow along. “Dignity” sounds very un-Porcupine Tree-ish. GH : That is actually a very simple song. There are a lot of songs on this record where there is a lot of attention on the drumming, “Dignity” isn’t one of them. I heard this song and wanted to make sure that I played very simply and didn’t take any of the attention away from the song. It’s cinematic. I wanted to find a really classic groove, and to hopefully play a few nice fills along the way. MD : You frame that tune very nicely. You mentioned fills, allow me to shift subjects for a second. There are so many Porcupine Tree songs, and even Pineapple Thief tunes when you play big fills at a key part of the tune like Porcaro did quite often. I have wondered if you work out those fills or the orchestration of those fills before-hand? GH : Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I will do a take and just go for it and see what happens. Other times I will know that a specific fill is at such an important point in the song that I might have 20 or 30 goes at the fill. I’m not trying to find the cleverest drum fill, I’m just trying to July 2022 Modern Drummer 27 find the most interesting solution for that moment. If you take a drum fill out of context, it’s almost meaningless. The context of a fill is everything. I think the most important thing is why is that fill at that point in the song so important. A fill is a moment of composition that functions from as a way to go from one place to another. If you take it out of context the meaning of the fill is lost. MD : Not only is the meaning gone, but the purpose of the fill is gone too. It’s not only about context, but also contrast. That’s what music is. GH : ABSOLUTELY! Sometimes not playing a fill could have more purpose or meaning that playing a fill. Or playing one note could have more meaning than playing a million notes. There has to be a balance. If I am going to play a very complex fill, then the bit before and after it need to be simple. If I am playing a super busy beat, and I play a super busy fill, the fill will lose its impact. If you’re playing a simple beat, and you play a very complex fill, the fill is really going to stand out, and that might be the point of the fill. MD: But that’s not always the point of a fill. GH : To me it’s always about balance, which goes back to what I was saying about design. MD: How about the song “Walk The Plank?” GH : That is an unusual piece for Porcupine Tree, Richard wrote a lot of that song. There are a lot of toms in that beat, plus in the first bar the back beats are on the ‘and’ of 3, then the back beat is on 4 in the second bar. For this song I had to really integrate my drums within the electronic patterns that were already there. I don’t think Porcupine Tree has ever done a piece of music like “Walk The Plank.” MD : I don’t recall any Porcupine tree tunes with a loop or electronic drum pattern in the background. GH: Richard programs a lot of patterns when he writes. I like programming, and I really like it when the programs don’t use real drum sounds. When you program real drum sounds it is very hard to put real drum sounds on top, but if you program old 808 sounds or synthesized sounds it is much easier to play drums on top of the program or loop. They sonically complement each other. MD: That’s what Phil Collins realized 40 years ago. What is going on in “Chimera’s Wreck?” GH: That came from one of our jams. We didn’t play to a click so we could bend the time and speed up or slow down. We wanted to create these big tempo waves where we could slow down at the end of a phrase, and then speed up in the beginning of the next a phrase. We originally did that so organically, that when it came to do the record we couldn’t recreate those sections, so we kept the original recording of the original jam. That presented some problems because the drums bled onto the acoustic guitar track, and the guitar bled on to the drum mics. That is probably the toughest song on the record to play, by the time I get to the end of that I’m pretty spent, there is a lot of heavy lifting in that song. MD : I never see you reading on stage, and Porcupine Tree does a lot of tunes with a lot of heavy lifting. Do you have a photographic memory? GH : Not really. When you learn a tune from a chart, there might be sections of the song where you don’t have to look at it, so that’s when I look away for a bit. Then as I learn the song, I start to look away more and more. When I look away, I can remember the shape of the tune, and sort of what it looks like. But it’s not like “perfect” photographic memory, no! The more that you don’t look at a chart, the more you internalize the song. Then you can reference what you are playing against hearing the song. MD : Is that how you learned songs in King Crimson? GH : A strange thing would happen in King Crimson. I would learn a song in the way I just described, and by the time we went on tour, I would (of course) be playing without the charts. Then we would come back a year later, and I might forget a lot the detail. I would look at the charts, and they would look very foreign to me, because I had internalized them. I was associating what I was playing to what I was hearing around me, instead of relating my playing to the little dots on a piece of paper. With Porcupine Tree there are songs that I have to practice, but the more that I play them, the more I find other fills and smoother ways to go from section to section. By the time we get to the end of a tour, I will be playing a song noticeably different than when we recorded it. I don’t like to play the same fills all of the time, and I don’t usually like to play the fills that I played on the record. I might improvise some fills, during a tour I might come up with better or more effective fills. Therefore, usually by the end of a tour, I wish that I could go back and re-record the record. MD : Do the guys in the band ever ask you to play things more like the record? GH: When I first joined Porcupine Tree they were quite surprised. The previous drummer played the same thing, in the same place, every night. And that’s absolutely fine. That isn’t a criticism. There are lots of bands where the drummer plays the same fills as the record, and the first three rows of fans at the concerts can air drum along with the entire show. After my second night in Porcupine Tree, they said to me “you played completely different tonight,” they were a bit shocked. I told them that’s exactly what I wanted to do. It’s just a different mentality. For me it makes every night of the tour a little bit different. MD: Do you really consider yourself to be a jazz drummer? GH : Not anymore. I used to play jazz with my dad, and I listened to jazz a lot at an early age. I loved the idea of improvisation from jazz, where a solo was something that you played off the top of your head. It has always seemed foreign to me that some guys play the same guitar solo, or bass fills, or drum fills every night. MD: You mentioned King Crimson, where does that stand? GH : It’s all in the hands of Robert Fripp. He had the idea of a project with three drummers, we took it around the world a few times, it started in 2014 and last year Robert stated that we have completed that mission. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the band necessarily. It could mean that, or it could mean he is preparing a new beginning. I really don’t know. Courtesy Gavin HarrisonNext >