He’s been in the business nigh-on 20 years, and he’ll never be fashionable. Whether it was as the lead singer of Marillion, or during his 10 year solo career, Fish has always been unjustly looked down upon by the music press at large. It’s their loss: as one of this country’s most charismatic and versatile acts, Fish has produced a body of work which rivals that of any contemporary.

It’s been a busy 12 months for the absurdly tall Scotsman. Having closed down his own independent record label, and released what is arguably his finest solo album to date, Raingods With Zippos (on new label Roadrunner), the Artist Formerly Known As Derek Dick has also appeared in TV’s The Bill, and Young Persons’ Guide To Being A Rock Star. Right now he’s currently rehearsing in preparation for his forthcoming European tour. Bubblegun phoned him as he came up for air amidst this hectic schedule (please note our hilarious use of an aquatic analogy there).

HOW ARE YOU?

"Not bad. Getting there slowly but surely. We fell off the table last year, but I just about managed to hold on with one hand."

THINGS GOT PRETTY BAD FOR YOU, DIDN’T THEY?

"It was an absolute fucking nightmare. I lost something in the region of seventy grand on the last tour. We had five tour companies go down on us, which was another eighty grand. It got to a point where I sat down at Christmas, and I knew that when I woke up I’d be staring at a one hundred and fifty grand loss. The bank wouldn’t give us any more money, and wanted back what they’d handed out. By January ‘98 my confidence was at an all time low."

WHAT MADE YOU CLOSE YOUR RECORD COMPANY DOWN?

"In all honesty I can say that Dick Bros had no expertise whatsover. We were just relying on luck and taking gambles. The situation got so that that I had to get back into bed with a record company. Polydor had given me back Internal Exile and Songs For The Mirror, and we had agents sniffing around, but I wanted somebody who’d deal with the back catalogue as a whole, and Roadrunner has given us that. We did a deal which has given me the confidence, and opportunity to focus on the creative side. Roadrunner has this real ‘indy’ ideal, which is great.

"If we can sell 600,000 copies of the new album then the situation will have been rectified somewhat. I’ve been banging my head against a lot of doors. Now it’s time to start kicking those doors down."

THINGS SEEM TO HAVE BEEN COMING TOGETHER OVER THE LAST YEAR FOR YOU. YOU’VE FLEXED YOUR ACTING MUSCLE MORE THAN ONCE.

"Absolutely. The whole acting thing has been great for the profile. A lot of people saw the Young Person’s Guide, or The Bill, and were like ‘Oh yeah! Fucking hell - it’s Fish!’. I got a lot of good notices for those roles. I’ve had people mention sit-coms to me - I’d love to get into comedy. And I’ve a couple of movie parts in the wings. They’re just waiting on funding, but these things can take years to get off the ground. I know actors with far more experience than me who are struggling to get roles. I’d happily get to the point where the acting is as important a part of my career as the music."

DO YOU THINK RAINGODS WITH ZIPPOS IS THE BEST ALBUM YOU’VE DONE?

"Easily. An artist will always say that, but it is the case here. I think it’s a very brave album. Plus I wasn’t being diverted by business issues. I had the freedom to focus on what mattered. The reviews were fantastic. The worst review we had was from Q magazine, and even that was a good enough review, with a begruding three out of five. I think it’s the album that fans have been wanting me to make for five years or more. "

YOU’VE COLLABORATED WITH A LOT OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE. DURING THE WRITING OF RAINGODS. YOU ATTENDED A WRITERS’ WEEKEND AT MILES COPELAND’S CASTLE, DIDN’T YOU?

"Collaboration is what I love about being a solo artist. When Miles called me up it was like a wake-up call. I was at my lowest point and it gave me the incentive to get up and go and do it again. It meant I could indulge the full range of styles and influences. I’ve got a huge pool of muscicians to draw from. No one who works with me is on a retainer. At the end of a tour we go our separate ways - we may meet up for a drink, or whatever - but they’re free to do their own thing. It’s the guitars and drums that are the most difficult positions to fill. But I’ve got John Wesley playing guitar on the tour, who’s superb, and Dave Stewart, who I think is the most underrated drummer in Europe."

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO DO AN EPIC TRACK LIKE PLAGUE OF GHOSTS AFTER ALL THIS TIME?

"If you’d asked me one year ago I’d have told you to fuck off. I was paranoid that people would think I was doing a Misplaced Childhood 2 or, God forbid, Grendle 2 (20-minute long B-side to Marillion’s first single). The whole Castle Marouatte session gave me the chance to flex my muscles. It was like a songwriters’ gym. I’d been speaking to Mark Daghorn and Tony Turrel, The Positive Light guys, who did some remixing for Marillion, about them doing some remixes of my stuff, but there wasn’t really the money for it. They mentioned this twenty minute ambient piece, and we talked about me putting some vocals over the top of it, or reciting some poetry, or something, but when I heard it we started talking about me using it. I thought it could be heavier, and it needed a total redesign. But it was the foundation and outline for what became Plague Of Ghosts. It practically wrote itself, really.

"It’s the track I’m most proud of in my entire career. On paper it shouldn’t work; it’s got trip hop, drum and bass, rock, prog, but it all hangs together in a very modern way. I think it’s as valid to a fourteen year-old dance music fan, as it would be to fans of the old Marillion prog stuff."

WAS THE WHOLE ALBUM AS EASY TO WRITE?

