Interview date: 01/18/2008
Metaphor is an American band that broke through with their debut Starfooted, which is hugely respected among prog fans. Later albums never quite hit the same level of popularity, but that doesn’t make them any less important. Metaphor grew from a purely symphonic outfit that sounded a lot like Genesis into a band with a fairly original style, mixing elements of symphonic rock, neo-prog and avant-garde. All of the band’s current members talked to Rockline – guitarist and main composer Malcolm Smith, keyboardist Marc Spooner, vocalist and lyricist John Mabry, bassist Jim Anderson and drummer Greg Miller.
Rockline: Do you work as full-time musicians? I know Marc (Spooner) plays in a non-prog band. So if you’re pros, I wouldn’t expect you to make enough from Metaphor alone.
Marc Spooner (MSp): Everyone else and I have other jobs too, I just think about music constantly.
Malcolm Smith (MS): Marc is the closest to being a working musician with his other band, but we all have day jobs so we can support our music. So for us it’s an extremely important hobby that lets us cover a lot of ground at once.
Rockline: How much time do you spend together rehearsing? I know some other non-pro bands, like IQ, don’t have much time to rehearse because of their jobs, usually just on weekends. Is it similar for you?
MSp: Definitely. If at least two of us get together in a week, that’s progress.
MS: Personally, I spend a lot of time on composing – either whole songs, or bits of songs that I bring in and we turn into full tracks together as a band. The songs themselves can take months, because we work in small doses, a couple of hours at a time. Then we get together at the computer and work out the arrangements, but again only a few hours at a time, once a week or a couple of times a month. When the songs are almost finished on the computer, we start rehearsing and tweaking them as we go. Rehearsals are only once a week for three hours, so it takes months before we’ve got everything down. But if you added up all those three-hour sessions, you wouldn’t get more than a couple of weeks! If only we could do this all the time…
Rockline: You started out as a Genesis cover band, right? Can you explain how that got going?
MS: I put an ad in the local paper looking for musicians with similar taste to play the good old Genesis stuff just for fun. That was in 1993, I think… Marc was the first to join, then the other members came along later (the lineup was different back then) and we played all the best stuff from the Gabriel era. Even then I was writing my own material and bringing it to the band, which was going through changes at the time, and later we moved on to working on original material.
Rockline: Why did you start writing your own songs? Was that always the plan?
MS: For me, yes! Once I got confident enough in my songs, I brought them to the band and that was that!
John Mabry (JM): A lot of us write songs. At the start it wasn’t a choice – we just can’t help it. I’ve been writing songs since high school and they’re still dripping out of me. They usually aren’t prog until the band gets hold of them. My solo stuff is more in the vein of James Taylor and Jackson Browne.
Rockline: Was it hard to find a label for your debut?
JM: As I remember it, it was like throwing a hundred pies at a wall and watching to see which one would stick.
MS: We sent out a ton of promo material and Galileo, which was a new label at the time, picked us up. When you’re looking for a label you have to expect rejection!
Rockline: What does your music, and music in general, mean to you?
MSp: A lot. Everything.
Jim Anderson (JA): Music offers so many things!It’s a way to express yourself creatively, and a way to get across a thought or tell a story. Sometimes it can be therapeutic. Music is a passion, whether you’re playing it or listening to it.
MS: To me it means creative expression. I’ve always said I write music because I have to, because I need to satisfy myself creatively. I mostly write instrumental stuff and I don’t do it to say anything in particular. The music just comes out, and if it sounds good, I keep going in that direction until I hit a wall. Then I head off in another direction and try something there. I do it because it’s fun! It’s an important part of my life and it gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Rockline: Could you list your influences? I noticed Genesis, Gentle Giant. Anything else? Do you have influences from outside prog – jazz, classical, blues?
MSp: Besides the big influences of Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant, mine also include jazz, classical music, Led Zep, Camel, Happy The Man, ELP, and plenty of others. Definitely not blues, though!
JA: I think we’re all subject to the influence of what we listen to – and the more you like something, the bigger an influence it becomes. I like a lot of jazz and classical.
JM:For lyrics, I’m hugely influenced by the vivid style of Bruce Cockburn and the sarcastic asides of Richard Thompson. Stylistically I borrow a lot from Steve Hogarth (Marillion) and Phil Collins (Genesis). I also love sacred choral singing, new age (especially the improvisational acoustic stuff from the Windham Hill school, ethereal music like Kitaro, and music that goes nowhere like Eno, Budd, Stearns and Serrie) and of course good old rock’n’roll.
Greg Miller (GM): For me it’s Rush, Led Zep, and Burt Bacharach.
MS: I like good jazz fusion. I just bought a new CD – the Joe Henderson Big Band, which is gorgeous. I listen to classical too.
Rockline: Even though you clearly have seventies influences, do you still prefer creating original music? Is it more satisfying than just copying someone else’s style?
MSp: Of course. People label us retro prog, but I think that comes from listener laziness. Critics have to write their reviews after hearing an album once or twice, so they miss a lot. The details and structures of good progressive music reveal themselves over time. Sure, the sounds are sometimes similar to the seventies, but they’re good sounds! But I think our compositions and arrangements are pretty original.
MS: It’s much better to do original stuff – honestly, I have a hard time listening to old Genesis (let alone the later albums) – I mean, I grew up on those albums like most prog fans, but these days the only prog I listen to is our own music. Right now I’m hoping Metaphor’s style will take shape, and I think my composing is developing too.
JA: When you put music together, the sounds just come on their own. I have no intention of copying anyone.
