Talk:Marillion

Re: Associated acts

I don't think it's necessary to list Fish and h as associated acts since they are or were in the band already, even though they both have solo careers. Sposato (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. In my view, outside activities of band members are prime examples for "associated acts", no matter when or under what circumstances (split, side projects, whatever) they occur. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 11:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Name Change

"also worth mentioning: the wrangling over the name -- Fish claimed as the name was his idea the rest of the group couldn't use it without his, as far as I remember."

Since the band was called Silmarillion and dropped the first three letters when Brian Jelliman joined - i.e. before Fish had even had an audition (Source: The Script by Clive Gifford) - he'd have been on very thin ice if he ever did claim that. BaldySlaphead 10:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC) (this comment was originally by me too!)

I second that, and to be fair to Fish, I've never heard of him claiming that. It used to be reported that the name change was his idea, but according to my long-lost copy of Clive Gifford's book, it was actually Brian Jelliman, who suggested it. Also, Jelliman joined the band before Fish, and they had already been called "Marillion" for some time by the time Fish joined. The following sentence in the article misstates this story: The band name was shortened to Marillion in 1981 to avoid any sort of copyright conflicts at the same time as Fish and bassist Diz Minitt joined ... on 2 January 1981. Rothery and keyboardist Brian Jelliman completed the first line-up. This actually sounds as if the name change took place when Fish and Diz joined (although it doesn't claim it was Fish's idea, the uninitiated reader may end up understanding this), and also implies that both Rothery and Jelliman joined after Fish and Minitt, when the opposite is true. Rothery is, in fact, the oldest member still in the band, everyone else in the current lineup joined after him. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 11:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: progressive rock

This is a rather contentious issue (witness the number of times it comes up on the Opium Den or Freaks mailing lists!). A number of people refer to marillion as progressive or neo-progressive but others (myself included) would describe the structure of some songs as being progressive but stop short of calling marillion a Progressive Rock band. The expression, 'Progressive with a small p ' has been used on some occasions. A common comparison is with Radiohead or Muse who are not usually described as prog bands, despite the length and complexity of their songs. In any case, I feel it's not a particularly helpful label. Pjwhams 20:10, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to steal your dreams and I am as far from a fanatic Marillion lover as it is possible, but Marillion is a definitive neo-progressive rock band. No, they are actually synonymous for it. Although they might not be seen as much "Progressive" as King Crimson was in 70ties (with their strive for something completely new and breakthrough with each of their consequent album) or Genesis was (where pure essence of clear creativity and virtuoso mastership of their key players (guitar Hackett, Collins on drums) - they still _are_ PROGRESSIVE.

And because their career started basically when prog-rock as a genre was considered dead(no, it was actually considered funny) and PUNK was what it was all about(80ties) and also 'cos they started exceptionally well(all their first three albums are major rock milestones) prog-rock lovers ADORED them - they kept prog-rock genre alive in the Eighties(DURAN DURAN anyone?). And please, first LISTEN to Marillion before comparing them to jerk such as Radiohead. Oh Radiohead... spare me of such rubbish. Their music is leap and bounds ahead of what Radiohead or Muse would EVER produce.

Please sign your comments by the way. --Mal 05:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not into clasifying music much, simply because there is so much overlap - even within albums there might be songs with very different sounds and influences. When I first heard the description "Progressive Rock", years ago, I endeavoured to find out what the hell it meant. The definitions I discovered all had one phrase in common: "concept album". Marillion are (or at least were, during the Fish era) the epitome of this. How do you classify The Beatles? They started off as what .. skiffle? Influenced by blues and 1920s music and various other genres. They developed and evolved, as most bands do. In the Beatles case, they were responsible for defining and creating genres and styles. Personally I prefer to distinguish between good music and dross. But, if forced to pigeon-hole Marillion, I'd go for Prog rock every time. --Mal 05:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree, Marillion are Prog. The problem is the connotation(fair or unfair) that has been attached to the Prog label.People tend to shy away from the Prog label due to that connotation.Watcher95 21:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

