All Access Magazine Kim Thore (AAM): Well it’s Friday the 13th, but superstitions aside things are looking very good for Marillion, you’ve enjoyed both critical and commercial success. I’m sure there are thousands of girls out there named “Kayleigh,” you’ve sold millions of records, and you’ve an entry in the Guinness book of world records. After 25 years, can you tell our readers what this journey has been like both for you and the band?
Mark Kelly (MK): Actually, I’m embarrassed to admit it’s been more than 25 years! For me it’s been 28 years and for Steve Rothery (Marillion guitarist) it’s been 30. So yea! A long haul to be sure. I didn’t expect to be doing this for a job after so long! It’s one of those things where you start something when you’re in your early twenties, expecting it to last a year or two…”well I’ll give it a go for a year or so and then think about getting a proper job…” So it’s strange to think about it in those terms, since it’s been quite a long time. It’s had it’s ups and downs, of course, Through it all we’ve had a string of hit albums, and sold millions of records and then we went through a lean time in the mid-nineties when it started to look less and less viable that we were going to be able to continue in the way that we had been. It was the internet that saved us, really. Wait a second… I’m afraid I’m rambling on a bit. Have I answered your question?
AAM: No, you’re doing quite well. You were talking about how your journey had been in the nineties, and I want to come back to the internet later on.
MK: Well that’s it, really. The internet saved us; it rejuvenated us as a band, both commercially and financially we’re more secure than we were. From the media’s point of view we have this reputation as being “internet pioneers.” Last night we played in Berlin and the promoter told us that there were twice as many people there last night than were there when we played the same venue a year ago, so from a live performance perspective it’s definitely getting better for us, although we are suffering the same slump in CD sales that everyone else is experiencing, on the whole it’s been quite good for us.
AAM: And you thought you’d only be doing this for a year or two!
MK: Yea, and now I’m not even sure if there is anything else I can do!
AAM: Exactly! I think you’re probably stuck, Mark!
MK: Absolutely! I’m otherwise unemployable!
AAM: Then you’re definitely going to have to tough it out! Let’s talk about the band’s music for a moment before we continue with our discussion of business. Stylistically, there has been an evolution of the band’s music over the years, both with the “changing of the guard” (Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth replaced Scottish singer/songwriter Fish in 1989 after the band’s fourth studio album), and in terms of its natural evolution. Has the band made a concentrated effort to look at what they are creating musically? What I’m asking, I suppose, is what is the creative process like for Marillion?
MK: Yea, you’re right. I think that even if the band hadn’t changed singers in the late Eighties, and remember the other four of us have remained the same, I think we would have evolved anyway. I remember when Steve (Hogarth, the bands vocalist) joined the band there was some criticism of what people thought was a change in direction because of his joining us, as if anything that had changed was only the result of Steve’s influence. I think that it was unfair that people were being critical of what we were doing and blaming Steve for it, which happened a lot, actually. It wasn’t fair because we wanted to move on and develop anyway. But then, it’s not really a conscious thing where we sit down at each writing session and say “ok what are we going to do this time to reinvent ourselves.” We’ve never done that. What we’ve done is a more subconscious thing, influences creep in which you can hear in the music. It’s funny; when you listen back to something after about five years you can hear the influences of that particular time in our music. It’s sort of been absorbed by osmosis or something, but at the time we aren’t aware of it. But when you look back you can see it.
AAM: It’s all a part of your “sonic scrapbook.”
MK: Exactly! When you listen to what we were doing in the early nineties, it is similar, in its way, to what others were doing during that time period. Unless you live in a vacuum you are going to absorb and be influenced by what is going on around you, musically and in every other way, actually.
AAM: The band is renowned for having an incredibly loyal following. I’ve heard many stories of people traveling immense distances to see a show, even crossing oceans from what I’ve heard, myself included, I guess, since I’ll be coming to Montreal . I find that very interesting, especially given the current economic climate, and its effect on the music industry, and arts and entertainment overall. Do you think this kind of dedication is driven by the close fan involvement you have created via the website, pod casts and the conventions, or are your fans just better at managing their bank accounts, because I find that quite awe inspiring.
