How difficult was it to get back into band life?
Peter: Not difficult at all. The point was that we got back together as friends and not as a band. At the time that I left, the things were pretty bad between us and there was a lot of stress. Really that led to my leaving more than any problems with the music.
[From this point on for a while at least we are hampered by some very loud and jolly folks in the neighbouring room. And our door was allergic to staying shut as well, causing some irritation with everyone involved.] We all lived together in a small appartment and we didn't get along particularly well anymore. What happened then was that IQ was doing a show as a four piece in the Marquee with Martin singing and Les Marshall had joind on bass. This was after Tim and Paul had left, 1990. I came on to do the encores and I found that a lot of that tension of the last years had disappeared. And so we became friends again. The Marquee encores was supposed to be a one off thing; it was for old times sake. They were going to find a new singer and then we were asked to do a one off show in Paris. First we didn't feel like it, because we saw it as a step backwards, but we decided to do it as it couldn't really do any harm. So we did that concert with Les Marshall again on bass and then after a few months he committed suicide. So the band ground to a halt, because everyone was in a state of shock really. So for about a year it didn't do anything. Then we decided, well what really happened is that when Les died it brought everyone a lot closer together, because it made all other disagreements we had in the past unimportant. From now on Martin Orford (M) is also present: The band started up again with John. It was basically a group of friends doing this. It wasn't that big a thing about me rejoining the band or anything. I certainly didn't see it that way. I was just happy to be with friends again. Since then, the band seems stronger than ever, at least internally. The relationships have been a lot easier and more relaxed and I think that now we have a lot more space within the band to do what we do best, whereas before it was quite competitive and hard work a lot of the time. Now it goes very well and the writing for the new album went quite well. Better than any previous writing I think. We all have a view of what we think the album should be like.
Is this maturity or not living together any more?
Peter: Well, we all have our own lives now and we have our space away from IQ. So we can now do IQ because we want to and not because we must or because that is what we do. Like now, we are doing just four gigs and next week we'll finish writing the album and then record the new album, but generally after a few gigs we don't see each other for a while. That is what makes coming together so much special anbd more important.
Martin: I can add to that: at the time that Peter left, it wasn't important who left, but that somebody left. If it hadn't been him it might have been me or one of the others. If it hadn't happened the whole thing would have selfdestructed I think.
Was it also the drive to become big that gave all the stress?
Peter: Every band in the world starts off with the idea to become the biggest thing since the Beatles. That's your intention for doing a band as much as anything I suppose. It fits into our life now more. We know now what the bands appeal is and where the bands appeal lies. We all know that progressive rock is not going to be big anyhow and personnally I'm happy with that. Like IQ is now, it is manageable and enjoyable and because we have our own label and all the rights to our backcatalog we are quite in a unique position, to have that kind of control over your own music.
Martin: If you want to be any bigger than this, you'll have to involve managers and companies and agents and in fact we don't really like any of these people. I can't say that I have ever met an agent that has done the band any good. There are a lot of them working, but I've never seen a good one and we prefer to do it ourselves now. We have had some nasty experiences with the music business and we like to stay out of it.
Maurice van Dam once compiled a bio of IQ for Platenblad and in his discography, the MSI releases are not noted. Could you explain exactly why that might be?
Peter: In truth they were never properly authorised. I think Martin has more to say on that...
Martin: Yeah, basically we had a manager, who we [Peter Nicholls spits on the floor]
Martin: we don't like very much. He basically, due to shacking up with a woman of expensive taste, decided to start ripping his bands off and that included us. So we left his company, basically because he was pirating our CDs and albums, selling them in countries where he thought we wouldn't find out about. After we left his company, next thing we heard is that he released the Living Proof album, which we didn't know about, but which had a good fake cover that looked a lot like Peter's artwork. First we knew about is when someone phoned us to tell that there was a new IQ album out. And we though it strange, because we hadn't recorded any.
Peter: I was even more surprised when I heard from someone that I was on the new IQ album. So I phoned Martin to tell him that he could've asked me, but it was in fact the first time they heard of it as well.
Martin: We then went into legal action against him and quite expensively bought all the rights to our albums from him. Jim White, not to be defeated, then went out with duplicate set of all the masters and sold them to a French company.
Was that MSI?
