This is a transcript of an interview I did on friday the 14th of march with Steve Hogarth on XFM in Copenhagen. It contains a lot of interesting stuff about the new album, about Beyond You and about the new tour and why they tour as they do.
Morten Bay,
Freak Extraordinaire and...
Music Director, XFM, Copenhagen.
Now, this is probably the hardest interview, I'm ever going to do with anyone, I've got Steve Hogarth on the phone
H. Hello and good morning
M. How are you doing, I thought you were in the Bahamas ?
H. (Laughs) News travels fast, doesn't it.
M. Yeah it does,
H. Everyone seems to know more about what I do than myself these days...yeah, I was in Barbados, that was about two weeks ago, no...must have been about a week ago.
M. Must've been nice ?
S. Yeah, it' was very nice actually
M. With the wife, and two kids and everything....
S. Yeah, we were all....they were all remembering who I was, which is, you know....you have to...you have to do that..
M. Well you have been pretty busy, what with your solo album and This Strange Engine coming out...
S. Yeah, it was quite an intense year last year, I spent just about the whole year in the studio, the first six months or so writing and recording the H album Ice Cream Genius, and the second six months or kind of....what was it August we got back together, so the second eight months or seven months, or whatever it was, six months, five months , my mind's a...(laughs). four months, make it four months...writing and recording the Marillion Strange Engine album, and then of course, as soon as we had finished that I was into touring with the H band
M. Which of course never went to Denmark
S. We didn't go anywhere much to be honest, we only did four shows, one in London, one in Milan, one in Paris and one in Amsterdam, but they were terrific shows, it was a great shame i couldn't just have carried on and on, at least done another couple of weeks, that would've been great.
M. I've heard....I've read on the internet on the freaks list, that everyone seemed to like them anyway....I'm not sure if Mark Kelly has told you this, but you're actually talking to the one radio station in Copenhagen that has had You Dinosaur Thing on Rotation for....what is that....two months now, or something ?
S. Oh Really ? Oh, well that's fantastic ! Well Done, I owe you a drink !
M. Well, er....you WILL get a chance to give me one ! That's one thing, but we did actually have, and this is the connection that Mark should have told this in, we did have Ice Cream Genius up for CD of the Week, which meant that one song off it was played once an hour.
S. Oh, that's terrific, I din't know that, I'm glad we did this interview, 'cause I probably never would have found out....
M. well, that's what I meant by this being the hardest interview, I have ever done, because Marillion has been my all-time favorite band for the last six years or so, (fumbles nervously with the words)......I'm probably just as fanatical as every other Freak.
S. Well, that's terrific, It's always nice to hear from people who have, you know really gotten into the band after I joined the band, (laughs) instead of before I joined the band....
M. Well, I knew Marillion, you know I had heard Kayleigh and Incommunicado and all the hits, you know, but it was just around Holidays in Eden that I really caught on.
But that's...we better get on with the questions, we can always sit and chat about how great Marillion is. (should've been are, but I was nervous, OK ?)
M. Why do you think Marillion ('s music) is so addictive, you know every marillion-freak, is really a FREAK as the song goes, it's really....we're really addicted, and when you start to listen to the first couple of albums, and start to get hooked to them, you've just got to have EVERYTHING !
S. Yeah, it's....it's a fantastic feeling for us, we are one of those bands that either people don't like at all, or they absolutely live and breathe, I think it comes partly, I'd like to think it comes partly from the fact, that we've retained complete sort of honesty over the years, we've made the music, created the music and put the music and the words together for what I'd like to think were the right reasons, because there is a tendency towards dishonesty in music, I think artists become very aware of what's going on and you know, where the trends are going. And they kind of sell out or cheapen themselves to be more alike what's going on....er...
M. But that's what you sing about in You Dinosaur Thing, actually ?
S. (doubtish) Yeah....., I mean YDT is also about me really, it's also about me being an old rocker and the horror of that realization..... 'cause I never thought of myself as an old rocker until about a year ago, I was walking down the street and it hit me like a ton of bricks, that I'd become one, somehow, when I wasn't looking.
M. Well, that's funny, Steve, because I remember an interview on the "From Stoke Row to Ipanema" video, where you were talking about you were listening to a lot of the Psychedelic Furs while you were in Brazil, and Psychedelic Furs has had a huge impact on the sound that is today, I think.
