By the end of that decade, many of its chief protagonists were either seemingly spent as creative forces (ELP, Yes), about to undergo radical transformations (Genesis, Yes again) or absent (King Crimson, albeit temporarily). The upstarts of punk may have been commercial minnows in comparison, but their jibes about 'dinosaurs' hit where it hurt.
Yet as the 80s got underway, something unexpected was happening. Across the United Kingdom, a wave of grassroots bands set about reviving this seemingly moribund genre.
A scene was emerging, largely away from the bright lights and music industry back-slapping of London. It was centred around the likes of Aylesbury's Marillion (née Silmarillion) and space cadets Solstice, Twelfth Night (who began life as an instrumental band at Reading University), Pallas from Aberdeen, Pendragon (originally Zeus Pendragon) from Stroud and Portsmouth's IQ (formed from the ashes of The Lens). Their ranks were swollen by countless other like-minded outfits: Chemical Alice (whose keyboard player Mark Kelly would join Marillion, and other members would go on to form Tamarisk), Trilogy, Haze, Airbridge, Liaison, Citizen Cain and others.
As the decade progressed, these bands would channel the DIY spirit of punk to create a vibrant homegrown scene, populated by a handful of larger-than-life characters and soundtracked by albums that wore their love of a thenunfashionable musical style openly. One band - Marillion - would go on to much bigger things, but others would have their own individual and collective successes, not least in keeping the progressive rock flame flickering.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/76fXnQJ5G1703849314689.jpg]
Unlike earlier scenes that had been centred around specific locales, the new prog bands initially operated in isolation in towns and cities across the country, largely unaware of each other.
Mick Pointer: “Silmarillion played our one and only show at a pub in Southall [west London] called The Hamborough Tavern. We had a big fallout with the guitarist and keyboard player over a fucking Mellotron, would you believe? We started gigging as Marillion pretty bloody quickly afterwards. You have to get yourself out there in front of a whole lot of people.”
Nick Barrett: “We played Redditch College and the agricultural college in Cirencester. We got booed off at most places. At one gig, the rugby team tried to drive a car into the venue and then got onstage and started hassling us.”
Andy Glass: “I’d played with Mick Pointer in a band called Electric Gypsy. As soon as Marillion started getting gigs, they were like, ‘Do you want to come and play with us?’”
Brian Devoil: “There were a couple of pubs in Bicester where we played, a couple of places in Oxford, and the Target in Reading, which was our local pub.”
Mike Holmes: “When we started IQ in Southampton, we wanted to do any kind of music we wanted to. We had a funk track, a reggae track, but it became really obvious very early on that what we were really good at was prog.”
Paul McMahon: “We were basically a school band when we started out [in 1978]. The ambition was to do original music. We’d no idea that prog music was going to have any kind of resurgence.
Graeme Murray: “Glasgow really seemed to take to the whole prog thing. There was a venue on Sauchiehall Street; we used to play there on a Saturday, a lunchtime show, an evening show and a late show, and the place would be packed out the door.”
Nik Szymanek: “We played The Ruskin Arms in east London, which is where Iron Maiden played a lot. We used to wear kimonos onstage. Was it a rip-off of Rush? Yeah, of course it was.”
Ed Percival: “These days, you can do a tribute band. Back then, it wasn’t
a thing you did. You wrote your own songs, because that’s what music was all about. It was about you creating something new.”
Andy Grant: “With Chemical Alice, we were so young. The only ambition was to play live and try and get a recording, just to see if we could get people to come and look at us.”
There was excitement in the air, both musically and visually.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/4284012063.jpg]
Marillion, Pallas and Twelfth Night imbued their musical experiments with an electric 80s energy, complementing it with visuals that drew on the grand theatrical tradition of Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill.
Mick Pointer: “The early Marillion stuff was going down more of a hippie route. It needed a kick up the arse. Then Derek Dick [aka Fish, who joined in January 1981] turned up with a book of lyrics and started looking at the material we had. That’s when things started taking shape.”
