Marillion: Drowning In The Liquid Seize
SCRIPT FOR A JESTER’S TEAR
Released: 14th March 1983
Script for a Jester's Tear
He Knows You Know
The Web
Garden Party
Chelsea Monday
Forgotten Sons
I should be able to write this without even listening to the albums. I know them inside out and upside down, but now it comes to it, how do I start? I'm not even sure when I first heard of Marillion, although it was almost certainly my brother having this album. I guess he came to them as a Genesis fan and in their Fish-led days the comparison was always being made. I don't think there ever was a New Wave Of British Prog Rock, but if there had been, Marillion would have been riding the crest of it. Derek William Dick, aka Fish (due to the more mundane habit of staying in the bath for ages rather than the more Rock n' Roll reason of drinking like one) did like to emulate Peter Gabriel with the face-paint and the theatricals, and the songs were musically complex, lyrically dense and most tellingly, long. Twenty minute interpretations of Beowulf and a Tolkien-derived name don't help either. To me though (and remember I'm about 15 at this time) Fish was a poet and he delivered his lyrics with a passion that you can't fault. 'Script' could be designed for shy teenage boys who think they're never going to get a girlfriend, from the opening line of the album "So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hearts", through to "I only laughed away your tears, but even jesters cry" (in The Web - the last 4 words being repeated in a desperate howl).
So, what do we have? The title track is a study in self-pity, with that opening line over a piano accompaniment, before Mark Kelly's keyboards kick in. Considering they are most easily placed in the 'Rock' category the instrumentation is very heavily keyboard-driven. The whole thing has an epic quality that I love, and Fish belts it out. I was never convinced by the rhyme of "hearts" and "roundabouts" - I always expect him to sing rahnd-a-bahts. The song comes in 3 parts - the losing on the swings, losing on the roundabouts bit, a quiet middle section sung against a strummed acoustic guitar, finished with another great line "promised wedding now a wake", then we have the finale which goes on about sitting and chewing daffodils - not sure about that bit. "So I'll hold my peace forever when you wear your bridal gown" mopes Fish, your heart breaks for him. 'He Knows You Know' was a single, all about drugs. I was a squeaky clean kid, so couldn't really relate to this one. It's still great through. "problems problems". You're not kidding. Fish doesn't paint a very attractive picture of drug addition."You've got venom in your stomach you've got poison in your head". It ends abruptly but then a phone starts ringing, on answering Fish shouts. "Don't give me your problems!". Quite.
If I'm honest, I never quite knew what the symbolism of 'The Web' was. It's another grim tale of bedsit angst. "I'm the cyclops in the tenement....crying amongst my rubber plants" - I really don't understand what he's on about but he's certainly angry about it. One thing Fish quite liked to do was to repeat a set of lyrics in a song in two different musical contexts. He does it here with "I realize I hold the key to freedom, I cannot let my life be ruled by threads, the time has come to make decisions, the changes have to be made". Then he says, "decisions have been made, I've conquered my fears". That's good then isn't it? He tosses in something about a flaming shroud before they wind it all up. 'Garden Party' is a dig at the upper classes and a live favourite because the audience got to sing a rude word at the top of their collective voices. "Edgy eggs and queuing cumbers, rudely wakened from their slumbers". Hmm.It too was a single, but they were yet to break through into the upper reaches of the charts. The denouement is where Fish backs himself into a rhyming corner by writing '"I'm rucking". Where can he go from there?. More depressiveness in 'Chelsea Monday', all about a young girl caught up in the seedy end of the glamour trade who ends up killing herself. We didn't have 'Emo' in those days see but there's nothing new in this world.
