Marillion – This Strange Engine
“Carrying a message, a message of hope”
Marillion are often discussed as the originators of the concept of crowdfunding which is sort of true. It was actually two fans of theirs named Jeff Pelletier and Jeff Woods that should be credited for it (possible a few others as well). The internet was a relatively new tool back in the mid 1990s. In February of 1996 as Marillion were starting to plan their tour for This Strange Engine, Mark Kelly posted that the band wouldn’t be able to tour North America the following summer due to prohibitive costs. Castle Records was their label in the EU/UK but was distributed through Red Ant in the US…and they were working on bankruptcy so…no moolah for touring. At the time the primary way fans communicated with each other was the Freaks e-mail list and also Usenet (google it if you don’t know what it is…I don’t have time to explain the history of the internet). Some posts were made by fans suggesting that they would be willing to throw in money to help the band with funds to tour the US. I believe Jeff Woods set up the bank account for people to actually donate money. I’m going a bit on memory here, but I believe what happened was as people started donating funds, the Jeffs was concerned about doing this without the band being aware or without their consent etc. The funds continued to roll in from around the world. People that wouldn’t even be able to see the potential shows were donating funds in order for the band to tour another country. So, I believe they reached out the band or perhaps Mark Kelly was already aware of the efforts…either way I think the band tried to squash the idea not wanting to feel like they were taking a handout from fans. The fund however was taking on a life of its own, so after discussing it with the band, they decided to go with it and pledged that if they raised the $30000 set goal, they would match it the funds. As it turned out the fund ended up in the $60000 US range, and despite never expecting it to materialize, the band ended up putting together a 21 date tour of the US.
The TSE tour started in Glasgow on April 30 1997, a fitting location for a Scottish Heavy Metal band, and ended 70 plus shows later in Amsterdam on my 29th birthday, October 27 1997. After a jaunt through South America in June, the band made good on their promise and trekked their way across the North America starting in San Juan Capistrano California on August 24 and ending in Mexico City on September 27th . The Toronto show on September 4th was again at The Warehouse…now renamed The Government…different stage setup… same shitty sound. The band mixed up the setlist quite a bit on this tour with a highly variable set of songs played night to night. We got a nice mix of songs in Toronto but unfortunately Pete Trawavas found himself at the wrong end of a mugging the day of the show, and despite being the champion he is, the show as truncated down to only 16 songs. I think it tainted the band’s feeling about my hometown. Assault can have that effect on people. As a thank you to the fans who had supported the fundraising efforts to bring the band back to the US, the Rochester NY show was recorded and pressed to CD, only for those who contributed. So much in its infancy was the internet at the time, that I didn’t even know about the tour fund until well after the fact. I probably found out from someone standing next to me at the show who I decided to randomly start talking to. I do that a lot at concerts. My apologies to anyone who has had to stand beside me wondering why the fuck some dude they don’t know is talking to them. It is partly to be friendly and partly to secure my space when I have to leave to go to the bar or the bathroom…probably both…but then I have an actual connection to someone in my spot, if I’m not with any friends…because they don’t want to sand beside me either….Anyway the CD was titled Marillionrochester, and as promised it has never been repressed. It is now one of the more collectable official releases by the band on their Racket Records Label with less than 2000 made.
So the tour fund, being the first actual crowdfunding done by a band and often credited to Marillion, which I’m happy to give them, was actually the brainchild of Jeff Pelletier and Jeff Woods, who I think deserve some credit, since without them it wouldn’t have happened…at least to them….at that time…but it did and now they are all a part of modern music history. It was an idea that would not be utilized for touring again despite many requests by fans to repeat. They would however, several years later, following their split with Castle Records, revamp the idea in a whole new way that was all theirs, and truly innovative. It was something that allowed a freedom for the band to actually write and record without the need for any record company involvement at all. But it would be two more albums before that happened.
