MARILLION - Misplaced Childhood (1985)

For better or for worse, the stories of Marillion and Fish will always and forever center around their biggest footprint in pop culture, made by Misplaced Childhood.  This record was lightning in a bottle; nobody involved would ever be as mainstream-popular or mainstream-“cool” again.  So, what’s it like listening to as someone who never heard a note of it until more than thirty-five years after release? 

 

Track One:  “Pseudo Silk Kimono”

I don’t know if it would have been immediately obvious that MP is a concept album not knowing that going in, but “Pseudo Silk Kimono” immediately casts itself as an intro rather than so much a song.  I don’t know if there’s much point in evaluating the track as a complete piece of music, which it very much is not.  I think there may be a little too much reliance in knowing the backstory – real-life Fish was coming down from an acid trip shivering in Steve Rothery’s house wrapped in a kimono-thing he’d borrowed when he started coming up with the concept for the record.  Otherwise it’s a solid keyboard part playing while Fish throws around weird poetic turns of phrase and doing both his somewhat grating high-pitched thing and some spoken word.  A little longer than it needs to be, a little overwrought.  Okay intro track, I guess.  Being a concept album, there’s no break between PSK and a distinctive guitar riff coming in…

 

Track Two:  “Kayleigh”*

It’s been noted that Marillion wrote a perfect pop song without trying to, a feat they were never able to recreate through misguided deliberate effort**.  And “Kayleigh” is a brilliant pop single.  At first I wasn’t sure how this little ballad got so big, but the staying power can’t be denied.  I can’t do justice to everything that happens in four minutes, but let’s start with the iconic riff, one of Steve’s best, and as usual, he and Mark Kelly seem to know exactly how to elaborate on each others’ melodies***.  Lyrically, the narrator tells a story about heartbreak with a lot of wistfulness wrapped up in the memories, casting itself in a long tradition of popular music that gets nostalgic about childhood love; there’s a reason it’s such a frequently tapped well.  I find a few touches especially clever here, including how it immediately establishes how intertwined love and memories of childhood are in this character’s mind – that way for the rest of the record, whenever he references one it’ll reflect on both.  And then there’s that pre-chorus:

By the way, didn't I break your heart?

Please excuse me, I never meant to break your heart

So sorry, I never meant to break your heart

But you broke mine

There’s some doubt in there, some caustic insincerity in the “please excuse me” part.  The narrator isn’t quite apologizing, or if so he’s doubtful about it – he’s too angry to be contrite.  This is very raw, early stage grief as we see in the chorus elements of denial and bargaining too:

… and Kayleigh, could we get it together again?

I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end

Kayleigh - I never thought I'd miss you

And, Kayleigh, I thought that we'd always be friends…

 

Steve just nails an all-timer of a guitar solo between verses one and two, seeming to have the instinct for when to just lean into a melody line that makes you feel and when to throw in a short run of notes to give certain moments a little extra kick.  The second verse and chorus adds a few new wrinkles during the latter.  One is the line “I’m still trying to write that love song,” which rewards those who remember the mention of a love song that Fish mentioned never having written back in “Script For A Jester’s Tear.”****  This leads shortly into the final proclamation that if he does so, “maybe it’ll prove that we were right… or it’ll prove that I was wrong,” with the music abruptly dropping away as the narrator moves towards a level of self-awareness that the rest of the song didn’t have.  Over the course of four minutes, there’s been character development and change and everything.  The gorgeous keyboard part that follows would make for a perfect ending, yet it’s also the intro to “Lavender,” because, you know, concept album.

 

I don’t think it’s a huge insight to argue that a classic song should be immediately sonically appealing while also holding up to and revealing new depths with repeat listens.  And I don’t think it’s an unusual position to argue that “Kayleigh” is one of those classics.  Ear-pleasing pop music with heft and emotional dept.