Finally we get political in 'Forgotten Sons'. About Northern Ireland and in particular the plight of the British squaddie. It starts with the sound of a radio being tuned and one of the stations plays a snatch of their first single 'Market Square Heroes' before the song starts. It really drives along and Fish makes it clear that he doesn't approve of all this fighting. "MORPHINE! CHILL SCREAM! BAD DREAM!" he screams. He duets with a Richard Baker-like newsreader for a middle section about the soldiers' parents worries before it enters into a prolonged instrumental interlude. Live it was even longer as Fish would turn his microphone stand into a machine gun and pick out targets in the audience. This leads into a kind of chanted prayer. He gets a bit stagey near the end. "HALT!, Who goes there?", "Death", "Approach Friend", and I never understood why he pronounced "fiery" to rhyme with "dearie". Of course the whole thing wouldn't be complete without a kids choir singing 'Ring a ring o' roses'. Just to ram the point home we finish with "Peace on earth and mercy mild, Mother Brown has lost her child" Album cover - well for a start we'll be having the full gatefolds thank you very much. Marillion employed Mark Wilkinson to do all their early covers and were generally themed around the character of the jester. For this one the bedsit theme is highlighted. There's probably all kinds of symbolism going on.
FUGAZI
Released: 12th March 1984
Assassing
Punch & Judy
Jigsaw
Emerald Lies
She Chameleon
Incubus
Fugazi
There's a long-standing tradition in our house. I get home from work on a Friday evening and make a bee-line for the drinks cabinet. J's tipple is Gin and Tonic, but I like a Bloody Mary, and as I pour that well-deserved end-of-week sanity restorer the same opening line of the title track of this album runs trhough my head "Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell". As with so many of Fish's lyrics, it's pretty meaningless but there you go. The album starts with 'Assassing', which probably counts as their breakthrough single. The intro is all Eastern twanging, resolving into a heavy beat before a "Sha!" and we break into the meat of the song. I've always assumed that this is about critics and their use of words to bring someone down. You'll appreciate by now that I'm the first to use a fancy word wherever I can but Fish really goes to town on this on. "Listen as a the syllables of slaughter cut with calm precision; Patterned frosty phrases rape your ears and sow the ice incision, Adjectives of annihilation bury the point beyond redemption, Venomous verbs of ruthless candour plagiarize assassin's fervour". I could go on. He pronounces 'plagiarize' with a hard instead of a soft 'g'. Now there's a mention of a 'sentimental mercenary' which is reprised in the final track, 'Fugazi', but I think only Fish knows for sure what that means. He finishes with a line from Apocalypse Now. "and what do you call assassins who accuse assassins anyway, my friend", although I believe it might be slightly paraphrased.
'Punch and Judy' is a commentary on a marriage gone sour and presumably degenerating into violence. He captures the petty arguments well "Who left the cap off the toothpaste tube, who forgot to flush the loo?". There's a wistful looking back to the halcyon early days of the relationship, I've never thought that hard about the meaning of 'Jigsaw', but it's pretty clearly about a break-up.I think it's one of their weaker songs, not quite the inventiveness that I like about them. In contrast 'Emerald Lies' is one of my favourites. Quite a heavy guitar intro on this one before it almost stops and Fish comes in singing his usual nonsense in a falsetto. My favourite lyric is probably 'I am the harlequin, Diamonded costume dripping shades of green". Middle section gets all threatening and manic as he screams 'INNOCENCE!' and starts dressing up like Torquemada, apparently. Another favourite is "Through the Silk Cut haze to the smeared mascara, A 40 watt sun on a courtroom drama". In fact it is jam-packed with magnificent, obscure, clever lyrics and I don't care if you disagree, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm less keen on 'She Chameleon'. It's accompanied by a church organ sound. All about sexual betrayal I think. There's a nice twiddly keyboard bridge - slightly reminiscent of parts of War Of The Worlds. Some gratuitous swearing is involved near the end, Don't listen when your Mum's in the house. The meaning of 'Incubus' is pretty obscure but it has an unsavoury air about it, some internet forums suggest it's a sequel song to 'The Web' but then I didn't understand that one either. Obviously I still think it's superb. The final refrain is delivered in an insane screech, talking about "stuttering paralysed with rabbits eyes".
