The Rest of Both Worlds Online

The Lizard Meets The Positive Light

Author: The Lizard
First published: April 2000

Most the people reading the magazine will have first heard of the Positive Light through Tales from the Engine Room, so I asked how that came about. “Sheer cheek!” replied Mark, and he and Tony laughed. This set the pattern for the interview, with Mark and Tony making fun of each other, and racing to be the one with the joke answer. However, this didn’t stop them going into a lot of detail, and Mark’s real answer regarding Tales was similarly full of detail.

“I had an idea in ’96 of doing remixes of Afraid of Sunlight and phoned Hit & Run and asked if they’d be interested”. “They phoned and said the band were quite into the idea and we sent them the African Mission record, that we’d done the year before. Eventually we got a call from Steve Rothery to come down to the Racket Club where they were working on TSE. I went and met them and heard some of the playback of the album. It had become impossible to do AOS, because they were no longer with EMI, and they decided they wanted the remixes done of TSE. We did one track that Christmas [Estonia] and brought it back and played it to them. We went to the record company [Castle] and they decided they liked the project and we agreed the deal.

“So we did 80 Days, and a couple of different mixes of Memory of Water. In the midst of all of it, the guy who was at Castle, John Knowles, decided he wasn’t staying so he went off to Eagle Rock. His replacement didn’t like the project, so decided they didn’t want it. So, we were finishing an album without a deal or any guarantee of it being released. That is really why the band put it out on Racket, to recoup some money on it, because they very graciously paid us what Castle effectively owed us. They ended up signing it to Eagle Rock, because John Knowles had gone there and still wanted the record. So they signed it, sold it to the fan base, and didn’t really go any further, which was a huge source of disappointment to everybody”.

Mark went on to explain: “We’d done acetates of MOW and they’d gone out to 20 trance DJs, who loved it. 19 of them actually phoned us up and said they were playing it and it was going down well”. [The one that didn’t was Pete Tong]. “To get a call from Paul Oakenfold, who I’d never met in my life, and never spoken to, saying ‘Hi this is Paul Oakenfold, I love the track’ is brilliant. I had a meeting with John Knowles and the guys at the Racket Club and we said ‘Look, we’ve done this off our own bat, the band has paid for the acetates, all you’ve gotta do now is a couple of thousand white labels of MOW’. Throw the net wider, get it out to the club DJs and effectively they could well have quite a big club record on their hands. He said, ‘Yeah that’s great’… then nothing.

Daghorn’s frustration is clear as he says “Yes it was in the shops, but there was no promo. They didn’t even sticker it to say they’re remixes of the Strange Engine album, cos I think your casual observer would say ‘Oh I’ve got those tracks already’. It was just a complete balls-up – the whole way it was marketed, or not marketed, as the case was. I think it’s exactly the same thing Fish has been through with Roadrunner. They know the artist has a fan base they can sell to without any risk [and] make a shed-load of money.” “[They] can’t be arsed to do anything else”, added Tony.

The rant continues: “They don’t care about where else it goes, how much effort’s gone into it or the kind of new market that it could open up. I think at that point it would have been totally feasible for them to do two versions of every album. That would satisfy their hardcore rock crowd, and keep the market that they would have opened up and do the remix. Not by us every time - they could get loads of different people to do it. I think it could have opened up a totally different avenue for them and I think that was part of the reason for doing it. I mean we did it for creative reasons – it was just something we wanted to do. But it kind of disappeared into obscurity, which is a real shame”.

I mentioned the release of the final MOW mix on the Web Christmas CD, and the use of the Big Beat version live. They were unaware of the Technopox release, but Tony said of Big Beat “I think we both found it quite flattering that Big Beat was used live, cos that was quite a surprise. I was quite proud of that mix. It was definitely my favourite out of the ones I was involved in”. Mark continued, saying “It was the last one we did. It was difficult to do three mixes of one track, especially as what we had was really just the vocal. We’d done the album mix , done the Technopox mix (we came up with this idea of vocoding all the vocals, and it was a lot harder than the album version – more a kind of techno garage type feel). They wanted a third version because obviously the idea was that all 3 mixes would come out on a promo twelve inch”.

“We looked at each other and went ‘Fuck’ ”, said Tony. Mark concurred, “We thought ‘What the hell are we going to do?’ We had the idea originally it was going to be quite a drum ’n’ bass thing, and then it sort of mutated. We realised half way through that we had to find some other things to put on it, so I spent a day with them at the studio and recorded some guitars and some harmony vocals. And some percussion, which I don’t think we actually used”. Tony thought they used “shakers and some bongos”, but Mark disagreed. “Actually no, we sampled those bongos off a Peter Gabriel song! Er, yeah those were Ian’s bongos – we sampled Ian’s bongos, which sound remarkably like some off a Peter Gabriel album, but they’re not”. “But it gave us the inspiration to put that version together really, just getting the extra guitars. It was really interesting to spend a day recording with them as well”.