@MalThe definitions I discovered all had one phrase in common: "concept album". Marillion are (or at least were, during the Fish era) the epitome of this. -- I think even if we were to accept "concept albums" as a defining feature of prog (I for one wouldn't say so), the statement is on pretty thin ice. Fish-era Marillion didn't make a concept album until Misplaced Childhood, and Clutching at Straws is really only a semi-concept album, very loosely based on the "Torch" character. That's 1.5 out of 4 albums, hardly what I'd call "epitome". Hogarth-era Marillion's "Brave" was a much more coherent concept album than Misplaced Childhood; Afraid of Sunlight also revolves around a common theme (the destructive effect of fame) and may be labelled "concept album" with the same justification as Clutching at Straws. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 11:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm far from one to define Prog as "concept album", given that I don't think Yes released one at all (unless you count TOTO as coherent piece) and Yes are, musically, the definitive Prog band. Marillion in H's time have made two great concept albums in Brave and Marbles, in that they have a coherent, almost narrative structure. This structure is, to me the core part of a concept album, whether it's The Wall, 2112 or Operation: Mindcrime. Even Childhood doesn't get as far as Brave or Marbles (but then, I've always thought the music has been better since H joined) Wavy (talk) 15:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Too many redlinks?

You have to consider that this is a general encyclopedia, so we want good, balanced coverage of bands. It's not the place for fan minutae (don't worry, I have to remind myself of this too sometimes). I'd therefore question the number of redlinks you have. Are the "Front Row Club" releases notable, for example? --kingboyk 00:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There are two of those Front Row Club recordings that have separate articles. I don't think they deserve to be separate articles, though I would keep the information available in the articles for now, until the discography is sorted out a bit more. The only information in the articles are the tracklisting and dates and venues of the recordings. Its going to look a bit messy to include all the information for just two of the CDs. I'd suggest that a separate article be created for all of the recordings, merged, or nothing at all (other than as a list in the discography). I'm going to have to work on making my sentences less convoluted on talk pages!! I'm going to remove a lot of the redlinks here, but I'm not doing anything as yet about the two FRC articles that have been already written. --Mal 06:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Project?

I wonder if it'd be worth making Marillion a wikiproject for a while. There seems to be a fair amount of work needed to clean the related cats and articles up. I've not started a project before, but I'd definately be a major contributer if someone could set up the groundwork on a project. --Mal 06:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I know it´s almost a year since the previous comment, but if it´s actual with a Marillion-project, I would be happy to contribute too. There´s a lot of material about Marillion on the wikipedia, so I think it´s a good idea to organize it. I have no experince of project´s (in fact, I´m rather new at the Wikipedia) so I don´t think I can take the lead. (English is not my motherlanguage, I hope I´m not embarrasing myself to much in my writing ;) ) /Johsan 21:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Well out of sheer coincidence, I started the Marillion WikiProject just a day or so ago! I left you a message on your talk page too, in case you don't see this.

The project has only just been set up, so I'm tagging some articles and I'm going to wait for the bot to get to the letter N so I can check its working before moving on. --Mal 09:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Discography split into two articles

The band's discography is split into two different articles. I personally believe these should be merged, and the main Marillion article itself could do with some cleanup, too.--HisSpaceResearch 12:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't sure initially (way back nearly a year ago now), so I'd started creating a new article for the discography in my userspace. I haven't touched it for ages though. I think I had thought it was logical to have two articles: Fish-era and h-era. We can discuss it on the Marillion WikiProject talk page though... step this way.. --Mal 09:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

What does this mean?

From the History section:

they agreed on creation of a departure stylistically of their previous albums.

This does not make sense and sounds/looks like something that has been mis-translated.195.157.52.65 13:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Picture caption

That's not a bad picture of the band - the one captioned "Marillion in 2007" - since you can tell what the guys look like. Could someone please caption it to say who's who? -Freekee (talk) 05:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "website" :
  • [http://www.marillion.com/press/before.htm Marillion's official website.]
  • [http://www.marillion.com/music/albums/fugazi.htm marillion.com | MUSIC - Discography - Fugazi | The Official Marillion Website<!-- Bot generated title -->]

DumZiBoT (talk) 11:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Steve Rothery, former member or not ?

That does not work. It is written everywhere that Steve Rothery is a former member but he is not in the former lineup. Also "the band was formed by Mike Pointer, Steve Rothery and others" is really not specific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.104.75.198 (talk) 19:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan Mover

I don't really know a lot about the band, but I know Jonathan Mover was in the band at one point. Does he count as a member or just a session player? Sposato (talk) 21:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

He was supposed to be a new member but it turned out he and the band didn't get along well. I recall reading (in Clive Gifford's book) that he ruined a hotel room with a fire extinguisher or something like that and was fired after just one gig. I'm not completely sure though. I lost the Gifford book years ago, have to read up on this in Jon Collin's "Separated Out". John Martyr was hired as a session player. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 13:34, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Another thing: Ian Mosly was originally hired as a session player only, when the band had given up hope of finding a permanent drummer in time for the recording of Fugazi. I don't remember when exactly he was officially elevated to "full member" status. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 11:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)