And finally, probably to me the ultimate Marillion song, 'Fugazi' itself. A substantial 8 minutes 13 seconds and non-stop pseudy-bollocks all the way that you can interpret whichever way you want. He borrows from Shakespeare "Safe and dry in my sea of troubles". plays with homonyms 'drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly Line" and creates great imagery - "rat-race, scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth". It's probably autobiographical to some extent but I don't know what "breaststroke ambition" might be. The instrumentation soars and creeps. Fish changes his vocal style mid-verse - no wonder he got nodules on his throat. It's political too. "A son of the swastika of '45, parading a peroxide standard.....this is Brixton chess". There's homelessness "A knight from Embankment folds his newspaper castle". Then at the end it gets really grim: "son waches father scan obituary colums in search of absent schoolfriends", "decriminalised genocide providing door-to-door Belsens". The kids think they have it hard these days, but this stuff seemed relevant (to me) in 1984 as we cowered under the threat of nuclear armageddon. He finishes with 'Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary". He's clearly looking for something to cling on to and I guess Fish was not in a great place at this time. The cover shows the jester spreadeagled on a hotel bed, either drunk or worse with his costume ripped off.
MISPLACED CHILDHOOD
Released: 17th June 1985
Pseudo Silk Kimono
Kayleigh
Lavender
Bitter Suite
i) "Brief Encounter"
ii) "Lost Weekend"
iii) "Blue Angel"
iv) "Misplaced Rendezvous"
v) "Windswept Thumb"
Heart of Lothian"
i) "Wide Boy"
ii) "Curtain Call"
Waterhole (Expresso Bongo)
Lords of the Backstage
Blind Curve
i) "Vocal Under a Bloodlight"
ii) "Passing Strangers"
iii) "Mylo"
iv) "Perimeter Walk"
v) "Threshold"
Childhoods End?
White Feather
I wonder how many 29 year old women called Kayleigh there are wandering about? It was a bona fide hit and the fans started getting the grumps because everyone was all over their favourite band who had sold out to The Man. Me? It didn't bother me all that much. It was good to see them on Top Of The Pops. However it did take me a while to absorb the album. I think it arrived pretty much on the day of release in our house. It's a concept album, but if I'm honest, I'm not sure what that concept is, and strictly speaking it has 2 tracks, Side 1 and Side 2. There's a number of spoken bits throughout and Fish, quite rightly, makes no attempt to hide the Scottish accent.
After the quiet, synthy intro we get straight into 'Kayleigh', kept off number one by 'You'll Never Walk Alone' by The Crowd, in aid of the Hillsborough disaster. I suppose it places it amongst the great number 2's of UK pop history, alongside Vienna. After that, onto the next big hit, 'Lavender'. Fish was always having trouble with his voice and he'd lost it by the time they had to perform on the Pops so he mimed with the words on idiot boards. Of course he could've just got away with it since everyone mimed on TOTP in those days, but it showed he was capable of sending himself up. The next bit is a 7 minute segue, 'Bitter Suite' having about 5 different titled sections. It starts a bit like Assassing before we get a little spoken ditty about a spider, mist currrling in from the canal and "a cascade of neon pollen" before delivering possibly Fish's worst lyric of the Marillion period. "A train sleeps in a siding, the driver guzzles another can of lager". I dunno, it was just so....unpoetic. There's a reprise of the musical theme of 'Lavender' before we hear about an encounter with a prostitute in Lyon. Some nice wordplay on road features (no, really) in the final 'Windswept Thumb' part before launching into the third single, 'Heart Of Lothian'. I love the line "It's six o'clock in the tower block, the stalagmites of culture shock, and the trippers of the light fantastic bow down hoe down, spray the pheremones on". You don't get that with your One Directions.
