- [on being in a studio next to Motörhead in 1986] Have you ever tried to compose next door to a bunch of whizzed up, unwashed, leather clad loonies who sounded like they were laying the foundations for a great public building, not making music?
- MTV is a disaster. If I grew up watching MTV I probably wouldn't like music.
- [on the album Holidays in Eden] I got pissed off at the speed of the recording - we recorded and mixed it in 10 weeks - which might be a long time for Spice Girls but is certainly nowhere near long enough for us!
- By the time we got to Hook End to record Holidays (Holidays in Eden) with Chris Neil I was a bit nervous. Any guy who had produced artists as bizarre as Céline Dion, Leo Sayer and Sheena Easton was, in my view, a questionable choice.
- [on Radiohead's decision in 2007 to let fans choose how much to pay for their new album] People forget Radiohead were still number one in the album charts. They also say they weren't very successful because they only got an average of £2 per download. But they wouldn't have got £2 per sale from EMI, so in those terms it was actually a big success, and they still sold CDs.
- Google paid $1,600,000,000 to buy YouTube. They were buying the huge advertising revenue that YouTube generates. A large amount of the content that people visit YouTube for is music, much of it copyrighted. In my last quarterly PRS for Music statement I received 0.6p from YouTube. With over 10,000,000 views for Marillion's videos I'm wondering if there's more to come. Like many musicians, I rely in part on my PRS for Music income to live. If we are not going to be earning as much from traditional CD sales because people choose to get their music in other ways then it's only fair that the likes of Google share some of the fantastic profits they are making at our expense.
- We have got a bit of a reputation. I had a conversation with Noel Gallagher at a party once and said to him, 'I'm in a band but it's the most uncool band in the world - Marillion'. He went, 'Yeah, you're right.' Deadpan! Not even smiling.
- Everybody talks about Arctic Monkeys becoming huge on MySpace. That's bollocks, of course they didn't. They had a couple of tracks on MySpace and then a big record company push.
- The Internet is making it a level playing field for any band. Anyone who can play a song can enter and it hasn't been like that for a long, long time. So it's going to be good for music, it might not necessarily be good for the music industry.
- Most bands end up signing awful deals and even when you're an experienced musician who's had 20 years in the business they still put these deals in front of you and you just think, 'nobody in their right mind would sign this.'
- We don't use pre recorded tapes in our shows. There are a few places where it is obvious that loops and sequences are playing or some sound FX or samples are used (including some of the backing vocals which other bands who can afford it, like Macca (Paul McCartney), achieve by hiring additional backing singers) but that isn't the same as miming to backing tracks. The five of us all play all the time on stage as anyone who has taken the trouble to go see us knows.
- I have met Rick [Rick Wakeman] before, but I was chatting with him and his son Adam at a Travis gig. Adam was playing keyboards with Travis and Rick was there backstage. And because I've never really spoken to him properly I went up to him and I said, "Look, I just wanted to say that you're the reason I started playing keyboards." And Adam, his son, said to me, "You're the reason I started playing keyboards; I didn't listen to my dad at all!" That was quite cool.
- There's just something more interesting about Gabriel [Peter Gabriel]. Collins [Phil Collins]? I dunno. As a drummer he was great - it's a bit sad he can't play anymore - but as a singer he never really moves me, you know. There's something about the quality of a voice that's really important to me, even more than the words, actually.
- Tony Hadley, from Spandau Ballet, I was talking to him a couple of months ago and he said, "I don't ever spend time with my fans." He said, "I was with Fish and he invited loads of fans back to his hotel. I couldn't believe it!"
- It's fortunate that Fish left when he did, because the band was at its peak. We were able to survive him leaving. Had we been further down the road, not selling as many records, the departure of Fish would have seen the end of the band. We probably wouldn't have been able to make that transition. It was fortunate. We were pretty confident that we would carry on.
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