MARK KELLY

A keyboardist’s-eye-view of prog icons’ rollercoaster career.

Mark Kelly pulls no punches in this revealing autobiography, in which the Marillion keyboard player charts his band’s rise, fall and rise again in a fashion best described as unflinching. The book falls into roughly two halves, the first dealing with Kelly’s childhood and the Fish years, when it was all very rock’n’roll and turmoil seemed to be Marillion’s modus operandi, much of that apparently due to their Scottish frontman.

THERE’S POIGNANCY, SELF-REFLECTION AND EVEN SELF-FLAGELLATION.

Fish emerges as a madcap one-man whirlwind of trouble, possessing an insatiable appetite for drink and drugs combined with a formidable constitution and a domineering personality. The delight that Fish takes in firing band members smacks of a cruel streak, although Kelly is hardly flattering about some of them himself. “His timekeeping was about as reliable as a pub-bought Rolex,” he writes about founding drummer Mick Pointer.

Following the arrival of Steve Hogarth, there’s a noticeable shift in the dynamics. Where the battles seemed to be overwhelmingly internal while Fish was on board, thereafter Marillion’s struggles become a series of tussles against record labels, management deals, and the constant fear of slipping into irrelevance. It might be a music industry cliché, but it’s still startling to realise how gluttonously labels and management enrich themselves at the expense of artists.

Kelly documents Marillion’s pioneering ventures in crowdfunding, which could easily have made for a very dry read. Fortunately, he punctuates every anecdote with a barbed sense of humour, and the ups and downs of the band’s fortunes are given a very human dimension by Kelly’s candid accounts of his turbulent personal life. As cutting as he can be about former bandmates, he doesn’t spare himself when it comes to his shortcomings as a husband and father, which lends a sense of poignancy and self-reflection, perhaps even self-flagellation, to the biography.

On the lighter side, the book provides a detailed insight into the making of every Marillion album, charting the evolution of the band’s creative process in considerable depth, although cataloguing who wrote what verse in each song may only appeal to the most devoted fans. Kelly is fulsome with praise for the abilities of Hogarth, Mosley, Rothery and Trewavas, but has no airs or graces about his own talents. “Some might say I’m playing in the wrong key,” he writes, “I’m here to tell you that those people are Communists and liars!” An immensely enjoyable and entertaining romp through 40-plus years of prog history.