Band Writeup - Marillion

Introduction

Marillion was my first venture into "neo-prog" music. I had heard of the genre before, and was even actively recommended it, due to its noted similarities with Genesis, abundance of keyboards and synths, and focus on melodies and emotional themes. Neo-prog was right up my alley, really, and it's odd that it took me so long to check it all out. The reason I went to Marillion in particular is that they were basically the poster boy for the genre, being by far the most successful neo-prog band in history. I put on their debut, Script From a Jester's Tear, and while nowadays it's far from my favorite Marillion work, it certainly leaves a good first impression, and I was captivated quite quickly.

History

While the band has a storied history, it was at its most chaotic in the beginning. The original lineup was Doug Irvine (bass/vocals), Brian Jelliman (keyboards), Steve Rothery (guitar), and Mick Pointer (drums). Irvine was quickly replaced by Derek Dick (much better known as Fish) for the vocal role and Diz Minnitt for bass, and Jelliman swapped for Mark Kelly on keys. The band then released their debut single, that being Market Square Heroes, which featured Three Boats Down From the Candy and the 17-minute Grendel as B-sides. None of these songs ended up on the album but were moderately successful and loved by fans, especially Grendel. By the time the album and its supporting singles (He Knows You Know and Garden Party) had been finished, Diz Minnitt had been replaced by Pete Trewavas. To summarize, the beginning of the band was a revolving door of members, leaving Rothery and Pointer to be the only original members left by the time Script For a Jester's Tear was released.

If you're curious what the former members are up to nowadays musically, Brian and Diz worked together for some time in the band Pride of Passion, which if their website is to believed, had the ubiqitious Steven Wilson on keyboards after Brian left that project(!!). Pride of Passion disbanded eventually but has reformed in recent days and has even released an EP and is planning an album. I'm glad to see Diz is still doing music after all these years! The original ORIGINAL bassist/vocalist, Doug Irvine, later joined the band Steam Shed (bandcamp linked here).

Script for a Jester's Tear, released in 1983, was very successful, incredibly unusual for a progressive rock band in the 80s when the genre was really going out of fashion. But people loved them. Unfortunately, Fish was rather unhappy with Mick Pointer's performance in the band, so he was fired. After this, the band had yet another chaotic revolving door of members, this time looking for a drummer to replace Mick. Their first replacement was the legendary drummer from the equally legendary band Camel, Andy Ward, but Andy did not stay in the band for long as he was struggling with mental health and alcohol problems at the time. The next two drummers were two John Ms, Johnathan Marter and Johnathan Mover, both of which Fish did not gel with very much, so they didn't last long. Mover did help write the song Punch and Judy though, which would appear on their next album, Fugazi. Finally, Marillion's drummer problems ended when they got the excellent Ian Mosley, and the lineup stabilized for a while.

And for the "where are they now" of all the drummers the band went through during this period: The original drummer, Mick Pointer, would go on to form the band Arena around a decade later with Pendragon keyboardist Clive Nolan, and rocks on there to this day. They are a fantastic band that may warrant their own writeup sometime. Johnathan Mover joined the supergroup GTR with Steve Hackett and Steve Howe, and recorded an album that everyone hated but was pretty successful. Andy Ward recovered from his struggles and went on to tour with Richard Sinclair's Caravan of Dreams. As for the last drummer, Johnathan Marter, he seems to be all over the place but has a lot of drumming credits according to his Discogs page, even working with Fish once again in 2001 in his solo album Fellini Days.