Marillion were facing oblivion. Then they made This Strange Engine and found a way forward

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11-02-2025

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When it was released in 1997, This Strange Engine marked a different kind of Marillion. No longer afforded big-label advances and plush West End studios, they were forced to get creative in a different way. Steve 'H' Hogarth, Steve Rothery and Mark Kelly looked back with Prog to mark the recent deluxe reissue.
It's very late when Marillion's Steve 'H' Hogarth steals down the stairs in the half-light. Something has woken him from a dream; the memory of something. His father, he thinks. He grabs a sheet of paper and starts writing. 'All the words came quickly in the middle of the night,' he says. 'I woke up, wrote it all down, went back to bed, then got up in the morning, read it and thought, 'Holy shit!' It was all sort of rhyming and had a certain nature. God knows where it came from, but it came more or less fully formed.'
Those two sides of paper would become the title track and a defining moment of the band's ninth studio album, This Strange Engine. 'I think it was an attempt to tell my father that I'd finally realised what he'd sacrificed for me,' H says. 'Giving up a life at sea to come back and be there for his family. I had the lyrics framed and gave it to him for his birthday, before it was ever really set to music. I think it made him really proud of the album, bless him. He used to sit there with his headphones on, listening to it.
'So I had those lyrics in place by the time we got to the studio, and I realised that I could hang certain sections of it on to the thing the band were doing. Things developed really quickly after that.'
In 1996 Marillion were caught between a rock and a hard place. Dropped by EMI –even after delivering the sublime Afraid Of Sunlight album – and now in the throes of a three-record deal with the independent Castle Communications label, there were suddenly new things to adapt to. The recording budgey was reduced (Mark Kelly: 'We got a £100,000 total advance, down from £250,000 per album with EMI'); there were stricter delivery deadlines; and, for the first time in a long time, the band found themselves unable to pay their way.
'The first three months of '97, we had no wages,' says Kelly. '[Manager] John Arnison came to us and said, 'Sorry guys, there's no cash.' I assume it's because we were waiting for the second half of the advance to come in once the album was released. That was the worst year financially that we ever had. We'd got used to being able to pay ourselves a wage.'
'When you work with that kind of label, they have different distributors in each territory,' says Steve Rothery. 'Some of those distributors did a great job, and others did not. You see your sales go from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands, and that has an impact on band morale, obviously.
The Estonia turned over and sank. The underside was red but looked pink in the moonlight… this darkly beautiful moment in this extreme tragedy
'Also, the money Castle paid us wasn't enough to run the band. There came a point where I thought I was going to have to sell my house, because there just wasn't enough income.
'And then John – who'd gone off to work for Hit & Run Music Publishing [Genesis, Phil Collins] and was covered financially – suggested that we needed to get part-time jobs to stay afloat.'
Arnison wanted the band to do something else for six months of the year. 'Ding! Wrong thing for a manager to say,' Rothery adds. 'We wanted to do a university tour. He said, 'Oh no, you can't do that; nobody does that any more.''
Kelly says: 'And then we fired him not long after that.' And Rothery adds: 'Then I booked a university tour.'
In an ever-changing landscape, Marillion had learnt to do something very few of their peers ever managed – adapt and survive. And not just survive; thrive, artistically speaking at least. This Strange Engine was the end of one thing and the start of something new.
It was the end of private cars picking band members up, and of photo sessions in plush West End studios; it was the start of a tightening of belts that would permeate through album artwork and things like tour support. But even in this state of flux, the band were happy and hopeful.
While it would be the first album they'd produce themselves, they still felt they had the songs in place and something to offer. In retrospect, This Strange Engine was something of a curate's egg – good in parts – and the good and bad parts depend on which member of the band you're talking to.
The fans asked what we'd need to make it work and we said something like £50,000 – and they raised £60,000
One song that's endured live and in the memory is Estonia, made even more remarkable because it's true. Paul Barney is the British survivor of the sinking of the cruise ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994, which killed 852 people. H was on a plane flying back to London from Stockholm when he found himself sitting adjacent to Barney – who had been there filming a documentary about his experience – and they fell into conversation.
