Closing the circle: So long and thanks for all the (music) Fish

For many thousands of women and men of a certain age, today sees the end of a musical era. A final farewell gig in Glasgow tonight sees the bringing to a finale a musical journey which has, for the man at the heart of it and many of his fans, lasted more than 40 years. After his final live show tonight with his band in the Glasgow O2 Academy, Scottish rock singer, actor, award-winning broadcaster (on Planet Rock) and writer, Fish, real name Derek William Dick, will retire from the music industry.

I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the fact about Fish that nearly every article about him starts with, namely ‘former frontman for progressive rock band Marillion' which is indeed the guise in which many (most?) of his fans first encountered his music and his thought-provoking, clever and personal lyric writing. It's somewhat ironic to start there, as his solo career, since leaving Marillion in 1988 has been four to five times as long as his Marillion career and has produced 11 studio albums and 21 (!) live albums. His final album, Weltschmerz, released in 2020, is perhaps as fine a set of songs as he has ever produced, widely acclaimed as a career high, something he has said he wanted to end his career with (although you can have fun debating best and favourite albums with his fans!).

Fish and his wife Simone have sold up their home and recording studio near Haddington (20 miles east of Edinburgh) and moved to the Outer Hebrides, to run a croft on the island of Berneray. In November 2023, he struck a deal with Primary Wave Music, a leading independent publisher of iconic and legendary music who acquired his master royalties and writer’s share for for the songs he wrote and recorded with Marillion. He has wound up his Chocolate Frog record company and his Fish online music and merchandise shop and he is retiring properly. Fish has said all along that he is a writer who can sing (rather than a singer who can write songs) and he means to work on his autobiography, screen plays and… who knows what else? And, after tonight, he will be the artist formerly known as Fish, that identity being put to bed so he can resume his life as Derek.

Fish's solo career has been characterised by a warm and generous relationship with his fans, with 'meet-and-greets' and numerous fan weekends and conventions, often in continental Europe and some in Haddington in East Lothian, Scotland, where Fish has been based for over 30 years. Throughout lockdown, and until recently, Fish also live streamed on Facebook from his home near Haddington almost every Friday evening for two hours from 6pm UK time, engaging in a live interactive session with his fans through their Facebook comments on the live stream. These 'Fish on Friday' sessions, named after his Planet Rock radio show, were hugely popular with fans and Fish has said in interview that it was as much for his own mental well-being during lockdown, as it was for the fans. Nevertheless, it was a great and pretty generous commitment of his time and energy and was much enjoyed and appreciated by many.

His final, farewell UK 'Road to the Isles Tour' (a reference to Fish and Simone's move to the Outer Hebrides) was, I think, meant to happen after the release of Weltschmerz but Covid etc got in the way. In the social media groups in which Fish's fans gather virtually, it has been an intensely anticipated 15 date tour of small-medium sized (and largely sold-out) venues, one of the largest of which is the O2 Academy in Glasgow for last night's and tonight's two final shows.

I'm not a completely disinterested bystander. In those pre-Internet days, my friends and I first came across Marillion and Fish in early 1982, when demo tracks were being played on the 'Forth Bridges' Monday late-night rock show on Forth FM in Edinburgh. Already hooked on Yes, Pink Floyd and Genesis as part of a wider teenage diet of heavy and classic rock, this was heady stuff for us, with a giant singer who came from our part of the world, as a 'Dalkeith boy' from the neighbouring county of Midlothian (we lived in East Lothian) playing music that sounded like nothing else being produced at the time. We'd scour Sounds, the rock-friendly weekly music paper for titbits of news and I sent off for back copies of Marillion's fan magazine, The Web which duly arrived in the post accompanied by a signed photo of Fish in greasepaint and wearing a horned helmet. 

In August 1982, my friend Pete and I, keen to see them play live, made the long journey by bus from Scotland to the Theakston Festival at Nostell Priory near Wakefield, to see Marillion play their first festival (at our first festival too), supporting Jethro Tull. That weekend, EMI signed up Marillion and, soon after, we were on tenterhooks for the release of their first record, the single Market Square Heroes. That release happened around the first time we saw them in Scotland, with a gig at the tiny Edinburgh Nite Club in November 1982. In our memories, the highlight of this night (apart from seeing their epic song 'Grendel' performed live) was probably the band asking us to help them load their gear into the van afterwards, and meeting Fish's Dad (he was very friendly, asking us if we were waiting to see Derek!). This kind of thing didn't happen to us at other gigs! A couple of years later, Fish spent some time living with his parents in North Berwick and we would spot him in the pub and out and about. He'd go to Hibernian FC football matches with friends of ours who were also Hibees. Incidentally, I have an autograph that a friend working in North Berwick's Galbraith supermarket asked Fish to sign for me in March 1984, as he knew I was a big fan. That friend then promptly misplaced the autograph and only found it 31 years later in a container on a mantelpiece when he was clearing out his late father's house, and then posted it to me!

