"Fish and I were living in Ettrick Bridge in a five bedroom holiday cottage called "Hawkshaw". We managed to live there after Fish had convinced the estate agency to open the cottage over the winter and that we were a band called Sirius (cue "you can’t be Sirius" joke here) who needed somewhere to write over the winter. The pre-Marillion version of Garden Party (just bass and vocals and very different to the later Marillion version – it sounded as good as this description of it sounds 🙂) was from memory included on the demo that we sent to the band prior to moving down to Aston Clinton on 1st January 1981."
"It was Mick that I called when I phoned about the advert for bass player/vocalist, and had the original conversation from the phone box in Ettrick Bridge while Fish was in the pub. As I only had one 10p piece I had to get Mick him to call me back, "Where’s Ettrick Bridge?" "Scottish Borders… but don’t worry about that". The trickiest part was initially convincing Mick that they didn’t need a singing bass player, what they needed was a bass player and a strong frontman/vocalist. Once we had that discussion it opened the communications, and we sent them a tape, and they did the same. Fish took over the communications (happy for him to do that)… although to be accurate Derek took over the communications as that is how I knew him until the point we joined Marillion, and he introduced himself as FISH 🙂"
(Diz Minnitt)
Read a full interview with Diz in the interviews section!
Red Lion Pub, Bicester – 14.03.1981
Bandphotos by Justin Thomas – early 1982
The Marquee Club, London – 07.03.1982
