You said you’d never let it happen again
You spend your money and you’re deeper in
Your fair-weather friends call two by two
To let you know what’s wrong with you
When Fish left Marillion, at first I was devastated and then like every good teenager caught up in a divorce I took sides. He was my hero and idol, so were they, but to a slightly lesser extent. Then they got in an English bloke with floppy hair, Fish did a bit of a bitter interview in Metal Hammer* and I just didn’t want to know about any new stuff they might be bringing out; especially when their last studio LP was the masterpiece that was Clutching At Straws. So when Marillion released Hooks in You on 24 August 1989 I didn’t buy it. Hell, it even had photos on it rather than a fantastic Mark Wilkinson creation** and they didn’t release a picture disc version. Pah! What did I care?! I was Sooo over them.
I lasted 19 days.
I was a bit nonplussed by Hooks In You, which was totally atypical of the forthcoming Season’s End, Marillion had released a straight-out rocker. No real keyboard swirls, no dark references to puppet shows / lager / white feathers / straws (short, long or indifferent). This was an entirely different beastie. It had that open guitar and keyboard chugging sound^ that I associated more with the likes of FM and Magnum than Marillion and when Steve Hogarth started singing, grudgingly I had to admit very well, it was about a hot ball-breaking chick. But he sang about it directly rather than couching his terms in polysyllabic metaphor and obliqueness – very strange, I could never see it carrying on.
Listening today Hooks In You is a bit of a curio, Marillion had never done anything like that before, or since (to my knowledge) ripped out a pretty straight forward AOR rocker. A very good way to draw a line under the Fish years and begin again, this really was something different, albeit with the same band name. Is it any good though? well …
We get two mixes of ‘Hooks In You’ on the 12″, the 7″ mix (confusingly) and the ‘Meaty Mix’ – which I object to on vegetarian grounds. The latter is by far the better for my money as there is a bit more guitar growl and bite for your money. Unfortunately it has to be said that the production by the band and Nick Davis, is really dated – the drums and keys just have that certain 80’s quality, in fact the drums sound alarmingly like ‘White Wedding’ in the intro. If you can see your way past that it’s a decent enough track, well-played but a bit light in terms of feeling. The other B-side was the non-LP track ‘After Me’, which was a bit more old school Marillion. I like ‘After Me’ a lot more that the A-side actually, Hogarth’s lyrics are clever and the track soars and swells – in fact give it a sonic tweak here and there and it you could pass it off as a Coldplay track; but in a good way.
Interesting curio but I wouldn’t bother buying Season’s End when it came out two weeks later.
I lasted 23 days.
You said you’d never let it happen again
You spend your money and you’re deeper in
452 Down.
P.S – From The Mighty Scrap-book of Rock ^^ – when Marillion announced their new singer in Kerrang!
*God that was a terrifying magazine – lots of spiky-looking middle Europeans in bands called things like HellGore and festivals called VomFest ’89 held in places like Mannheim.
**probably involving a jester stealing a script from a drunken magpie, whilst being chased by a drummer boy, whilst a man in an Anglo-Saxon helmet just looks on.
^you know where the keys go ‘Duh-duh, Duh-duh-duh’ in the foreground over the top of the guitar. Sorry if I’m being too technical here.
^^think Pinterest but with added wood pulp.