“We didn’t look like hobbits…”

“The press had allegedly buried progressive rock. We had come up under the fucking radar into the Marquee club. Suddenly prog was back.”
Fish

“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