(Aberystwyth from Constitution Hill – Andrew Jephson via Unsplash)
It’s the last day of April 1984. I’m in Aberystwyth, Wales, one month away from finishing my postgraduate diploma in librarianship, when my radio speakers erupt with “Assassing,” the debut single from Marillion’s second album Fugazi. Heavy guitar riffs introduced the song as singer Fish declared: “I am the assassin / with tongue forged from eloquence.”
“I’m a Market Square Hero” (“Market Square Heroes” – Marillion)
Since I was a fan of 1970s “prog rock” bands such as Genesis, King Crimson and Yes, I was attracted to Marillion’s sound, especially when I purchased the 12” of their debut single “Market Square Heroes,” the B-side of which included the seventeen minute epic, “Grendel.”
The previous year I’d purchased their debut album Script for a Jester’s Tear and had seen them play a raucous and energetic homecoming concert at Edinburgh’s Playhouse. Compared to the ethereal sound of Script, Fugazi was heavier and more guitar based. Fish’s lyrics on both albums were florid, poetic and Baroque.
Fugazi’s themes were much darker. From today’s perspective, I have to say that some of the songs are extremely problematic. “Punch and Judy,” referencing the violence in traditional children’s puppet shows, was a story of a disintegrating marriage that ends with the male protagonist saying “Slip her these pills and I’ll be free.” The topics of the other songs included divorce, betrayal, seduction and manipulation. The title track then added to this sense of personal decay, a sense that the post-war security my generation expected was coming to an end.
“On the sacrificial altar of success, my friend” (“Assassing” – Marillion)
“Assassing” resonated with me because in the six months I had been in Aberystwyth, my outlook on my future had completely turned around. When I had arrived the previous October, my plan was to leave as soon as I got my diploma and start looking for work. I had not anticipated that I would find romance. That’s what happened, though. My girlfriend was in the first year of a four year degree and I wanted to stay and work in Aberystwyth until she finished. I went against all that my family wanted because I would not sacrifice my love for her to material prosperity.
My desire went against the spirit of the age. The only measure of value in Thatcher’s Britain was if you were profitable to another. This meant giving up your truth and conviction. Neither I nor my girlfriend wanted to do that. In that, we were like the 140,000 miners who went on strike in March 1984 to stop their pits closing and preserve their communities. The violence between police, pickets and strikebreakers dominated the headlines. The darkness of Fugazi’s lyrics mirrored the times. Nothing expresses the despair better than the title track, “Fugazi,” the album’s final song.
“This World Is Totally Fugazi” – (“Fugazi,” Marillion)
At US bases in the UK, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had permitted President Reagan to deploy nuclear-armed Cruise missiles to counter the USSR’s SS20s. Women’s peace camps had sprung up at the bases to protest the missiles – my girlfriend was one of the protestors. The title track of “Fugazi” begins with another failed romance, but it turns into a description of the last years of the Cold War where many thought a nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was inevitable.
“Fugazi” begins with the protagonist who’s described as “A bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule.” Fish’s lyric accurately described my twenty-something self then. I would later on know the heartbreak of my relationship unraveling, and then other songs on the album, like “Jigsaw” became very relevant. I was indeed,“picking up the pieces on the ricochet.”
“Fugazi” describes a journey on London’s Underground in terms of alienation as commuters with their Walkmans use them as “an aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation.” People were becoming accustomed to isolating themselves from their neighbors. Now we can do that even more completely with smartphones and VR.
The protagonist sees those commuters as “nine to fives with suitable ties.” While he is “cast adrift as their sideshow,” by contrast the protagonist sees himself “drowning in the real.” I identified with these lines in that summer of 1984 as I looked for work and waited for my girlfriend to return.
As the song continues, its vision widens from the protagonist’s personal travail to see the return to an earlier more violent age. Fish describes “a son of a swastika of ‘45 parading a peroxide standard.” Violence as a political tool was already a feature of industrial disputes, such as the miners’ strike.
The song reaches the final layer of pessimism as it contemplates the possibility of nuclear annihilation. “Pandora’s box of holocausts / gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens ...
the season of the button … the penultimate migration.”
Faced with such power in the hands of leaders who care nothing for their citizens, Fish offers the bleak conclusion, “This world is totally fugazi.”
“Where are the Prophets?” (“Fugazi” – Marillion)
Despite all that has gone before, hope is not entirely extinguished. The last lines of “Fugazi” point to a possible alternative, “Where are the prophets / where are the visionaries / where are the poets to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary?”
In 1984, this was our call to become creative visionaries, to imagine and work towards a world that is peaceful and humane, resisting the lure of lies, violence and power. Although my then girlfriend and I went our separate ways, the vision that these lines of “Fugazi” convey has remained with me ever since.
Today, it finds its expression in the creation of Little Feline Press. The darkness that the year 1984 heralded has grown even thicker in 2024. Yet the desire to live my own creative truth and so encourage others to do the same is now something I can begin to put into practice. Then and now, my aspiration remains, “Where Life is Art.” Out of its darkness, Fugazi stirred my spirit to reach for an alternative and that is why it remains an album I listen to forty years later.
For more on Marillion check out https://www.marillion.com/
Originally from London, Phil Kemp now resides in Iowa City, IA. Phil is a published poet, whose poems have been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine and featured in Iowa City's “Poetry in Public” program as well as a novelist and essayist. Phil owns his self-publishing company, Little Feline Press and writes “The Little Feline” on Substack. Little Feline Press is found on these platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.