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Keep the rest of my life away

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24. Fantastic Place – Marillion

Marillion are probably the least “cool” band in the UK. Certainly the least covered in the mainstream music press these days considering the size of their fan base. I suspect they don’t care and more power to them for that. They were a big, big band for me as a teenager, presumably hooked in by “Kayleigh” in ’87 (some fine hair in that video) and then going backwards into the first two albums, “Script For A Jester’s Tear” and “Fugazi”. I don’t actually remember my route in but it must have been via the singles from “Misplaced Childhood” – they were probably the archetypal “handed down from older brother” kind of band but I didn’t have an older brother. I do vaguely recall liking a girl called Hayley at around the same time and I’m trying hard to suppress a memory of changing the chorus to “Kayleigh”* to fit my unreciprocated love. Sadly, a recurring theme of my teenage years. The lack of reciprocation, not the changing of lyrics to the chart hits of the day…

To fully immerse myself in this post I decided to listen to all of their studio albums, in order, up to and including “Marbles”, from which “Fantastic Place” is taken. That’s 13 records. It took me a couple of days and I did cheat a bit on day 2 when I had to listen to something else just to break things up. What struck me was the disconnect in my head between the two versions of Marillion – with Fish, with Steve Hogarth – and the reality. Fish era Marillion was the one that I grew up with and I was still a fan during the transition as Hogarth became the vocalist – in fact, the only line up I’ve seen live was with Hogarth round about “Season’s End” and “Holidays In Eden”. I still think of the band’s output as split roughly equally between the two singers but in actuality Marillion has long ceased to be Fish’s band. Albums with Fish: four. Albums without Fish: thirteen (counting the “Less Is More” acoustic re-workings album).

I lost track of the band just after “Holidays In Eden”, the second post Fish record. Listening back to it now it has its moments but it’s a little polite, particularly for my tastes back in 1991 when I was in thrall to fuzzed guitars and singing wasn’t singing unless it was a cathartic scream for understanding. Ironically the follow up, “Brave” is a fine record – a concept album about a girl found wandering on the Severn Bridge, unaware of who she is or how she got there – and I should have given it more of a chance back in ’94 when it came out.

There’s then a run of five albums between ’95 and ’01 which I’d never heard. This run also marks the point at which the band moved away from a traditional record label model for recording and distributing their music towards an ahead-of-its-time version of fan funding. I don’t know if they did it first but Marillion were certainly doing Kickstarter before anyone had even heard of Kickstarter. There’s an interesting Tedx talk from Mark Kelly (the band’s keyboardist) on crowdfunding on the band site: here.

Hearing these records for the first time, in sequence, was an enjoyable experience. A few songs popped out straight away as warranting further attention and “This Strange Engine”, in particular, as a complete album is one that I will go back to. Marillion don’t tend to write immediate songs though so repeated listens often repay; it’s music to sit and soak in rather than stuff to stick on in the background while you’re doing something else.

Those five take us up to “Marbles”. About three years ago I had noticed that a friend (who had been a fellow Marillion fan at school) had been listening to a couple of their songs that were unfamiliar to me – via last.fm, the marvelous music-meets-stats website (my profile is here). This piqued my curiousity and I found the songs on a streaming site. One of them would have been “Neverland” which I immediately fell in love with and subsequently ordered the album direct from Marillion.com. Who says streaming services don’t work ? Artist royalties is perhaps a debate for another time…

“Marbles” is a wonderful record. Built loosely around recurring themes of madness, escape and the loss of childhood innocence it showcases the band at its best – I think it’s their career highpoint (although “Clutching At Straws” from the Fish era is also a brilliant record). Those recurring themes, eagle eyed regular readers of this blog will have observed, are like cat nip for me but they wouldn’t be enough on their own for the record to resonate. Sometimes, for me, like quite a lot of what you might term prog, Marillion can lose the balance between a song and something that extends for its own sake. Sometimes the sounds don’t seem to be going anywhere. That never happens on “Marbles”. Never happens on the 13 minute opener “The Invisible Man”, never happens on 12 minute closer “Neverland”. And even never happens during the 17 minutes and 57 seconds of “Ocean Cloud”. Everything here, every note on this record, is perfectly judged, immaculately played, and serves each song. There’s nothing extraneous which is no mean feat given the length of the album.