It's these connections to his time in North Berwick that makes the Marillion song 'Warm

 Wet Circles' (from their fourth studio album 'Clutching at Straws', in 1987) one of my favourites, with its references to places and people we grew up around.

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Marillion in their first festival performance at the Theakston Festival, August 1982 (c) Gerald Sables

As history records, Marillion's rise after that first single release in 1982 was fairly meteoric and we were regular attendees at Marillion concerts in various festivals and at Scottish venues for the next six years. The last time I saw Fish performing with Marillion was in the summer of 1988 at a small festival in St Andrews called Fife Aid 2 (raising money for poor farmers overseas?). We had a wild time down at the front row for Marillion's performance, not realising that it would be his last show with the band as he left soon thereafter. That I had seen his last show with Marillion was something I only discovered earlier this year.

Marillion at Fife Aid 2 in August 1988, fatefully Fish's last gig with the band

before he went 'solo in the game' (c) Paul Holmes

His solo career kicked off in Autumn 1989 with a single release, State of Mind, and a UK tour ahead of the launch of his first solo album, 'Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors'. I managed to see his two warm-up gigs for that tour, in Haddington's Corn Exchange in October 1989 (my diary entry says his new solo material was 'very strong (and good)' - incisive assessment!). And then... and then... I wouldn't see Fish play live again for another 21 years which, when I look back is a bit shocking. I bought his first four solo albums as they were released (and loved the first two intensely) but then studies, work, relationships, other priorities, life just got in the way. I have listened to and loved his Marillion and solo music all through those years but just never got to gigs (not just Fish gigs either) or fan conventions. In 2006, the aforementioned lifelong gig pal Pete called me and said I had to buy 13th Star, Fish's latest solo album - he was of course correct that I would love it. A real gem full of wonderful songs. And I was inspired to play catch-up with the albums from the intervening years. A cornucopia of music over the period, with Fish's heart worn on his sleeve for all to hear, and a world view in his lyrics that swung at outrage and optimism in equal measure.


I finally managed to see Fish play live again in 2010, again in Haddington, on the acoustic Fishheads Club tour with Foss Paterson on keyboards and Frank Usher on guitar, in the enormous Saint Mary's Church where one of Fish's weddings took place. I'm so glad I went to that show as I made lifelong friends from a conversation over the course of an hour at the head of the queue with a Dutch couple, Tom and Ellen, whose love of Fish's music had brought them (not for the first time) to Scotland just to see his shows. We hit it off, have been friends ever since and have had some great adventures - thanks to Fish and the power of saying hello!


So when 'Weltschmerz' was released in 2020, and a farewell tour mentioned (and eventually, post-COVID, emerged in 2024/2025), I was keen to go for one last hurrah, to see Fish off into his retirement, taking the chance to enjoy him playing live one final time in 'The Company' of Fish's loyal and enthusiastic fans and with Fish's hugely talented and experienced band of friends and long-time collaborators. We had a moving and joyful night at the first show of the tour, in the Haddington Corn Exchange in February 2025, back together with Pete and Simon, with whom I went to many rock gigs in the 1980s. That was meant to be it. A final night of live Fish to close the circle after 43 years.

But I couldn't pass up the chance of one more show when I found a return ticket for last night's show in Glasgow, Fish's second last ever performance. It didn't matter that, although he has two overlapping but different sets for this final tour, I saw mostly the same set twice. The crowd was up for a great night and sang our hearts out, the band fed off their energy and it was a really special and memorable night of live Fish fandom for me. I can't imagine what the emotions will be like tonight for the final show.

And so, after tonight's show, as Fish sang back in Marillion days: 'The game is over.' Time, indeed, to take that Road to the Isles. After 43 years of amazing music, some great gigs and important friendships forged through that music, with the closing of that circle, I wish Fish and Simone all the best of luck, love and health in the next stage of their life journey, on their Hebridean croft, and also continued success to the rest of Fish's band. And, in the future, we have Fish's proposed autobiography to look forward to, no doubt stimulating much revisiting of his back catalogue!

