SCRIPT FOR A JESTER'S TEAR

"I found smog at the end of my rainbow, I found my thoughts shift slowly into phase "

OK I'm not even sure where exactly to begin and I'm acutely aware of the fact that I might lose some of my limited audience?but I'm willing to take that chance?If you aren't a Marillion fan maybe there is something here you might enjoy learning about?if not I'll see you in about 15- 20 days as we are currently entering the month of Marchillion.

My older brother is two years older than me. He was born in 1966 and me in 1968. When I started High School in the fall of 1982 he was already into a lot of Classic and Progressive Rock. Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Yes, Pink Floyd, The Who, Springsteen etc? By extension that directly affected my taste in music as I was exposed to it all from about 1979/80 and was already developing a fairly informed knowledge of their catalogs, all at once. At the same time New Wave was taking hold as the new post-punk direction in music with bands like Duran Duran and Tears For Fears having a deep impact on the youth of the day. A lot of these new wave bands were actually heavily influenced by glam and progressive rock. My first exposure to Marillion was actually in 1985. I had just joined my band Tempus Fugit as the singer and Daniel Veidlinger, our pedantic bassist and songwriter, knew I was a big Genesis fan and asked me if I had ever heard of Marillion. Millennium? Who are they? Well in the early 1980s progressive rock was about as far from cool as it has ever been. There were very few bands that were still creating good old fashioned progressive rock in the grand old way of never changing. Some, like Genesis, were adapting and changing their sound in the antithesis of what progressive music should be....right? So, I distinctly recall shortly after Daniel suggested checking out Marillion, who had just released their third album Misplaced Childhood, finding Script For A Jester's Tear at the Forest Hill Public Library which I immediately withdrew to check them out. It had a hand painted album cover, with a jester playing violin and it was intriguing before I ever heard a single note. Sometimes an album cover is a gateway to a whole new universe. That's what Script was for me. It only had 6 songs of which four were over 8 minutes in length, another over 7 and one just over 5. That's like Prog porn by numbers for someone who was already into Genesis and Yes and ? Styx?and?Pink Floyd.

"So here I am once more...in the playground of the broken hearts". Ok I'm in! I mean I was around 16 years old and not part of the cool kids and was bullied and wore my headgear to school for a year! A more perfect fit there couldn't have been. The music was old school keyboards and guitar solos and long dynamic changing musical sections within complex songs. The vocals were incredible, and the lyrics even more so. Just hearing the opening title track alone was a fundamental change in music for me. It had very strong Peter Gabriel era Genesis sensibilities, but it was current. I mean it was released a few years prior to me hearing it, but the band was a current take on a perceived dying or dead genre, and it was all mine. What I didn't know at the time was that it would set the stage for both my overall views on music, and also that I would be even more immersed in their music over 35 years later. I knew just from this song alone that I would be a fan of this band for the long haul. The amazing guitar solos interspersed with acoustic sections in a complex web of music. Everything that is great and emblematic about what Marillion was from 1983 to 1988 can be found in this song despite it being somewhat regressive in style.

Script is an astounding debut album which was released in 1983, though the band had actually had its genesis (sic) back in 1977 when drummer Mick Pointer and bassist/vocalist Doug Irvine left a band called Electric Gypsy to form their own band called Silmarillion named after the Tolkien novel in 1978. After one show they added Brian Jelliman on Keyboards and Steve Rothery on guitar and shortly thereafter shortened their name to Marillion. That lineup wrote some demos. Doug left and was replaced by Diz Minnitt on bass and a giant of a Scotsman on vocals named Derrick William Dick standing 6 feet 5 inches tall, but famously known as Fish. The nickname either arose from his love of a lot of bath time?or possibly his love of a lot of drinking time?maybe both. Anyway, Fish is/was an absolutely mesmerizing presence on stage, had an incredible voice and wrote truly inspired, intelligent, beautifully crafted lyrics like few others I've experienced. Jelliman left in 82 and was replaced by Mark Kelly and Diz was booted and replaced by Pete Trawavas.

This lineup of Fish, Kelly, Pointer, Rothery and Trawavas would record the band's first studio material in 1982 after building up a very strong, loyal fanbase around London which saw them signed by EMI Records. Their first release was the single Market Square Heroes backed by Three Boats Down From The Candy. Market Square Heroes is simply stunning - an incredible first song by a band. To this day it is one that when performed live can cause the audience to jump around enthusiastically to the point that the entire floor of the venue bounces within questionable limits of its breaking point. It is an amazing song. Three Boats however is?not quite as goodly. Actually, despite being clearly prog by all accounts, it is widely considered by many fans to be one of the least favourite songs of the Fish era. Some love it, however - that's how prog fans roll?there will never be any sense of consensus among them. Personally, I actually quite like it but agree it is a lesser track of the era. The 12" single was a whole other beast, however. Side 2 of the 12" Market Square Heroes single was a 19-minute song called Grendel, inspired by the Beowulf novel and straddling a very fine line between homage and plagiaristic inspiration of Genesis's revered Supper's Ready from their Foxtrot album. It is a long complex song with many different sections, some slow and calm, some searing and guitar ridden with solos. It feels like a lesser quality rewrite of Supper's Ready, but there is something extremely charming about it as well, both in ambition and execution, if not in originality. I think that this is the actual strength of the song, and why people still yell out for it to be played in concert despite the fact that the last time it was performed live was August 27 1983. To be clear?the band don't even particularly like this one. However, it was a very important one in the group's history as I believe it captured the attention of a generation of fans who were younger and who had grown up with 70s Prog, but didn't really have anything of their own to sink their teeth into. Well Grendel provided the meat for that feast. It was also an albatross for the band as the media gravitated to the similarity of the Genesis track which would pigeonhole them as a Genesis clone band. Clearly they were heavily influenced by them, but their music and lyrics were very different. The labeling probably worked in their favour as much as against it?but in the end I think it gave them attention that any new band needs to at least rise above the noise. Plus, they were different from everything else at the time and had a singer who dressed up in costumes and wore face makeup?I mean how could they possibly have been lumped in with old Genesis whose singer used to dress up in costumes and wear face makeup?Also the artwork by Mark Wilkinson was amazing and was fundamentally important in creating a definitively iconic logo and image for the band. All their work with Mark is immediately identifiable as Marillion just on sight.