There are four or five tracks on the record that I really love, particularly the stellar closer “Neverland” (well worth your time, linked on the Neverland reference above) but “Fantastic Place” is the one I have taken refuge in more times than I care to remember. Sunk into it and let it spirit me away. A song about escape that I use to escape.

As is becoming a recurring theme in this list my relationship with the song doesn’t rest on a literal read of the lyrics although there are themes here which resonate, notably about opening yourself up to somebody (say you understand me and I will leave myself completely; I’ll tell you all I never told you, the boy I never showed you) and the idea of release from everyday life (take me to the island, show me what might be real life; put your arms around my soul and take it dancing). This song, for me, is all about how it builds. It’s similar in some ways to where we started, way back with Warren Zevon and “Desperados Under The Eaves” – a self contained journey from disillusionment to the potential of something better.

“Fantastic Place” is a slow burner, from the muted, subdued opening – Hogarth almost murmuring the verse – through choruses that progressively grow in scope musically; it swells like a wave building until finally breaking into the bridge. That section as the bridge lyrics run over into the guitar solo (say you understand me and I will leave myself completely, forgive me if I stare but I can see the island behind your tired, troubled eyes) is breathtaking. It’s not rare for a song to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up but it is rare for the same song to do it, in the same place in the song, every single time I hear it.

Then we’re into Rothery’s gorgeous solo (his playing throughout “Marbles” is exquisite) before the song just continues to soar through to its close. Hogarth’s vocals on this track are also worthy of special mention, particularly in the very final section where he pulls off a performance that’s technically spot on (in so far as these ears can tell such things) but that wrenches something genuine out of his guts. I deliberately posted a live version at the top of this as it’s worth watching Hogarth perform it and his reaction to the song as it finishes – he is utterly lost in it and it’s a touching moment seeing him almost return to the room, back from wherever the song has taken him.

There is a magic in this song, a transformative, transportative magic. Strong enough to make up the word transportative and strong enough to carry me away when I need to be carried away.

* Given that Fish allegedly wrote “Kayleigh” about an ex girlfriend called “Kay Leigh” I think I’m in good company. She’ll never guess, Fish.

But except in dreams you’re never really free

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1: Desperados Under The Eaves – Warren Zevon.                        When: right now.

This wasn’t on the list. Just over a fortnight ago I’d never even heard it before. At last count I’ve now heard it 60 times. Listening to it over and over and over. Learning to play it, badly, on the guitar. Reading about it. Writing about it. That is why it now starts the list.

For me music never loses its capacity to surprise; there’s always something undiscovered, something unheard. The balance of this list, the other 41, are all rooted in a time, a place, framed by a particular point in my life. In many cases that’s why they’re on the list at all. Later in the 42 @ 42, when we get to The Posies’ “Dream All Day”, I won’t claim it’s the greatest song ever written but it, without fail, will put me down drunk in a field in Reading in 1996 throwing straw at my friends.

This is different because it’s new. Not actually new, it was recorded in 1976, but new to me. It arrived by chance. The result of a casual reading of a piece in The Guardian on Zevon which contained enough to make me think: why haven’t I heard this guy ? Time was someone might have passed you a tape, carefully curated selections of songs that they’d think you like (I miss that), but now everything you could ever want to hear is available within two clicks. So I started at the beginning – his debut, eponymous album – and there, right at the end, was this. The right song at the right time. A five minute rumination on being at your lowest ebb, poised between the abyss and salvation.

It starts with strings picking out the chords from the album opener “Frank And Jesse James”. Exact same sequence. A signal that we’ve come full circle; our titular outlaws no longer “riding, riding, riding” but now hunkered down and desperate. This gives way, via a brief guitar figure, to what, at first, sounds like typical 70s singer songwriter fare – vocals over piano.

