THE PROG INTERVIEW
Former Marillion singer Fish called time on his recording career following the release of last year’s acclaimed Weltschmerz, and he insists his touring is going the same way. We caught up with the big man to find out the current state of play, and to mull over highpoints from his life in music.
Dave Gilmour said, ‘Talk to the [Marillion] guys. Once you let the lawyers off the chain, you can’t do anything about it’.
Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Derek Dick, who, as Fish, rose to fame in the early 80s as frontman for prog game-changers Marillion. Four UK Top 10 albums, three Top 10 singles and one spectacularly acrimonious split later, he began his own eventful solo career, and in 2020 released his swansong album, Weltschmerz, to great acclaim. We sent one of our tallest writers to look the former lumberjack right in the eye (more or less) and ask him the questions you always wanted to…
For Fish, it’s all been about the journey. Raised in Dalkeith to the east of Edinburgh, there was an initial love of progressive rock and distant fantasies of becoming a rock star, before reality bit, and propelled him into a short-lived career as a lumberjack.
A fortuitous meeting with a school friend and a fleeting chat with Peter Gabriel provided the inspirational drive to front a band. Travels through the Scottish Borders, Cambridge and Retford saw Fish seeking a band that could match his keen expectations, and eventually led him to Aylesbury, where, in 1981, he joined Marillion. A tenure of seven years produced some of the finest progressive albums of the decade, and an unexpected hit single in the form of Kayleigh, before he resigned from the band to pursue a solo career.
That path has been similarly eventful. Legal cases with his former band and EMI brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. Such stressful distractions aside, he has built a formidable solo catalogue, not least in the form of his final recording, 2020’s Weltschmerz. It’s also apparent that, creatively, there remains much for Fish to accomplish. Acting has provided opportunities over the years, there’s talk of screenplays, novels and an autobiography. Then there’s his weekly Facebook broadcast, Fish On Friday, which provided an entertaining routine for both singer and fans over the last 18 months. He’s also just completed a UK tour with the final full performances of his 1990 album, Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors, culminating in ‘Vigil’s End’, a ‘global broadcast event’ recorded live at The Assembly, Royal Leamington Spa in December. Plans are afoot for a (possible) farewell jaunt in 2023.
Taking you back to your childhood in Dalkeith, was there any particular spark to your love of music?
I loved music and loved lying in bed on a Saturday morning, listening to Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart on the radio. But music became more important when I went to High School. For me, it was the whole early 1970s progressive scene with all the album covers. Seeing Tarkus and thinking, ‘What the hell is that?’ It was just something different.
I was too big and chubby for fashion, so I was drawn away from glam rock. The progressive rock stuff appealed to my more literary side because of the lyrics and the emotions that were in it. I loved the complexity of it all because it seemed to fit in with where I was, as a displaced 13-year-old.
Was the attic in your childhood home a safe, musical haven?
It was my bolthole and became my little sanctuary at the top of the house. I used to go up there and could play music as loud as I wanted. It was where I had my fantasy world, listening to all those Yes and Pink Floyd albums. Then, when I became an older teenager, it was where a lot of us used to meet and bond. I think that was one of the bases for the Script For A Jester’s Tear album cover, with the room with the
darkened window, although it wasn’t a window, it was just a bloody skylight.
Did meeting Peter Gabriel in Edinburgh in March 1980 give you the final push to become a singer?
It was part of it. At the time I was depressed at my situation, I was frustrated, and I didn’t feel I was following the right path. I still had this fantasy of being a singer. I went along to that Gabriel gig, and he had a lot of problems on the night. The veneer was all pulled away. Suddenly he became a frail and shy human being, standing in front of a microphone, making terrible jokes as they tried to sort out equipment issues.
When I came out of the gig, I met a guy that I’d been at school who asked if I wanted to audition for his band [Not Quite Red Fox]. I went, ‘Yeah why not, let’s do it’. Then I went to the stage door and bluffed my way in, pretending to be a German journalist. Peter was right in front of me, recovering from being on stage. I went up and got his autograph. He was just a very shy person and wasn’t this huge character that I’d imagined him to be. I think that was part of the inspiration too, you know – if he can do it, so can I. It was a big moment.
And a few months later you had an eventful first gig fronting the band Blewitt?
I had an audition with them and within two weeks, I was doing my first gig at the Golden Lion in Galashiels. I was really nervous. I was wearing white flares and a white cotton hemp shirt, which I thought was the attire for singers. However, that wasn’t particularly the attire for singers in a Galashiels pub [laughs].
I’d arrived really early and had been polishing off pints of McEwan’s Export followed by a couple of whiskies. The adrenaline carried me through but at the end of the gig, the alcohol kicked in and I went through to the toilets and threw up all over the wall.
