marillion by Freddy Billqvist.png
The venerable British group Marillion will be at the Hard Rock Rocksino on Saturday, Oct. 29.
(Freddy Billqvist)
PREVIEW
Marillion
When:
8 p.m. Saturday.
Where:
Hard Rock Rocksino, 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield.
Tickets:
$45.50 to $78, plus fees, at the box office, Ticketmaster outlets, online at
or by phone at 1-800-745-3000.
By Peter Chakerian
Ask Steve Hogarth, frontman of Marillion, to describe his band to unfamiliar listeners, and he acknowledges a quote of his dating back several years:
"If Pink Floyd and Radiohead had a love child that was in touch with their feminine side, they would be us."
Sound intriguing? The real irony is that some of those unfamiliar listeners of the band are actually Marillion fans. How is that possible?
It goes this way: At the tail-end of the 1970s, the English progressive rock band cut its teeth delivering Peter Gabriel-era Genesis-inspired music -- fortified with moody keyboards, grandiose melodies, introspection, and all sung by a hulking Scotsman named Fish (born Derek Dick) wearing greasepaint on his face.
Several years later, Marillion defied the pop explosion with a concept album called "Misplaced Childhood." It topped the charts in many countries in 1985 and cemented the band's prog-rock identity, one from which Marillon still struggles to emerge with older fans.
The peak of the group's commercial success (and excess) also spawned the hit "Kayleigh." But the lead up to "Childhood" and the ensuing three years of relentless touring and chaos ultimately led to their frontman's departure.
Enter Hogarth. Where Fish leaned more toward the cerebral, verbose poet, the multi-instrumentalist Hogarth had a grand, sweeping cinematic vision of the progressive rock soul that Marillion could deliver.
Taking the band on a journey through the labyrinths of humanity, memory and modern relationships, Hogarth's splintering heart-on-sleeve has been firmly on display for the 14 albums and 27 years since his arrival. He still gets a lot of criticism for being the "new guy," but "h," as he's known colloquially, is anything but.
On the contrary. Since 1989, he's pushed Marillion to great heights, ushering in an era of Internet connectivity, crowdfunding, Guinness world records, tour funds, and weekend fan conventions -- the latter bringing fans from across the globe travel to see and hear them.
And Hogarth has done it all with a pinch of punk ethos and humility. The band's latest album "FEAR (F**k Everyone and Run)" is a rumination on the last century for man--a bit apocalyptic even for a band that rejuvenated prog's new and darker wave and has done so with a silver lining in each album.
"FEAR" has no such lining. It's pure survivalism.
"The world we all live in may have fallen past that tipping point, or perhaps even gone off the proverbial cliff. That's really what I wanted to say [with 'FEAR']," Hogarth said in a Skype interview last month from England.
"There's this sense of a storm coming -- a financial, ecological, social, global one--this foreboding churn coming on from all angles for some time... it feels like everything is going to change for all of us in the very near future."
Unsure of how many more albums the group have ahead of them, Hogarth said that delivering a desperate message about the future of the world felt "morally imperative" to him.
The results are beyond striking: the concept album is divided into five separate songs ("El Dorado," "Living in Fear," "The Leavers," "White Paper," "The New Kings") spanning 17 different musical motifs and emotional territories.
It also pushed Hogarth, Mark Kelly (keyboards), Steve Rothery (guitars), Pete Trewavas (bass) and Ian Mosley (drums) to further explore the musical spaces touched on in their other concept albums -- "Brave" (1994) and "Marbles" (2004) --and their last album, "Sounds That Can't Be Made" (2012).
"I suppose I have become a terminal 'quiet cynic,'" he added. "There's been a fairly dark cloud hanging over me for some time. 'FEAR' was born from that. And we don't use the word [expletive] with the implied shocking media effect; quite the opposite. It is used with sadness... as if we're all utterly '[expletive]-ed.'
"There are two basic impulses behind human behavior--love and fear--and all the good stuff always comes from love," Hogarth said.
"We all have a choice to make."
Choice, indeed. Clevelanders are challenged because the show (booked last year) now conflicts with Game 4 of the World Series that features our American League Champions, the Cleveland Indians, against the National League's Chicago Cubs.
But a Marillion concert here happens almost as often, and is a bold cinematic experience -- one that hearkens back to everything from Yes, King Crimson, and Pink Floyd, to Radiohead and Porcupine Tree.
Marillion's first area performance in 12 years hits the Hard Rock Rocksino on Saturday, Oct. 29. They'll play selections from "FEAR" and a healthy dose of music from four decades of being an "overnight sensation" almost 40 years in the making.
It also features the full multimedia presentation and lightshow that they have become legendary for. To hear Hogarth tell it, so much of Marillion's longevity is a championship in and of itself, and has an awful lot to do with Cleveland.
"Without [musician, former Marillion keyboard tech and former Clevelander] Erik Nielsen, Marillion's history might've changed drastically," Hogarth said. "He brought us to the Internet before anyone suspected it was remotely important.
"We might have split up after our major label contract expired in 1995, instead of becoming the first UK band online, or having the 1997 North American tour happen because of crowdfunding -- which has defined our career, and many other bands who followed our lead," Hogarth said.
"Most contemporary music still has one eye on the market. That feels dishonest. No one wants to stagnate, and we aren't... We make records for ourselves. We're lucky our fans trust us implicitly with [paying us in advance for an album] and then let us be the most creative we can be.
"We couldn't have done any of that, or what we have done in the almost 20 years since, without [Nielsen's] help," Hogarth said.
"Marillion are able to do what we do, and live a modestly comfortable lifestyle as a band, because we are deeply indebted to him, and to you... so thank you, Cleveland. The last two decades might not have been at all, if not for you."
Chakerian is a freelance writer from Bay Village