Side 2 starts with 'Waterhole (Expresso Bongo)' which is much harder edged than what has come before. Really complex xylophone-style instrumentation along with really complex Fish-type lyrics. It calms down as it moves into 'Lords Of The Backstage'. "I just wanted you to be the first one" pleads the piscine one. We then drift into another extended suite, 'Blind Curve'. He touches on one of the main themes of the whole album, the price of fame and the hotel-hopping life of the modern rockstar. In 'Perimeter Walk' he mumbles on in the background. About the only thing you can make out is "Wasted, I've never been so wasted, I've never been this far out before". he works himself up going on about his misplaced childhood before howling "Oh please. Give it back to me!". This is followed by a list of all the awful things Fish has witnessed. "Convoys, kerb-crawling West German autobahns, trying to pick up a war". There's abused kids, napalm and so on. "They call us civilized?" - calm down dear, it's just a Cold War. Back to the Heart of Lothian theme before going into the more upbeat 'Childhood's End' where Fish seems to achieve some kind of redemption, getting back in touch with his childhood self. It's quite uplifting and he concludes that there is no childhood's end. Finally he gets some backbone and asserts that he won't wear a white feather and is proud to own his heart. Considering Script ended with dead soldiers and Fugazi with apocalyptic hopelessness, I think you're really making progress, well done Mr Dick. The cover: a child in a military uniform holding a magpie (cf Fugazi), the jester is exiting through a window and the chameleon is still there too in a gilded cage.
CLUTCHING AT STRAWS
Released: 22nd June 1987
Hotel Hobbies
Warm Wet Circles
That Time of the Night (The Short Straw)
Just for the Record
White Russian
Incommunicado
Torch Song
Slàinte Mhath
Sugar Mice
The Last Straw
Happy Ending
When it comes to the early Marillion albums, I'm like a proud grandparent, I don't have favourites, but if I was pushed, I reckon I'd give my last, pocket-lint covered Werther's Original to Clutching At Straws. It was probably the first album for which I eagerly awaited the release. By now I was a student in a grotty house rented from a Mackem builder with the surname Allen. Our cutting student wit had led us to dub him 'Dave'. Off I popped to HMV in Sunderland to buy it on cassette. Later on my good friend John gave me the picture disc for Christmas which according to Terry's Picture Discs is now worth the princely sum of £21.99 (although eBay says £9.99, what do they know?)
Another concept album, this time built around the clearly autobiographical central character of 'Torch' a writer who struggles with the booze. Fish plays an old trick on this one where the opening line of the opening song is the same as the opening line of the last, sung to a different tune. Here it starts gently enough but it soon ratchets up as the "familiar craving is crawling in his head". There's some flolloping instrumentation during the guitar break and he calms down again. 'Warm Wet Circles" paints a picture of small British towns and thwarted dreams. The line "I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths, a classroom's shabby butterflies" makes you feel a bit queasy. Fish gives his throat a good workout toward the end, before the piano peters out. The music rambles around for a bit before settling into 'That Time Of The Night (Short Straw)', a combination of gentle verses and angry chorus. At the end it all comes to a head "If I had enough money, I'd by a round for that boy over there. A companion in my madness, in the mirror, the one with the silvery hair, And if one kind soul could pick up my tab, and while they're at it, if they could pick up my broken heart". Now at this point something unusual happens, Marillion have employed a female backing singer, how novel. They reprise the Warm, Wet Circles refrain and move on to the more sedate 'Going Under'. 'Just For The Record' is an attempt to capture the thought processes of an alcoholic. It has a good core of electric piano and repeating guitar riff. The closing shot is the lie "Just for the record, I can stop any day". Side 1 closed with 'White Russian' where the navel gazing stops and the rise of the Far Right is examined. The line "To stand up and fight, I know we have six million reasons" is followed by squealing guitars and descriptions of escalating violence. It's passionate and a bit worthy, but considering many might dismiss Marillion as an airy-fairy prog act I think it's admirable. It finishes with the melody played on a musical box.
Side 2, back to the booze. 'Incommunicado' was the lead single, just about being famous and pissed really. It did well and by now the band were pretty much guaranteed a Pops slot (although in those days there were strict rules - you had to be a new entry or have gone up the chart AND you mustn't have been on last week, with the obvious exception of number 1). 'Torch Song' is contemplative and features the character of Doctor Finlay, who says "My advice is, if you maintain this lifestyle, you won't reach 30" to which Fish/Torch responds "Christ, it's sort of a romantic way to go though, part of the heritage. It's your round innit?". I think 'Slainte Mhath' is my favourite track on the album. The gaelic title is carried through in a tune that hints at traditional Scottish folk music. As Fish sings "Take me away", he launches into an impassioned lament of how Scotland has fallen. "They promised us miracles, but the whistle still blows". Sounds familiar. 'Sugar Mice' is fine, and was a single, but I think it's a weaker song. And finally 'The Last Straw' as noted already, we heard the opening line at the start. The song ends with Fish singing "We're clutching at straws, still drowning", ably assisted by Tessa Niles' backing vocals. So, despite the title of the very, very last track, 'Happy Ending' (a hollow laugh), the upbeat ending of Misplaced Childhood is gone.
