Albums I Wish Existed: Silmarillion - Herne The Hunter (1980)

Friday, December 10, 2021

Silmarillion - Herne The Hunter (1980)

In December 1977 bass player Doug Irvine formed the band that was to become Marillion, recruiting local drummer Mick Pointer, and calling themselves Electric Gypsy, before changing that to Silmarillion. They were later joined by keyboardist Brian Jelliman and guitarist Steve Rothery, at which point they shortened their name to Marillion, due to copyright concerns. They recorded multiple demo tapes with the original line-up throughout 1979 and 1980 including a sole recording of an apparently lost song called 'The Tower', which would be exhumed and reworked into 'Grendel' for the b-side of their 'Market Square Heroes' single. In its original form, 'The Tower' was an instrumental track that lasted around 21 minutes, and it's assumed that it was the origin of many of the melodies and solos eventually featured on 'Grendel', especially Steve Rothery's guitar parts, since he was in the band when 'The Tower' was written. It is assumed to be dark in tone, like 'Grendel', and perhaps have echoes of dark, long-form instrumentals by earlier progressive rock acts like King Crimson's 'Larks' Tongues in Aspic', but the changes to many of the original songs during the Fish-era are significant, and since 'The Tower' is at least five minutes longer than 'Grendel', then it's reckoned to be very much a lost piece of music. In November 1980 original vocalist and lyricist Doug Irvine left the band, falling out of contact with them and never being heard from again, and new singer Fish joined in January 1981. This resulted in a complete re-assessment of the group, bringing in new keyboardist Mark Kelly and soon afterwards bass player Pete Trewavas, and scrapping all of Irvine's old lyrics and reworking some of the old songs with new words from Fish. Some of the old demo tapes have survived, including the original versions of the songs with Irvine's lyrics and vocals, and you can hear that a number of them were the genesis of Marillion classics, such as 'Alice' which was rewritten as 'Forgotten Sons' and 'Close' which morphed into 'The Web'. This album features just the Irvine period of the group, and despite the less than perfect sound quality, it shows that even in those early days they had something about them which promised great things.