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Clutching at Straws - Intro

Introduction: Clutching At Straws was the fourth and last Marillion studio album to feature Fish on vocals. In some ways, Clutching is an odd album. This is mainly due to some of the discussion about it in the press that occurred after Fish's departure. Fish declared "Clutching At Straws was my self-penned obituary" in a post split interview (Gone Fishing - Kerrang! 1989) with the band's chronicler, Mick Wall.


Are we then to take it that Fish knew he was going to leave after the album or that he means it was his obituary by default? In a 1987 question-and-answer piece published in
Just Seventeen (my girlfriend used to read it, OK? - embarrassed Ed), the interviewer asked 'Have you ever had your fortune told?' Fish replies, "Yes, quite a few times. One bloke a few years back got it all spot on. He said I would have three careers and I've had two of them already with the forestry and then with Marillion and he said I would marry at twenty nine which is right as well. The third career is supposed to start in 18 months time but I've no idea what it will be. Maybe serious acting or writing a novel."

Almost exactly 18 months later, Fish left the band. Co-incidence or planned? Well, in all likelihood, it was pure coincidence, but it is true to say that so much information was flying about in the press, much of it contradictory, that Marillion fans are unlikely to ever know the full story of the split.

Clutching At Straws itself is a concept album about a man named Torch, a writer with chronic doubts of his own ability and a drink problem the size of the Pacific, who definitely isn't a thinly-disguised Fish, no sireee...

I was sent an article by
Kristie English from the Freaks mailing list which details the episodes of the story. The article was presented on a song by song basis and I have prefaced each explanation by the relevant extract.

The Clutching At Straws remaster, released in 1999, contained demos for a number of tracks that had never been heard before. The majority were the tracks demoed for the follow up album, but which were abandoned when Fish left the band. Only one, Beaujolais Day, predates Clutching.

Some of the music and lyrics from these songs later appeared on albums by Marillion or Fish in a different form.
I've included explanations for Beaujolais Day, Sunset Hill, Tic-Tac-Toe and Exile on Princes Street.

Cover notes:
The cover for Clutching At Straws was another Mark Wilkinson work. Unlike the other studio albums, Clutching is not a gatefold. This is presumably a deliberate attempt to get away from the dated feel of the concept album and towards the mainstream market with regards to image.

In a 2017 article for Prog magazine entitled How Mark Wilkinson created the artwork for Marillion's Clutching at Straws, Wilkinson discusses at length how time constraints led to what he considers his least satisfactory Marillion album cover, leading to him reworking it for Prog, with many additional characters.

The logo has been modernised though it still retains the essential design of the old logo. The pictures are both photos of the interior of the Baker's Arms pub in Colchester (don't go looking for it, it's long gone), with famous characters painted into the scene by Wilkinson. All of them had serious problems with substance abuse, many of them citing it as either an aid to their creativity or a crutch to protect themselves from the surreal nature of fame.

Torch, we can see, is a descendant of the jester by the belled cap that hangs from his pocket and the shadows of the motley colours of the harlequin across his face.

In the 2017 article for Prog, Wilkinson said, "I used the futurist Russian poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky as my model for Torch for no other reason than I liked his thousand-yard stare!"

The people depicted on the front cover, left to right along bar are Robert 'Rabbie' Burns, Dylan Thomas, Truman Capote and Lenny Bruce.

With a nod to
Jeroen Schipper's Marillion FAQ, here are some brief details:

Robert Burns, Scottish national poet, died aged 37 of alcohol poisoning. The image is based on Burn's friend Alexander Nasmyth's 1828 painting, Robert Burns, 1759 - 1796. Poet

Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet, died at 39, also died of alcohol poisoning. I haven't yet managed to track down the reference photo for Thomas; he seems to favour poses taken from a similar angle when being snapped though.

Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood died aged 59, of a combination of alcohol, drugs and pills (probably suicide). I also haven't found the source photo for Capote. There are many of him in a hat with his hand near his face - it's pretty much his USP - but not the specific shot.

Social satirist and comedian Lenny Bruce died of a heroin overdose aged 40.

The CaS image appears to be based on a photograph of Bruce from a collection of his short stories called Stamp Hemp Out! and other Short Stories. The photo - attribution unknown - is entitled 'A JOINT'.


On the back from left to right, the painted characters are John Lennon, James Dean and Jack Kerouac.

Contrary to what Jeroen's FAQ says, ex-Beatle Lennon was an alcoholic and a junkie. At the time of his death however, he had been clean for six years.Lennon was shot dead by crazed 'fan' Mark Chapman on the 8 December 1980, aged 40.

The image is based on a photograph taken by Mike McCartney of his older brother and John Lennon with Gene Vincent when The Beatles supported US rocker at The Cavern in Liverpool on the 1st of July 1962.


Method actor James Dean died aged 24 in a car crash, but was probably drunk when it happened. He was an alcoholic and also used drugs.

The face is taken from a photograph taken in 1955 by Dennis Stock in Dean's home town of Fairmount, Indiana.


Beat-writer Jack Kerouac, who popularised stream-of-consciousness writing, died of alcohol poisoning (he also used drugs), aged 48.

The image is a composite based on a 1945 photograph of him with fellow Beatnik Neal Cassady (left), taken by the latter's wife, Carolyn, and a 1944 snap of Kerouac in a fake (according to him) merchant marine cap. 



On the back wall is a calendar showing the Market Square Heroes cover. Perhaps this was a little thing for the older fans; it is very much in shadow and not readily recognisable unless one is familiar with the image. Wilkinson and Fish's The Masque book reveals that it was put there to hide the sign to the gents toilets!

Below the picture on the rear cover is the following quote:

"If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon the stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber?... Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and each play their part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows."
The quote is from Erasmus' The Praise of Folly. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536) was a Dutch Humanist scholar and ordained monk. The Praise of Folly (1509) was a satire written in England for his friend Sir Thomas More. It poked fun at superstitions, traditions and the Church. Fortunately for Erasmus, Pope Leo X was said to have found it amusing.


Songs with a link have explanations.

1 comment:

  1. So when you go to the bar for years ,the shadows are there and after you depart from your body ,you gonna return to the bar to drink again with the mortals..............thus you now is the guy on the silver hair......................became welcome to the band of shadows...............Cheers...................

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