Ghosts In The Half Light

Released 20 years ago, Porcupine Tree's Deadwing was the album that Lava Records hoped would turn over a profit. Although things didn't quite work out that way, the band's eighth studio record did raise their profile and launch them to American audiences. Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Lava's Andy Karp and scriptwriter Mike Bennion reflect on the journey that took Porcupine Tree from playing to 30 people to filling 1,500-capacity venues and even scoring a ride in Neil Peart's Aston Martin.

- Dave Everley

It usually takes a lot to throw Porcupine Tree for a loop, but watching a stripper gyrate to one of their songs in a club called Paradise Found managed to do just that. It was May 2005, and the band were playing Club Tundra in Syracuse, New York a couple of months after the release of their eighth album, Deadwing.

"Next door to the venue was this strip club, like a Bada Bing!/Tony Sopranotype of place," recalls PT drummer Gavin Harrison of the gentlemen's club the band found themselves in. "After we finished playing, they invited us in. So we go inside and they put on Shallow and some girl came onstage and stripped to it. We were encouraged to put five dollar bills into..." He mimes slipping money into some unspecified orifice. "It was surreal."

In fairness, Mötley Crüe were never in danger of losing their crowns as rock'n'roll's kings of debauchery to these intense, slightly awkward Brits. At the time, Porcupine Tree were barely known in the US outside of progressive rock circles and the more adventurous sections of the metal scene. Free entry to places like Paradise Found were the exception rather than the rule.

Their previous album, 2002’s In Absentia, had been released by Lava Records, a subsidiary of major label. powerhouse Atlantic. Artistically, that record had been a success, seeding a new strain of metal-edged progressive music that would inspire countless bands and come to be one of the dominant sounds within the prog scene. Commercially? Not so much.

Both the band and their major label paymasters were hoping that Deadwing would succeed where its predecessor failed, at least on a business level. Porcupine Tree's singer, guitarist and driving force Steven Wilson knew how the game worked. Shallow the song that unexpectedly soundtracked the stripper's gyrations at Paradise Found was his attempt to get his band some much-needed radio play. Other songs on the album, such as the gently pretty