The other half of the formula for the band’s ultimate self-preservation was setting up their own record company, merch and distribution network. Racket Records is a direct to market approach the band set up in 1992 to sell products directly to fans, cutting out the middleman and maximizing profits. Something they needed to do in order to provide a sustainable business, in an increasingly challenging musical market. In the beginning it was the odd interesting live show – Live at the Borderline, Live in Caracas, Live in Glasgow plus a few other musician’s albums such as John Wesley’s Under The Red & White Sky and Michael Hunter’s River which was used as the intro music for the Brave live shows. In 1995 the band released The Making of Brave comprised of musical ideas and demos that was like a reverse engineering of the final album product. They would continue to do this with all of their releases as well, giving fans a glimpse into the process of making their albums via interesting snippets of music in various stages of development, musical ideas not used, and roads not taken on the journey to the final product. Marillionrochester was one of the early Racket Records releases as was the ambient take on the TSE album by Marillion and The Positive Light titled Tales From The Engine Room in 1998. This business model has become vastly successful for the band. Their ability for self-preservation is something that has been written about on many occasions…actually…seeing as I’m 35000 words into this history of the band I’d say this is now one of those occasions as well.
Since 1992 Racket Records has released over 220 titles. Everything from Christmas related fan club freebies to fully produced multi disc professionally shot and edited DVDs and CDs of live shows, as well as a slew of ever-changing merchandise. They also released 43 CDs under their Front Row Club (FRC) label. This series was a subscription service from 2002 – 2008 which offered soundboard or audience recordings of selected shows, warts and all without the post production one would ascribe to official releases. They were limited editions that were only sold until sold out (around 3000 per title I believe). The FRC program was discontinued in 2009 and the band moved to downloads of live shows for most of their gigs. The other great marketing idea the band embraced early on is Crash Course. This was originally a full length physical CD that was sent out to new fans for free as a sampler of the band’s output. The artwork and the material included changed periodically based on current releases. I believe there have been 9 versions of the series so far between 2001 and 2017. If you are ever looking for a way to bankrupt yourself, become an obsessive Marillion collector. There is more material than one could ever hope for and more than most could pay for…and it has kept the band afloat for much of their career as an independent cottage industry band. I’m sure there is someone out there who has reviewed and rated every release…If I get a book deal I’ll consider doing it, if it hasn’t been done already. One show I would like to give a nod to is Racket 9 which is one of my favourite Marillion live releases. It is titled Piston Broke: This Strange Engine Live in Europe 1997. It is a great double CD featuring all h era material and I love the double entendre of the title for a band struggling to survive while driving around Europe (i.e. Pissed And Broke and Piston Broke…as in a broken down car). I’m sure everyone has their favourites – I’ve got a whole bunch – I’ll post pics of the ones I have. I thought I had a few but it looks like I’ve got more than that…I don’t have a problem…you’ve got a problem…don’t judge me.
Edit courtesy of Richard Schwarz
Some corrections to the early back story.
“The idea actually began forming a year or 2 before TSE. After North America was passed over for the Brave tour, many of us were discussing via the Freaks list how we could prevent that from happening in the future. At this time, Jeff Woods, who was the proprietor of a very successful business and seemingly flush with money had suggested that he would be interested in potentially backing some Marillion concerts himself or getting fans to back/promote concerts. Not much came of these discussions and Marillion did in fact tour North America in 1995 in support of Afraid of Sunlight (although I believe they didn’t make it to the West Coast on this tour).
Fast forward to early 1997 (not 1996) and Mark Kelly, who was occasionally chiming in on the Freaks list, had laid out touring plans for the upcoming This Strange Engine album. He did not directly state that the band wouldn’t be touring in North America, but it was a notable omission in the plans he presented. So I chimed in and suggested to Jeff Woods that maybe now would be a time to see if fans could actually promote or back concerts a la the suggestion he had made a while before. Jeff Woods replied that he no longer had that type of spare cash around, but agreed that we fans should maybe be a bit proactive if we could. It was then that Jeff Pelletier suggested that if not actually booking/promoting shows, then maybe fans could simply donate to a tour fund to cover many of the expenses that the band would not be able to recoup through ticket sales. Jeff Woods then immediately jumped on the idea and said that he’d be willing to start an escrow fund that would collect money (and give everyone a refund if a tour didn’t happen) for a tour but only with the blessing of the band. It was then that Mark Kelly posted that he couldn’t see any harm in starting a collection – to see where it goes – and said Jeff Woods, who he knew and trusted, would have his blessing to begin collecting the money.
And the Tour Fund was born and very quickly started accumulating some serious cash. I think everyone was surprised at how fast this idea took off, none more so than Mark Kelly, who at one point posted that he better let the rest of the band know what was going on here.”
Recommended Follow Up: 1) Let everyone know the FRC/Racket releases you love 2) Let me know the corrections to the errors I have made in this post and I’ll fix.
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