 

Track Three:  “Lavender”

In contrast to the clear classic that preceded it, the other chunk of this concept piece that became a massive radio hit took a lot longer to grow on me, to the extent that it has.  I honestly don’t think that much of it as an isolated song – a little inert, and I can’t handle the “dilly dilly” parts.  In context of the record “Lavender” is okay for what it is – a wistful moment before we go dark, as the narrator sees the children in the park seeming to be singing the idyllic song he’s trying to write.  We introduce more childhood-related stuff and some musical elements to build on later, and at least it’s short.

 

Track Four:  “Bitter Suite”

Officially divided into five sub-sections that I can’t be arsed to name, despite wondering if there’s any particular reason to have them all on one track.  Some of the pieces within the “suite” have a beginning/middle/end and clear character of their own, at least as much as “Lavender” does.  Ah, well, these long multi-part songs were the style, I guess.

 

“Bitter Suite” is where the record admittedly loses me here and there, as the band get a bit indulgent and find themselves unable to overcome their fundamental Marillion-ness.*****  For instance, it starts with a minute-and-a-half intro that basically amounts to holding a sinister chord for awhile.  The song eventually develops through what I don’t think are necessarily the record’s strongest individual moments, either musically or lyrically, but – and get used to me saying this - do add up to something bigger.  I’ve seen a few different interpretations of what exactly is happening with the train thing and the hitchhiking thing, but to me the track is a bit of a montage of the main character’s whole idea of love curdling over time after a series of unsatisfying and in some cases self-sabotaging relationships.  What he had with ‘Kayleigh’ (the character) was the childhood that we now watch get misplaced with age and disillusionment.  My favorite section here (and I think most people’s) is “Blue Angel,” as the closest our protagonist can come to the innocent contentment of his extended childhood is in the arms of a “lady of the night,” as they say, who’s seen better days.********  The repetition of “I can hear your heart,” sung to the “Lavender” melody, sounds kinda sweet in its own right while highlighting how far we’ve fallen.

 

Track Five:  “Heart Of Lothian”

HOL is quite catchy with a great guitar riff.  It also happens to be a really weird song that musically doesn’t seem like it ought to work.  There’s not really a chorus, it slows down abruptly while playing the same part just when it seemed to be building momentum, there’s the totally unexplained fact that the protagonist’s drinking buddies are called the “Wide Boys” and sung in a way that sounds like “white boys…”  Just a strange song.  I’m actually at a bit of a loss as to why it does click, yet it does.  Ian does a lot of heavy lifting in making the song hold together despite how rickety it seems to be… maybe deliberately composed that way given the topic matter.  I don’t even know sometimes.

 

 

Track Six:  “Waterhole (Expresso Bongo)”

The second half (side two, in the days of physical media) of Misplaced Childhood can’t really help being overshadowed by side one with its three radio singles and such.  Still almost a shame, since I’m inclined to argue that the second half of the record is overall slightly stronger and more cohesive than the first.  Starting with a quirky little piece built around a very fun xylophone-sounding percussion piece.  I love Fish’s performance here, brushing against the top of his register.  Nothing like a carefully calculated dissonant note to hammer home a sense of disquiet.  The track lasts just two minutes, into…

 

Track Seven:  “Lords Of The Backstage”

An even shorter track that naturally flows from the last one, and continues the high energy of the previous one.  Steve has another good riff for us to keep us humming along.  Yet meanwhile, the music and lyrics continue to work together perfectly to show the developing urgency under the surface.  Of course Fish’s fictional avatar had to become a performer – write what you know, I guess – and he’s actively working to forget about ever having had feelings of an almost human nature.  The refrain of “I just wanted you to be the first one” is coming from a place of numbness now…

 

Track Eight:  “Blind Curve”

Until the music succumbs to inevitable exhaustion.  Although officially a multi-part track, “Blind Curve” to me has two distinct parts.  The first is about mounting depression and resignation as a haunting guitar riff takes over and Fish incorporates more and more plaintive falsetto as the narrator slips into “still trying to write love songs for passing strangers.”  Can he get any more detached?  Well, sure!  Let’s see his attempted found family start to fall apart, after someone called “Mylo” “[goes] down,”