S. Yes, I think so too, they were doing it all quite a while ago, weren't they.....but, the reason I was such a big fan of the Psychedelic Furs wasn't just the music,
and the noise and the anarchy of it, and it wasn't just because Richard tends to write good tunes, because years ago, when I was in the Europeans, I did a gig in Munich we did a gig in club where we opened for the Psychelic Furs, and I only saw him very, very briefly, he was walking through our dressing room on the way to the stage, and he was floating, it was like he was walking on tip-toes, grinning like a cheshire cat, and.....I don't know, he seemed like a magical person, it was like he was all full of something, it radiated from him, it was kind of soft, and really you know, full of, full of kind of...........how can I put it...some kind of peculiar, creative, insane love, eehm, and I must have been in the room with him for about two-and-a-half minutes and that was enough, you know, you know and I thought, I'm gonna find out all about what this guy does, because, he's just got something, one of those things you can't quite put your finger on, but it's very spiritual.
M. This is quite funny, actually, because being a musician myself, and being a singer - this is not just to rub your elbows...this is exactly the same experience I had with you, actually.
S. Well, you know, you...you couldn't flatter me more than to say that, I do sort of try to give out some of what is inside me, you know, this isn't just a way of making a living, and it isn't simply an intellectual exercise, and it's certainly not a commercial exercise...
M. Would've been a very bad one at that,
S. (Laughs) Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's to do with, without getting pomps about, it's about having this view of what life should be about, and the way the world ought to be, and just spreading some of that directly.
M. Well, that something, I've really come to love about you and the rest of the band, that you probably have the most involved.....kind of ......you're the one band I know, who are so much involved in your own music that their own, your own feelings really come out, and it's even so, not that I want to delve into that, but there is a song on AOS that you won't even sing live because of its intensity in it's text...or lyrics....
M+S. ...Beyond You...
S. (Laughs mysteriously) It's funny, you should pick that one out....
M. ...But let's not get into that....
S. There is link, actually between Beyond You and Copenhagen..........but I'm not telling you what it is......!
M. Oh, you're horrible !
S. .....(suddenly very serious) but there is one, so it's curious you should pick that one out.
M. It wouldn't have anything to do with a girl called Vibeke would it ?
S. Called who ?
M. Vibeke or VIbeke ?
S. Vibeke........no ? Nice name....
M. It's just a girl I once met who said that she knew you, and stuff.....but anyway...let's talk about the new album, I find it has...Maybe I should say, that the reason I'm not playing any music between our talk here is that I want to get as much talk with you as possible, then I can always edit the music in later....
S. Sure, I can understand that.
M. But the thing is, I think the new album has everything Marillion has ever done in it, It's kind of an amalgamation of all the Marillion eras...?
S. Well, maybe that's....there's a shred of truth of that, because there are a couple of elements in this album, although this album is probably, you know represents another step foward in time for the band or another jump somewhere that the bands never been....there are some avert moments on this album, that take me right back to the beginning, particularly the synthesizer solo in "This Strange Engine", in fact the third section of it, when it goes back to the tom-toms it takes me back to MSH and all of that...
M. Yeah, that's what I thought....
S. So in that sense there are a couple of moments that go all the way back to those roots, I suppose, but at the same time, I think overall, the album is in many ways the most rarified, we've done, certainly the most acoustic, we've done
M. ....mmmm, with songs like A Man of a Thousand Faces and 80 days.
S. Yeah, a lot of the songs were written....you know, came from acoustic jams and so the thing drifted in that direction and a lot of emphasis on acoustic sounds, hammer dulcimers, organ, piano, horns, trumpets, choirs,
M. ...but the horns were artificial, weren't they...?
S. ...and then perhaps in the past....Some of them were, and some of them weren't...
M. The saxophone solo weren't
S. The Sax solo is real of course, it's Phil Todd, the guy who did the sax solo on Berlin, and there are some real trumpets on A Hope for the Future, as well
M. (Laughs) That's funny, actually, because....
S. Which again...getting real trumpets on a Marillion album was something of an achievement ! (Laughs).
M. The funny thing is that on the Freaks list, which, I should tell our listeners is an internet discussion group, discussing all kinds of Marillion stuff, that Mark Kelly writes to, as well. There was this guy who wrote that Mark Played some horns, and probably now he was going to look stupid, because someone would come along and tell him that those were real horns. And it is real horns ?
