Trollheart

Nowhere is this shown better than in “The Web”, which runs for almost nine minutes, and starts powerfully, with blasting guitar chords, then settles into a sort of introspective passage, as the protagonist hides in her apartment, trying to figure out what has gone wrong with her life, afraid to move on. ”Faded photos exposing pain/ Celluloid leeches bleeding my mind” - such lyrical genius was something I had seldom encountered before, and even then, in bands who had been doing this for years, maybe decades. Here was a band only starting out, and already showing such tremendous promise. With a clear and almost unique understanding of the human condition in one so young, Fish painted nightmare dreamscapes and lurid pictures of addiction, isolation, fear, panic and despair that just cut right to the heart, his bitter claim ”I only laughed away your tears/ But even jesters cry!” a nod back to the title track, and indeed the figure of the jester was one that would characterise Marillion for years, appearing on the cover of their first three albums.

Another powerful section where keys and guitar join to great effect, then Rothery is off on another solo, and as the song reaches its six minute mark, the character realises things must change, and after a brief laidback guitar piece as Fish declares ”Now I leave you/ The past has had its say” there's a huge upsurge and a big instrumental piece as the tempo jumps, and for the next nearly two minutes we get a keyboard solo from Mark Kelly that is a delight to the ears. Then, just when you think it's going to fade out on the keys, Fish blasts back in with a final coda and the song ends powerfully on hard guitar and swooping keys.

There's little joyful about this album, in terms of lyrical content - though it's a true joy to listen to it - with themes from broken love affairs, loneliness and addiction to war and suicide, but if there's a light-hearted song on it, it's “Garden Party”, where Fish pokes not-so-gentle fun at the glitterati, the high society, those who live for rubbing shoulders with the rich, the famous, and the royal. Starting with a hard guitar and swirling keys intro, Fish gleefully describes the scene as ”Champagne corks are firing at the sun again/ Swooping swallows chased by violin again” and those who believe themselves the cream of society “have a really jolly time”.

“Garden Party” rocks along on a really upbeat, happy melody, which mirrors the insincerity of these people who declare ”Punting on the “cam” is jolly fun!” and live their lives in a constant state of vying for position and prestige among their fellows, always trying to prove themselves better than everyone else. Great keyboard solo from Mark Kelly, and a hilarious change of lyric from Fish, where he originally grins ”I'm wining, reclining/ I'm rucking, I'm ****ing” but the word had to be changed when this too was released as a single. Great fun, and Fish's savage satire comes across really well when he replaces the word with "miming".

Bringing everything back to earth then with a jolt is the dour, bitter “Chelsea Monday”, which tells the tale of a young girl desperate to be an actress but who is afraid to take the steps she needs to make her dream come true. Carried on a beautiful bassline from Peter Trewavas, the song conjures up images of dark, grey streets, rain-lashed bus-stops and yellowed windows, smoke from factories curling up into the ash-choked sky. Rothery's guitar whines in the background as Fish relates the tale of the ”Catalogue princess, apprentice seductress/ Hiding in her cellophane world in glittertown” who waits for fame to find her. The first part of the song is carried on Trewavas' silky bass rhythm, with splashes of colour thrown in by Kelly on the keys, and Fish's keening voice presiding over all like a dark storyteller who knows how this will end.

This is also a long song (as most of the six tracks on the album are), over eight minutes, and at the two minute mark Steve Rothery pulls off a beautiful and agonising solo which takes us really into what would again be categorised as part two of the song. This is carried on a more restrained guitar part, sparkling keys and Fish tells of how the girl would ”Perform to scattered shadows/ On the shattered cobbled aisles”, Pointer's drums pealing out like the march of Fate. Another powerful solo by Rothery takes the song to its climax, as the parent promises ”Patience my tinsel angel/ Patience my perfumed child/ One day they'll really love you/ You'll charm them with your smile/ But for now/ It's just another Chelsea Monday.”

As the song comes to its end, Fish speaks as if to a mate, not singing, talking about the tragedy of the young girl's death at such a young age. ”What a waste!” he sighs. And Rothery's guitar takes the song to its sad conclusion, cutting off suddenly as we hit the closer, and indeed standout of the album.

Fast, powerful, savagely satirical, angry, brilliant, “Forgotten Sons” must surely go down as one of the best anti-war songs to have come out in the last few decades. Expressly addressing the conflict in Northern Ireland (”He'll maim you, he'll wound you/ He'll kill you for a long-forgotten cause/ On not-so-foreign shores”) it became one of Marillion's best-known and loved songs, with its acid rejection of war and hatred, its graphic depiction of life on the streets of Belfast and other Northern Irish cities, and humanising the conflict through the eyes of those who suffered through it.

Mostly carried on Kelly's deceptively upbeat keyboard melody, it's peppered throughout with stabs of sharp and angry guitar from Rothery, and a great solo about a third of the way through, where his guitar seems to be crying with the massed voices of all those who have lost loved ones over the thirty-odd years of "The Troubles". Then, everything drops away to leave only Trewavas' lonely, insistent bass, standing like a sentry on duty, for a few seconds as the tension builds. Then Rothery and Pointer hammer the point home as Fish spits out his modified Lord's Prayer, which really needs to be reproduced in full. And here it is:

”Minister, minister, care for your children!/ Order them not into damnation/ To eliminate those who / Would trespass against you/ For whose is the kingdom, the power, the glory/ For ever and ever amen!” Just to underline the point, all instrumentation stops then, and we hear a voice cry shakily ”Halt! Who goes there?” to which the creepy, hissing reply comes, ”Death!” and the soldier then breathes ”Approach, friend.” Hard-hitting is not the word. But that's nothing compared to the litany Fish unleashes as Rothery and Pointer smash back in, the song reaching its powerful climax with Kelly's organ blasting out like the accusing voices of the dead, and Fish sings ”From the dole queue to the regiment/ A profession in a flash/ But remember Monday signings/ When from door to door you dash!”

Having been so impressed with the lead single (which isn't on this album) “Market Square Heroes”, I was eager to see if the album could live up to its promise. I remember having listened to it the first time, and I was so gobsmacked, my breath was literally robbed from me and I lay on my bed, just completely dumbfounded, unable to speak or breathe, just static in time. I was frozen like an insect in amber, and it actually took me several long minutes before I could move or do anything. What I ended up doing was flipping the record over, putting the needle down and playing the whole album through again, the entire thing. And then a third time. I have never done that with any album, before or since.

It might seem facetious to be saying this now, in a world where such opuses are perhaps a little commonplace, where people can record their own music in their bedrooms today and be on YouTube tomorrow, perhaps seeing a successful music career in a very short time. But back then, and even now, I think such genius - and yes, it was genius, and nothing less - was and is in short supply. There are of course great prog rock bands now, new and old, but I still believe no one album has ever truly affected me the way “Script for a jester's tear” did, that day in March 1983, when I realised for the first time that there was the pop chart stuff I had been listening to mostly up to then, and then there was real music.

There's no way I could ever deny that this album changed my life, in ways I could never even have begun to imagine. If it wasn't for Marillion and the discovery through them of progressive rock and other genres outside that, I might never have developed the true love for music that I have to this day, and I truly believe I would be a very different person in many ways. I owe those five guys a huge debt of gratitude, one which I will never be properly ever able to repay. I hope that in some way, this review will go a little of the way towards giving them back what they gave to me, the priceless gift of appreciation of true music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Script for a Jester's Tear
2. He Knows You Know
3. The Web
4. Garden Party
5. Chelsea Monday
6. Forgotten Sons

Rating: 10/10

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018