First verse:

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel

I was staring in my empty coffee cup

I was thinking that the gypsy wasn’t lying

All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles, I’m gonna drink them up

At salty margaritas I’m interested. It’s so specific. So vivid. And surely not an accident that of all the tastes to pull out of a margarita it’s the bitter one that we’re concerned with.

And if California slides into the ocean

Like the mystics and statistics say it will

I predict this motel will be standing

Until I pay my bill… 

Now I know something special’s going on. The mystics and statistics line – opposing sources of truth, deliciously united in their rhymic opinion – is lyrically arresting enough but then we get the pay off. Just as things threaten to get too serious, there’s the sardonic prediction. Our narrator’s entire world view encapsulated in four lines. The world’s going to shit and I’ll still have to pick up the tab.

Chorus

Don’t the sun look angry through the trees

Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves

Don’t you feel like desperados under the eaves

Heaven help the one who leaves

The chorus crashes in to the song – literally announced with a guttural “huh”, chords descending through Bb, Am, Gm, C. Glorious Carl Wilson harmony vocals echoing in the background, juxtaposing the message: it’s hell out there, I’m staying in here. My refuge in the hotel: under the eaves. The lyrics now are biblical in their ire, our narrator tormented by the sun, by images of nature turned to visions of crucifixion. And surely, in the context of LA in the mid 70s, amongst the musical circles Zevon moved in, “desperados” is a none too sly reference to the Eagles ? We digress.

I’m still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands

And I’m trying to find a girl who understands me

But except in dreams you’re never really free

Don’t the sun look angry at me

This verse (it’s almost a mirror of the chorus) lets us join the dots – from salty margaritas to shaking hands, with the sunlight too painful to bear. There’s a literal read with our protagonist as a washed up alcoholic, hiding out in a hotel in LA, lonely and unsure. By all accounts the literal read is also, most likely, the largely autobiographical read too. Zevon, pre fame, allegedly once jumped a window at a local motel to avoid paying a bill – returning once this record was out, only for the motel to refuse him trying to settle the account. They accepted a signed record apparently. He was also no stranger to booze and wound up in rehab.

However, I think there’s a route in to the song – and certainly my route in to the song – which plays to the underlying themes of uncertainty, of peering to the future, of trying to make sense of how you’ve arrived at this point, which makes the alcoholism somewhat irrelevant. It can be read as a symptom, not necessarily the diagnosis. As stated earlier this is a rumination on being down, maybe out, but with an ending that suggests there’s a way to pick up the pieces.

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel

I was listening to the air conditioner hum

And it went mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm…

… look away, down Gower Avenue…

So. The end of the song – and the echoing refrain to “look away, down Gower Avenue” – is what finally elevates this from great to spectacular. First of all there’s just the sheer audacity, the gall, almost conceit, in referencing the hum of the air conditioner and then picking out the song’s melody in that hum. The first time I heard it I wanted to laugh; partly in delight but partly because it’s so unexpected. In the wrong hands it would be utterly ridiculous: I realise I’m perilously close to Spinal Tap “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever” territory here.

It’s an astonishing moment and suddenly the whole song coheres – Zevon sitting in the hotel room, a moment of clarity arising from the thrum of the air conditioning, an optimistic melody forming from within the white noise, gazing down the street at the hills, at the Hollywood sign, at the hope it represents. It’s like the last two minutes of the greatest film about LA you’ve never seen.

This happens to me, for me, every couple of years – more if I’m lucky. Something completely unknown appears and I can’t imagine having never heard it before, can’t imagine now not hearing it again. Abba’s “Winner Takes It All” was maybe the first song that hit me like that (aged 10, more of that later) and this is the latest. It sounds melodramatic but it becomes an important part of my life. I’ve always used music as a means to express my inner life (“hey, why so many sad songs, Phil ?”) and still marvel at the capacity to convey the human experience a three or four minute pop song has.

If nothing else this was an attempt to share some of that feeling.