I moved the conversation from Marillion to the other side of the camp and them co-writing with Fish. How did that come about? Tony suggested “we did it deliberately actually, just so we could match up. I don’t get credited for anything with Marillion and Mark doesn’t get credited for anything with Fish”.

Mark starts the story, “Jez, [Fish’s] business manager phoned our manager at the time. She knew Fish and Jez and he just phoned her and asked for a copy of Engine Room. She sent him a copy and he phoned back and said ‘I really like it – ask the guys if they want to come to my 40^th party and come up the night before and we’ll have a chat.’ So we drove up and had a meeting and had a look around the studio. I’d asked our manager if she would tape me some of the recent Fish stuff. I kind of fell out of love with Fish’s material after Vigil, but I’d never heard Sunsets on Empire. And we’re driving up in the car, and we put Sunsets on and I was absolutely gobsmacked. All the way I was thinking ‘I don’t know why I am doing this, because I don’t really want to do any of the stuff’ I’m totally judging it at this point on Internal Exile and so on. But I heard Sunsets and went ‘Fucking hell’. Tony, too, said he was “astounded” by Sunsets.

Mark is well into the story now, “I was blown away and we just listened to it repeatedly. I said I’d love to do a remix of What Colour is God, and at this point we’ve no idea what Fish wanted. We sat down to the meeting and he said ‘I’m after a remix of WCiG’ and we did the remix. At the time we’d been working on a long ambient piece which became Plague of Ghosts, called All These Christs at that point. We’d spent a couple of months programming and sampling and we had the basis of it together. A lot of it was spoken word and I liked the spoken word stuff that Fish had done on Sunsets. So we came to a sort of arrangement where we wouldn’t get paid for the remix, but he’d make a guest appearance on All These Christs. Anyway, we sent him up a working version of it, along with the remix and he didn’t like the remix at all, which we were pretty gutted about”. Tony explained, “He said he wanted it to be heavier, more Nine Inch Nails. Having said that, if he’d told us before we did it…” “… we’d have had some pointer as to what he wanted”, Mark finishes for him. “But he didn’t say anything. He just said go and do what you do….” “So we did”, added Tony.

Back to the story: “We got a call and he said I don’t like the remix but I really like this other track. See if the guys want to come up for a couple of weeks, with no sort of set thing and not paying them, but they’ve got two weeks of studio time to do what they will with. In many ways there was very little point in that for us, because we had our own studios, but it was worth it for a crack. We thought at the very worst we’ll go up for two weeks and be able to work without any distraction, which is a rarity for us.

“Second day there we just got programming and carried on. [Fish] came in and had a listen and said this is half an album really, isn’t it. At this time it was going to be half our album, which is the album we are making now. [Fish] said ‘Can I have it for my album?’ We were really surprised – there was no indication of that. He wanted it and we thought if we put it out at this point in time the only sort of fan base we have is the people that bought Engine Room. So at least if we create a piece of music for him he’s gonna sell seventy, eighty thousand copies, so we agreed and did it from there. And the rest is history, as they say.

Once they had done Plague, Mark came back to finish Wes’s album, but Tony talked about his involvement in Raingods, “The only thing I didn’t play – I didn’t play anything on Rites of Passage. I heard that and thought ‘Eurgh!’ and pointedly said to both Elliott and Fish at the time ‘I hope you don’t want me to do anything on this’ because I just didn’t like it. The only other thing that I didn’t play on was the intro piano on Tumbledown. Everything else on Tumbledown is me. I know it credits Mickey Simmonds with something on Faith Healer, but in actual fact he did sod all. I did all of it”. Open wounds show their evidence again, as Mark adds “That’s all right – he credits Elliott for samples on Plague” and Tony agrees, “That’s right – and he did sod all.” I pushed for the story on the production, and Tony replied “It’s quite simple – we should have got a co-production credit at the very least and we never got anything. End of story.”

Not quite end of story though, as Mark joins in at this point. “That’s what we were promised –a co-production credit. In many respects I’m glad we don’t have the production credit because I don’t actually like the finished article. So I’m kind of glad, because the end result is nothing like we would have done it, but we feel extremely hard done by, not getting the credit. If somebody had said ‘We don’t think you deserve the production credit’ then we could have talked about it and ironed it out, but nothing was said. The first we knew of it was when we got a copy of the album. I suppose it’s something that has been a bit of a learning curve and certainly we’d be very wary and want to get everything very tightly nailed down before ever doing anything with anyone again”. “Stuff it in writing”, explains Tony.