MK: I think what you said about managing their bank accounts is true (laughs). The age demographic definitely helps. Our fans are largely not teenagers with no bank account. Many of our fans seem to be in well paid jobs and influential positions, actually. Of course if you go back twenty years they weren’t. They’ve grown up with us. Many of them are very successful at what they do and choose to spend a part of their expendable income on Marillion, which is great for us, you know! (laughs)
We do have fans that will travel HUGE distances for the Marillion conventions. We have traditionally done the conventions in either the UK or Holland, but that hasn’t stopped people from coming from literally every continent except Antarctica. We’ve heard quite a few stories. I remember one guy who sold his drum kit so he could afford the plane fare to come to see us.
AAM: Now that’s dedication!
MK: Seriously! It’s really flattering and overwhelming, really, to have people feel that passionately about our music. I really can’t imagine that! Even if the Beatles reformed, which would be quite a trick, I probably wouldn’t go if I had to travel more than four hours. OK, maybe for the Beatles! (Laughs)
AAM: That would probably be worth the effort (laughs). Let’s go back to talking about the business side of Marillion for a moment. One of the first things you see on your page is a statement about the importance of the internet to Marillion. Was that something that you did out of necessity or was it just someone’s damn good idea?
MK: Well, it was actually a case of accidental discovery by me out of a sort of voyeuristic attempt to try to see what the fans were saying about us (laughs). There was a girl who came to the studio in Liverpool when we were working on Brave in the early nineties and she brought a huge stack of papers she had printed out from the Freaks digest, which was an email list run by fans. I don’t know if you remember that, but Jon was very active on it. People would send emails to the list and it would then be distributed out to all the other members. At that time there were about 1500 people on this list. I had never seen it, and thought “Wow! This is really interesting.” So I joined the list and lurked for about two years. Then one day I decided to blow my cover. I don’t even remember why, I’m sure someone said something outrageous that I felt I needed to address or something. There were mostly Americans on the list at that point, and that’s how the whole tour thing happened in 96-97 (During the tour for the This Strange Engine tour American fans raised over $60,000 in donations to help subsidize the bands touring the United States. Each fan who contributed received an autographed limited edition live CD of the bands show in Rochester, New York) . The fact that we raised $60,000 for that tour made me realize just how useful a tool the internet could become.
AAM: I’m impressed that you were lurking for that long without blowing your cover. I probably wouldn’t last 30 days.
MK: (Laughs) I know! I think I did quite well lasting that long actually!
AAM: So at that point you began to move away from the traditional “record company plus band equals success” model and thrive in an economic environment that is tricky at best.
MK: Yea, that’s true but there was never really a “master plan.” That sounds sinister, doesn’t it? (laughs) I think people tend to rewrite history to make it look like it was inevitable, that everything was planned. I have to admit that that wasn’t the case at all, really. The tour fund thing, for example, was started by the fans. We had very little to do with it. In the mid to late nineties we produced three albums in rapid succession, which we had never done before. We had left EMI and were signed to an independent label, and then realized that we had depended on record company advances to live and work, really. We had to produce more music in order to live, really. And at that point we were not making enough royalties to do that, we were basically just able to pay back the advances, but it was difficult to raise the money to record and produce. Of course the record company said “that’s ok, let’s just record another one!” We found ourselves on this horrible treadmill which wasn’t a pleasant experience. So when the record deal was up, and we had delivered the three records, the record company wanted to resign us because THEY were making money (laughs) but we weren’t making enough money to make us feel that it was a good relationship. Not only that but we weren’t even making enough money to try to raise the bands profile and promote our music the way we thought it needed to happen. The record company was quite happy with the 100,00 sales or whatever it was because on every album they were making twice what we were. It was at that point that I told the guys that what we really wanted was the money to do what we felt was in our best interest, not the record deal. So I suggested that we ask the fans to pay for the record in advance, and then find a distribution deal, which are almost always more favorable to the bands and we wouldn’t have the debt to the record company to pay back. So we decided to put it out there and ask the fans on the list. Out of the 6000 or so on the list at that point only 200 said “no.” So that was the green light and off we went.
