In 2019 Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth looked back on his first 30 years with the band, telling Prog about their changing fortunes, his attitude to the record industry, living with artistic tension, and why it’s important to be scared while creating art.
“You never want to be comfortable. I don’t think good art comes from comfort,” says Steve Hogarth. It’s now 30 years since he turned down the offer of playing keyboards with The The in favour of joining Marillion. “I remember my old publisher saying, ‘Give it a couple of years,’” he recalls.
“I still don’t really think forward that much into the future. It’s an uncertain world we live in; who knows when it’s all going to come crashing down? I’m reminded of Ringo Starr – when somebody asked him how The Beatles was going to last, he said: ‘Maybe a year or two, then I’ll open a hairdressers.’”
When Hogarth came aboard, Marillion were signed to EMI, enabling them him to record 1989’s Seasons End with the band in a manor house near Henley-on-Thames. He describes it as a blissful time. “The sun shone every day and I swanned around in a big shirt feeling like Lord Byron, while girls brought me club sandwiches and Pimm’s!”
They parted ways with EMI after 1995’s Afraid Of Sunlight, and became – albeit unwittingly – pioneers in crowdfunding when fans raised the money for a US tour in 1997. Since then they’ve become a model for how to thrive as independent artists, and have continued to grow musically and commercially, earning rave reviews and numerous awards for 2016’s FEAR and staging their own fan conventions.
Playing with the same five guys for 30 years must lead to some sense of creative comfort. Is it still possible to surprise each other musically?
They’re all fairly mad, so we’re constantly surprising each other! Certain members are less predictable than others. I can usually take an educated guess, for instance, at what Steve Rothery is going to get off on and what’s going to leave him cold.
I’ve come to know their well-trodden path and, rightly or wrongly, I’ve always thought my job is to stop them treading it. My job is to find the stuff that surprises them rather than allows them to do the stuff they could do in their sleep. Whether that means I’ve denied the world a lot of great music that otherwise might have happened, I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ve done that to me. Maybe they haven’t; maybe they should have.
The people who produced the records have occasionally kicked me off my own well-trodden path, and I think that’s a producer’s job – to see where something could go and how something could be in the end. It’s the vision thing. Nine times out of 10 I’ve got all these things I want to express, and so I have to determine the shape of something in order to say what I need to say. It can be frustrating to be denied that power; and the producer’s job, probably, is to deny me that power in favour of something which overall might be more satisfying.
If you’re Bob Dylan, you don’t care quite so much about the music – your mission on Earth is to get all these words and thoughts out and to tell these stories. I need the other guys to say: “Yeah, but this has to be interesting musically – you can’t just do this over one chord for 10 minutes,” which I would quite happily do because I’m busy telling a story and I don’t give a fuck about the chords! There’s always that tension between a lyricist and a bunch of musos. I say that with the greatest respect!
FEAR seems very prescient now. Are you disappointed to have been right about the direction current events have taken?
Maybe I’m a human weather vane; maybe I can see where it’s going – I can sense what perhaps the sum total of what our society has become is going to lead to. You can paint a picture of where you think something is inevitably going to land. What you’re seeing on TV, reading in the papers, experiencing yourself in daily life, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to imagine where that’s going to lead.
If you end up painting a totally dystopian picture, then I think that’s going to be born out of pretentiousness to some extent. You’re letting your own idea of yourself – what you ought to be saying and what art should do – drive the car, instead of just trying to keep it true and honest and instinctive.
When I was working on the album, I was genuinely worried the whole time about what I was saying, mainly because I didn’t want to be Bono. I didn’t want to be standing on a box with the wind in my hair, trying to put the world right, because I didn’t want people yawning, going: “Oh, so it’s a protest record.” That was my big worry the whole time: “What are people going to make of this? Are they just going to think it’s a load of pretentious twaddle or is it going to resonate with them?”
Very few A&R men were bright enough to just leave bands alone. If you’ve signed Radiohead, why would you want to tell them what to do?
I was scared of the reaction to it. But I was scared of the reaction to Brave. I remember when we were mixing Brave, thinking: “Oh my God, nobody is going to get this. We’re going to lose the fanbase overnight when this comes out!”’ And we did lose a lot of people when it came out. The accepted wisdom is that it’s this amazing masterwork, a watershed in the band’s creative development and blah-blah-blah.
