Steve Hogarth
As surprising as it seems, for the last five months of 1988, Marillion were an instrumental quartet. After the acrimonious departure of frontman Fish that summer, Aylesbury’s finest were faced with the unenviable task of deciding what to do next. They were still working on new music, of course, because that’s what they’d always done (and still do nearly 35 years later), but the spotlight that had illuminated their former singer was now hitting an empty centre-stage.
“There was a sense of relief when Fish left, to be honest,” says guitarist Steve Rothery. “It was like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders, just because things had got so bad. What had been a great working and personal relationship had degraded to the point where it was just unworkable. This was a bit of a journey into the unknown, but we had faith in the music that we’d already written, and that sustained us.”
“Strangely enough, I don’t think any of us were panicking, like, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?’” says bassist Pete Trewavas. “It wasn’t a shock-and-awe moment. It was more, ‘We’re just going to carry on because we’re good at what we do!’ We knew what we did and we knew its worth. We also realised that we had some good music, and we just wanted to complete the new equation with a good singer. It was worth the wait to find somebody like Steve Hogarth, it really was.”
Part of the huge challenge that Marillion were now facing was that Fish had been such a distinctive lyricist and character, and one whose entire persona and approach were inextricably woven into everything that the band had released. Replacing such a charismatic figure was no small task, but Trewavas, Rothery, keyboard player Mark Kelly and drummer Ian Mosley remained united, determined to use this unexpected pause in their story as a means to forge ahead anew.
“Yeah, we’d pre-empted it a little bit, the fact that Fish was such a singular frontman,” says Trewavas. “We decided early on that it was going to be a big ask to find someone that was going to be not just a great singer, but a great frontman and a great lyricist. The only thing we could really do to help that situation was to find a couple of good lyricists, and see what direction we thought the lyrics might want to take.”
Did none of the remaining quartet fancy having a go at writing lyrics?
“Ha ha ha! No. It was suggested at one point that I might want to sing, but I didn’t,” Trewavas reveals. “I do love to sing, but I did not want to be a frontman or a singer. I’m terrible at remembering words, so it was definitely a no-no! In all seriousness, I thought it was a bigger thing. What we needed was a proper frontman. As well as looking for a singer, we continued working on the music we’d been writing. Then we found this lyricist, John Helmer, and a couple of other people were suggested as well. I think
