The Party

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com, "I was trying to capture the atmosphere of the first teenage parties I went to up in Yorkshire. I was young and naive and everything about them seemed mystically illicit and dangerous. The man in the off-licence used to let me buy a bottle of cider even though I was only sixteen (and only looked fourteen!) These were my first forays into the wild world of alcohol, girls, dark rooms, joss sticks, patchouli oil and Led Zeppelin. Phew!

"One night at Stanbridges (Stanbridge Farm Studios where the band recorded Holidays – Ed) we had a Mexican evening - we all hired ponchos and big hats, blacked out our teeth with wax crayons, ate magic mushrooms and drank tequila. I spent the evening with my hand in a bowl of rice and later, in the garden, I remember watching the moonlight dripping in the trees like the juice of some unearthly tropical citrus fruit. That's where the 'succulent light' came from."

In an April 2007 interview for musicplayers.com, h said: "I think I was about sixteen and there was this girl in our school called Janet Jones, and her mum and dad used to go out and leave her on her own in the house. So she used to throw parties while they were out and we all used to get on buses and go across town to her house. And that's all completely blow-by-blow accounting of the parties that she used to throw that I used to go to. But I was very young at the time, and it wasn't an intimate memory."

In issue 100 of Prog magazine, in a piece nominating Jon Anderson as his prog icon, h said "I first heard Yes at a party of maybe 16 years old. It was a life-changing experience and I later wrote a song about it called The Party. During the course of the evening someone put on The Yes Album. Until that point I'd been listening to The Beatles, The Stones and The Kinks. But The Yes Album changed my whole idea about music. Jon Anderson's amazing vocals and Bill Bruford's amazing random drumming, Chris Squire's grinding bass - everything at once, it was a genuine 'What the fuck?' moment!"

'Cider'
An apple-based alcoholic drink. Back when Mr Hogarth was young, cider was often the first drink that a teenager might try due to its sweet taste. In the age of alcopops, this is probably no longer the case! The word cider is now used for fruit-based beverages of all types, but certainly back then, 'Cider' would have meant apples.

'Thought she was older' The girl must therefore be younger than eighteen (assuming that it's based in Britain) as that is the age at which one can legally buy alcohol over the counter, or from a pub. However, you are legally allowed to have sex at sixteen in the UK, which suggests that she might be even younger.

Song Listing:

Songs with a link have explanations.