
Introduction:
Fish (The Funny Farm Interview - July
'95, Dick Bros) said: "Diz and I moved
down to Cambridge where I had a girl friend who was an archaeology student
at the time. So we were actually living in this all female block down in
Cambridge; I think it was Newlands College or something, having to sneak
during the day through the windows because there were no males supposedly
allowed in the college. Funnily enough that was the first place I ever
painted my face; we got invited to this party so, seeing as how we were rock
and roll people, we decided to be very outrageous. And we got all this Boots
#7 stuff etc., I remember Diz did his face up like a cat, and I'd painted my
face up as something. We gone down to this little party, and drunk this
wonderful wine and being quite outrageous. And that period actually inspired
the track Garden Party [...] We couldn't get the band started; we didn't
have any money, so we just wandered about being very involved in the
Cambridge student scene and punting and all that sort of stuff."
It was Newnham College, Cambridge, not Newlands.
Former Marillion bassist Diz Minnitt posted on Facebook; "The Garden Party
lyrics were written when Fish and I were living in Ettrickbridge [near Selkirk in the Scottish Borders - Ed] in a five bedroom holiday cottage called Hawkshaw .
We managed to live there after Fish had convinced the estate agency to
open the cottage over the winter and that we were a band called Sirius
(cue ‘you can’t be Sirius’ joke here) who needed somewhere to write over
the winter. The pre-Marillion version of Garden Party (just bass and
vocals and very different to the later Marillion version was, from memory, included on the demo that we sent to the band prior to moving down to Aston Clinton on 1st Jan 1981."