I think it would have been impossible for me to approach a best of
collection, without taking account of the song that changed my life, more than any
other track that I had been involved with writing. Kayleigh turned Marillion from
being a band that was known for making albums, into a band that was capable of
writing world wide hit singles. I remember when Steve Rothery came into the room in
Chessington, where we were actually rehearsing & writing the Misplaced album.
And came in with this riff, & I immediately identified it as the possible twinning
with this little lyric that I had, in the little black book with the poems in. It was about
a lot of different people. It wasn't just about the one girl, as everybody expected it to
be at the time. There was a girl called Kay, who had a middle name Leigh, but I
changed the spelling in such a way that it took the focus away from her, I thought at
the time. The band hated the idea of me using the name of a present girlfriend as the
title of a single, & tried to convince me that it would have been a great idea to use
Katherine, or Jennifer or Laura as the name of the track. But I held my ground, and
I'm glad I did. & its quite funny to actually think that in the book of childrens
names that's about at the moment, if you look up Kayleigh, its got references: name of
single as written by band Marillion. As well as being the single that changed my life
about, I've got a lot of fond memories to that summer of '85, & Live Aid & just the
way everything changed from driving about in busses, to being in Lear jets, if only for
a moment in our lives.
Recorded at Hansa Studios, well the original version was recorded at Hansa Studios.
And of course, the video was where I was able to use the old rock star bit of "Would
you like to appear in my video". & I met me wife, Tamara, so it meant a lot to me.
But at the same time, when I came into the Yin & Yang albums, what I didn't want to
do, was just churn out the same version that has been on so many compilation albums,
and I wanted to allow my solo band, thats been really around me since 1988, to
interpret it. & the version that's out on the Yin & Yang albums is the version that
was recorded at the Funny Farm Recording Studios in early '95. & this is it. The
single that changed my life. Kayleigh.
Lucky
I find this song quite
ironic really, because it was written in 1990, when my life & career was going
through probably one of the roughest patches that it had ever been through. We had a
litigation going on with EMI records, my wife was pregnant, we were building a
studio in the middle of a recession, things were not looking good. But I think the one
thing that kept me going was that determination to survive against all the odds. I
always remember when I got my palm read by this little Iranian guy in Galashiels,
way back in 1980. He said that luck will be one of the strongest points you will ever
have in your life. & at that time, I was just feeling that it had all gone. At the same
time, I knew that I still had the opportunities, & as long as I kept my head to the
stone, things were going to change around. So I think that Lucky is more of a scream
against the world than anything else. It's my little rocky anthem in a way. I had to redo
this, as I always felt that the original version that we did back in the Internal Exile
period, it was just a little bit slow, & with it becoming such a live stalwart as it has
done over the years, I really wanted to put a more fused energy version of this song
together, & here it is. Lucky, I am.
Boston Tea Party
The first
time I ever smoked a joint was at Parkhead Football Stadium in Glasgow in 1975,
during The Who - Put The Boot In Tour. One of the support acts on the bill was The
Sensational Alex Harvey Band, & as the clouds of smoke disappeared, I suddenly
came face to face with this band, that had all the wonderful mannerisms of 1970's
progressive rock theatrics, mixed in with the hard edged Glasgow rock sound, & I
was entranced. Years later, I was privileged to have Ted McKenna come in & drum
with us for a few months, during the recording of the Internal Exile album. It was if
our paths were starting to twist together at that point, because I'd decided to go for an
album called Songs From The Mirror in 1992, which took in all the songs from the
70's, from bands that really influenced me. One of the songs that I picked out was
Boston Tea Party, but rather that record it with my own band, I really wanted to bring
in someone special, & I was overjoyed when The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
agreed to come in & record it. The couple of days that we spent together putting this
track down were a wee boy's dream come true, & I am totally overjoyed at the
outcome. It really shows off the band to be the great rock'n'roll band that they still
are.