Martin: No it wasn't. It was another company that didn't last for very long and after bankruptcy, the masters were acquired by MSI.
I still wonder about the role of MSI here.
Martin: MSI pirated our records, at first without knowing anything about it. Having said that, I have reason to believe they still make copies of the Nine in a Pond is Here bootleg from time to time so I'm not going to let them off completely.
During the Nomzamo and Are you sitting ... period you were professionals right? M:" Well, that is one of those things: when you get a record deal worth a quarter of a million pounds so much is taken up by studios and producers and all those things a record companies tells you you got to have, we ended up with something like eighty pounds a week each to live on, so we weren't much better off than on social security.
But there was no side job.
Martin: No, we did't.
But now I guess you do?
Martin: Yes, we do know, but I don't think that we got more music done when we didn't work. You just stay in bed all day.
Peter: Or fight about beans and milk: "Who's eaten my beans? Where's my milk gone?"
So being an amateurband is not such a problem.
Peter and Martin: (loudly) We are not an amateurband!
Ah well, not being a full time band then.
Peter: Because we don't work as IQ full time, we assure that when we do work at it, we do something good. In fact more than ever. In the past we did do crappy gigs and it didn't really matter: a) there were not many people there and b) if we did it wrong one night we could get it right the next night. We don't really have that luxury now so in a way there is more pressure now, doing only four gigs. But equally I think we know that more rides on it now and for ourselves it's important that each thing we do is really good.
Martin: Plus that full-time musicians are very rare in fact. Most of the people I know in most of the bands do have other jobs. In fact all of them in the progressive sphere.
Well yes of course, in the progressive sphere... Is it easier that because you have your livelyhood outside music, that you as a band do not have to perform financially?
Martin: Well, it doesn't really hold for me, because everything I do is involved with music to some extent, while all the others have quite diverse jobs. Most of what I do is at least IQ connected.
And playing with Jown Wetton?
Martin: That's something that helps a lot financially. I teach four days a week at well at local universities and colleges. I run the record company and that doesn't pay unfortunately.
But you do gt more money out of your own music
Martin: Yes, that is absolutely true. And you're in control: there's nobody in the chain that is ripping you off.
They could still pirate your CDs.
Martin: They can but we have some pretty violent roadies who could go and pay them a visit.
Peter: In fact some people keep on asking when we are going to release Seven Stories into Eight...
...in fact that was one of our questions...
Peter: ...cause if we don't do it somebody else will. It is kind of on our cards but for now we of course concentrate on the new album. We would want to release a rarities CD next year and we would be quite happy to make it a double CD and put Seven Stories into Eight on it.
And No TV Tonight?
Peter: Well that's the Lens, and for that things lie a little differently.
Martin: I also think that it doesn't have good enough quality. The problem with Seven Stories into Eight is finding a mastertape of good enough quality and at this point we really do not know where to get one.
Still IF one ever finds a new copy of the tape then it is always very expensive so a rerelease would be nice.
Peter: At the time we made endless copies of the thing. We had only one reel to reel copier which had played the mastertape.
Martin: We had to do one at the time.
Peter: And we did that in real time. Now the refrigerator had a fault in it and we to start and start again and also listen to every single copy we made to hear if it contained any clicks. So it might be rare to you, but we heard it like eight thousand times. We are just sick of the bloody thing. I guess it would be nice to have the thing available to complete the story as it were. There are records out there, that people have to pay a lot of money for to get hold of. Possibly they are not in very good condition. So we would like people to get them like this. Like we did a radio session before we recorded The Wake and I think personally the version of Widow's Peak on there is superior to the one on the album.
Martin: Definitely.
Peter: So it would be nice to put that on, without the BBC knowing about it.
Martin: I did write to them to ask for the rights and they never replied. If we use them they can hardly blame us we didn't warn them.
Peter: Plus I don't think the BBC could care less about IQ.
So you don't think they would release it themselves? They did with VDGG and Peter Hammill.
Peter: Still they are far more established artists. They have a wider appeal.
And things like Barbell Is In?
Peter: There is actually quite a lot of stuff we could put on there, 12 or 13 tracks. There is Hollow Afternoon of course.
Was that the one sided single?