He was the first of our own

Some of us go down in a blaze of obscurity

Some of us go down in a haze of publicity

Either way, it’s absolutely inevitable that our protagonist is going to die alone.  He slips himself some pills so he’ll be free, and…

 

…the music just sits there for a few minutes, slowly incorporating some thumping beats.  A near-death experience has to sound like this, right?  Even before the spoken word bit comes in talking about a “presence.”  At this point “Blind Curve” has earned its rock bottom, so now it’s okay for Fish to lose his shit and atonally scream about his childhood (“please give it back to me!”)  I am absolutely on board with letting the howl of pain be as raw as it has to be.  And then the band drops back in, with Ian and Pete mixing raw force and brilliant musicality to take us back into a rock song.  The last bit of “Blind Curve” sounds great, coming after what led up to it.  Narratively this is the only part that fits together a little more tangentially to me, as our narrator is able to look out from himself but can only ask “should we say goodbye?” at what he sees around him.  The idea is, presumably, what’s the point of getting back his life , childhood, innocence etc in a world that’s so shit for children?  I just wish this element had been introduced a little earlier in the narrative, since it plays such a big part in the conclusion.  A well placed reprise of the riff from “Heart Of Lothian” follows, finally completing the track.

 

Just, wow.  I can’t listen to the run from tracks 6-8 without feeling like I’ve been hollowed out.  I can’t imagine that, however much writer’s license he takes with it, that Fish isn’t just doing that performer’s thing of just tearing open his soul for our entertainment.

 

Track Nine:  “Childhood’s End?”

Another chugging riff here that’s sort of the resolved, upbeat cousin of the one from “Kayleigh” is the backdrop for a happy ending.  Maybe it’s predictable that the real childhood was the friends we made along the way… er, that the child was alive inside the narrator the whole time.  Since the last song earned all of its pathos, surely our protagonist has earned the chance to come out the other side with a better understanding of himself.  “Hey, you, you’ve survived.  Now you’ve arrived!”… “there is no childhood’s end.”

 

Track Ten:  “White Feather”

That’s not quite the end, though.  Instead, “Childhood’s End?” abruptly switches to a wibbly keyboard figure as Fish asks the child to “lead [him] on” and that transitions into our closer, “White Feather.”  Here’s where the seeds planted at the end of “Blind Curve” pay off, as our protagonist finds a purpose in life as a champion of other children.  The lyric is pretty clever here, starting with a reference to the white feathers once used to shame men who didn’t enlist.  Not only does the narrator willingly take on a label of not fighting for, or belonging to, a nation, but he, and the song, turn that into an anthem, as I becomes “we.”  I concede that the ideas here are a little underdeveloped, but there’s something to be said for a good short and punchy track too.

 

 

NON-ALBUM:  “Lady Nina”

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the two songs from the Brief Encounter single-thing that came out in 1986.  “Lady Nina” and “Freaks” are not quite part of Misplaced in the same way that a B-side like “Cinderella Search” can be considered to “belong” to Fugazi.  Yet they’re also not enough to merit a whole separate blog post the way the Market Square Heroes single did.  They were written around the same time the band was putting together MC, plus I don’t really have all that much to say about them, so I’ll lump them here. 

[Addendum:  Okay, apparently they actually were Misplaced B-sides.  So, I guess being wrong led me to be right!]

 

“Lady Nina” is longer than it needs to be, but it features some interesting musical choices, including the use of a disco beat in a way that’s almost unheard of in a Marillion song and rare in a Fish song.  Fun to see a band at the top of its game experimenting.  The pitying/patronizing description of a woman’s life by a male narrator is something that I’ve never cared for, but then the song flips things around by making us wonder how much this is all projection from the john/mark/sucker spending all this time with Lady Nina.  “I know that you're in love with me.” Yeah, suuure she is.