Barney had been asleep on a bench in the ship's restaurant and woke up when he fell off the bench because the ship was no longer level. 'He climbed up the ceiling, which at that point was vertical,' says H. 'Climbed up all the electric wires, like it was a ladder. Somehow he managed to end up on the deck. The ship kept rolling one way and the other. He saw an awful lot of people falling away, going to their deaths.
'He got up to the front of the ship and he could see life rafts in the water some way off. He had to pluck up the courage to jump – it was like jumping off a house. He got to this raft with this tent affixed to the top, managed to get in – and a wave hit it and trapped him upside-down inside. Unbelievable. He managed to swim out, climb onto the upturned base and clung on for five hours.
'And as he and some other survivors were holding on, the Estonia turned over and slowly sank below the waves. The underside of it was red but looked pink in the moonlight. The guy next to Paul said, 'Wow, isn't that beautiful?' And he had to admit it was. This darkly beautiful moment in among this extreme tragedy.'
I steamrolled that song through, to the general derision of Steve, who I think hated it. Probably still does
Downsizing labels, self-producing, firing their manager... but it wasn't all gloom for the band on the business side. One of the excellent extras on the album's latest reissue is a live set from the Orbit Room, Grand Rapids in 1997.
'That was a good show – that was a good tour!' says H. 'The funny thing about playing the States is that we only do clubs there. There's a club in Boston called The Paradise. When I joined the band we played it; and we're still playing it now, 35 years on.'
There would have been no tour at all if it hadn't been for an enterprising American audience who crowdfunded to get the band across the Atlantic. 'They asked us what we'd need to make it work and we said something like £50,000 – and they raised £60,000,' says Kelly.
'We ended up touring there for about six weeks. We were able to play more shows than we would have otherwise, and it was pretty well attended too, because of the publicity that we had around how the tour was funded. It turned on a lightbulb in my head about crowdfunding and how we could keep the band afloat in the future.'
That was still a few years off, and before then the band would learn to reinvent themselves once again.
Mention the tumbling 80 Days and for H it conjures up memories of preparing to play the Town And Country Club (now The Forum) in London, and looking out of the high dressing room window onto the queues of fans below.
'I wanted to write a song for them,' he explains, 'to let them know that we don't take them for granted standing out there in the cold. It was partly about that, and it was partly about touring and how that changes you.'
They were just looking at us agog: 'Why are these white guys playing this terrible music?'
'It's just not very Marillion – it's not a favourite,' says Kelly. 'It's a bit singer- songwriter for me, the strumming guitar and vocal and not much else. And it's got that really naff Penny Lane horn solo by me that's best forgotten about!'
What about the samba-infused Hope For The Future? 'Ian Mosley was playing this rhythm,' says H with a chuckle, 'and I had my Talking Heads hat on. I really steamrolled that song through to the general derision of Steve, who I think hated it. Probably still does.'
''Hate' is a strong word,' says Rothery. 'But we tried four different pieces of music with that lyric and the one we finished up with was my least favourite, unfortunately. There was a version we did that was quite James Taylor. That was lovely, but it didn't excite H...'
One thing they can all agree on is that playing Hope For The Future in front of a South American audience was a mistake. 'I remember thinking, 'They're going to love this, because it's got a bit of a samba to it,'' Kelly says. 'They were just looking at us agog: 'Why are these white guys playing this terrible music?''
He's all about Pink Floyd and floaty dresses… I'm a bit more Devo, Massive Attack and samba… It's not necessarily pleasant
'Oh, yes,' says Rothery with a sigh. 'We played it in São Paulo and the look on the faces of the crowd was just pure disbelief. 'Why is this English progressive rock band murdering one of our rhythms?' It was painful.'
'What you have to remember,' says Hogarth, 'is there's such a broad range of influences in this band. With Rothers it's all about Pink Floyd and girls in floaty dresses. And with me it's a bit more Devo, Massive Attack and some samba – so we're always pulling against each other.
'It's not necessarily pleasant when you're writing; but it's the tension, you know, the creative tension that often creates the interesting things and makes us Marillion.'