Splintering Heart

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "The lyric came to me in a flash early in February of 1990. I went for a walk in Toronto - I was on my way to the CN Tower* - the world's tallest structure or something like that - doing the tourist thing, and I wrote it down with a felt pen on a photo wallet that was the only piece of paper available. I was feeling lonely and I could sometimes feel it pricking at me. It's an icy place in February - Toronto - and I was imagining a heart shattering from it's own hardness... or coldness. I still like the imagery in the last verse... 'a cross for a kiss...' Aint that the truth?"

* The CN Tower was the world's tallest free-standing structure for thirty two years until 2007, when it was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa.

Cover My Eyes

Introduction: Steve Hogarth in the liner notes for Six of One: "The song didn't really exist until just before we commenced recording Holidays in Eden in February '91. We had just given Chris (Neil) a cassette of unfinished half-ideas along with songs that were already complete and he telephoned one night to say that if we were to arrange two of the ideas together, we would have another 'single'.

"When we got together at Nomis to routine the album, we set about with glue and string... Sixties actress Eleanor Bron inspired the original lyric idea. See if you can spot David Niven.". He later added on Marillion.com, "Lyrically, it's a fantasy about beautiful women - an intensity of beauty which intimidates and scares. The examples are stolen from movies, art, literature, and pop videos."

The verses to the songs came from a song by How We Live called Simon's Car.

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!

No One Can

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "I had written these words standing in a field near to the rehearsal studio in Brighton, one day. I'd been away from home for most of the eighteen months since I joined the band and I was beginning to feel alienated from my wife, and daughter (Sue and Sofie). It was a beautiful day and I had a head full of the natural things all around me and the sense of separation from the people I love most. I imagine it's worse for them than it is for me and these words are an attempt to say 'It's okay, you're with me here...' and to argue against the myth that to be single is to be free. I remember being single... I don't remember it being great."

Dry Land

Introduction: According to Tim Glasswell's Europeans/How We Live website, Dry Land started off as a Europeans' song called You are an Island, demoed by the band and played at their final concert. It became the title track of the How We Live's album that shares the same name.

Holidays in Eden

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "The first lyric by John Helmer on this album. A girl he knew had gone on holiday to South America and 'gone native' for a while. When she got back home she had problems picking up the threads of her old life. We could all relate... "

This Town

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "I'd written these words about the threat imposed upon a relationship by two people moving from where they grew up and met, to a city. The feeling that the city is seducing your lover away from you.. and being jealous of it... and knowing it will win."

 

 

 

The Rake's Progress

'The Rake's Progress' This is Marillion's little joke. The Rake's Progress is a series of eight pictures by Hogarth (William Hogarth, that is) following a young man who has inherited a fortune. He dumps his girlfriend and spends his days in drinking, gambling and the pleasures of the flesh. Even his former fiancée's pregnancy cannot stop his debauchery and eventually he ends up in the notorious Bedlam, a hospital for the insane. Many of them were actually in the advanced stages of syphilis, which causes insanity.

The pictures are in the Sir John Soane museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. It's round the corner from Holborn tube station and free to visit and is a magnificent museum to boot. The third in the series, in which the titular Rake is living it up in the taverns is on this page, but the following link will take you to a site with all the pictures upon it: The Rake's Progress. These particular versions appear to be from the engravings not the paintings displayed at the Soane museum.

100 Nights

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "We got into the idea of developing This Town, exploring the consequences of becoming bitter and taking revenge on the city - using it, and the people in it, for your own ends... becoming a champion of the city through manipulation and some kind of two-faced cynicism. Playing it all like a game. It was easy to create this fiction - I've been in the music business for over a decade and, believe me, there's no better place to meet these guys. He discovers that his ruthlessness makes him perversely attractive. Am I ringing any bells..?

A Collection

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com "A song about souvenirs... John Helmer had a friend who was in the habit of photographing his girlfriends at a certain favourite location. Every girlfriend he'd had in his life had been innocently lured to this same spot, unaware that she was to become part of a series of similar snapshots. The photographs were assembled in an album, which he would peruse from time to time in secret. Well, it's not illegal... but it's not entirely wholesome either. John was inspired! He wrote this lyric which explores the desire to capture and to possess someone at a moment in time - to keep them forever."