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Clutching at cash

From page 14 of Classic Rock Magazine July 2003

Cover of July 2003 issue.

Marillion deny hustling their fans for money.

MARILLION VOCALIST STEVE Hogarth has been talking about the band’s latest plans to involve fans in a quest to expand the group’s audience. The follow-up to 2001’s ‘Anoraknophobia’ album will be released via www.marillion.com early next year as a limited-edition Campaign Version double set, with a single disc in the shops at a later stage. The additional revenue will be used to fund a radio marketing campaign. But with Marillion’s fans already having paid the costs for a US tour in 1997, and pre-ordered their last studio album to cover recording costs, Hogarth feels no shame in asking fans to help again: “We weren’t thinking how we could screw some more money out of the fan base, the fans have actually hustled the living shit out of us to do it again,” he insists. “It’s easy to paint this picture of Marillion as stony broke, totally screwed and on their uppers; it’s almost as though you have do that to justify going to your fans for support.” The band began writing the new album in January 2002 and, as Hogarth reveals, progress has been slow: “At times I get terribly frustrated,” he says. “I could make another solo record in the time it takes Marillion to get a bloody high-hat sound. That kind of attention to detail ultimately brings its rewards, but sometimes I sit there, singing a verse for the fiftieth time, thinking, oh, for Christ’s sake... just record it!”