Five Minutes Alone: Bruce Soord
The Pineapple Thief prog mastermind on his early days, overcoming obstacles and the power of self-belief
I got my first real six-string…
“My first guitar was a crap nylon string thing from a music shop… back when there used to be music shops in every town. Yeovil had about three. I saved up £30, and this would have been 1986 or 1987, and it was terrible. It took me months to tune it up. I’d got in with some mates at school and they were already musicians. My best mate played sax and a bit of keyboards, my other mate was a Grade 8 violinist and they wanted to start a band. I didn’t have any musicians in my family and my dad said, ‘What have you wasted your money on that for?!’ I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m not going to give up.’ My first electric was an equally hideous Marlin Sidewinder in sparkly purple with a locking trem.”
Super Strat…
“It was always an American Fender Strat as my dream guitar. Back in the day, you were either a Strat or a Les Paul guy and I remember thinking, Les Pauls are so ridiculously expensive but maybe one day I’ll be able to afford a Strat. When we were in school we were into old prog rock and especially David Gilmour, he was the big one. I just wanted to sound like him. There was a music shop in Weston-superMare and I bought myself a second-hand American Standard Strat. I spruced it up and played it on the new album.”
Don’t stop believing
“When I started with the Pineapple Thief it was all very much me on my own. But I think when you’re onstage and you get a bit of validation and people are coming and enjoying it, that enabled me to not just become a better guitarist and singer, but a better frontman. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re never going to get anywhere and it took me a while to get that feeling. I wish I’d had that much earlier on in my career... you don’t want to come across like a real arrogant arsehole but at the same time, you’ve got to have that belief in yourself.”
No surprises
“We’re quite lucky in that we don’t get an awful lot of grief – our fans seem to be really nice. We get a lot of comparisons, like, ‘If you like Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree and Radiohead…’. We always get that but that’s a misconception as I don’t think we sound anything like Radiohead and I don’t think, even with Gavin [Harrison, drums] on board, we’re not trying to be the next Porcupine Tree by any stretch of the imagination. If people are thinking that I urge them to listen to the new record before they jump to that conclusion.”
Getting better
“I’ve been playing with Jon [Sykes, bass] since I was 18 and I remember when us and Steve [Kitch, keyboards] were all holding down day jobs, while trying to make the band good. You don’t get the luxury of being able to go into a rehearsal room for weeks to get shit hot. We were scattered around the country so we would meet in Bristol in the evenings. It took an hour to get there and then you’d lug all your stuff and by the time you’ve set up you may get an hour of decent rehearsal. Then you’ve got to lug it all back and go back to the day job… it was tough but we made a decision to make it better and we put the hours in. Gradually, we got better and started selling more records and eventually we reached a tipping point... I look back and think, ‘Thank god we didn’t jack it in.’ There were so many bands that did.”
The Pineapple Thief’s latest album
Dissolution is out now on Kscope. The band tour the UK in March; pineapplethief.com
“If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re never going to get anywhere... it took me a while”