THE PROG INTERVIEW MIKE HOLMES

Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Mike Holmes, IQ’s co-founding guitarist and the man behind their Giant Electric Pea label – now also home to Solstice, Rain and Damanek. “I really don’t have any regrets at all,” he tells Prog as he reflects on the band’s early years; their latest live album, The IQ Weekender 2024; and looks ahead to the long-awaited studio follow-up to 2019’s Resistance.

Johnny Sharp

Although the neoprogressive movement of the early 1980s didn’t produce any acts beyond Marillion that would break into the mainstream, its impact on a generation of fans and musicians too young for the golden age of progressive rock, and its influence on like minded musicians that followed, shouldn’t be underestimated. One man has been a mainstay throughout IQ’s 40-plus years as a band, but Mike Holmes’s influence extends beyond that band, thanks to his role in building the band’s label Giant Electric Pea, which would go on to nurture the careers of rising stars of the genre including Big Big Train and Spock’s Beard. Growing up in Southampton on England’s south coast, Holmes was a musical obsessive from an early age. “The first toy I remember having as a kid…

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Prog Italia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 153

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