S. There's certain real trumpets on "Hope for the Future", but there is also a hunting horn/fluegel horn solo on "80 Days" which wasn't real, that was a keyboard thing, a sample.
M. Okay, now we were at the keyboard things, who plays the string arrangements "Memory of Water" ?
S. That was, eeh, that was both of us actually, what happened was.....wooo...(thinks)....it was one of those things, we handed back and to, the idea for MoW came from one of the songwriting sessions for AoS, where Mark was fiddling about with a string sample, and I just got the melody and the idea of it, almost in a flash, I sang it faster than he could move the strings around, and so a lot of what I sang clashed with what he was doing, but once I'd sang it, I kind of had a vision of how the chords should move, and what should happen. So then, I took it away, I actually demoed MoW for a possible track for the H album...
M. Yeah, but you did a similar track called Better Dreams
S. Well, yeah, Better Dreams was a lot more involved, and chordally and tonally a bit more.....But yeah, it was like a cousin in a way in the sense of it being almost a cappella and strings.. I took MoW away and then arranged it, and then Mark took it away, and then he rearranged it, and then he gave it back to me, and I rearranged it again, so we just kept passing it back and to, so it was a fifty-fifty thing, really, I think Mark went away and played it all again, he took the sequence, I'd actually done, he took that away, changed all the actual sounds, to use better string samples, then he brought it back to me, and I removed a bit, and added a bit, we passed back and to.
M. What about the rest of the band ?
S. Well, for that song the rest of the band weren't involved at all I don't think.....?
M. They must have said OK for it or something ?
S. Oh yeah, I think Rothers(Steve Rothery, ed.) liked it, he said he liked it, 'cause at one point, I was saying "Should we put this on ?", and he said "oh yeah, I like it", so...
M. I was actually, let me finish off the album with asking this question : What on earth is that effect that is on your voice in that section in "MoaTF", where the song changes its character, it's like...or is it in the end, I can't remember....where your voice goes into pitch, and then continues, digitally into pitch. What happens ?
S. (Laughs) Oh no, that's on...shit, what's that, yeah that's (sings) "took a leap and I landed on the mooooooooooooon" (goes into a very high pitch)
M. Yeah, exactly.
S. It wasn't an effect actually, it was me just going through into falsetto, and then holding a very high falsetto note, we cross-faded it into, I think it was a Moog synthesizer....cross-faded it into a Moog synthesizer, and because in falsetto, my voice happens to be almost as pure as a sine wave up there, so when we crossed it into the synth, you can't really tell where it crosses,
M. Very clever....
S. Once it had crossed, Mark pushed the pitch way,way,way up, so it just whoooooooip (funny noise, that increases in pitch), So that's what it is, it's not actually an effect, it's a voice cross-fading into a synthesizer.
M. What about your voice, Steve, I've noticed, I've had some singing training, and I've noticed that you have a very good technique, but remember reading somewhere, I think, that you haven't actually had any lessons ?
S. No, I haven't...that's not strictly true, I had three singing lessons once, but I had been singing for years, and I only had them, because I thought I ought to go and
find out, if there was anything I should be doing that I wasn't doing....
Just in an attempt, I suppose just in my mind to feel like a proper singer, I thought I'd better go and see a proper singer and find out what it is I should be doing.
M. When was this, was this in between the Europeans and How We Live or was it after ?
S. Yeah, somewhere around that time...
M. Well you can hear that, actually, because your singing on the "Dryland" album is absolutely fabulous, whereas your singing on the "Recurring Dreams"-album, which is the last Europeans album, is good, but not that good...?
S. Yeah, but that didn't have much to do with it, because you can't really achieve much from three singing lessons, and the only reason, I had three to be honest, was that I fell a little bit in love with the singing teacher, which was a woman called (Tony Something), who was about 80, and who was absolutely enchanting and after the first time I went, she told me that I didn't really need singing lessons, there wasn't much she could teach me at all, but I could come back if I wanted, so I went back a couple of times purely for the pleasure of being around her, but I've had no kind of tuition at all, I never had piano lessons either, I worked it all for myself. There is no better process of a improving than doing it and touring, and it's the years of touring that has done it, really and purely that.