Peter: Yes, that was for the concert in the Marquee on New Year's Eve 1984. We pressed up five hundred copies and gave them out to people attending. We only played that song live at that particular concert.
Why?
Peter: Well just to have a legend going about the band...no, we just meant it to be something special, a present to the people.
You play very few gigs and I heard that John Jowitt said that he played with Arena because you play so few. Doesn't that tell you something?
Martin: Well if we would play more gigs it would not mean that we would become more popular. As it is it would only mean that we would see the same people over and over and they were more thinly spread. As we do it now, every IQ gig is a special event, because of the way that the band works: we all live in different parts of England, we all have different personal lives, we are very limited in the times that we can meet up. Distance is against us and there are other considerations against us and we are now able to do IQ as often as people can play golf in the weekend. It's not an easy thing to organize, but
Peter: It can be frustrating, because when the band is in good form, which most of the time it is
Martin: Most definitely
Peter: Often gigs are not as what I would describe as enjoyable necessarily, cause there's a lot of work involved and only one thing needs to go wrong. But last night in we really really enjoyed it. And if it is like that, it is frustrating, because you want to have more of that, but if we would do 300 gigs a year, then people would not be there to attend those concerts, because the audience itself is of very limited size. Our prioritity is now to record a great album and come back. Now when we do an IQ show it is very good. Very rarely do we do a show that is only okay.
Martin: They get a nice long set with lots of material. We give it the biggest stage production that we can...which is going to get bigger for the next one.
Peter: Definitely.
Martin: So we do try and put on the best show that we possibly can, but in the context of fewer gigs.
Are the four gis of this minitour also a tryout for the new album?
Martin: Well, yes to some extent yes. We have deliberately decided not to play too much of the new album Subterranea, because we want to save somee surprises for the real show, but we have included enough tracks as a taster.
Peter: Also, when we release the new album our show will be taken up by playing it live entirely. Obviously we won't be doing as much of the old material. One of the benefits of these shows is that we can play some tracks that we can then put to bed for a year or two.
Recapitulating then?
Peter: What?
Like a greatest hits tour.
Martin: Something like that yeah.
Peter: A ten minute show.
Martin: Let's call it Nearest Hits.
Peter: When we put the set together it is not really something that we agonize over. We don't want to play the same set every time we come back obviously, so we do put some new tracks when we return.
Martin: If we ouwld do a Greatest Hits tour right here we would probably be doing a lot of stuff from the Wake which is probalby our bestselling album overall. We have deliberately scaled down the number of songs that we play from this album, because we have played so much of it in the past.
Did it even manage to outsell Are You Sitting Comfortably..?, because that even got quite high in the charts here? Maurice van Dam in his story on you also said that the album did quite well.
Martin: Oh well, we do not know anything about sales of the albums that we had no control over. Looking at backcatalog sales however , The Wake does a lot better than the Polygram albums.
Maybe that is more due to the fact that the Polygram albums were easier to get in the shops at the time?
Martin: Could well be.
Peter: The Wake got into the charts in England. Okay only 72 but it got in.
Martin: We were number one in the heavy metal charts, believe it or not.
Martin, you do most of work for the record label right?
Peter: Well, I can't disagree with that, no. The other do contribute some as well. Mike is involved with the accounts. Thomas Waber does the German office. As to getting the CDs were they need to go and the everyday running of the company, that is pretty much my business.
For a while you didn't have any distribution in the Netherlands. What is happening now?
Martin: Now we do. It is Suburban, a guy named Ron Willemsen.
We know him.
Martin: It is rather a new company that started in the offices of Roughtrade. Roughtrade got rid of a lot of their staff and a new company was formed, and ehm we have been using them for only three months and they have been much much better than Roughtrade.
Ah yes, Zomba took over Roughtrade, but got rid of some of the smaller labels and that then became Subrurban.
Martin: We had a very bad time with Roughtrade. We sold only a small quantity of albums and they didn't really distribute anything as such. If people would get into the record shop and order then Roughtrade would kindly send it to the shops, but I don't think there were any CDs in the racks. I think that did just the bare minimum.
In our rather small hometown (63000 pesons) there is a CD shop that carries the new Threshold and Spock's Beard so it seems to go well now.
Martin: Since we worked with Suburban the improvement in sales has been very significant and we have only been with them for three months.