The second single released was He Knows You Know in Feb 1983 just prior to the album release in March of the same year. It is a heavier song both musically and lyrically focusing on drug addiction. It stemmed from the earlier writing with Jelliman and Diz as well and is the shortest song on the record. If you ever hear someone walking around saying "Problems! Problems!" you can bet they are an old school Marillion fan. The flipside was Charting The Single which is an excellent song. I mean it actually isn't excellent but it if you want to see Fish's gift for words check this one out ? every line is a pun set to fairly meh music but if you are a fan from this time it is hard to actually dislike this stuff regardless of how good it actually is. I wouldn't play it to try to convert someone?actually, trying to convert someone into a Marillion fan is officially one of the most challenging things one could try to do with respect to music as a whole. It is harder to do than trying to be a Morrissey or Ryan Adams fan in 2021?just for context. If any fans are interested?you are welcome to rate all the puns in this song line by line on a scale of 1-10 in the comments below. My personal favourite is "Gonna make my escape on the midnight train Choo, choo to you - Choo, choo to you - Charting the single" ? The Genesis reference to I Know What I Like's "Coo Coo To You" is not lost on me?

So, the songs Script For A Jester's Tear and He Knows You Know are the first two on the actual debut album. The third is a moody early fan favourite called The Web. It is all proggy isolationism with lots of reference to jesters?for the second time on the album. The band actually dropped this from their live sets fairly early on as well, but it is a pretty great song, and for the first time in their career but not the last, they predated ideas of the computer world that the rest of the world would take years to catch up with?They should have called their first website The Web. They could have been Marillionaires.

Side 2 starts with the gloriously fun song Garden Party which was also the second single from the album. It is absolutely fantastic and one of the most beloved songs in their entire catalog. It often ended, and still ends some of their live concerts, to this day. The song is subtitled "The Great Cucumber Massacre" and in the early days fans used to shower the stage with cucumbers much like how The Barenaked Ladies used to have to dodge boxes of Kraft Dinner when they performed If I Had A Million Dollars. Actually I might be making that up as I recall reading about it but can't find a reference now. Regardless, Marillion fans are VERY engaged in the shows and often involve themselves in various ways even now?even if it is just farting freely in an attempt to kill others with their smell or lack of common decency. Garden Party is to this day one of the most entertaining songs I have ever see performed live by any band. I get the full experience of the absolute joy of seeing live music just hearing it performed. Live it would often merge into Market Square Heroes which was a double dose of awesome. Just thinking about it makes me feel sad at how much I miss live music. The flipside of the single was the live song Margaret ? which was 12 minutes long on the 12" single, but edited for the 7". Margaret is a vamped-up version of You Take The High Road with altered lyrics, a driving rock beat and band introductions. It is fun but somewhat inconsequential in the big picture of the band's output. Fans love it though.

After Garden Party is Chelsea Monday. This one is a slowwww song. I think it is about 10 beats per minute. It is brooding and moody. A lot of Marillion fans LOVE this song. It's fine, I guess. Other than the lyrics which are very good and the searingly awesome guitar solo by Rothery, it is probably my least favourite song on the album and the Fish era. I mean it is OK but I do find it somewhat repetitive and not the most exciting song they've done?and Fish says Chelsea Monday a LOT which personally I find gets on my nerves. The ending, however, finds us in Pink Floyd radio dial sample switching territory where a small clip of the song Market Square Heroes can be heard before launching into the awesome Forgotten Sons which is an amazing song in every way, and arguably my favourite on the record. All of the musical ideas, motifs and styles that were established in this song would be further enhanced and built on in the subsequent three albums they recorded with Fish at the helm. The music is amazing, the lyrics are astoundingly good, and Fish's vocals are at their peak. He is powerful, emotive and poetic and the music is equally awesome.

I think it is important to note that despite there being very clear regressive influences musically (Genesis) and stylistically (David Gilmour via Steve Rothery), lyrically what the band was writing about was very far removed from what Gabriel era Genesis was known for. Whereas Genesis often sang about fantasy-based stories of aliens and oddball stories (Watcher Of The Skies, Supper's Ready, The Cinema Show ? all of the The Lamb), Marillion were always very firmly based in current social commentary and personal demons and relationship battles ? despite the metaphors and the odd jester reference?and Grendel. There was something about the intensity of the music and the lyrics that made it all very relatable in a way that was much different from early Genesis material ? especially to my teenage mind. In no way am I suggesting that one is better than the other. Marillion and Genesis are my two favourite bands of all time so clearly for me they both brought something to the table that resonated with me in a deeply profound way. They were simply different things presented in a somewhat similar framework. Gabriel era Genesis was escapist fantasy while Fish era Marillion was more the soundtrack to my adolescence. When I started writing this I thought I would do one post about Marillion?It looks like it might be more along the lines of 15-20 since I'm already at 2500 words.

Recommended Listening: Market Square Heroes, Grendel, Script For A Jester's Tear, Garden Party, Forgotten Sons