Feb 14: M is for Marillion

I bought Marillion's first album: "Script for a Jester's Tear" on the day of release in March 1983 from a record shop in Huddersfield whose name escapes me, and saw the band play live quite a few times in those early years, including some gigs with Fish... facepaint, Grendel and all. 

The playing was not as polished as it was on later albums, but the tone and atmosphere it portrayed went right to my sensibilities. I saw the band play live three or four times in the early years, with Fish in his make-up prowling the stage. I will post about 'Grendel' later in the blog. There were comments about the time about the derivation of their name, the use of face paint, progressive time signatures etc.

I'm also a fan of the longer version of 'Assassing' and other songs from their 2nd album 'Fugazi'.

In 1985, they released 'Misplaced Childhood' - this tour was the last time I saw the band play live, so that's over 40 years ago!

They had several singles at the time, most notably 'Kayleigh', which is probably their most played song on the radio.

They have released many albums since, and changed after Fish's departure and the arrival of Steve Hogarth as vocalist and lyricist.

One of my favourite later albums of theirs was F.E.A.R. - from 2016.

On the title, Steve Hogarth said:

”This title is adopted not in anger or with any intention to shock. It is adopted and sung (in the song "New Kings”) tenderly, in sadness and resignation inspired by an England, and a world, which increasingly functions on an “Every man for himself” philosophy. I won’t bore you with examples, they’re all over the newspapers every day. There’s a sense of foreboding that permeates much of this record. I have a feeling that we’re approaching some kind of sea-change in the world – an irreversible political, financial, humanitarian and environmental storm. I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that my FEAR of what “seems” to be approaching is just that, and not FEAR of what “is” actually about to happen.”

Spoiler alert: it happened.

In 2022, they released an album which has references to climate change, COVID, Greta Thunberg, blood diamonds in Sierra Leone and a whole range of other issues of the modern day, with a reminder that as well as being kind to ourselves it might be better to be hard on ourselves...

Interestingly, I saw Tangerine Dream recently at the Roundhouse and the special guest guitarist for the final improvisation session of the concert was Steve Rothery: the Marillion guitarist. He was also in the audience for the final gig of Clannad - something I mentioned earlier this month, sitting in the row in front of me.

Here's the video for the opening track from that album: 'Be Hard on Yourself'.