CityLife

Marillion take Happiness On The Road

FOND MEMORIES: Marillion play here on November 14

MARILLION have survived endless speculation and have just released their 15th album.

Following lead singer Fish's departure in 1988 after just four albums, they were largely written off.

Steve Hogarth replaced him and the rest is history. 20 years later, and they are still going strong, having launched their own record label, Intact.

They have developed a unique relationship with their fans, thanks to the internet.

Marillion play at the Academy in November, one of their favourite venues.

CityLife caught up with bassist Pete Trewavas to find out about downloading their music, and what fans can expect from the tour.

Your new album, Happiness Is the Road is free. How does that work?
Well that is a good question that is quite involved. You are correct in saying that there is a free version of the album that can be found if you search on peer to peer networks and download sites. This in itself is nothing new - every album ever made from Dean Martin to Madonna has found its way on to these networks and this creates a fiscal problem that record companies and artists are aware of. In a nutshell 95 per cent of all music obtained via the internet is not paid for. What we decided to do was try and take back some control of this and make something good out of a bad situation.

We teamed up with a company called Music Glue who added a file we call a widget to the WMA music files (like MP3 files) for the album. Then flooded the internet with them a month before anyone else could have feasibly had a copy.

This widget locks the music file until you enter an email address. Also when you try to play the music a pop up video of us (the band) plays in which we explain that although you can down load the music for free, the music wasn't free for us to make. People are also guided to where you could donate to the album, buy the album or concert tickets if you like what you hear.

We are trying to appeal to the better nature of the casual downloader/freeloader with this approach with this, but as well as hopefully bringing people on board the email addresses have a practical use. We can build up a profile of exactly who is listening to us all be it for free, and also give them all a geographical location.

This is your 15th album, how do you keep the momentum going?
That is the strangest thing about being truly creative. When we started on this album we had seven songs left over from the last CD 'Somewhere Else' and initially we were going to write a couple more songs and put the lot out as a single album. I must admit that going back in the studio was a struggle for all of us and it wasn't until Mike our producer came down and sorted the studio out for recording that things really took off.

We were turning up every day and jamming and Mike was recording everything on a Pro-Tools hard disk recording system. He would then listen back and flag up what he thought was good or we would all instantly know when we were on to something and then fairly quickly we suddenly had lots of ideas for songs.

In fact to many for a single album. Then we got down to the hard work of arranging and recording backing tracks etc. Except that this time a lot of the backing tracks were already in some shape or form as they were properly at the time of creation. All of this combined made the writing and working together on the album a very happy and creative time for us, as you will hear.

What do you like about the Manchester and the fans?
I love Manchester. My Mum and Dad were both born there and I still have a lot of relatives in the area. It is a vibrant city and We always have a great atmosphere when we play. Not forgetting Manchester United, the team I have supported all my life. Also my Grandfather Charles Trewavas was the Town Clarke of Stretford during the war till 1962 I think it was.

What can fans expect from your set list on the tour?
This tour we take will be taking on board a hugely popular choice of varying the set from night to night. So we have essentially a large pot of songs mainly from the last five or six albums with obvious favourites, along with eight or nine songs from the new album and we will make a set list each night. Some nights may vary more than others but every night will be different by some degree.

What are your plans following the tour?
Well we start the tour on November 8 mainly round the UK then we go to Europe after Christmas for another six to eight weeks. We then have a break to rehearse for our world wide conventions, held in Holland and Canada. After that we get to mid spring and there is talk of us doing some acoustic shows for a few weeks followed by festivals in the summer. After that I expect we will reconvene in the studio for a lie down if nothing else.

Marillion play Academy 1 on Friday, November 14. £14. Call 0161 832 1111.