Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Steve Hogarth of Marillion, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, April 2018. Photograph used with the kind permission of Gordon Fleming.
It has been a long time since Marillion stepped over the Merseyside border, that near international boundary that separates the city of Liverpool from the U.K., not built in myth but in the very nature of its home grown and adopted sons and daughters strength of purpose and identity. As Steve Hogarth was heard to say during one enjoyable exchange of banter and nicely placed heckle, “We really are in another country now”.
It is a country to which Marillion as a collective haven’t stepped in to for a while, but the memory is strong, the recording of influential albums, Steve Hogarth’s Christmas vigils inside many a church and the abiding fan in pews waiting excitedly for the serene songs and covers from the front man of the band. The memory is long and the night at the Philharmonic eagerly anticipated by the local fans and those who always make the journey round the country with them, from new fans to those who fondly know their linage within the genetic of the history of the group, this was a night that the Philharmonic Hall could not have expected but which readily embraced.
The borders repealed for the night, the influx of the hardy fans who braved the miles between home and the banks of the Mersey shore, all were to be congratulated for the positive way in which the greeting and warmth was like a tidal wave of emotions, the haunting visual echoes, the sense of prosperity and Time to which Steve Hogarth, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Steve Rothery and Ian Mosley played with elegance and the pursuit of one night greatness in the hardest city to conquer, but one that never lets you go when you put the audience first; all this was the lofty ideal attained and for the butcher, the baker, the noise control officer, the school assistant and the long suffering civil servant, this was a return that was nothing short of exceptional.
In songs taken from the critically acclaimed latest album F.E.A.R., across nuggets of gold from the past such as Quartz, The Party, Season’s End, the astonishing beauty of Afraid of Sunlight, The Great Escape and This Strange Engine, Marillion came to Liverpool, paid homage at the gates of the city, gave dutiful and sincere deference to John Lennon and left the stage having fulfilled the Liverpool fans of the band most gracious wish, to come back once more and give the performance, arguably of a life time.
A welcome back to Marillion that has been long in the waiting, but was worth every agonising moment for the fans of the band, proving once more there is nothing to fear except the possibility of not having such a group play in the music capital of the country again.
Ian D. Hall