Prog Me: Neal Morse

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Five things that rock our prog stars’ worlds…

OK COMPUTER?

It would be difficult to do what I do without my Macs. I record all my ideas on my iPhone and then I use the laptop but I don’t have as many backups as I should. I lost a drive at a hotel in Frankfurt last year and I don’t even know what was on it.

MASTERMIND?

I guess music or The Bible.

RELICS?

That’s probably my grandparents’ Bible from the 1800s – I don’t know how I wound up with it because I wasn’t always religious but I love the way old books smell and I love old book shops very much.

SOUND & VISION

All The Beatles records, Close To The Edge by Yes and King Crimson’s Red – I like a lot of the albums from your Greatest Prog Albums list [Prog 48], actually! My favourite TV show at the moment is Downton Abbey and I really like the films Field Of Dreams and Dead Poet’s Society. I like any art that moves me in some way – anything that causes a real reaction, from old Marx Brothers movies to big blockbusters.

SUPPER’S READY!

I like good food of all types, especially spicy ethnic stuff, like Indian, Mexican and Italian food. I drink Perrier a lot and I’ve developed a real taste for good coffee and lattes recently as well.

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.