Marillion began as a Tolkien tribute and pioneered fan-funded records
A band from Aylesbury took its name from Tolkien's The Silmarillion, then trimmed it to Marillion. In the mid-1980s it scored a British number-one album with Misplaced Childhood. Long after the mainstream lost interest, loyal fans kept them going, and the group is credited as a pioneer of crowdfunded music.
Drummer Mick Pointer and bassist Doug Irvine split from a band called Electric Gypsy in late 1978 to form Silmarillion. Pointer says the name was shortened after the first concert at Berkhamsted Civic Centre on 1 March 1980; other accounts place the change in 1981, to dodge copyright trouble, when a singer known as Fish joined after an audition. Keyboardist Mark Kelly and bassist Pete Trewavas completed the classic line-up by 1982, and a session on the Friday Rock Show led EMI to sign them.
Their debut single, Market Square Heroes, came out in 1982 with a 17-minute epic called Grendel on its flip side. Straddling punk energy and old-school progressive rock, they became the most commercially successful band of the neo-prog wave. Fish, unhappy with Pointer's timing, had him dismissed in 1983, and three drummers came and went before Ian Mosley settled in that October.
Misplaced Childhood in 1985 took a more mainstream turn. Heavy radio play for Kayleigh pushed it to No. 2 in the UK and gave the band its only Billboard Hot 100 entry, while the album knocked Bryan Ferry off the top of the chart. The darker Clutching at Straws, about excess and life on the road, followed in 1987. Exhausted by touring, Fish blamed a manager taking 20 per cent of the gross and told the band to choose between them; they kept the manager, and his final show with them came on 23 July 1988.
Steve Hogarth took over in 1989, and his era produced a biggest hit, You're Gone, at No. 7 in 2004. Legal battles kept the two camps apart until 1999, but in 2007 Fish's old bandmates joined him in Aylesbury's Market Square for an emotional encore of their first single. The band has sold over 15 million albums, and its 2022 release entered the chart at No. 2.
Source: Marillion
