Let there be light: h leads the band in a night of adulation, celebration, and adult refreshments…

WILL IRELAND

MARILLION

VENUE EVENTIM APOLLO, LONDON

DATE 27/11/2021

There’s a moment during this second night at Hammersmith Apollo that crystallises the adulation, joy, respect and sheer drunkenness that Marillion inspire in their audience. With the air of an end-of-term party (it’s the final show of their Light At The End Of The Tunnel tour) where the elder boys have somehow got into the cider, the Marillion faithful are either hoisting, and sloshing, their pints around, bumping into each other then offering heartfelt and effusive apologies, or singing lustily along. That is until we get to the lightness of touch that is Bridge from the album that almost brought the band down: Brave.

The delicacy of the moment is lost on some who attempt to sing along only to be shushed very gently, though at about the same volume, by those around them. It’s touching, in a way that a nature film that settles on wild buffalo nuzzling is touching. There’s no such hesitancy for the melodic fluidity of the guitar solo in Sounds That Can’t Be Made though, every picked note of Steve Rothery’s solo is sung back at him with gusto. Rothery – now half the man he was, after what looks like a punishing exercise regime that has seen the weight drop off him the way ice melts in March – adopts a wide grin.

And he’s not the only one. This is a celebration in so many ways, the band free from their Covid-induced bubble (Hogarth joking: “We all tested positive on day two and didn’t tell anyone, you can all have your money back.”) and on the road again.

Lost in music: Steve Rothery.

The key master: Mark Kelly.

The new album might have been pushed back to the spring and the live dates smoothed along by crowdfunding (Marillion are good at that) to help cover the insurance costs, but everyone’s grasping the nettle and living in the moment. One lucky, and presumably flush, contributor who helped cover tour costs gets singled out from the stage by h, who struggles with their name the way Steve McQueen once struggled with a barbed wire border fence in The Great Escape (not, we hasten to add, the Marillion song of the same name; there’s no space for that tonight, sadly).