 

NON-ALBUM:  “Freaks”

Good keyboard part and a tremendous hook.  Not much a song beyond that, pretty one-note for me.  I wouldn’t care about “Freaks” at all if it weren’t for some reason, such a treat whenever Fish digs it out live (at least based on listening to the live records, obviously).

 

 

Final thoughts

When summarizing my reaction to first hearing this record, the phrase I default to is “a revelation.”  As much as I did find stuff to love on previous releases, nothing prior to Misplaced would have led me to expect that Fish would rapidly emerge as one of my favorite singers and songwriters ever or that I’d be building my travel schedule around catching a few gigs before there aren’t any more.  Both on a technical level (did he take singing lessons, or just develop an innate sense of how to stay in key and when to put in the spoken-word bridges?) and on a songwriting level, Misplaced is a stunning leap forward both compared to the previous records and compared to most music ever recorded by anyone, ever.  If I haven’t been clear, the listening project I was doing at the beginning of 2021 was specifically listening to all of the Marillion records in order.  Then I listened to Misplaced Childhood.  Basically 50% because of Misplaced and 50% because the podcast I was listening along with was doing an episode about Fish’s first solo record, I had to at least listen to that one along with my Marillion stuff.  And now I’m writing effusive blog posts about how I celebrate the guy's entire catalogue.  Anyway, I trace it all back to this point right here.

 

I don’t know how anyone can fail to be moved by the experience of listening to Misplaced Childhood.  If music is about triggering some type of neurotransmitter response, how much more effectively can it be done than if a bunch of diverse sounds and musical structures are all working together to tell one story? 

 

Breaking briefly from heaping praise on the man behind the mic, I hope I’ve been properly effusive about how great Ian Mosley’s drumming is throughout the record.  Both in general and specifically on these songs, Ian is like few others in his ability to keep a tempo that’s rock solid whilst adding some proggy flourishes to make the songs come to life.  No disrespect to the various other drummers who’ve worked with Fish over the years, but Ian is something special.

 

I actually briefly considered not giving the record the full 5.0 because of its lack of songs other than “Kayleigh” that I adore note for note, en toto.  Listening to key sections together again immediately disabused me of any thoughts in that direction.  Misplaced Childhood is that elusive concept album that actually lives up to the cliché of being more than the sum of its parts.

 

 

Favorite track [album only]:  "Kayleigh"

Runner up:  "Blind Curve"

Least favorite track:  "Lavender"

Overall rating:  5/5

Definitive running list of records by Fish/Marillion that I have profiled so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Misplaced Childhood

2)  Fugazi

3)  Market Square Heroes (single)

4)  Script For A Jester’s Tear

 

We continue with Clutching At Straws whenever I get around to it!

 

 

*I assume anyone who somehow stumbles over this blog post will already know the background, but just in case – “Kayleigh” with this spelling actually became a name with this song, and there are a generation of women called Kayleigh now because of it.  The name was a nod to Fish’s on-again now-off-for-good girlfriend, Kay, or “Kay Lee” to her family, who was the principal inspiration for most of his early breakup songs (although he takes writer’s license to include memories involving a few different real-life people in the “do you remember…?” verses).  At least the way Fish tells it, Kay somehow managed to miss “Kayleigh”’s existence until 2005 when he was doing an anniversary tour, at which time she listened to Misplaced for the first time, and the two reconnected and were pretty good long-distance friends until her death a few years later.

 

**“Cover My Eyes (Pain And Heaven)” is sure as fuck no “Kayleigh”

 

***A fruitful partnership to this day, obviously

 

****My assumption is that “I’ll always take the roundabout way” from the end of “Bitter Suite” is also a callback to “Script” (“I’m losing on the roundabouts”).

 

*****The fact that Marillion can’t stop being Marillion-y has always been the biggest barrier to anyone enjoying their music.******

 

******Chill, I’m just kidding.*******

*******Sort of.

 

********Allegedly based on a real encounter, although the real-life counterpart of the “Magdalene” wasn’t a literal sex worker.