AAM: Wow! That’s a great ratio. I imagine that at that point you knew you were on to something.
MK: Well to be honest we knew 6000 wouldn’t be enough, but we also thought that if we got the ball rolling it would increase, and it did. We ended up with about 13,000 the first time we did it, which was Anoraknophobia in 2001. It was a really successful business model for a midsized band like us with a following it made total sense, if you h
AAM: Plus that leaves you in total control of your own promotions, marketing and career which is very rare. With your latest release “Happiness is the Road” you also broke the mold by pre-releasing the album via the ptp networks in an attempt to deal with the piracy that is so prevalent now.
MK : I take an insider’s view of the piracy thing, I suppose. I would suspect that almost everyone who is into file sharing or whatever would admit to using at least one piece of pirated software. Everyone seems to have Photoshop for example, but no one seems to have paid for it (laughs) because most people don’t use it for work, they just use it to fix their family photos so they have a hard time justifying the 500 pound price tag, or however much it is now. So I’ve tried to keep an open mind about it. People will tell you that people who download music will eventually buy it if they like it or whatever. But it was still a difficult thing to convince the other guys in the band to go along with it because it meant releasing our music to the file sharing networks before the actual release date, which made people who had paid for the album in advance a bit unhappy, but we thought that once the CD is released it will happen anyway, so we just made it happen sooner than later because if we waited until MP3 versions of the album were available it wouldn’t have worked. We tried the Radiohead approach where we had the “honesty box” and people could pay what they felt it was worth. To be honest, though, I think that most people who paid were people who had bought the CD anyway.
AAM: So you dealt with the inevitable in a way that you could have more control?
MK: Yea. In some ways it was a success. For example we were able to collect 12,000 email addresses 8000 of which we didn’t already have. While that’s not a huge amount, it did increase our data base by about 15 or 20 percent, which is pretty good. Whether these people will actually buy anything is another question. We haven’t tested that yet, but on the next release we’ll email everyone and see what happens.
AAM: Well you see it in sales, but you also get the benefit of further developing your exposure, and this seems like an excellent way to track it.
MK: Absolutely. One of the unintended consequences was that it turned out to be a big story and we received a lot of press and a lot of media coverage. In fact, we received more coverage in Europe than we had in years. I’m sure that contributed to the ticket sales and making this tour more successful than previous tours. However, I’m convinced that we actually didn’t sell anymore CDs as a result, so I am now firmly on the side of “piracy is a bad idea.”
AAM: Well from a marketing perspective it makes sense though, because it allows you to do things to reach potential fans at a much more cost effective level.
MK: Yes, but to “monetize,” everyone seems to be using that word now and I’m not even sure if it is a word (laughs), or “cash in on” the whole piracy downloading thing., so the music industry is in a freefall. Personally I think the best solution would be to go to a subscription based system like Rhapsody, which we don’t have in the UK for some reason.
AAM: Really? That makes me sad (laughs)
MK: I know. I loved Rhapsody when I could get it. It has something to do with the UK licensing system. It’s interesting because communications technologies are sort of ubiquitous now. What’s the point of owning a piece of music when you can just listen to it on your cell phone or whatever? Of course, I personally don’t really get it. What’s the point of buying music if you don’t actually have a physical thing? Maybe it’s my age (laughs). SO I never really went for the I-tunes thing, although I believe that a subscription based system of music distribution is a good solution. Although, how the artist gets paid in all of this concerns me. In some cases you are talking about the artist getting pennies, or even fractions of pennies, once the record company, distributors, and everyone else gets their slice which is really worth it. Although with us, and because we don’t work with a record company, we could probably work a deal with a provider that would be worthwhile.
AAM: Yes, but you are in a rather unique position in that regard (laughs). I have a couple more questions, and then I’m going to turn the phone over to Jon so you two can talk about plans for Montreal. I think a lot of artists don’t really understand it’s a business. If there was one thing you could change about the music business today, what would it be?