I don't think this one had a gatefold sleeve but the front and back both featured a bar-room scene with some of Fish's heroes in attendance including Burns and John Lennon. The one and only time I saw them in concert was at the Newcastle City Hall when they were promoting this album. Fish wore a black suit with a flame design rising from the lower hems. After this 'musical differences' kicked in and Fish and the rest of the band went their separate ways. However there is some good stuff that appeared on B-sides that I'll take a look at before I finish.
B’SIDES THEMSELVES
Released: 4th January 1988
Grendel" "Market Square Heroes
Charting the Single
Market Square Heroes
Three Boats Down from the Candy
Cinderella Search
Lady Nina
Freaks
Tux On
Margaret
Marillion always showed a bit of integrity when it came to singles, they usually put an unreleased track on the B side. This brought together most of the stuff that had never appeared on an album. First off is 'Grendel', retelling the story (to some extent) of Beowulf. Seamus Heaney it ain't. Just to bring non-scholars of ancient Old English texts up to speed, and those who haven't seen Ray Winstone's laughable and surprisingly boring mo-cap film version, Grendel is a monster that has been troubling King Hrothgar of the Danes and Beowulf slays (by pulling his arm off I think). The song is broadly sympathetic to Grendel, portraying him as simply giving as good as he gets. It builds to a climax as Grendel lays into Beowulf and his warriors both verbally and physically.
'Charting The Single' features lots of groanworthy puns on a vaguely Euro theme. "I'll be floating in Seine", "Plastered in Paris, I've had an Eiffel", "Schnapping my fingers on an alcoholiday". You get the picture. You can either listen to the song or try to work out how Fish works "pasta", "chianti" and "pizza" into the lyric. It's diverting fun, but you can see why it was only released as a B-side. 'Market Square Heroes' was their first single and goes at a brilliant gallop. There's a middle section where Fish sings "I am your Antichrist, Show me allegiance", but for squeamish broadcasters there was a version where 'Antichrist' was replaced by 'Battle Priest' (?). This was usually what they finished their live shows with in the early days. 'Three Boats Down From The Candy" starts with quite a degree of urgency before it halts abruptly and Fish sings the opening verse in not much more more than a whisper. Then pace picks up again. In fact it's almost like one of their more complex album tracks like Fugazi, but in microcosm. Within 4 minutes they manage to cover about 5 different musical movements. 'Cinderella Search' is the lonely teenage boy's anthem. "Maybe it was infatuation or the thrill of the chase, Maybe you were always beyond my reach and my heart was playing safe, But was that love in your eye I saw or the reflection of mine, I never really knew for sure you never really gave me time". Fish was partial to the odd tribute to ladies of the night and 'Lady Nina' follows that particular tradition. It has a heavy electronic drumbeat and some good lyrics "The sailors of the ships of the night". 'Freaks' is yet more contemplation on the drawbacks of fame. It starts off quiet enough before the guitars kick in and Fish starts screaming. 'Tux On' was the B side of 'Sugar Mice' and may be a better song. A story of unexpected pop success and ensuing drug death. I don't recall 'Margaret', the B side of 'Garden Party' being on my old version of this album.
Live larkiness recorded in Edinburgh and including bits of "Scotland The Brave", "Mairi's Wedding" and 'The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond" and laddish references to drug taking. They rock out while Fish introduces the band and then the crowd "on audience tonight", and Pete Trewavas introduces him ("On vocals, and percussion" - meaning they only trusted him with a tambourine), . In proper ELP, prog rock style there's a splash of a classical tune - "In the Hall of the Mountain King" - known to most of us at the time as the backing track to Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum. "Show you're Scots!" he berates the audience. I'm sure the audience enjoyed it at the time.