This is an excerpt from a ultimate-guitar com interview. 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!'
"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."
Steven Wilson: The Guitar Effects I Absolutely Can't Stand
Since you also used some Gibsons, as I've seen in some of the YouTube videos, have you seen what happened to Gibson? What do you think about that? Why do you think that happened?
"From what I can tell, the build quality hasn't been very good for a long time. So it's kind of understandable. And also the guy who saved them in the first place - I think he was investing in some strange things.
"That tuning system cost a lot of money. It's like... Really? People just want a good guitar, they don't want all these fancy stupid self-tuning things. That just seems very pointless. And it's probably gonna go wrong. I'm not interested. Just give me a good guitar. I can tune, I have a tuner. [Laughs]
"I think they just lost their direction a little bit. It's kind of a shame. But I know when I actually went and got a Les Paul, I tried to cut the new ones and no. Definitely not. So the one you saw me with in the video, that's 1988 Les Paul Custom. I just fond it in a second-hand shop. So it's nice. I got new frets on it because I don't like the really low frets they use. Changed the pickups. I think it's great.
"I wasn't gonna use it that much with Steven. I kind of took it along to the rehearsals because I thought I'll just use it for a one number. I was thinking about using it for 'Sleep Together' because it's a big heavy tune, it's in drop D. I though I'd just have that around my knees. It sounded great, looked great. And Steven's looking over and says 'That looks really good. Can you maybe try it on 'Hand Cannot Erase'?''
"So all of the sudden I'm using this stupid guitar for the 90% of the set. And it's really heavy. It's really weird to play because it's different scales to everything that I've been plaing for the last 20 or 30 years. And then I thought I'm just bending out of tune as well because I had similar strings on. I had 10s so I put 11s on it just so it felt a little more like my normal guitar."
