Interview: Marillion Drummer Ian Mosley - Page 2

So take us from Marillion back in the Fish days to where the band is at now.

Right. We did quite a few tours in America with Fish. We were with Capitol Records back then and we did quite a few gigs, but we really didn't ever manage to break through. The only thing was towards the end when the album Misplaced Childhood was out. We did a really short tour with Rush, where we played arenas and that was really good. And then we went back a bit later and played some of the same arenas ourselves, but it was really more in Canada than in the USA. We love touring in the States, but economically it's always a bit of a disaster for us.

Any chance of getting over here again anytime soon?

Well, were working on it. Maybe next year some time. But the American government is making it very difficult for bands to come over there from England at the moment. There's always massive problems trying to get work visas. And then you've got the whole tax thing as well, which is quite complicated. It's even affected some of the classical musicians. There is an eighty piece orchestra that was going to come over to New York, but they couldn't because the American embassy said we need you all here at 7:00 in the morning to apply for visas and it will cost you three to four thousand dollars per visa.

Wow!

So with an eighty piece orchestra that lives all over England, that's a problem. They were due to play at Carnegie Hall, but they had to cancel. The logistics of getting to America are quite difficult. You probably already know about the time where we said we couldn't afford to get to America, and the fans actually raised the money for us.

I was actually going to ask about that. What's the difference between working with a label like EMI or MVD, and doing it yourself on the web like you guys have done?

Over the past few years we've really become quite self sufficient. It all started really with an American fan, who said "if you can't really afford to come to America, why don't we raise some cash? How much do you need?" We didn't really take it all that seriously at the time and we said we'd probably need about fifty or sixty thousand in cash. After some time went by, he called and said well we've raised $30,000 already. In the end, they raised the money and we came over and we toured.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

Visit Glen Boyd's author page — Glen Boyd's Blog