Happiness Is The Road - Introduction

Introduction:  Album fifteen is another double album, produced by the band & Mike Hunter. The first CD is a concept album entitled Essence.

Essence is partly based on ideas from a new age/self-help book recommended to Steve Hogarth during the Somewhere Else tour, called 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle and concerns the notion of embracing the moment rather than dwelling on the past or future.

Dreamy Street

'That monkey inside o'me Gone skulkin away'
A possible reference back to h's solo track The Evening Shadows and its opening line, 'I have an animal inside me'.

Other references to monkeys and apes exist on this album. Human beings, monkeys and apes all share a common ancestor, of course. Genetically, we may not have a monkey inside us, but we certainly share a lot of the same DNA!

This Train is my Life

'Distant lights from the wrong side of the tracks'
The wrong side of the tracks is a term meaning someone who comes from a bad or less prosperous part of town. The phrase arose because train tracks would often mark neighbourhood boundaries. It was often employed as a dog whistle for parts of town where black people lived.

Essence

'Choose life, Choose living'
Possibly intended as a parody of the famous speech by the character Renton in the book Trainspotting by Irving Welsh, especially given the previous line in the song, 'The book, the film, the faithful depiction'.

Wrapped up in Time

'Told backwards down this rod of light... ...Long extinct'
The stars in the night sky are light years away from us, meaning that by the time the photons have travelled from the star to our retinas, spans of time have passed. 

A light year is literally the distance light can travel in a year, so if you're looking at something a light year away, you are seeing how it looked one year ago when its photons were first emitted and started their journey through space to your eye.

Proxima Centuri, the closest star to Earth, is 4.7 light years away, meaning that when we look at it, we are seeing how it looked 4.7 years ago. No matter which star we look at, we are looking back in time, not seeing it as it is now.

Woke Up

'Woke up in a city that doesn’t sleep'
If Sinatra is to be believed, that would be New York City; a  quote from New York, New York.

Trap The Spark

'I've opened the box and I've touched the treasures of the earth'
A deliberate echo of the line from Genie on Marbles..?

'They're buried on the island far away'
A reference to the island from Fantastic Place on Marbles..?

Happiness Is The Road

Introduction: The lyrics to the song Happiness Is The Road were inspired by h's trip to a doctor in Utrecht when he was ill on the Somewhere Else Tour.

In an interview with  Sean Palmerston for Exclaim, h said, "During the Somewhere Else tour I was suffering with my health. It was self-induced really. I wasn't eating properly and was also under a lot of stress both within my domestic situation [recent divorce] and professionally [on tour]. My body eventually rebelled and although I won't go into gory details, I ended up needing surgery. I was referred to a doctor in Utrecht, Holland who performed a minor operation (on the afternoon of the Utrecht show!).

Half Empty Jam

Introduction: Mark Kelly said on the MOLF, "It's a jam that some members of the band felt didn't belong with the finely crafted material that makes up the rest of the album... so as a compromise we stuck it on the end of disc 1 with a 1 minute gap before it starts. The 1 minute gap has it own ID, so the iPod users can delete the silence (something I always find annoying with hidden tracks... TSE springs to mind)."

Thunderfly

'The little corn flies are messing with my nerve endings'
The Free Dictionary says: "A small fly which, in the larval state, is injurious to grain, living in the stalk, and causing the disease called 'gout' on account of the swelled joints. The common European species is Chlorops tæniopus.

"A small fly (Anthomyia ze) whose larva or maggot destroys seed corn after it has been planted."

The Man from Planet Marzipan

'I am the man from the planet Marzipan'
A play on the name of the planet Mars, presumably intended to imply tragicomedy to the aforementioned man through the use of the word 'marzipan', a confection of ground sugar and almonds, often used to cover cakes.

The line first appeared in the lyrics to The Wound, on Somewhere Else.

Asylum Satellite #1

'It said in the paper that 90% of the universe went missing this morning'
90% of the universe is made up of what's known as 'dark matter'. It is inferred from the gravitational effects exerted on visible matter in a number of different ways that all support its existence, yet does not give off electromagnetic radiation that would allow us to detect it in the manner of the visible matter.

Older Than Me

h introduced the debut live performance of Older than Me at the Sunday night set at the Marillion Weekend at Port Zelande 2023 as having been influenced by the film Harold and Maude.

Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude is a 1971 dark comedy film directed by Hal Ashby. The story follows Harold, a young man who is obsessed with death and goes to great lengths to stage fake suicides for his own amusement. His mother sets him up with various potential wives in an attempt to change his behavior, but he remains disinterested until he meets Maude, a free-spirited 79-year-old woman who teaches him to appreciate life and live in the moment. They develop a close bond and spend their time together attending funerals and engaging in other unconventional activities. However, Maude's perspective on life is challenged when Harold reveals his own plans for suicide.

The film is known for its exploration of dark themes such as death and suicide, but also for its humor and unique portrayal of the relationship between Harold and Maude. The film's soundtrack, composed by Cat Stevens, is also widely praised.

'Over the hill, And far away'
'Over the hill' is an idiomatic expression indicating that one has passed the mid-point of one's life and is heading towards the grave.

Over the Hills and Far Away is also a song title in common usage, with Led Zeppelin, Gary Moore and The Mission all having different songs with that name. However, the expression probably originates with the traditional English folk song of the same name, which dates from at least 1700. Several different versions of the lyrics exist.

Perhaps the best-known these days is the version used in the TV series Sharpe, by John Tams, based on the 1706 version by George Farquhar.

Throw Me Out

'Two's a crowd'
Rich Harding pointed out this line is based on the popular idiom, 'two's company, three's a crowd': a group of two people is comfortable; a group of three is not.

'No more trouble No more strife'
'Trouble and strife' is Cockney rhyming slang for 'wife'. Cockney is a working class dialect from the East End of London that has a rich vein of rhyming slang that has become relatively common parlance.

Especially True

'I gazed upon you from the bleachers'
Bleachers is a US English term for tiered bench seating, as seen at sporting events, such as baseball.

David Dyte suggested that the rhyme refers to 'Bleacher Creatures' - the regulars in the cheap seats at the New York Yankee's Yankee Stadium. They have achieved notoriety for their rowdy songs and intimidation of nearby on-pitch members of the opposing team.

Real Tears for Sale

Such a pretty girl [...] you shaved your head, pulled a face'
Although Britney Spears might have been the pop star to shave her head most recently to when the song was released, h has stated the inspiration for the song was Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor.

'The horror show when you were young'
O'Connor has stated that her childhood was characterised by abuse from her emotionally-unstable mother.