You were in the unusual position of being able to adopt a fresh persona when you moved down to Aylesbury…
You have got to remember that
I was always Derek Dick in Dalkeith. Then when I moved to Aylesbury, I became Fish, and I could become whoever I wanted. I could completely reinvent myself. There was nobody judging me. I had the keys to the sweetie shop. It was like, ‘Well, let’s try this, let’s do acid, let’s go and kick about with a bunch of freaks’.
Were those early days with Marillion your happiest time with the band?
It was great in those days. There was a gang mentality and it was us against the world. Then we started getting rid of people and bringing in better players. It was always going up a level and about bringing in people with the right attitude as well.
It was interesting doing all the interviews for all the recent Marillion remasters. I didn’t realise that I was part of a religious cult band and that nobody did anything apart from me [laughs].
Did you have a desire to be famous but, when you got there, it wasn’t what you expected?
It wasn’t so much the fame side as what came along with it.
That’s always been the question mark with me and Marillion: ‘What would they have done next?’ And that’s how I want to leave my solo career with Weltschmerz.
Who knows – Leamington could be my last ever show. I really don’t know.
When Kayleigh came out, everyone was sniffing around and offering stupid money to find out the identity of Kay. I’ve always said fame is great, as it gets you tables at restaurants, but you’ve got to pay a lot more money in tips.
There came a point when I felt it was an intrusion and it became overwhelming. I think particularly during the Kayleigh period, but it was something that I came through and I had to learn how to deal with that. I think I was riding point on everything, as I felt I was a barrier to some extent between the media world and the rest of the band.
Did that pressure get worse after you left Marillion?
There were certain elements for whom it was in their interests to basically throw a lot of doubt over my capabilities. Waking up in Berwick in Beach Road one time, with my mum bringing in a copy of The Sun, with a headline that said something like ‘Fish leaves Marillion in drink and drugs shame’. It was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ It was something concocted by the media. When I left the band, there was a lot of flak thrown at me from people who wanted to demonise me by saying I was fucking up and that was why I’d gone.
Your debut album, Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors, was a strong statement to any naysayers out there.
Yes it was. I’ll be putting out the definitive version of that album. I left Marillion after what I still consider was the best album we did together, Clutching At Straws. Everyone went, ‘What would have happened next? If he had stayed, what would they have done?’ If we’d all taken a year away from each other and then started writing, we could probably have done a brilliant album together.
That’s always been the question mark with me and Marillion. ‘What would they have done next?’ And that is the same way I want to leave my solo career with Weltschmerz – ‘What would he have done next?’
You then hit a period when there were a few legal cases flying about…
A few? [laughs].
It was fucking overwhelming and was crazy at the time. When I left Marillion, there was all this stuff about how I’d tried to stop them making
Seasons End.
I remember talking
STILL to Dave Gilmour
about this at the time. We were playing pool and were talking about his thing with Pink Floyd and mine with Marillion, because they were both ongoing at the time. He said, ‘You need to talk to the guys. Once you let the lawyers off the chain, you can’t do anything about it.’
So it was the lawyers that put the injunction on the band. I told him that I wasn’t comfortable with it at all. It dragged on and it wasn’t until 1990 that it actually finished. Then the EMI case was basically because I wanted my contract to be updated. They said no and we took them to court.
With the benefit of passing time and hindsight, do you regret the legal case?
At the time, it nearly killed me. I was fighting Marillion on one side and EMI on the other. The reason that I built the studio was because I was in a situation where I could have been on the back burner for the rest of my life. I could have handed in an album and EMI could have said, ‘We don’t like that, do it again’, and then charged me twice.
I needed the freedom and the only way that I saw to get that was to build my own studio. I embarked on that at the same time I was fighting EMI. In retrospect, you could look back and say it was an incredibly stupid move. But I’m sitting here now in the studio I built during that time, with my own label, and apart from Vigil, I own the copyright to every one of my albums.
But Internal Exile didn’t really capitalise on the momentum from your debut…
That was my difficult second solo album. Direction-wise, I didn’t really know where I was heading at the time. I’d started writing songs like Dear Friend and Credo.
I was aware that there were so many different types of songs on that album. I mean, Just Good Friends was almost country and fucking western. It was a difficult album to do.
Is there any truth to the rumour suggesting you were approached to replace Phil Collins in Genesis in 1996?
I wasn’t approached and didn’t actually get asked if I would be interested but my name was put forward by Tony Banks. From what I was told, Paul Young and Paul Carrack were also put forward. Basically, Mike [Rutherford] and Tony put forward the singers that they’d been working with on solo albums. I think because there was no agreement there, they decided to bring in somebody from completely leftfield.