Slàinte Mhath!

Fish and Simone on Berneray (c) Fish/ Derek Dick

Photos (c) Scot Mathieson except where stated otherwise

Great gannet grandstanding...

More dodging of my "timetabled" Ladybird book "seasons"  blog posts to tell you about a spectacular nature experience I had today, one described by no lesser personage than one of my own nature heroes, Sir David Attenborough, as “one of the Twelve Wildlife Wonders of the World”.

The Bass Rock is the largest single island gannet colony in the world, with over 150,000 gannets. The island effectively turns white between February and October once the gannets return from offshore where they over-winter. The latin name of the gannet, Britain's largest resident seabird, was formerly Sula bassana, now changed by bird taxonomists to Morrone bassana, and comes from the Bass Rock - the species was named after its most impressive population centre!

The Bass Rock from the west - the white colour is a mixture of thousands upon thousands of gannets and their droppings - guano!

I grew up in East Lothian and went to secondary school in North Berwick, the nearby harbour town and so probably saw the Bass rock nearly every week day of the year, barring holidays. But you know how it is, when you never actually manage to get around to visiting the local sights that all the tourists and all your visitors want to go to. So it was with me and the Bass rock. I lived in East Lothian until I went away to University and I have never moved back. Every summer for the last few (20?) years, I've said I must get out to the Bass. But I never managed to take the boat trip round the island to see the gannets, the seals and the coastal scenery. Until today, that is.

Now you have to understand that most of that time, there was only one boat trip around the Bass, on the Sula II, originally run by Fred Marr, and now by his son Chris and daughter Pat. You can find out more about this here, along with information on their excellent and valuable gannet rescue work here. There are more boat trips around now, and also the Scottish Seabird Centre near the harbour which allows a different perspective on the Bass Rock, with remote cameras, etc., but it seemed to me that the best way to visit the Bass Rock would be with the Marrs on Sula II, with their fantastic local knowledge - eleven generations of the Marr family have worked out of North Berwick harbour. I don't think you can substitute for that kind of experience and inheritance. So when I heard earlier this year that this might be the last season that the Sula II would be running (Chris is retiring), I was determined to make a trip after all these years.

And so I took the day off work, in anticipation of the current high pressure lasting another day or two, and went, via breakfast at my parents along the coast, to North Berwick. As a hopeless nostalgic sentimentalist, I always find it quite emotional when I manage to spend a day around North Berwick, which due to schooling, is probably in third place in the list of places in which I have spent the most days of my life. It is such a beautiful little coastal town and, to my eyes, seems even more bustling and well-to-do than it ever did. No gap sites on the high street here, despite the credit crunch and global financial meltdown, though no doubt a few former Edinburgh bankers live there - NB is a very "des-res" place for people looking to move out of Edinburgh (it probably always was). Many of the shops I knew as a school child have gone, replaced by cafes and pretty little boutiques selling nice things and coastal lifestyle stuff!

 Anyway, I joined the mid-day sailing of the Sula II today (times vary daily due to tides and weather conditions), skippered by Chris Marr, with other family members helping with the crewing.

Sailing conditions and weather were perfect. I couldn't have asked for (or expected) better.

We motored out to the Bass Rock where it looked a bit like this on the way out...

The sky around the Bass rock is a seething mass of tens of thousands of gannets, gulls and occasional shags or cormorants. And it is noisy!

And every available square inch of space on land seems to be occupied or fought over:

At one point, we went in close enough to take these:

Here's the old foghorn I remember hearing as a child when the typical Scottish East Coast summer "haar" (sea fog) rolled in (to spoil our precious school summer holidays) - now decommissioned as a foghorn (it is all electronics and satnav systems now) but still obviously popular with the birds!

A final image from the Bass, to show the steeps cliffs that are the result of the weathering and glacial scraping away of the softer rocks around this plug of basalt, the origin of the Bass Rock being a former volcanic eruption:

We sailed back via another smaller island, Craigleith, which has its own seabird and conservation story to tell, but that's for another day. I'm immensely happy after all this time to have made that trip, in that boat, with those people, on this fabulous day, to have seen these sights, those birds and views. If you want to do it, then go and do it before the end of September. The contact details are on the Sula II website.  I took my darling O home a wee box of "Berwick Cockles" ("A crumbly soft red striped traditional boiled sweet") as a "Gift from North Berwick", but I can't help but feel that I was given the greater gift today!

Some of Pat Macaulay's rescued gannet chicks, being fed and strengthened before being returned to sea.