M. Okay, what about the tour you're going on now, if you're not coming to Denmark, I'll go see you in London, I did that the last time. I was at the London gig at the Forum, which was absolutely great by the way, with Jeff getting married, and everything....
S. (Laughs) Yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it ?
M. Especially because Easter is one of my favorite songs as well as Jeffs as well, anyway you made a big pass around Scandinavia this time....
S. Yeah, well it's nothing personal...
M. It's just funny, because the last time you were in Denmark, you sold out the biggest venue for a band your size...twice !
S. Yeah, but it's actually not enough to be honest, in terms of the money we lose, when we come, it costs us so much more to come there than we earn from being there, and we don't mind losing money to play in certain places, but there's a limit to how much we can afford to lose, and that kind of...in a way that varies depending on the rest of the tour, you know, if we earn a lot of money on the rest of the tour, we can finance the places where we lose money. For instance, you know in the past we've gone into Holland, and and played the Ahoy Sportspalace, which will sell out at about 11500 people, and for one nights work, we come away with, I don't know maybe thirty or forty thousand pounds, and we can then spend that on coming up to Copenhagen or going up to Stockholm and Oslo on the amounts of money we lose to play the clubs up there.
M. Is that why Copenhagen wasn't on the BRAVE-tour schedule at first, but was tagged on at the end ?
S. I honestly don't know, It's a complicated affair, as you can imagine, it's all to do with the money, the confidence of promoters, whether or not the right size venue is actually available you know, at the time we need, and then it's down to how much money we're making elsewhere, how much money we feel we can afford to lose here and there, and of course with this tour, we've taken the decision not to play the Ahoy, which earns us all the money, we're not going to do the one big gig in Holland, we're going to do lots of little gigs, that way we get to more people in the country, and we're doing the same in Germany, where instead of playing two or three big shows we're going to do seven or eight little ones. And so obviously part of that decision means that the money becomes very tight, and we can't afford to go places where we lose a lot.
M. Hmmm, what about the summer festivals, the was some rumours, that you might go to some summer festivals ?
S. Well, we're available, get on the phone, if you can persuade a promoter to....
M. Trust me, I'm doing all I can
S. (Laughs) ...to pay us we certainly have nothing against Scandinavia, it's always lots of fun to come up there to play, it's always lots of fun anyway.
M. You played the Midtfyns Festival in '92, there was a lot of people there, I seem to remember...
S. (slowly, thinking) in 92.....
M. Yeah, the summer of '92
S. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah....I remember that.. that was a funny experience for me actually...
M. Why ?
S. I got locked out of the hotel and had to spend the night in a tent !
M. (Laughing) is that true ? Well you've had the real festival spirit, then !
M. (Here I tell Steve that I'm going to try and get hold of some of the other Marillion-interested people in the press to try and get Marillion back on Midtfyn)
S. Yeah, it sounds like you've got a little bit of a vibe happening there
with the airplay and everything, you know we would be more than happy to come up and do something.
M. (rambles on about Midtfyn)
M. Second, I wanted to ask you about your view on the thing that's happening in the States ? This Collection thing that's going on ?
S. Well, it's incredible isn't it, I think it's a first....I know of no other fanbase who has ever physically clubbed together themselves to finance a band's tour, it's amazing, even if they don't manage to raise enough money to do it, it still will be amazing that they tried, as far as I know a only relatively short time into the process, they already have raised 15.000 dollars, which is a phenomenal really, there are certain people who have pledged as much as 2.000. You know the thought of someone spending 2000 dollar to see his favorite band in a club is praise in the eden, very flattering to point of mindblowing...
M. Well, you know that's what we're like...well the good thing is that the relation ship...you give us back....is this good...I mean I've got a friend who received a postcard from you as a reply to the card she sent you for your birthday, there are not (fumbles again) there are not many artists who would do that !
S. Well, you know, we care...we care. We respect our audience because we respect ourselves. They think they're conning their audience, because what they're doing is not necessarily terribly honest, and if someone buys it, they think they've put one over on'em, you know, that line of reasoning isn't true in our case, we've every reason to respect the people that get into us, because we know they get into us for the right reasons........... But I have to go, I'm being waved at !
M. Well, Steve, thanks for talking to us, I'm hoping to see you in the summer, or else I'll see you in may in britain, (I wrap up)
S. Keep the faith, bye, bye !
