During their three decade long journey, British prog-rock visionaries Marillion have come to be regarded as one of the most consistent and influential acts in modern music. They’ve delivered mesmerizing live shows, have been widely acknowledged as the first band to truly embrace the Internet to interact with their global community of fans and, have sold more than 15 million records worldwide.
Recently the group released their fifteenth studio release titled,
Happiness Is The Road. The expansive 2-CD set, individually entitled "
Essence" and "
The Hard Shoulder", is a panoramic musical journey that travels through
Marillion’s wondrous sonic landscape whilst retaining their signature classic rock sound and progressive orchestration. Working together with co-producer
Michael Hunter, the group developed the dynamic collection over eighteen long months working at their Aylesbury recording studio, the Racket Club.
Happiness Is The Road represents the group’s broadest and most wide ranging collection of influences to date.
Joe Matera recently sat down with the group’s longest serving member, guitarist
Steve Rothery to discuss the new album, embracing the internet and his passion for photography.
UG: The new double album - Happiness Is The Road - took 18 months to make and is divided into two separate discs. Did the length of time it took to make the album, play a major part in why it turned out as a double album?
Steve Rothery: Yeah, some of these tracks came from the very first sessions we did with Mike Hunter (producer) when we first started working with him, before we'd made the Somewhere Else album (2007). We’d done some recording with the idea of doing an EP. But we scrapped the EP idea but kept on working with him on tracks for an album. We finished a bunch of songs and chose a selection of those songs for the Somewhere Else album. They weren’t necessarily the best songs, just the songs that would best fit together. And so that’s how that record came about. When we started this album we looked at the songs we had on the shelf and thought we could just write a couple more and we’d have the album. But once we started writing, so many great things began to happen that it made more sense to make a double album. It also gave us a lot more choice of which songs we’d use and how we’d put them together.
Album one -Essence - shows the band’s more softer musicality while the other album - The Hard Shoulder - displays more of a tougher sound. It’s like revealing the group’s “yin and yang” sides?
Yeah, there are two different aspects to what we’ve done. The first album is more of a concept album while the second album is more of a collection of songs that are quite, diverse in style. And I think it works really well overall.
After almost 30 years in the industry and this being your 15th album to date, does making albums get any easier for you these days?
There is a great amount of creativity still within the five of us, so getting that basic idea is fairly easy once we’re in that initial flow of writing. Arranging, I think, is something we still argue about and it is why it is great to have a producer involved. He can be the referee to stop the band from arguing constantly about the direction of the songs.
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| "There are a few tracks on this album where you can hear that initial bit of magic that happened in the room." |
Speaking of the creative impetus, how do you approach the songwriting process?
We basically all get together in a room and jam. Some days it’s like hell. Five men in search of a tune! (laughs) But once we’ve got something happening, we’ll just improvise and record the sessions directly into a Pro Tools HD system so we can keep any great moments that happen. It’s a lot better than trying to recreate those ideas. There are a few tracks on this album where you can hear that initial bit of magic that happened in the room. Quite often though, when you’re writing re-recording like that, you can never be 100% satisfied that you have caught the right vibe of the original idea.
When you’re recording an album are you consciously aware of how you’d be approaching recreating the sounds of the album in a live environment?
No we don’t really consider that when we’re making an album. We just get on and make the best record that we can. But there are times in rehearsals where we’d wished we had taken more care with that aspect of it (laughs). But, we do pretty well because we do have two keyboard players and Pete [Trewavas] the bass player also plays MIDI bass and so there is a lot of stuff he can trigger. So we do get by okay.
Marillion were one of the very first bands to embrace the internet and modern technology as well as have fans directly involved in the whole process of making music.
That’s right. The internet thing goes way back to 1997 when we had a situation where we couldn’t afford the $40,000 shortfall an American tour would cost us. At the time there was a Marillion mailing list and one of the American Marillion fans on it decided to open a bank account for donations to bring us over. People started paying into the account, and not just the American fans, but fans from all around the world, which surprised us. Eventually they raised something like $60,000 which was enough to enable us to tour the States for six weeks. So this showed us how important the internet could be and the way it could unite people all around the world that have a common passion, and how supportive the fans could be. Then we found ourselves in the position of changing labels, where we had made eight albums for EMI and three albums for an independent label, but we weren’t happy with how the independent label had approached the band or our fans. So we had to decide whether to sign another deal with another independent label or try and do it ourselves. So we went to the fans and said 'how do you feel about paying for the next album before you get it so it can enable us to make it and have the freedom to do what we want to do with it’. And we got about 12,500 fans supporting the idea. And they raised about 300,000 pounds which gave us the money to make the Anoraknophobia (2001) album.
Going back to Happiness Is The Road, what gear did you use?
My main amp for the whole album was a Groove Tubes Trio three channel valve pre-amp used with a Groove Tubes Dual 75 power amp. The Groove Tubes Trio is a very versatile amp. I’m also using a Gig Rig effects board. It is incredibly clean and gives you the best possible combination of hi-tech and fidelity. I’ve got a huge rack with a lot of outboard gear and various stomp boxes. The stomp box I used the most on this album is an AdrenaLinn effects processor, a fantastic box which can be synced to MIDI so when you have backing tracks with a tempo map you can have it pulsing in time with the beat. It makes you sound more like a keyboard at times, while at other times it still sounds like a guitar, but really very different. And that is probably the single most important thing I used for this album. Guitars are Blade guitars most of the time these days, usually Strat styled guitars; a Blade RH4 Classic Stratocaster that is fitted two Lindsay Fralin vintage single coils and a humbucker.
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| "So many great things began to happen that it made more sense to make a double album." |
How many Blade guitars have you got?
I’ve two Strats and one Telecaster. The RH4 Classic Stratocaster and a Blade Texas Standard Stratocaster and a Blade Delta Telecaster
Gear wise, how do you think your sound has evolved throughout the band’s career?
Well on our very first album I was using a Marshall. Then on the second album, I used a Roland JC120, which is a transistor amp that’s incredibly clean and fantastic for the bell like clean chime-y sounds. The JC120 went really well with a Boss Distortion pedal for solos. It gives you a very different kind of solo sound, it compresses less than a valve amp and it works really well through a Delay pedal with my Strat that’s fitted with EMG SA pickups. So using the JC120 and the Marshall was pretty much my main approach all the way through until the making of the Radiation [1998] album where I went back to using the Marshall more but also, using it for clean sounds as well. I started using the Groove Tubes stuff from the Anoraknophobia album onwards, and all the subsequent albums have been with the Groove Tubes.
You’ve been working on a second album with your side project The Wishing Tree, so what’s the status with that at the moment?
I’m 90% done making the record. Mike Hunter is going to mix it for me and help me finish the few little bits and pieces that it still needs. Hopefully, it’ll be out in early March just in time for the Marillion conventions. There’s one in Holland and one in Canada so I really want to get it out and finished by then.
Your photo website [www.postcardsfromtheroad.co.uk] has got some amazing photos documenting the band’s career. You obviously have a passion for photographing too?
Yes and that is literally only a tenth of what I have. I have photos documenting the whole career of the band, and through the various tours and making of the records. Once this tour of the album is done my plan is to try and really do something with them. Photography has become a passion of mine over the years. Wherever we go in the world, I usually take one, if not two cameras with me. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a career that’s lasted so long and having so many great moments caught on film can take you right back to how you were at the time.
Interview by Joe Matera
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2008
Marillion Music
I'm seeing them next sunday, really looking forward to seeing them again. Last time, they really blew me away, I didn't really know them at that time.