MK: Wow! That’s a big one. I think that if there was a way to prevent people from stealing music, I would be very supportive of that. Finding a way to protect an artist's copyright would be a good thing. Then again, it’s not about going back to the old system. I love things like Rhapsody and the way it allows me to find and hear music that I otherwise would remain unaware of, it’s taken over from radio really. I haven’t listened to radio for years, actually. When I was a kid I remember listening to certain DJs because I know that they would play something that I would find interesting, and the internet has taken that away to a certain extent, and I think that that was an important thing that we don’t have as much now. It can be hard to find new music that’s really good, because there is just so much of it.
There’s something weird about what’s happened in the industry in the past 13 or 14 years. Back in the old days people got into music on the radio to find new interesting and exciting things. Somewhere along the line, though, the business people took over and I think they realized that if you just play anything enough times, people will begin to like it, which is another conversation I suppose, it doesn’t have to be innovative, it doesn’t have to be fantastic, and sometimes I think it doesn’t even have to be good, it can just be the same old rubbish as long as they’re making money. It seems like the people who have a real passion for music don’t have those jobs anymore. There are no risk takers. I think that now because the technology is so cheap that anyone with no musical skill can churn out something that sounds like a song. I think that if you take away the singer on 99 percent of what you hear on radio that you would be hard pressed to find anything to distinguish one band from another. They all sound the same.
AAM: I have a friend who is a DJ at a local station who works the late night shift. Of course all of it’s prepackaged. I found out that when I was listening to him on the radio, he was actually not on the radio, but was instead at home listening to himself on the radio because the whole show was prerecorded. For some reason I had a big problem with that.
MK: Yea, that is fairly ridiculous, isn’t it? Although I guess I should admit that most of my playing on the new album was recorded at home (laughs).
AAM: (Laughing) Well, that’s different isn’t it?
MK: I suppose, but people find it shocking that I can make an album without actually going to our studio to do so, although I eventually do end up there (laughs)
AAM: One last question, and then I’ll turn you over to Jon, I promise, because I know you two want to catch up. Time and time again Marillion has been able to get their fans to contribute to projects, pay in advance for albums that hadn’t even been written yet, and generally demonstrate a great deal of trust and belief in your band. What is the why and how of that?
MK: Well to use your term, they trust the “brand.” I think that’s pretty much it, really, although it’s hard for me to say for sure since I’m on the other side of that. I don’t think we’ve ever done an album that was a real turkey that had people saying “wow this is really terrible.” Of course there’s always going to be controversy about this or that, I think fans are like that sometimes. However, I think people have come to expect a certain quality, or standard, from our work, and some of these people have been with us for 20 years or longer, so they’ve already spent thousands of pounds (laughs) so what’s another twenty quid? (laughs) well not really, but I’m sure there is some of that. I think that it really is as simple as what you said. We’ve created a certain “brand identity” which that is associated with a certain quality of our work. As long as we continue to do that, I believe we will continue to carry on successfully. We have a hardcore fan base of about 15-20,000 fans who provide the majority of our income because they buy everything we do, more or less, and then there are another 60-70,000 who make up the other 10 percent of our sales who buy things as it appeals to them. Over the past 5 years or so this has remained fairly consistent. We have a fairly low turnover in fans. Once people are in, they’re in (laughs) although recently we’ve noticed that we have older fans, who had moved on to other things, returning to the fold, so to speak, which is a good sign, I think (laughs).
AAM:I guess I’m an example of one of those who returned to the fold, and that’s actually because of Jon, because he sent me the lyrics and the YouTube link to “Splintering Heart” from the “Somewhere in London” DVD, and I was completely floored, so thank you for that (laughs). At any rate, I am going to turn the phone over to Jon so you two can figure out the Montreal thing. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.
MK: No thank you, Kim, I’m really looking forward to seeing you and Jon in Montreal.
*Interview Transcribed by Jon Epstein