When you made The Wake the sound was very much in the Seventies with a lot of Moog. Ever however sounds very modern. Was that a concious choice?
Martin: Well in the mean time we got some money and so now we can afford some decent gear. I mean there's this big thing with Hammond organ and Mellotron and they are actually very unpleasant things to work with. I played Mellotron at Progfest the other day in Los Angeles and I have to say it was really as bad as I remembered.
You didn't take it along did you??
Martin: No, I borrowed it from an enthusiast, a very nice chap. Having nice samples of the mellotron for my own keyboards I'm glad I can use them now. I never want to go back to using the original thing. I'm not into that retro thing at all. There are so many better things and you can still have the sounds without the huge box.
A lot of bands from for instance Sweden do love to use it still.
Peter: Yes, on Progfest when we were there, Anglagard were playing. They worship the mellotron and I think: wake up. I mean I love the sound of the mellotron, but you don't have to have it around to have the effect of it. They had photos of a mellotron on the backsleeve of the album, they had three mellotrons on stage. It's a kind of slavish recreation of 1971. And when they did the whole of the Musical Box as an encore, everybody loved it, people went mad. But what is the point of that? Genesis did it perfectly well in 1971.
But most of the people present weren't there in 1971.
Peter: Yeah, of course, but why don't they just play brilliant Anglagard music now?
Martin: What I do not understand about the progressive scene is that there are a number of Swedish bands that use keyboards that were no more recent built than 1970, yet they are progressive. Then when we use modern technology we are called, with a terrible term, neo-progressive.
You don't like it?
Martin: No, it's disgusting. I think that people who use the term should look at what the music consists of. Were not a museum, we are an ongoing band, and it is very annoying to see that those museum bands being termed progressive.
Peter: In the dictionary it doesn't say with "progressive": "recreate in finest detail everything that has gone before. Do not inject any of your own ideas". Progressive means progress. By all means take all the bands that were there in your youth, Genesis, Yes, Floyd, by all means: use them as a starting point, but then you should do your own bloody thing.
But the term "progressive" is not descriptive, but just a label. It points at some bands, but not because their music is progressive, but because they fall into that specific category.
Peter: It's a generic term now. Heavy metal means heavy metal bands and progressive means: Widdly widdly ahaaahah (rpt).
Martin: We do a lot of the progressive cliches, but we do a lot of other stuff as well.
Like Wiggle?
Martin: Yeah for sure, for sure.
Peter: If we use progressive trademark things in our music then it is always within the context of a song. It is a song that is played in a progressive way rather than a riff joined on to another riff joined on to another riff... keep going, keep going...stop, we passed the twenty minute mark. I'm fed up with reading reviews that say "there's a twenty minute track on this one". It might be somebody snoring for twenty minutes.
Some songs of twenty minutes snoring are actually quite good.
Martin: In comparison with the epics
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Peter: This obsession with song lengths is really bad, because you hear then that think of 3-minute songs that they just have to be bad. We will be playing a new track tonight which is 3 or 4 minutes long and it's a plain song.
Martin: It's a simple verse-chorus pop song.
Peter: It's just keyboards and vocals and that's just what it is. We'll make a bit more of it in the studio, but it's just a song. If a song doesn't work stripped down like that, then it is never going to work, no matter what mellotrons you might add.
Martin: Like The Last Human Gateyway which is actually a long string of pop songs put together. The whole thing with IQ is that it is this pop thing in that all the long songs are long pop songs really. They're all pop melodies and it's not all doom and gloom all the time, although it won't always seem like it.
Even the rain won't fall in a straight line?
Peter and Martin: Nervous laughter
Martin: Would you like to explain this Peter?
Peter: Lyrically that is why I'm not very fond of things with Jester's and chessboards. I've never made a secret about that, because...well I'm not knocking the bands that are doing it and I'm not naming the bands that do it,...but it's not right for me personally. As the person who writes the words, I feel it is not something for IQ. What we have always done is, like Martin said, is that we have written songs. Songs always had a genuine emotional core and I've never much liked songs about wizzards and geese and chessboards and Star Trek and stuff, you know. I don't think it is right for us to do that, because it is done by other people.
But you have been named very often as a band that came up in the slipstream of Marillion.