But at the time, we all thought: “Jesus Christ, this could be the thing that finishes us. It’s weird – and we don’t even know what it is.” EMI didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know what to do with it. It was the death knell for the band with a major label; they had no clue how to sell it so they lost interest. It was dropped from EMI at the time Blur was happening. Suddenly there was Britpop, this new movement, and what had we got to do with any of that?
More often than not, when you’re creating the music that people look back on as being hopefully startlingly good, you’re shitting yourself, basically, because you think: “What on Earth are people going to make of this?”
Marillion provide a model of how to function without a major label. Has the demise of the traditional record industry been a bad thing?
I think the problem with the record industry was the A&R departments. Every now and again there was a very good A&R man. We had one when I joined the band, a guy called Nick Gatfield, who was great. Then he left, and other people – who shall remain nameless – arrived and they didn’t know their arses from their elbows. Despite that, they were given this omnipotence to massively influence the direction that artists are lead towards.
That process usually happens via a producer. They’ll go, “Why don’t you use this producer?” If they can talk you into that, they’ve got someone whose ear they can whisper into without you knowing. That’s the mechanism by which a record company can change the direction of an artist. Sometimes it works – where would Diana Ross be if she’d never worked with Nile Rodgers? She certainly didn’t enjoy the process, from what I’ve read, but she had the biggest hit of her career.
You can sit go, ‘Aren’t we great?’ but you’ve got to be a pretty sad character. You should be going, ‘We’re not very good at all… we need to get better’
Of all the albums David Bowie ever made, Let’s Dance was his least favourite – but it sold a bazillion copies and bought all his houses and helicopters. It’s really the job of the label to try to find a way to make an artist commercial. The mistake they always make, of course, is they try to make you sound like something that was great last year. By the time you’ve sat down, recorded it, packaged it, mastered it, wrapped it in a ribbon and released it, it’s going to be a year from then. So you’re trying to create something that was done much better by someone else two years ago.
That’s when everything stagnates. The A&R departments had the power to create impure, dishonest, stagnant music, and very few A&R men were bright enough to just leave bands the hell alone. If you’ve signed Radiohead, why would you want to tell them what to do? The reason you signed them is because they’re geniuses; let them do their thing. You don’t have to understand it. It doesn’t have to sound like ZZ Top or Pink Floyd or any of the things that sold millions of copies.
So in that sense, the demise of the music business may have a positive effect on creativity. Whether or not that creativity is ever really enjoyed by a mass market is another question, because the major labels had the machine that got music in front of a lot of people, whether it was on Top Of The Pops, or putting enormous posters on railway stations. If they really wanted to do it, they could do it. In the new world that’s not nearly so easy.
How do Marillion reach new listeners and get new fans?
I ask myself that question every time I walk out on stage and look at the crowd. We did a gig in Poland at the beginning of this year; the average age of the crowd must have been about 24. I was thrilled, but totally, totally bemused – “How the hell are these kids hearing this?” In a way, if I could answer that question, that might not be good; the more aware any artist is of their demographic or their market, you become less of an artist and more of a record company man.
I dragged them reluctantly towards the Albert Hall. It took me 28 years, we finally did it, and it was incredible
I think there’s an element of pomp in knowing the answer to that question. You don’t really know; you just like the idea of knowing. Who knows why anybody gets off on a piece of music? Music means so many different things to so many different people. For some people it’s just something jolly to do the ironing to; for some it’s to strut their stuff to on a dance floor; for some it’s absolutely core to their being.
That’s probably true of most of our fans: our music is core to their being. I get emailed all the time or people come up and say: “You’ve saved my life.” Which sounds so silly – but they mean it. I don’t know how they find it, but they find it.
You’ve said in the past that you don’t enjoy watching or listening back to your live performances. But doesn’t a frontman need to be a bit of a narcissist?
I think I was a narcissist when I was younger, and with good reason, because I was pretty damn good-looking! I wasn’t singing nearly as well as I am now, so I couldn’t bear to listen back to myself because I wished I was a better singer. As I’ve gotten older I’ve become better – but I look in the mirror and go, “Oh my Christ!” The problem has shifted.
