“We didn’t look like hobbits…”
In the early 80s, something strange appeared. Picking its way carefully between the dying embers of punk and the just-awakening new wave, something rather proggy was re-emerging. Prog looks at the musical playing field into which Fish and pals emerged, blinking…
We were doing something really different. The press had allegedly buried progressive rock. We had come up under the fucking radar into the Marquee club. Suddenly prog was back. Of course Sounds would run the new progressive rock revival, the new wave of British prog and shit like that: it was your Solstice and IQ and all stuff like that. We were straight ahead of those bands.”
This is how Fish, somewhat dismissively, described the early 80s musical playing field that was headed by Marillion to Prog towards the end of last year. While he’s not wrong that Marillion were leading the field, both musically and as far as commercial fortunes went, he is being somewhat disingenuous.
“[Pendragon manager] Greg Lines booked a new band called Marillion to play in Gloucester with Pendragon supporting them,” recalls Pendragon mainstay Nick Barrett. “Marillion brought a lot of fans with them, and it was an opportunity to play in front of an audience that already loved prog rock. The two bands hit it off right away, and [Marillion’s then drummer] Mick Pointer asked Pendragon to support them at the Marquee. And so started the rollercoaster ride of Pendragon.”
It wasn’t just Pendragon either. This writer recalls his own first experience seeing Marillion at the Marquee for their fabled Christmas shows of 1982. The aforementioned Pendragon supported that night, but the other two nights saw Milton Keynes’ folk proggers Solstice and Chesterfield’s answer to ELP, Dagaband support.
The fact of the matter is that there was a prog rock revival going on in the early 80s. And even though they may have been several furlongs out in front, Marillion were neck deep in it as much as the bands they indulged in a spot of the old quid pro quo with.
“We were playing in Scotland and as far as we knew Pallas were big up in Scotland,” Fish would later recount in the very same interview. “So we did a joint headliner with them. Basically we went and played with them to get to their audience.”
Before bands like Marillion and their ilk began appearing, prog
rock had been the domain of older siblings – the archetype being the greatcoat-wearing elder brother proudly clutching a copy of Jethro
Tull’s Aqualung or Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway under one arm like a badge of honour.
But the new scene being reflected in the pages of the music press in the early 80s offered a young rock fan something intriguing. A year previously the now defunct Sounds had pushed an ill-fated new psychedelic movement that spawned the likes of Dr And The Medics, Le Mat (who would swiftly transfer their allegiance to prog) and Mood Six. No sooner had interest waned, than small news stories referring to a new prog movement began appearing in the paper. It wasn’t long before Sounds and fledgling metal mag Kerrang! were running cover features exploring this so-called new musical phenomenon, even though everything was already in full swing.
Lack of decent coverage of rock in the UK media was hardly new in the early 80s, and despite the support of the aforementioned magazines, the bitterly cynical approach of NME and Melody Maker led to a swathe of fanzines supporting the new prog scene. My own Court Jester was typical of the time – a small but successful zine, inspired by Marillion’s own The Web newsletter. Equally worthy were fanzines like Afterglow, Slogans,
Exposure and Fascination, all of which offered a mouthpiece to the movement, while the likes of The Amazing Pudding (Pink Floyd), Opel (Syd Barrett) and Relayer (Yes), among others, concentrated on specific bands.
“We didn’t look like hobbits,” says former IQ keyboard player Martin Orford, reflecting on some of the more cosmetic reasons why these new younger bands differed from the old guard. “And we weren’t your typical prog rock band in as much as we hadn’t been to public school, we were all from a working-class background.
“Marillion had nothing to do with us. The Lens was from before Marillion ever started, and IQ came from The Lens. So there’s no way to say IQ came about because Marillion started getting success.”
Marillion were still very much the standardbearers for this new musical force however. And the band’s big step to success also acted as a springboard for others, helping to open them up to a wider audience, as well as generating media interest.
Within months, the Marquee in London’s Wardour Street, very much the central hub of the new wave of prog’s activity, was awash with likeminded bands – not one month would pass without new progressive revivalists packing them in, selling their wares and seeking out that elusive record deal.
Most Prog readers will be aware of the fellow players snapping at Marillion’s heels: Pendragon, IQ, Pallas, Twelfth Night, Solstice. These bands weren’t the only ones of note, although they were certainly the leading contenders. Galahad from Dorset formed in 1985 and would make serious headway. From East Anglia there was the art rock charms of Airbridge (who would in turn begat LaHost). In Essex, Tamarisk formed from the ashes of Chemical Alice, the band from which Marillion had poached keyboard player Mark Kelly. Sheffield’s Haze were early forerunners of having your own label in the still-going Gabadon Records. Elsewhere the excellent Rush-like strains of prog trio Trilogy, Scotland’s Citizen Cain, London’s own Quasar and Liaison, Herts prog metallers Gothique and more all added to the piquancy of a scene that ultimately would simply refuse to die.