Andy Glass: “Fish was incredibly charismatic. Who doesn’t love a showman?”
Mick Pointer: “In the early days, we used to wear these fucking stupid kaftans with a big eye on it. We’d walk down the street in them before the show, publicising the gig. Whatever it took.”
Fish: “There were a lot of what you might call ‘refugees’ from the styles that were around at the time. They weren’t Clash fans, they weren’t Police fans. They wanted a bit more. They were looking for something that was prog.”
Brian Devoil: “I remember seeing Marillion in the Target and they got a bit of stick from our fans because basically they weren’t as good as we were at that time. I remember making some comment that it was because our fans were used to the real thing.” a thing you did. You wrote your own songs, because that’s what music was all about. It was about you creating something new.”
Andy Grant: “With Chemical Alice, we were so young. The only ambition was to play live and try and get a recording, just to see if we could get people to come and look at us.”
There was excitement in the air, both musically and visually. Marillion, Pallas and Twelfth Night imbued their musical experiments with an electric 80s energy, complementing it with visuals that drew on the grand theatrical tradition of Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill.
Mick Pointer: “The early Marillion stuff was going down more of a hippie route. It needed a kick up the arse. Then Derek Dick [aka Fish, who joined in January 1981] turned up with a book of lyrics and started looking at the material we had. That’s when things started taking shape.”
Andy Glass: “Fish was incredibly charismatic. Who doesn’t love a showman?”
Mick Pointer: “In the early days, we used to wear these fucking stupid kaftans with a big eye on it. We’d walk down the street in them before the show, publicising the gig. Whatever it took.”
Fish: “There were a lot of what you might call ‘refugees’ from the styles that were around at the time. They weren’t Clash fans, they weren’t Police fans. They wanted a bit more. They were looking for something that was prog.”
Brian Devoil: “I remember seeing Marillion in the Target and they got a bit of stick from our fans because basically they weren’t as good as we were at that time. I remember making some comment that it was because our fans were used to the real thing.”
Mick Pointer: “Marillion were an exciting band, we were putting on a show. There’s no doubt about it, Derek Dick was a really great frontman.”
Fish: “There was a kind of a punk thing with the band in those early performances. There was a bit of spit and venom. It might have been all clever-clever-proggy music wise, but the delivery had a lot more attack.”
Roger Morgan: “Afterglow had started off as a Genesis fanzine before we took it over. Then somebody sent in a tape of this band Marillion, with a photograph. The guy singing sounded a bit like Peter Gabriel, but they looked and sounded interesting.”
Brian Devoil: “We didn’t have any particular aspirations. The ambition was just to see where it took us. It wasn’t until Geoff Mann joined properly at the end of 1981 that we started taking things seriously. Geoff wasn’t a fantastic singer. Neither was Fish or Euan Lowson from Pallas. But they had presence.”
Nick Barrett: “Initially, Geoff Mann wasn’t very popular. We did a gig with Twelfth Night and Dagaband at the Venue in London, and he kind of grated with the audience. But they went off and played more gigs, and he honed his craft and just turned it around. People loved him.”
Graeme Murray: “Euan liked to delve into the outrageous. He had a big, theatrical performance in the song The Ripper, where he had a white forensic-police boiler suit on, his face was covered in dark paint. He’d be completely wired. There were times when he came offstage and the rest of us would look at each other and go, ‘Holy fuck, what was that?’”
Roger Morgan: “Geoff Mann was doing a lot of theatrics and Fish was doing his thing. If you didn’t have a theatrical performer, you were a bit behind the times.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/zLmTp_DEk1703849501712.jpg]
Bands began to venture further and further afield, taking things from a local to a national level. In 1982, Pallas and Marillion teamed up for a joint tour of Scotland, proving there was a wider market for what they were doing.
Mike Holmes: “We’d read about bands like Twelfth Night, Pendragon, Pallas and Marillion in the press. Not even in big features, just in the gig guide.”
