Marillion In The 1980s

Nathaniel Webb

• Publisher: Sonicbond Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789520651
• eBook ISBN: 9781789521146
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Rock Music

Derided as seventies throwbacks upon their arrival and misremembered by the wider population as one-hit wonders, Marillion rode the 1980s as one of the most successful bands in Britain. Delivering the musical and conceptual density of early progressive rock with the caustic energy of punk, the Aylesbury heroes both spearheaded the neo-prog revival and produced its crown jewel in their number one album Misplaced Childhood and its Top 5 singles 'Kayleigh' and 'Lavender.' Musically, their influence reaches from prog legends Dream Theater and Steven Wilson to household names like Radiohead and Muse.
The 1980s encapsulated Marillion's birth, commercial apex, and near-implosion. This book combines meticulous history with careful musical analysis to chronicle their most turbulent decade from their first gig, through the dizzying success and destructive decadence of their time with frontman Fish, to his bitter departure and replacement by Steve Hogarth. It turns an experienced critical eye not only on their five albums of the decade - from the seminal Script For A Jester's Tear to Season's End - Hogarth's debut - and a line up that remains as active as ever. The book also discusses demos, singles, and Fish's solo debut to dissect a band which critics still love to hate, even as today's music industry stands upon their shoulders as pioneers of self-promotion and internet-based crowd funding.

Nathaniel Webb is an American author, musician, and game designer. As a lead guitarist, he has toured and recorded for numerous acts including Grammy-nominated singers Beth Hart and Jana Mashonee, Colombian pop star Marre, and Talking to Walls. His writing includes the novels Expedition: Summerlands, The Days of Guns and Roses, and Arcadia Mon Amour. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Wesleyan University, Nathaniel lives in Portland, Maine with his wife and son under a big pile of cats. He can be found on Facebook and Twitter @nat20w.

Sonicbond Publishing Limited

www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk

Email: [email protected]

First Published in the United Kingdom 2020

First Published in the United States 2020

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright Nathaniel Webb 2020

ISBN 978-1-78952-065-1

The right of Nathaniel Webb to be identified as the author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Sonicbond Publishing Limited

Printed and bound in England

Graphic design and typesetting: Full Moon Media

Contents

Introduction

Prologue: Silmarillion

1980: Professional Outlook Required

1981: The Crying Jester

The Roxon Tape

1982: Let the Blood Flow

‘Market Square Heroes’

1983: I’m Just the Drummer

Script for a Jester’s Tear

1984: Passion, Pain and Pride

Fugazi

1985: The Heart That We Have Live

Misplaced Childhood

1986: The Soporific Demands of Worldwide Acclaim

1987: What Am I Doing Wrong?

Clutching at Straws

1988: We’ve Still Got Our Sound

1989: Coming In Out of the Cold

Seasons End

1990-2020: Such an Amazing Thing

Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors

Introduction

One of the great pleasures of writing about a cult band is meeting other people who are as obsessed as you are. Until I began work on this book, I had only one person to talk to about Marillion: my friend Andrew, who loves ‘Grendel’ so much he taught himself Anglo-Saxon and translated Beowulf.

Otherwise I was alone.

I discovered Marillion via my brother, an avid reader of rock reviewer Glenn McDonald, who for twenty years wrote a column called The War Against Silence. On 7 September 2000, McDonald published TWAS #293, an essay titled ‘Chalk Hearts,’ in which, inspired by the recent release of The Singles ‘82-88’, he spent 4,500 words comparing all fourteen versions of ‘Kayleigh’ then extant.

Here, thought my sixteen-year-old self, was something worth obsessing over.

At Bull Moose in Portsmouth, New Hampshire I picked up a CD called Kayleigh, which I thought was maybe the album the song was from but turned out to be a Dutch singles compilation from the mid-nineties, presumably made as a quick cash grab. It didn’t matter, though: it opened with a seventeen-minute monster epic called ‘Grendel’ and the eight songs that followed were as drunkenly romantic as McDonald’s strange essay had promised.

I was hooked.

Marillion are a cult band in nearly every sense, especially for American fans. Their records sold well in Britain throughout the eighties but they barely registered in the States. Meanwhile, the band has been dismissed or mocked by most mainstream pop gatekeepers, who crowed in 1981 that progressive rock was long since dead and buried and ought to stay that way, ate their words over the next decade, then promptly decided that the group could be safely, if inaccurately, relegated to the one-hit wonders bin. Looking back, every one of Marillion’s successes seems coloured with a note of surprise, as though nobody really expected things to go so well... with one grand exception: the fans.

The fans have always been a huge part of the Marillion story. The stories of the band’s dedication to their fanbase are countless, ranging from the epic (buss...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Prologue: Silmarillion