Having enjoyed huge success with Marillion and as a solo artist, Fish has decided it is time for the music to take a back seat. Throughout his career Fish has maintained that he was ‘a writer who could sing’ and has announced he will retire in 2018 to concentrate on writing, gardening and the possibility of some more acting. Prior to bowing out though, he has a few things to see through. Currently on the Farewell to Childhood tour, the final chance his fans will get to hear Misplaced Childhood live in its entirety. Music Life Magazine recently caught up with Fish in Herford, Germany prior to his show to chat about his plans.
Germany continues to play a big part in your professional and personal life. What is it about the country that attracts you?
I don’t know to be honest. I was taught German in school, but I was rubbish at it. I think I was about 12 years old when I first came here and I have always felt really comfortable in Germany. Later on, of course, in 1985 we [Marillion] recorded Misplaced Childhood at Hansa studios in Berlin. My first wife is also from Berlin. I love performing here, the audiences, the attitude towards music and the respect they have for the artists, it’s great. When I came out on the Fish heads tour we played around 70 shows in Germany and it was one of the best tours I have ever done.
I’ve been with my fiancé for over 5 years now and she is also German. I had considered moving to Germany, but the decision to retire meant taking stock of everything and it made more sense for us to be in Scotland, so she will move across later this year. She loves Scotland as much as I love Germany.
You’re currently on the Fairwell to Childhood tour, the last time fans will hear Misplaced Childhood live. Do you view this as the end of an era for Fish?
Yeah it is. Mainly because the album was so special to me on a number of levels. It was very autobiographical and it was also during a period where I was finding myself and my lyrical style. Misplaced Childhood was our breakthrough. Marillion were no longer a lower division band, we were starting to make waves. At the same time though, it was a double edged sword. In as much as it brought the fame and the money, it also brought in a lot of people we didn’t want to have around us. Also, the gang mentality we used to have kind of disappeared, it suddenly went from five guys in a band to five guys in a business.
Because I was the front man I was getting a lot of attention and I had a hard time dealing with my ego. Eventually, everything manifested itself in me feeling isolated within the band, I became a very unhappy person. I think what we needed was someone to grab a hold of the reigns to keep us together. In 1988 we could have done with a year off, unfortunately our manager at the time wanted to keep us on the road, mainly because he was making more money than the band.
In the end, I decided it was the manager or me who had to go, however, he had convinced the other band members that if he went I would take over the band and it would be only a matter of time before it would become Fish’s band. That was enough for them to make the decision for me to go. There was a lot of misinformation thrown around at the time. It took until 1991 before the whole thing was settled and it was a long time after that before we were able to sit down and talk again. We went through a pretty vicious divorce, but we’re still friends.
I suppose there had been a certain amount of naivety on our part. We were learning on the balls of our feet and to be honest I don’t particularly like fame. From an ego perspective it’s great when everyone is patting you on the back and telling you how great you are, but it’s how you deal with it. I dealt with it very badly, I was a complete asshole at times, I found it very hard. I didn’t have anyone to teach me, in fact Andy Field, my production manager at the time, was probably my saviour. He was the guy who would tell me when I was being an arse and when he said that I knew he was right and I took notice.
Your have always had a loyal following, given the fact that this is it for Misplaced Childhood, what sort of feedback have you had from your fans?
Considering we have changed a lot of the keys, I can’t sing like I could 30 years ago, the response has been brilliant. In fact I was talking with Mark Kelly [Marillion Keyboards] and we both agreed, if we had thought about it we should have made the key changes right at the beginning. When we were writing the album we used just to go into a room, the band would play something and I would sing. I wasn’t thinking that in 20 or 30 years time I was going to have to sing the same songs, I wasn’t trained as a singer either. If I had been it may have been different, but that’s just the way it happened.
I have never been a particularly great singer but I have had the soul and the passion to pull me through. These shows have been fantastic, getting up and doing the whole album again has been great.
You have released three re-mastered albums [Sunsets on Empire, Raingods with Zippos, Fellini Days] each containing three versions, which must have taken an immense amount of work?