I don’t know; I think I’m too old to remember the answer to that question. You grow up, you get uglier, you put a few pounds on, narcissism fades away. That’s probably the answer. Not only that, but I am a perfectionist. I think any half-decent artist is a perfectionist, because that’s why they’re half-decent most of the time. Unless they’re one of those White Stripes bands that sounds like a car crash, and the whole point is they’re really good at it. In which case you’ve got to have the guts to let it out there knowing that it’s not right.
Marillion are not like that. We’re all craftsmen and we have to fight that a bit. If you’re a perfectionist you’re never going to be happy with anything – all you’re going to hear is what’s wrong with it. When you make studio albums, you’ve got a better chance of getting happy because you can dick about with it until the cows come home. But live, there it is: it’s out there, warts and all, and when you watch it or hear it, all you hear or see is the warts. You just hear what’s wrong with it.
If you get through the wilderness and you arrive in some kind of sweet spot, there’s always this assumption that’s where you’ve always been
In which case it’s even more surprising that you’ve released so many live albums.
I don’t listen to any of them! A lot of our the more official ones have had an element of craft; they’ve been multi-tracked and our genius producer Michael Hunter has mixed them, and he’s presenting us in our very best light. But even so, it’s not something I’d go home and put on. The focus has to be on the next thing; that’s where your energy needs to be. There’s nothing you can do about what you’ve already done. You can sit and bask in it and go, “Ooh, aren’t we great?” But you’ve got to be a pretty sad character to want to do that. What you should be doing is going: “Actually, we’re not very good at all, are we? We need to get better.”
Marillion put on their own weekender festivals. Would you ever want to do something like play at Glastonbury?
In a heartbeat! I’d love to do Glastonbury, absolutely. But even that question isn’t simple, because Glastonbury is a complex thing. It’s loads of stages all over the place. There’s a thing that takes place in America called South By South-West, and all the cool, up-and-coming bands do it. The reality is there are bands everywhere – in every club, every theatre, every space – and Glastonbury is a bit like that. It has that amazing atmosphere, of course, for the people. But from a band’s point of view, if you’re not on one of the big stages or one of the big nights, then it’s a gig.
If you’re on one of the big stages, then it’s a trip, it’s something career- changing; or it can be. If it doesn’t change your career it certainly leaves you with an amazing memory. But we’ve never been asked to do it, for whatever reason. I don’t think we’re big enough to headline or second-headline Glastonbury, and we’re too big to do any of the other little side stages. We’re in that awkward place.
That said, Marillion seem to have hit another sweet spot in their career, playing two nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall. When the deal with EMI ended, could you have imagined doing that?
Perhaps we should have thought more carefully about all of it, but we didn’t. We just cracked on and got on with it. We’ve focused, always, on the music: “Let’s try to make a great record.” It was never: “Let’s try and sell out this slightly bigger place.”
Having said that, ever since I joined the band I’ve been bitching on at them to do the Albert Hall and they’ve been going, “Why would we want to do that? We’d rather do Wembley Arena.” I’ve said, “Wembley Arena’s a shithole!” But they never got it. I dragged them reluctantly towards the Albert Hall. It took me 28 years, we finally did it, and it was incredible. We could never have imagined doing the Albert Hall when we parted company with EMI. We did our 10, 15 years in the wilderness that most artists do at some point.
People like Sinatra, you think he was always huge. He wasn’t – at one point he didn’t have a pot to piss in. Nina Simone was nearly on the street at the middle period of her life; now she’s this goddess, and rightly so. You’ve got to do your time in the wilderness. If you get through that and you arrive in some kind of sweet spot, there’s always this assumption that’s where you’ve always been. But it ain’t.
The reality is, it does ebb and flow, and at the moment we’ve had a couple of great years, probably because of FEAR. That album has lifted us. The five-star review in the Guardian probably made a few of us sit up and go, “What?!” Maybe a few people who otherwise would have completely written us off thought, “I’ll check that out, then – that might be worth at least having one ear on it.”
I’d like to think if anybody has one ear on us, they’re going to be shocked in a positive way. They’re going to go, “I had no idea there was this much to them.” That’s what I hope and pray for, because I think that’s what we deserve.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