Martin: We have never been influenced by Marillion. Marillion had nothing to do with us. The Lens was from before Marillion ever started. IQ came out of the Lens seamlessly, so there is no way to say that IQ came about because Marillion started getting success.
Compare it with Nirvana: when they got successfull a lot of bands that probably existed before Nirvana also got their share.
Peter: It is possible for similar bands to coexist without influencing each other. Someone a couple of nights ago asked if it was going to be a concept album and I said yes. Then he asked: "Is it going to be like Brave?" and I said that I'd never heard it and also didn't want to. And he said that lots of people thought that IQ and Marillion were the best progressive bands around and that we should listen to them, and I said that this was the reason why we shouldn't. I do not want to be a like Marillion, and I do think they are a damn sight better than what they used to be. I'm damn sure that they would not want to be like us either. I also don't think that people would find it interesting anymore if we did sound like each other.
Martin: I must admit that I've been thinking about the whole idea of influences and inspiration. I've been torn for years between whether one should listen to lots of music of none at all and I tend to favour the latter if you want to write pure music.
For people who make music that is probably best, because it seems easier to be original. Also, people who play do not tend to need to listen to music made by others anymore. Still there are many bands with whhom you hear easily to what albums they have been listening.
Martin: You know, that during my tour with John Wetton, I played this solo piece that I can honestly say was written before I had ever heard of Yes, Pink Floyd or any of these bands. I was just a classical student then. I can only say that you should listen to that piece if you come to the John Wetton show and decide if what I write is inspired by Genesis. You have my word that I never had heard any Genesis when that piece was written.
Peter: It really irritates me when people say we have been influenced by Marillion. Absolutely not. The bands came up at the same time.
Martin: You probably haven't seen them for at least 10 or 12 years.
Peter: In 1982 I heard the last of their music. I've heard bits and pieces since then and I'm not knocking the band, but I just don't want to know about them. I want IQ to be just IQ, to have a strong character. I also think that that is why IQ was never seen as me and four other people. We were also five people. Marillion was more like Fish and a number of people. The band does not work internally as me telling people what to do.
Martin: To Marillions credit, I think they were brave to carry on after Fish left and good luck to them. Their early stuff had nothing for me, but what I've heard of the new stuff, I must admit, I like a lot more.
With you coming up with Marillion we never meant that you were in any way like them. Moreover, if bands come up, they have already been at it for quite some time usually, so....and the same holds for 12th Night and Pendragon and Pallas, which were also said to be coming along in the slipstream of Marillion.
Peter: None of the bands were in fact influenced by each other.
In fact you do not sound similar at all.
Peter: Personally, I always thought Pallas was way ahead of Marillion in terms of writing; they had much better melodies. I always regarded 12th Night as better than us, because they were more polished than we were. They were taller than us weren't they.
Martin: Yeah, they were. They always had glittering suits.
Peter: Yeah, yeah and Andy Revell always seemed asleep while playing guitar. I think we supported all of the bands and it was also how we got to know Geoff.
Reminds me I have a question about that. Do you think that Mannerism will be rereleased?
Peter: Well, I hope so. Andy Labrow, who was in charge of that project and he was a close friend of Geoff and he also handles all the merchandise, he said that SI should morally be given the time to rerelease if they wanted to. Since Willebrord had funded the project in the first place and Andy being a fairminded guy, it was what he did. But now it seems that it will not be rereleased, I certainly think it should be rereleased, because a) there is a lot of good music on there and b) it is important to keep Geoff there. Also the money was meant for cancer research and also for Geoff's family, so all the time it is not available that money is not being raised. It might even be that GEP will put it out. It contains quite a number of IQ related tracks, so that might be an idea.
And Second Chants for instance?
Peter: Well yeah
Martin: I think that has already been rereleased.
No I think you mean Live and let Live that was rereleased on Cyclops now.
Peter: And there was also a Geoff live album called Recorded Delivery with various incarnations and various tracks of 12th Night and Geoff solo on it and that's ready to go, but it has not been released [Cymbeline should have released it later that year]. I think the album should be out there, out of respect for Geoff the music should be made available.
In fact recently I helped somebody find Mannerisms, because in the shops it really could not be found.
Peter: Well Andy Labrow sells the entire backcatalog. Shortly we will put his address on the IQ homepage.