I wanted to get the re-masters out this year, for them to be the definitive versions of the albums and hopefully be my legacy. I had always planned to include different versions of each one, the studio album, live and demos. The main reason was the songs have all been played at different periods throughout my solo career and played by different musicians over time.
Writing the sleeve notes has been really difficult and time consuming, but I wanted to put something together in an attempt to explain where I was at the time and where the songs came from. I had to do so much research to jog my memory, so thank God for the internet! The sleeve notes for the first three started off at around five thousand words. I’m dealing with Field of Crows at the moment and there were three line up changes within that album. I have had to draw on what was going on professionally at the time and also what was happening on a personal level as that’s where a lot of the lyrics came from. So far I’ve re-written it twice and I’m not finished yet. The sleeve notes to Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors and Internal Exile will be really hard. Vigil especially as it takes in the whole split, the press, the refocusing and the fresh start. I read back some of the notes and sometimes question how we managed to put an album together!
There is no time frame on when the remaining re-masters will be released, I would rather take my time and release something I am happy with.
Weltschmerzen [world pain] will be your final album, can you give us any more details on it?
There is not really much else I can say about it. At the moment I’m playing with a few ideas, but it’s at a really early stage. I had hoped to have been working on it by now but for various reasons I haven’t managed to achieve that. I have no idea when I will get it finished but the plan is for it to be out by May 2017 and then do some open air shows next summer.
Feast of Consequences was almost 6 years in the making and to be honest I think I surprised myself with how good the album was. After that I thought I may have one more album in me and decided on Weltschmerzen. I have been aware of the word Weltschmerzen for a long, long time and I think it represents where we are at the moment. I mean you only have to switch on the news and it is literally nothing but bad news, there seems to be an immense pain in the world and Weltschmerzen just sums it up for me.
You announced your plan to retire from music in 2018. What prompted your decision and what can we expect before you hang up your microphone?
I am now 58 and my recovery is not what it used to be and it’s getting harder to perform. I can’t do four shows in a row anymore so it’s three then a day or two off. Every time we take a day off the band still have to be paid, the crew still have to be paid, the bus has to be paid for and so on. The reality is I am never going to get two or three thousand people each night coming to my shows, which is what I need to tour comfortably. Also, I’ve got to have fun, I have to be up there because I want to be. I decided I needed to put an end game in place and I made the decision two years ago that I would step down in 2018.
The plan as it stands is to go out again for the 30th anniversary of Clutching at Straws at the end of 2017, which is a nice synchronicity as it was my last album with Marillion and ties nicely with my final solo album. 2018 we will go out again with the Farewell tour.
After that, I’ll get into the garden, write books, screenplays and maybe a bit more acting. If I need a live kick I can maybe do a small Fish Heads club tour.
Having been so busy for so long, do you think you will take to retirement easily?
Yes. Without a doubt. I’ll be honest, I’m on this tour at the moment and when we are driving round I look out the window at the plants coming into bloom. I can’t help but think “I’m missing this in my garden”. I should be in my greenhouse every day getting the seeds done, the chilis, the tomatoes. Instead I’ve had to get someone to do it for me. My fiancé and I both love being in the garden.
As far as the writing and the acting go, I don’t have anything planned. The open for business sign is up but nothing is in place yet. If something that interests me comes along, great. I’m no De Nero or Hackman, but I’d like to do some character roles that I can have fun with.
I think screenplays is where I am at though. It’s something I’ve tried to keep going, even through the music career. At the moment I have maybe four ideas running around my head. I don’t write anything down, I don’t have a pile of notebooks lying around. It’s a bit like monkeys writing Hamlet! I’ve put a couple of my ideas to some folk in the business and had extremely positive feedback. I need to find the time and the finances to to do it though, which hopefully the final album and the farewell tour will provide me.
Fish on the web: http://fishheads.club/
Fish live at X
Herford, Germany
April 17, 2016
All photos by Spike Porteous
©2016. Please DO NOT copy or use without permission.
Taking a final trip to North America maybe?