To be honest, it wouldn’t have worked and wouldn’t have happened. I mean, I get on really well with Mike and Tony, but I think that out on the road, my outspokenness and Scottishness might have been a bit too much. I think that might have been mentioned at the time as well.
In terms of your solo albums, is there a feeling that there may have been more consistency if you had kept the same musicians?
I think everyone brings something new into the game. Mickey Simmonds [keyboards] was great but left after Internal Exile and joined Mike Oldfield. But it was the right thing. When you’re in a band, it’s the same
goddamn chemistry all the time and it gets tired. You either alter the musicians or bring in a producer who’s going to bring in his own style and implement that across the band.
I started working with Steve Vantsis, on 13th Star, and although it is Steve and myself as the core, we can bring in different people. Like John Mitchell came in on Weltschmerz and Robin Boult,
Foss Paterson. They all bring in different energies, different styles, different chemistry and attitudes.
And you’re happy now to be operating as a cottage industry?
Yeah. If we take Weltschmerz, that sold about 25,000 copies. If those 25,000 copies had been made through a major label, it wouldn’t have paid for the recording fees. Even if a major label had got the sales up to 100,000 copies, then I would have made less money than I’ve made doing the album on my own.
I think the bottom line is how much work do you want to put in? When the Fugazi deluxe reissue arrived here, we had 3,000 albums to distribute. My wife and I dealt with it ourselves. I signed every album and packaged about 80 per cent of them. The money we earned in those two weeks pays for everything for a year. I could have got lazy, given it to someone else to do and not signed them, but this is what it’s about. It’s indie living.
You’ve dabbled with acting – did your music career prevent you investigating that further?
In the 80s, I was put up for Highlander, Rambo and I auditioned for a Bond movie as a villain. One of the problems was that if I’d taken a movie role, you were looking at taking at least a couple of months off. What do the band do?
Highlander came into the frame because it was sold as, ‘If Fish gets the movie, then you can write the music’. But you couldn’t be in a band of our standing and have the lead singer go away. Plus, you’d have a singer doing his own stuff that could possibly eclipse what the band were doing.
Later on, I did the audition for The Jacket [2005] but for various reasons, the whole shoot moved from a November time to March. I couldn’t do four weeks shooting as I had a tour booked, so I ended up doing just one day. I was working with Daniel Craig, Kris Kristofferson and Adrien Brody. That’s the pinnacle of my acting career – being a nutter in a room with that lot.
Would you consider a return to acting?
I’d like to and I’ve done a couple of independents. It’s fun to do, but in all honesty, I’d rather write something. Somebody said to me that I should write a screenplay and write myself into it. There are a load of ideas that are kicking around that I’ve not had the time to do. Saying that, even just now, I’m trying to get the sleeve notes written for the Glasgow live album release and I’ve got to write up the notes for the revamped 13th Star. Then I’ve Vigil and Internal Exile reissue notes to write up, so there’s a lot of writing to be done.
The good thing is that by doing all that, re-buffing the website and writing up a kind of diary, I’m almost doing autobiographical research. But I’m not going to write the standard musician’s autobiography. It’s going to be more of a memoir thing that bounces around all over the place. Very much like
Fish On Friday, with a stream of consciousness. There’s a lot of stuff that I couldn’t write about in the autobiography.
I know people that are writing autobiographies, no names mentioned, that are dealing with some legal question marks over stuff. There are lots of things that I could write about that would probably piss a lot of people off and I’d end up with lawsuits. So why not write a fictionalised parallel to it all? I have two ideas for musician- and music business-type works which would fulfil that purpose.
So writing appears to be something that’s likely to form a big part of your future?
I just feel that as far as music goes, I’m discarding this outer shell and there’s something else coming out. I’ve been feeling like that for the last four years but especially over the last year and a half, propelled by the selfexamination that Covid brought upon us. That’s where I feel I am. I’m growing out of this skin and moving into something else.
There have been little signs that seem to come along, and that’s where I’m at in my life. There has been a natural progression and it’s moving me towards being a writer. I’ve always said that I’m a writer that can sing, not a singer that can write. Things are meant to happen for a reason. In every part of my life, there’s that Scottish saying: ‘What’s meant for you will not go by you’.
And you’re also making plans for your farewell tour?
When I do my farewell tour, I really want to go to my favourite venues and cities in the world, and play two nights. So, for example, you go to Amsterdam’s Paradiso and do two nights, with two completely different setlists. We live in hotels, we don’t do buses, and have fun with people you want to meet up with. We do it under our own speed, with no pressure and just have fun.
I don’t think that I’ll be able to do that until 2023 because the venues are booked, but things could change. Just look at the last two years. So, who knows, Leamington might be my last ever show. I really don’t know.
Weltschmerz is out now Chocolate Frog. For all things Fish, go to www.fishmusic.scot.