Rockline: Where do you get ideas for lyrics? Does each album have good ideas or a concept?
JM: Mostly it’s whatever I’m interested in at the moment, since I’m the main lyricist. When we were making Starfooted, I was deep into Gnosticism, so it felt natural to explore those themes lyrically and musically. For Entertaining Thanatos it was a group decision not to make another narrative album and to let things seep out on their own instead. A lot of us were grieving the deaths of loved ones when we started writing, so it was natural to head in that direction, as a kind of shared working-through of grief. Really therapeutic, actually! For the new album we again decided together that it should be a narrative work. We’d been toying with the idea for The Sparrow before Entertaining Thanatos and we were still excited about it. Once the author of the book, Mary Doria Russell, gave us permission to use her story, there was no turning back.
Rockline: Have any religious groups ever criticized you over the lyrics, since you sometimes deal with religion in a pretty cynical way?
JM: Strangely, no. It’s nice that you see cynicism and not that we’re hostile toward religion. As a clergyman, I take religion pretty seriously. But religion without cynicism can have a devastating effect. Critical thinking is essential in religion and I hope that comes across in my lyrics. I don’t reject religion at all. I’m just saying we shouldn’t dodge the hard questions, and religion has to wrestle with difficult subjects, especially violence, ignorance, unconsciousness and dumbing-down, which it’s responsible for itself. Religion has a lot to answer for, but it’s also part of what makes us human. I hope my lyrics keep a balance between celebration and criticism, since both matter for a rational, grown-up approach to faith.
Rockline: Would you ever do a short tour of Europe?
JA: OK!
MSp: Gladly!
GM: Of course! But it would be hard for all five of us to get time off work for a tour at the same time. Definitely worth a shot if the chance came up, though. Personally, I’d put everything else on the back burner for a European tour.
MS: Well, I guess I have to be the sensible one – a tour is unlikely given our general circumstances.
Rockline: Would you be willing to play as an opening act for bigger bands, like The Flower Kings, Spock’s Beard, Arena, IQ?
MSp: Absolutely.
GM: You don’t have to ask me twice!
MS: They have our address!
JA: Weeell…why not!!
Rockline: What about gigs? I know there are a lot of art rock festivals in the US. Have you ever played one, and if not, would you like to?
MS: Apart from a few shows early on, when we were still playing Genesis covers, we’ve actually never played in front of an audience.
MSp: Unfortunately we’re not active live, but personally I’d love to play a festival.
Rockline: Could you even tour with your day jobs?
MSp: Not yet
JA: First we have to play our first gig! Jobs and families have to come first. There’s no way we could make a living from music alone, at least not with the kind of weird stuff we play.
Rockline: Since Starfooted you’ve changed the rhythm section a lot. Do you think it’s stable now?
MSp: Yes. But I’m not sure about the others. Ha ha.
JA: I don’t think the two of us are stable!
JM: Damn drummers love to blow up!
GM: My wife would disagree, but I think I’m fairly stable.
MS: Who knows! Drummers and bassists are weirdos you have to handle nice and gently.
Rockline: Let’s talk about the new album for a moment. Are you happy with the response from fans and critics?
MSp: Mostly, yes. I’d like to see us sell more copies, so there’d be more response from fans too!
MS: But we’re definitely happy with the positive reviews – and we’re always glad to get sales.
Rockline: Are you happy with the songs on The Sparrow?
MS: Very – I think they show progress in my writing and in the whole band’s writing.
MSp: Mostly, yes. Every artist wishes their work were even better once it’s done.
Rockline: Looking back, would you change anything on this release?
MSp: Never look back, always forward!
MS: There’s no point dwelling on what’s done, you have to start on the next project.
JA: There are always things I’d change, but there’s no time to look back.
MS: I’d go back and ask Jim to change his underwear at least once. That was a terrible problem!
Rockline: How do you decide what an album will sound like? Do you agree on it beforehand or let things unfold on their own?
MS: We let the music develop by itself – the music comes from who knows where, and we just shape it.
MSp: We talk it over first, but in the end everything always unfolds naturally.
JA: On The Sparrow we talked a lot about the main sections, then split those into smaller ones, each with its own atmosphere depending on what happens in the story. Sometimes John (Maybry) says a part needs to be darker, and then we have to come up with something sick. It’s like painting. You don’t know exactly how it’ll sound until the end.
Rockline: What other musical projects are Metaphor members involved in? Marc is in Hitmen…
JM: Greg and I are in Mind Furniture, and we just put out our second CD, Hoop of Flame. It’s prog-pop, similar to Spock’s Beard, with two 25-minute suites on the album. One suite puts God in the dock, and the other is about Kierkegaard’s three stages of consciousness. Music for the brain (and for the feet)!
MS: Right now I’m thinking about a solo CD and I’ve already got plenty written. Funny thing is, it sounds a lot like Metaphor.
MSp: Besides Hitmen and Metaphor, I jam a lot with friends on weekends. Right now, believe it or not, I’m in a band that plays fusion. We’re trying to get somewhere with it, but at the moment everything is moving very slowly. We play covers of Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson, and we’re also planning some classic (electric) jazz and some original material. I hope.
Rockline: And finally, what do you think the future holds for Metaphor?
JA: Right now we’ve got nothing planned yet, but I’m always ready for action.
MSp: I hope for another album. Then one more after that. Malcolm?
MS: Hard to say. The band is resting at the moment. I don’t know when we’ll start moving toward a new album again, but I can say for sure there’ll be new music from all of the members!
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