The Game Is (Almost) Over
A number of factors including grief and health problems may have delayed Fish’s final release, but now he’s planning to bulk it up to a double album due next year. Prog finds out all the details…
Musical retirement may be an unavoidable and necessary part of life, but for those who’ve had four decades’ immersion in an artist’s music and lyrics, the thought of a ‘final album’ comes with an overwhelming sadness. For Fish, that album is the long touted Weltschmerz which, if his best laid plans come to fruition, would be a recording already released and providing one bookend of his back catalogue. Indeed, last December’s live expedition was billed as a Weltschmerz & Clutching At Straws Tour, the only problem being that Fish and his band hadn’t written a note of the new album. It was, as he explains, becoming a worryingly long goodbye.
“Yeah, last year I was really worried about it,” he admits. “There’s been so much that’s happened in the last two years. My dad died in May 2016 and six months later, I kind of woke up in the garden and went, ‘Where have the last six months gone?’ I also had health problems and I just couldn’t get my head into writing. I was just in a state of perpetual recovery. It was really only around February this year that Steve [Vantsis, bassist] and I had that one spark that just set the control room ablaze. Finally, things just started to come together. I mean, this is tagged as my last album. I just want to do what I want to do and it’s like a ‘damn the torpedoes’ kind of vibe. I’m just going to feel the whole thing through. Whatever it demands will be done.”
Certainly, there was a slight but nagging doubt that writer’s block might blight this final album. But as Fish hinted at, once a firm direction for the album had been formed, ideas
began to speedily morph into tracks. Within six weeks, the duo had four songs written in demo form, with two of them expanding to around 15 minutes each. With another two lengthy epics also in development, Fish began to consider a double album. Yet, with the original intention for the album to be recorded and released by September, that would only add unnecessary pressure to his schedule.
“When I nominated it for a double album, I realised it would really screw things up as I knew I would never be able to get a double written,” he recalls. “Around March, I then got a call from [cover artist] Mark Wilkinson. He told me that he had some issues that he had to deal with and he knew there was no way he was going to be able to get this artwork ready for September.
“Mark and I had been talking for the year previously about how we wanted to put together a great packaging layout, similar if not better to A Feast Of Consequences. I basically turned around to him and said, ‘Look, you’ve worked on every project that I’ve ever been involved with since 1982 and there is no way I’m going into my last album without you.’ There was just no way I was going to use another artist. So I thought, ‘Fuck it. Let’s find the silver in the dark cloud and put the album back to May 2019.’ I mean, when Mark declared that he was unavailable for six weeks, I could have put my head under a pillow and had a good sob but I thought, ‘Let’s find a way round it.’ There’s always a solution to everything.”
For Fish, there’s a need for the lyrics to dictate the album’s flow, or as he calls them, “rock flicks moments”, where he can effectively draft a short story, then worry