Roger Morgan: “Once we’d featured Marillion in the fanzine, people got in touch with us, saying, ‘Maybe you’d like to feature our band?’ They’d send us tapes and photographs. And that’s when we turned it from a Genesis fanzine into a prog fanzine.”...
Yet as the 80s got underway, something unexpected was happening. Across the United Kingdom, a wave of grassroots bands set about reviving this seemingly moribund genre.
A scene was emerging, largely away from the bright lights and music industry back-slapping of London. It was centred around the likes of Aylesbury's Marillion (née Silmarillion) and space cadets Solstice, Twelfth Night (who began life as an instrumental band at Reading University), Pallas from Aberdeen, Pendragon (originally Zeus Pendragon) from Stroud and Portsmouth's IQ (formed from the ashes of The Lens). Their ranks were swollen by countless other like-minded outfits: Chemical Alice (whose keyboard player Mark Kelly would join Marillion, and other members would go on to form Tamarisk), Trilogy, Haze, Airbridge, Liaison, Citizen Cain and others.
As the decade progressed, these bands would channel the DIY spirit of punk to create a vibrant homegrown scene, populated by a handful of larger-than-life characters and soundtracked by albums that wore their love of a thenunfashionable musical style openly. One band - Marillion - would go on to much bigger things, but others would have their own individual and collective successes, not least in keeping the progressive rock flame flickering.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/76fXnQJ5G1703849314689.jpg]
Unlike earlier scenes that had been centred around specific locales, the new prog bands initially operated in isolation in towns and cities across the country, largely unaware of each other.
Mick Pointer: “Silmarillion played our one and only show at a pub in Southall [west London] called The Hamborough Tavern. We had a big fallout with the guitarist and keyboard player over a fucking Mellotron, would you believe? We started gigging as Marillion pretty bloody quickly afterwards. You have to get yourself out there in front of a whole lot of people.”
Nick Barrett: “We played Redditch College and the agricultural college in Cirencester. We got booed off at most places. At one gig, the rugby team tried to drive a car into the venue and then got onstage and started hassling us.”
Andy Glass: “I’d played with Mick Pointer in a band called Electric Gypsy. As soon as Marillion started getting gigs, they were like, ‘Do you want to come and play with us?’”
Brian Devoil: “There were a couple of pubs in Bicester where we played, a couple of places in Oxford, and the Target in Reading, which was our local pub.”
Mike Holmes: “When we started IQ in Southampton, we wanted to do any kind of music we wanted to. We had a funk track, a reggae track, but it became really obvious very early on that what we were really good at was prog.”
Paul McMahon: “We were basically a school band when we started out [in 1978]. The ambition was to do original music. We’d no idea that prog music was going to have any kind of resurgence.
Graeme Murray: “Glasgow really seemed to take to the whole prog thing. There was a venue on Sauchiehall Street; we used to play there on a Saturday, a lunchtime show, an evening show and a late show, and the place would be packed out the door.”
Nik Szymanek: “We played The Ruskin Arms in east London, which is where Iron Maiden played a lot. We used to wear kimonos onstage. Was it a rip-off of Rush? Yeah, of course it was.”
Ed Percival: “These days, you can do a tribute band. Back then, it wasn’t
a thing you did. You wrote your own songs, because that’s what music was all about. It was about you creating something new.”
Andy Grant: “With Chemical Alice, we were so young. The only ambition was to play live and try and get a recording, just to see if we could get people to come and look at us.”
There was excitement in the air, both musically and visually.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/4284012063.jpg]
Marillion, Pallas and Twelfth Night imbued their musical experiments with an electric 80s energy, complementing it with visuals that drew on the grand theatrical tradition of Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill.
Mick Pointer: “The early Marillion stuff was going down more of a hippie route. It needed a kick up the arse. Then Derek Dick [aka Fish, who joined in January 1981] turned up with a book of lyrics and started looking at the material we had. That’s when things started taking shape.”
Andy Glass: “Fish was incredibly charismatic. Who doesn’t love a showman?”
Mick Pointer: “In the early days, we used to wear these fucking stupid kaftans with a big eye on it. We’d walk down the street in them before the show, publicising the gig. Whatever it took.”