Lavender
Lavender was the surprise hit of the Misplaced
Childhood album. Although muscially, Mark Kelly's main haunting keyboard theme
was to form quite a lot of the skeleton of side one of the album, the lyric which was
based on this 12th Century pop song, was never expected to take it into the heady
heights that it actually went to. It reminds me a lot of the Berlin days. I was crossed
between the Bohemian & the Romantic, in walking about public parks with a Sony
Walkman on, listening to Joni Mitchell songs, & dreaming of bumping into the girl
that would eventually turn round & become the one that I would love forever, my
wife etc., etc. We started doing it again on the acoustic tour. I never really enjoyed
doing the straightforward rock version, but on the acoustic tour, there was a
'bluesy'ness that came out of it, that I wanted to explore more, & again it was
decided that we would go in & record this one up at the Funny Farm, & the
version that's on the Yang album is the one that I feel fits the soul of the song better
than the original.
Somebody Special
Somebody Special was a track
from the Suits album, that came out in 1994, but I didn't really feel that the song
found itself until it was within the acoustic tour. I think acoustically there was an
energy, there was a spark & a vitality that was in the song, that I think had gone
missing during the original studio versions. The song itself was about a number of
people, but based upon one girl whose name I could never, ever mention. It's about
people that look on, for example, the yuppies of the eighties or whatever, people that
gloss through the pages of Hello magazine & go "that's where I want to be, that's the
sort of person I want to become", when in actual fact, they've already found
themselves as a person. Everybody is individual, everybody in themselves is
somebody special in their own right.
Just Good Friends
Just Good
Friends had a strange beginning, in that it was originally put together as far back as
the middle of 1988, when I was spreading my wings as a contributor to other artists'
albums. I'd done some work with Peter Hamill, I'd done work with Tony Banks, but I
got a request to come in & do a potential duet with Myra of Clannad & I went
down to Rockford Studios in Wales to put down this track, which was supposed to be
part of Clannad's new direction. Clannad were going through the same sort of
turbulent phase that Marillion were going through at the time, & I came away with a
great lyric, but the rest of the project just disappeared. & it wasn't until '91 that I
picked it up for the Internal Exile album, which was my second solo album. We
wanted to do a duet then, but the circumstances at the time dictated that we weren't
going to find the female voice to come in, but in the early part of this year, Foss
Paterson, my keyboard player, happened to mention Sam Brown, who was living up
in the county, or the kingdom of Fife in Scotland, & she came down six months
pregnant, heavily laden with child, & we put together a track which is probably the
version that I was always intending to be of Just Good Friends
Lady Let It Lie
Lady Let It Lie falls into the same area as Kayleigh, & a lot of the other
ballads, that I am probably better known for, & like all the lyrics, it's all based on
personal experience to some extent, although some characters are changed to protect
the guilty. During that desperate recession that Britain went through, there seemed to
be a lot of friends of ours, whose marriages & relationships were all getting broken
apart, or were going through heavy periods of friction, & every time we met up, it
was always heavy arguments kicking around. & Lady Let It Lie, it was about the
couple who were getting to that point in their lives where they realised that perhaps
their dreams were no longer achievable, & they were turning on each other, and
blaming each other for the fact that they weren't living in the nirvana that they thought
they were going to be living in. It was a strange song, in that it brought myself & my
wife closer together. When the lyric was glued together, it seemed to draw us in, and
made us examine ourselves a little bit more, & I think that we both realised that in
order to get through a lot of the bad patches, it's a lot safer & it's a lot easier to get
through the rougher times when you're together rather than apart.
Punch & Judy
Punch & Judy came off an album called Fugazi, which I wrote with
Marillion back in 1983. It was the first single, & hit number 19 in the charts, and
caused me a great deal of tossing & turning, & I was very worried about it,
because I felt that people would come to the opinion that I was actually advocating
domestic violence, in the fact that the song is all about marriage, & how sour
marriage could actually be. Fugazi itself as an album, was all about relationships, and
I felt that I had to go into marriage, & I wanted to take it in such a way, that it was
based on the old Italian puppet theatre, but at the time I wasn't married, I had no
serious relationship. I didn't actually realise how close I was getting towards the
reality of the thing. I feel that I balanced the books, I put my own Yin & Yang
together with the song Family Business off the Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
album, which was more sympathetic. The Punch & Judy one is just dark comedy, all
wrapped up in a nice piece of rock'n' roll. This is the version that we did in 1995 at
the Funny Farm