During a recent interview with UG, Roger Waters’ guitarist Dave Kilminster talked about working with Steven Wilson as a touring musician and on his latest studio record “To the Bone” – on which Dave only performed backing vocals on four tracks.
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You worked with Steven Wilson. Can you tell us what are the main differences between working with Roger Waters and Steven Wilson?
“Money. [Laughs] I’m just kidding.”
You’re not kidding.
“[Laughs] I mean, it’s probably easier to point out the similarities. They’re both perfectionists, which I love. Again, Steven’s very fussy. In fact, Steven’s probably fussier than Roger about guitar sounds, because he’s a guitarist. So it was more difficult to make him happy. He wants the right effects for the right solos.
“There’s certain things that he hates, like vibrato, which is a very personal thing for a guitarist to have. Hates it. Any sort of vibrato. Doesn’t like it on voice, doesn’t like it on guitar. And I tried to work with him in the studio once and it was a complete nightmare. I was gonna do a solo, so I played a note. ‘No, no! No vibrato!’
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“For me, I just sound like a beginner then. Because you’re not adding any personality or inflections and stuff. To make him happy was kinda tough. And he’s such a great guitarist. He should do it himself, which is obviously what he did on the latest album [2017’s ‘To the Bone’] when he played most of the guitar parts.
“I knew he was gonna do that, so I just sort of went, ‘If you want, I could sing some backing vocals.’ So I ended up singing on four or five tracks on the new album. I was really happy with that actually.”