"Eighteen months ago I was suffering that major male depression thing of ‘I’ve fucked up big time’. My company had gone under. I was in major debt. You know, I was really, really low. To get away to Castle Marouatte and be a creative artist again, it made me realise what I enjoyed. That writing music is fun. I came away from there with six songs and a sackfull of confidence. The whole of the last year has seen a metamorphosis of my entire business and artistic lifestyle."

A LOT OF THE LYRICS ON THE ALBUM ARE INTENSELY PERSONAL - PARTICULARLY RITES OF PASSAGE. HOW DOES YOUR WIFE FEEL ABOUT THAT?

"Heh heh. You mean my wife who’s standing right next to me now?"

YES.

"We wrote that song around the line about ‘Living with you is like being parked on double yellow lines’. It was a case of, Where is this going to fit? Mickey Simmonds and I put it together eventually. But my wife wasn’t allowed to see the lyrics until the song was finished. When we finished Rites Of Passage I took her into the studio to play it back. The crew were keeping well away!

"Another song on there which is about relationships is Incomplete, which is about two people who live together who find it difficult to get on. You know, I have to do it, though. It’s like releasing the stress valves. When my wife listened to Rites, it finished and we were both a bit teary-eyed, but it was just a snapshot of how we were at a moment in time, and we came through it. You can’t possibly know everything there is to know about somebody’s relationship from just one song."

WHEN YOU’RE UP ON STAGE, PERFORMING THESE SONGS NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, ARE YOU ABLE TO DETACH YOURSELF FROM THE EMOTION?

"You have to, otherwise you’d go nuts, and have a breakdown. Sometimes you can feel terribly exposed up there, and it can have a tremendous effect on you. But you have to be an actor."

WHICH OTHER LYRICISTS DO YOU ADMIRE?

"I quite like some of Alanis Morrisette’s stuff, the fact that it’s agressive, but with a sort of feminine approach. It’s not too macho. But I heard that it’s a guy who writes her lyrics, so...! I think the Divine Comedy guy, Neil Hannon, is incredible. Very, very clever lyricist."

LISTENING TO THE ‘MISSING’ TRACKS ON THE RECENT MARILLION ‘CLUTCHING AT STRAWS’ REMASTER, I T WAS SURPRISING HOW LONG YOU HANG ONTO LYRICS FOR.

"What do you mean by ‘hang on’? They all lie in a little black book, like crystals in a dish, and when the time is right I’ll use them. I can remember writing the lyrics to Fortunes Of War in American back in ‘87. The interesting thing about those Clutching tracks is you can see how we wrote. It disproves the established history that the guys wrote the music, and I just came in and sang over the top."

YOU RECENTLY GOT TOGETHER WITH YOUR FORMER BANDMATES. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?

"We’d become like ships manouvering in the night. It had come to the point where we knew we’d have to face each other. With the remasters there were sleeve notes flying back and forth. As it got towards Clutching, we knew we’d have to deal with it and get together. I spoke to Mark Kelly on the phone, and we set it up. When we finally met we got on as if we’d only been apart five weeks. We were just five friends, five family guys, sitting around a table. We have so much history. We did so much back then that others can only aspire to, taking a small Aylesbury band to world class status. We talked and we could appreciate what each others’ positions were back when we broke up, and all felt that we’d been manipulated by outside forces.

"We had a brilliant time that night, because it was just about friends. There’s no question of any sort of musical reunion. There may be a situation in a year or so where Mark (Kelly) comes up and does some keyboards for me, or I’ll go down there and do some vocals with Steve Hogarth (Fish’s replacement), but, you know, Steve Hogarth has been singer with Marillion for longer than I was, and the lad does a good job. He’s Marillion’s singer now. End of Story."

WAS IT WEIRD THOUGH, LISTENING TO THOSE MISSING SONGS?

"You know, we all agreed that we don’t remember them being that good. But that said, I still have problems with the tracks. Sometimes the changes are a bit too O.T.T. and acute. They needed to be more gentle. Maybe if we’d had a year to sit back... but it wasn’t to be. I looked up our tour dates from back then, and realised that we’d only had three months off in three years. I got married in that time - the honeymoon ended up being a promo tour of America. Somebody should have told me to go off and make my solo album, and get it out of my system, and for the others to go off and do their thing, but the manager was making so much money from us touring, that he wasn’t about to do that. But, what’s the point in saying maybe? It’s history. You can’t change it."

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF BANDS LIKE KULA SHAKER AND RADIOHEAD - THE SO-CALLED "NEW PROG"?

"I find Kula Shaker very plastic. When I was doing my radio show up here I took great delight in playing Traffic next to Kula Shaker: ‘This is where it comes from, kids!’ But, you know, they do what they do. I just found the first album very shallow. I enjoyed it on the first couple of listens, but can’t listen to it again. I’d hate to make an album like that. That’s why I’m so proud of Raingods. When you ask people to point out potential singles they name every track. That to me is the mark of a great album."

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND YOURSELF IN TEN YEARS TIME?

"My goals have changed so much. At 21 I wanted the fame, but what does fame give you? You get the best table at the restaurant, but there are more waiters hanging around looking for bigger tips. What I want now is to go and watch the football on a Saturday afternoon, and go and have a pint afterwards without being recognised, and just talk about local matters. Then go home and do a spot of DIY. Spend a couple of days a week writing a screenplay, then a couple of days writing songs with mates, and go out on a tour from time to time knowing that I’m not running any risks. All I want to do is provide for my family. They’ve been through a world of shit over the last five years, but now I want to make things happen for them."