The Crow and the Nightingale

The Crow and the Nightingale
Steve Gutteridge remarked that the song title was strongly reminiscent of the way that Aesop's Fables are titled in the format 'the X and the Y'. Fables are stories containing anthropomorphised animals, creatures, plants or other inanimate objects and which have a moral. Some 720 tales are attributed to the ancient Greek Aesop, but scholars are agreed that many cannot be by him as they predate him.

Crows appears in 27 of the tales, while Nightingale appears in six, but as Steve notes, they do not appear together. Generally the Crow is depicted for its horrible squawking and the Nightingale for its beautiful songs.

Sierra Leone

Introduction: In an interview for Smashing Interviews Magazine entitled Marillion's Masterpiece of Waning Moments, h was asked how Sierra Leone fit into the theme of the album. He said, "It kinda doesn't in the sense that it's not a song about the environment or the pandemic. But on the other hand, it is a song which questions consumerism and is more about human dignity. This poor man has just found a diamond as big as his hand, and yet, he refuses to sell it. It’s a symbol of power and defiance, a power he has for the first time in his life. He has a power to say "No," a luxury he has never had before. So he lies on the beach and stares through it into the infinite." Thanks to Paul Rose for sourcing that!

Care

In an interview for Smashing Interviews Magazine entitled Marillion's Masterpiece of Waning Moments, h said, "Section one, Maintenance Drugs, was inspired directly by my friend, Conrado, in Mexico City, who discovered he had inoperable tumours along his spine. He underwent many sessions of chemotherapy, and whenever he was having the treatment, he would send me a WhatsApp message with a smiling and defiant selfie. So I accompanied him on his journey. I am happy to say he is now in remission and feeling very well.

This Strange Engine (WFftO version)

Introduction: For the version of This Strange Engine on the With Friends from the Orchestra album, an additional line was added. The line had long been included on the lyric sheets, but wasn't actually in the song.

According to h on the Corona Diaries podcast, the musical section was felt to be too long, and therefore the line had been excised.

With Friends from the Orchestra - Introduction

Introduction: With Friends from the Orchestra is the nineteenth Marillion album, the fifteenth with Steve Hogarth.

It was announced on 30th September 2019 in a news article titled We have a confession to make that the band had secretly recorded an album that would come out in mid October, followed by a short European tour.

Fuck Everyone And Run - Introduction

Introduction: Fuck Everyone And Run (F.E.A.R.) is the eighteenth Marillion album, the fourteenth with Steve Hogarth. The album title and promotional artwork was revealed on the 7th April 2016.

The word 'Fuck' is rendered as 'F***', but Lucy Jordache confirmed the correct title of the album is Fuck Everyone And Run.

It was originally planned that FEAR should be released on the 09^th September 2016. It was pointed out that 9(th)+9(Sept)=18(^th album), however, this was later pushed back to 23^rd September 2016.

El Dorado

Introduction: In a pre-release PR piece from label earMUSIC, the song was described as follows, "El Dorado examines the notions of political entitlement and the modern challenges for the UK".

In an interview for Prog magazine, h described the track as follows, "It's really about a sense of foreboding and a feeling that everything is going to change in this country. I was trying to paint a picture of someone mowing their lawn in a quiet garden as a storm comes towards them. It's an ecological storm, a financial storm, it's a humanitarian storm. It’s a feeling that there is a sort of watershed coming. I don’t know what it is, but there is just a foreboding. If there is a central theme to the record, it's that and the fact that we brought this about on ourselves and a sense of shame. El Dorado is for me about the fact that there’s a sense of shame over the migrant crisis. It’s about the way that this country has responded to the refugees spilling over from Syria, which is a war that we’ve stoked the fire in, even if we haven’t created it."

Living in F E A R

Introduction: In an interview for the Web UK magazine, h said, "I heard all these statistics about how people in Canada don't really bother locking their door but if you go over the border into the USA, everyone's got a gun by their bed, they're so terrified of crime. They're all shooting each other by mistake with these guns they've got by their beds, or shooting their children by mistake. Completely batty.

The Leavers

Introduction: In an interview for Prog magazine, h said, "The Leavers is a totally different animal. I wrote it really as a response to the corrosive effect that travel has on you. When you're in a touring band, or even more so in a touring band's crew, you’re hardly ever home, you wake up in a new city every day. There's a repetitive thing of the process of putting a show together, perform a show, you take it down, get on the bus, go to sleep and go again. For crew that's the life. When you get home if you’re off, you’re not being paid and you feel like you’re unemployed. It's also about how these gypsy, thrill-seeking people seem to arrive, do their thing and then are gone. You can't trust them because they'll forget you as soon as they're gone."

White Paper

Introduction: In an interview for Prog magazine, h said, "It's about several things. It's a sort of sister story to The Leavers in some respects. It's about trying to settle into domestic life, about wanting to live passionately and in the moment. There's also the thing about slowly coming to terms with the fact that you're getting old, and you better get used to the fact that what you are railing against is very beautiful and natural.

There's a line in the song of 'I used to be centre stage, time I should act my age', and that really is what this song is about. It's about at one time feeling you were the most important person in the equation, and having to come to terms with the fact that you'd better stand at the side and watch something beautiful going on, rather than try and occupy that space yourself, with your own ego."