Fish: “There were a lot of what you might call ‘refugees’ from the styles that were around at the time. They weren’t Clash fans, they weren’t Police fans. They wanted a bit more. They were looking for something that was prog.”
Brian Devoil: “I remember seeing Marillion in the Target and they got a bit of stick from our fans because basically they weren’t as good as we were at that time. I remember making some comment that it was because our fans were used to the real thing.” a thing you did. You wrote your own songs, because that’s what music was all about. It was about you creating something new.”
Andy Grant: “With Chemical Alice, we were so young. The only ambition was to play live and try and get a recording, just to see if we could get people to come and look at us.”
There was excitement in the air, both musically and visually. Marillion, Pallas and Twelfth Night imbued their musical experiments with an electric 80s energy, complementing it with visuals that drew on the grand theatrical tradition of Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill.
Mick Pointer: “The early Marillion stuff was going down more of a hippie route. It needed a kick up the arse. Then Derek Dick [aka Fish, who joined in January 1981] turned up with a book of lyrics and started looking at the material we had. That’s when things started taking shape.”
Andy Glass: “Fish was incredibly charismatic. Who doesn’t love a showman?”
Mick Pointer: “In the early days, we used to wear these fucking stupid kaftans with a big eye on it. We’d walk down the street in them before the show, publicising the gig. Whatever it took.”
Fish: “There were a lot of what you might call ‘refugees’ from the styles that were around at the time. They weren’t Clash fans, they weren’t Police fans. They wanted a bit more. They were looking for something that was prog.”
Brian Devoil: “I remember seeing Marillion in the Target and they got a bit of stick from our fans because basically they weren’t as good as we were at that time. I remember making some comment that it was because our fans were used to the real thing.”
Mick Pointer: “Marillion were an exciting band, we were putting on a show. There’s no doubt about it, Derek Dick was a really great frontman.”
Fish: “There was a kind of a punk thing with the band in those early performances. There was a bit of spit and venom. It might have been all clever-clever-proggy music wise, but the delivery had a lot more attack.”
Roger Morgan: “Afterglow had started off as a Genesis fanzine before we took it over. Then somebody sent in a tape of this band Marillion, with a photograph. The guy singing sounded a bit like Peter Gabriel, but they looked and sounded interesting.”
Brian Devoil: “We didn’t have any particular aspirations. The ambition was just to see where it took us. It wasn’t until Geoff Mann joined properly at the end of 1981 that we started taking things seriously. Geoff wasn’t a fantastic singer. Neither was Fish or Euan Lowson from Pallas. But they had presence.”
Nick Barrett: “Initially, Geoff Mann wasn’t very popular. We did a gig with Twelfth Night and Dagaband at the Venue in London, and he kind of grated with the audience. But they went off and played more gigs, and he honed his craft and just turned it around. People loved him.”
Graeme Murray: “Euan liked to delve into the outrageous. He had a big, theatrical performance in the song The Ripper, where he had a white forensic-police boiler suit on, his face was covered in dark paint. He’d be completely wired. There were times when he came offstage and the rest of us would look at each other and go, ‘Holy fuck, what was that?’”
Roger Morgan: “Geoff Mann was doing a lot of theatrics and Fish was doing his thing. If you didn’t have a theatrical performer, you were a bit behind the times.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/7_L2i5nID1703849155007/zLmTp_DEk1703849501712.jpg]
Bands began to venture further and further afield, taking things from a local to a national level. In 1982, Pallas and Marillion teamed up for a joint tour of Scotland, proving there was a wider market for what they were doing.
Mike Holmes: “We’d read about bands like Twelfth Night, Pendragon, Pallas and Marillion in the press. Not even in big features, just in the gig guide.”
Roger Morgan: “Once we’d featured Marillion in the fanzine, people got in touch with us, saying, ‘Maybe you’d like to feature our band?’ They’d send us tapes and photographs. And that’s when we turned it from a Genesis fanzine into a prog fanzine.”...
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 146