Marillion.Com Introduction

Introduction: Marillion.Com is the seventh Marillion album with Steve Hogarth, and their eleventh overall.

There isn't a cohesive theme to the album. Some songs carry on the themes of domestic upheaval seen on the preceding Radiation; indeed Interior Lulu and Tumble Down The Years were originally intended for the Radiation album but were held over as the band felt they required more work. Tumble is a little more optimistic than the Radiation material, whilst you can tell that House would have fitted in well with the feelings of despair that pervaded the previous album.

A Legacy

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: "Occasional Marillion lyricist John Helmer writes a 'turmoil and divorce' story as the music chops and changes; punchy here and delicate there, from film-noir through funk, grunge and The Beatles, with an accidental Beach Boys' moment."

Steve Hogarth said: "We wondered if it was throwing too many curves, but it's gone down quite well."

Lyrics: John Helmer

Deserve

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth philosophised: "It makes the point that we all get what we want if we really want it, if we're really honest. We bring about most of what happens in our lives, not only as individuals but collectively. We get the flowers and trees and the spores on the breeze that we deserve. To some extent, you create your own joy and your own misery. Unhappiness isn't really related to anything other than state of mind."

'Page one and three'
A reference to the front page of a newspaper, which carries the most important story of the day. Page 3 was the colloquial name for the practice of having pictures of topless or scantily clad women on the third page of the newspaper. The practice, which was started by Rupert Murdoch's Sun in 1969 (although the models weren't nude until 1970), was copied by other papers including the Star, Mirror and Sunday People. The practice because more and more frowned upon and even the Sun stopped publishing the pictures in 2015. The Star continued until 2019. The Sunday Sport, which does not contain journalism, continues as the only paper to carry such photos.

Go!

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: "It's whimsical, it's dreamlike," says Steve Hogarth. "It's a holiday in the mind. But at the other end of the spectrum, it's a total revolution; a take-everything-down-and-start-again song. I'm very fond of Go!"

Rich

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth's words combine a series of personal thoughts and quotations compiled by Mark's then-partner Angie.

"I thought they were all positive philosophies, a code by which you could live. 'It's by spending one's self that one becomes rich,' I thought was such a fantastic idea. It's a celebration of life, really. Absolutely full-on, positive, no cynicism, no sarcasm. We finally pulled off that rare thing of writing something that's happy and, at the same time, is real and manages to avoid the vacuous, playroom trap."

Enlightened

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth said: "It's about the magic of feeling great and very chilled out and spacey and smiley. I wrote it in a café called 'Viva Vida' in Sao Paolo. When you're incredibly tired, which, of course, you usually are on tour, you get into a euphoric state of mind that comes out of exhaustion. I was sitting there in the afternoon with my body-clock all upside down, just watching the people on the avenue, killing time, and I was trying to write about being in love with life while at the same time thinking about love-making, and losing yourself in a person, and the electricity."

Built-In Bastard Radar

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth commented on John Helmer's lyrics, "It's a song about girls being attracted to bastards, as they often seem to be. I get the feeling he'd maybe lost 1-0 to a bastard way down the line, and it was his way of getting back. I don't know. Maybe he was taking the piss out of me, deriving some quiet, mischievous joy out of asking me to sing these words."

I was able to ask John about this when I interviewed him for the Web UK in 2005: "No, but he's definitely my love rival, if that's what he's getting at!

"It might have been the other way round. I remember when I was a young man and I was behaving with such probity as I now behave with in my relationships, I certainly found the worse you behaved, there were benefits for cheating when you were 20-something and in a band. But it definitely wasn't trying to get at Steve."

Tumble Down The Years

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth comments on John Helmer's lyrics: "It's probably a song about marriage or a very long relationship, about how that commitment that you make at the outset is watered down or lost. It moves from the early, idealistic stage and intensity of romance through the mundane and then into crisis and the unpicking of the relationship and yet, it really ends up saying "Let's hold on to this and be stronger and closer for having made the journey."

Lyrics: John Helmer

Interior Lulu

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com:Steve Hogarth wrote the complicated lyric, which introduces us to a 'funny little girl' who can't quite carry-off her bohemian pretentions. The focus moves to Hogarth himself, and his realisation and guilt that by writing from personal experience, you empower your work only to cheapen the memory or the emotion which inspired it.

"One day, you'll have exhausted everything that you are. Everything that was ever precious to you will have gone, to be redefined in verse 2 of some song or other, and then what are you gonna do, when you run out of life to write about?"

House

Introduction: From the notes on www.marillion.com: Steve Hogarth wrote: "Funny, while we were working on this song overdubbing in the studio I picked up a copy of Q (monthly British rock magazine, 1986-2015 - Literary Ed) and read this interview with Massive [Attack]'s Robert del Naja and when he was asked what he was listening to at the moment he said, among others, 'some old progressive rock albums', which was kind of surprising and a little spooky considering what we were working on.