While it’s true to say that only Marillion went on to achieve truly massive long-term fame and commercial success, the fact that many of these bands continue to exist in one form or other pays testament to the strength of the genre and the bands’ own ability to outlive fads and trends. Yet back in 1983, it really did seem as if the world might be their proverbial oyster – especially for those bands who made it onto the bill for that year’s Reading Festival.
The headlines for 1983’s Reading may have been about Black Sabbath, with Ian Gillan singing Smoke On The Water, or what turned out to be one
of the last appearances of Thin Lizzy. But it was also the year that the new wave of British prog bands made their presence known at the festival. Pendragon, Pallas, Solstice, Marillion (who had debuted the year previous) and Twelfth Night (who first appeared in 1981) all played that year, while long-time festival faves The Enid and a resurgent Magnum also made winning appearances. Typically, Marillion got most of the headlines, having opened their set with their lengthy epic Grendel – despite having previously announced they would never play it again (it was the last ever live airing of the song) – and immediately winning over the audience. It was also a rare outing with Marillion for drummer Andy Ward, once of Camel (although stand-in drummer John Marter was on hand should the wayward Ward have spontaneously combusted onstage).
Marillion aside, the presence of most of the major players on the new prog scene seemed to signify that the music industry – which had thus far been resistant to the peculiarly English charms of most of these bands – might be taking notice. Notice, maybe but a wherewithal to do anything successfully with it was another matter entirely.
“I suppose it’s all based on the recession of the late 70s when all the record companies were looking for singles acts,” said Twelfth Night drummer Brian Devoil, on why
“It’s not hard to sell prog rock, but Phonogram couldn’t do it.”
Martin Orford
Twelfth Night struggled to get a major deal. “The days, when you’d make a demo, go to a record company with it and they would say, ‘Let’s go in the studio and see what we come up with’, have gone.”
Twelfth Night would sign with Virgin off-shoot Charisma Records, having released 1984’s Live And Let
Live and 1985’s Art & Illusion on the independent label Music For Nations. IQ, who had replaced frontman Peter Nicholls with Paul Menel, found themselves managed by Def Leppard and Metallica’s management company and signed to Mercury for 1987’s Nomzamo and 1989’s Are You Sitting Comfortably?, which were both released via subsidiary Vertigo in the UK. Pallas followed swiftly in Marillion’s footsteps by signing with EMI affiliate Harvest Records, and releasing The Sentinel in 1984 and The Wedge (with new singer Alan Reed) in 1986. However, the results for all were disappointing.
Although it would be true to say that without big music business players behind them managementwise, many of these bands displayed a certain naïvete. However the plights faced by Marillion’s successors were largely the fault of the record industry’s inability to understand how to market progressive rock effectively, something that largely rings true today. It’s been a major factor in how bands like IQ, Pendragon and eventually Marillion themselves, took control of their own destinies with their own labels.
Pallas’ original intention for The Sentinel to be an audacious double album was unfortunately shot down by their new paymasters. Hardly the best of starts, followed by the departure of singer Euan Lowson soon after the album’s release. The label’s interest soon waned, stymying the band’s development. Twelfth Night were faced with similar indifference. IQ were signed as a progressive rock project but soon found themselves being coerced in the direction of writing singles-orientated material. “Why sign a bloody prog rock band then?” an exasperated Martin Orford once said to me.
“We were signed directly to Squawk, who were using Phonogram for marketing and distribution,” he says. “But as Phonogram hadn’t actually signed us, they weren’t interested. It’s not hard to sell prog rock, but they couldn’t do it.”
The prog revival of the 80s may not have catapulted many bands to superstardom, but it re-ignited an interest in the genre. That Pendragon and IQ remain major payers in today’s scene should not go unnoticed. Pallas (and Alan Reed as a solo artist) and Twelfth Night have been active in the last decade and many of the acts mentioned are either still going today or have morphed into other acts. More than 30 years down the line this says far more about the staying power of progressive music and the quality of the music these bands make than anything else.
It might even have had something to do with jump-starting the socalled ‘dinosaur’ bands of the 70s, who had largely withdrawn to lick their wounds after the onset of punk rock. Genesis and Yes had some of their biggest ever commercial successes in the decade, even if their updated sound would upset the purists. Asia flourished for several years.
And even giants ELP and Pink Floyd made active returns.
These days, as we well all know, ‘prog’ is no longer a dirty word. It’s an increasingly vibrant, multi-faceted and boundary-defying musical genre. It’s a far cry from when Genesis singer and drummer Phil Collins told Sounds back in 1982, when asked about the impact of Marillion: “I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone to try and be successful in this day and age, being a parody of a band nobody likes.”