Mark: “At the start of the record, we had no idea anyone else was going to mix it. It’s just one of those things that we were trying to get acquainted with the situation. We were pretty nervous as well. Doing the Marillion record, they weren’t there. I had the nerves of having to meet them and deal with them on a business level, but we just took the parts away and made the record. But this was a full on situation with Fish in the room. Well, not much, but sometimes. And Elliott obviously. Inevitably in situations in studios where people haven’t really had things totally clarified as to who’s doing what and why, when and how, then things can get difficult”. Tony is more direct: “People fight for their own space.” Mark explained the Elliott situation further. “I think Elliott was fairly comfy with Tony because Tony was playing keyboards on the rest of the album. But my function was to produce Plague and he had a problem with that, because he’d been told he was producing the record. He’d been told we were producing our half, so as far as I’m concerned the production decisions were mine. As far as he’s concerned they were his. So that was a very difficult situation.

Mark summarised, “I think we were both nervous and didn’t have enough confidence to stand our ground a little more. In those situations, among those kinds of people, you get walked over. I think it was felt at the end that we could very easily be walked over, so things happened that shouldn’t have done. Now it would be a very different scenario, if we were to go and do anything like that again”. At the time of the interview, Mark and Tony had been mentioned in connection with Fish’s live album, but Tony explained “That’s all right. It’s in writing”, and Mark added “As long as he doesn’t spell my name Elliott Ness, then we’re OK.”

There had been rumours that they’d already written some of Fish’s next album, but Tony clarified, “We haven’t done anything with Fish. We’ve written stuff, some of which is on this [PL] album. We’ve got other stuff as well”. Mark added “The honest answer is we don’t know. I saw someone the other day and Fish had told him he was recording the album here and we were doing it, but we don’t know that.” “Cos he hasn’t told us”, added Tony.

Mark: “We made the decision quite a while ago that we weren’t going to do it unless we produced it and we wrote the whole album or the bulk of the album. Certainly we wouldn’t write it and hand it over in the way that we did last time. Or write it and think we’re getting credits that we don’t end up with. We don’t need to do it - we’re quite happy making our own records. Yeah we’re not going to sell the same number of records, but at least when we decide they’re ready to go, that’s it. The decision’s ours and we’re in control of it. I’d love to do another Fish record, but under the right circumstances and he either respects that or he doesn’t. That will be the deciding factor over whether we do it or not. I think we’ve gotta stand our ground on that one”.

I moved the conversation onto their own records, initially the difference between the Positive Light and the Silent Buddhas. Mark’s explanation was that “The Silent Buddhas is dancier, sort of harder-edged really. Because we write a lot of stuff, we need more than one outlet for it. We’re fairly prolific and if we only had one project, we’d want to make three or four albums a year with it, and you can’t really do that. But you can separate some of the styles a little bit, and give it a different name”. Similar to Steve Wilson, I suggested?

Mark: “Yes, very similar and I think that’s the way to do it. We’d both hate the idea of being in a four or five piece band that go out and play pubs and constantly rehearse and then make a record occasionally, with all permanent members.”. Tony was looking quite happy with the playing in pubs bit, though: “I still do that. There’s a few guys that I get together with and play once every four or six weeks. We only do a covers set on a Sunday night down at the local pubs, but I love doing that. It’s great fun, cos you don’t have to think. You just turn up, and you hit things and it usually sounds alright.” “It might do to you…” says Mark. Tony pointed out “It goes hand in hand with the drinking somehow. I’m great when I’m pissed.” No doubt there would still be someone down the front saying ‘It’d be better if they had Mickey Simmonds’, Tony agreed.

Mark added, “I’m not really into the pub thing, but we’ll probably go out and do some gigs next year, we’ll do some Positive Light gigs”. What form would they take? “Well, people sort of go into a place, and you set up on stage and you play. And they listen. Well, no, they talk at the bar,” replied Mark, rewarding me for a “silly question”, as Tony put it. When they go out and play, will it just be the two of them? Tony said, “Oh no, we’ll take out a full band.” What, I asked - drummer, bassist, guitarist, small string orchestra… “Well, we’ll have me and Tony, and a drummer, and a guitar player and a couple of singers and we’ll probably sample the live strings off the multi-track tape, and he’ll trigger them. We wouldn’t be able to afford to have the string quartet”, suggested Mark, to which Tony replied “No, that’s it. I’m leaving this room now. If we can’t have…”

I asked who will buy the new album – can  they leverage the connections with Marillion and Fish, or are there other ways of doing it? Mark was first to answer, “There’s other ways. We did the African record a few years ago and our distributor heard it the other day and absolutely loves it. He feels that’s got serious potential in all sorts of different markets. I guess we have to start on the basis that with the Fish and Marillion connection, some of them will go out and buy what we do, and hopefully word will spread. We’re not a commercial act – I mean it’s fairly un-commercial and underground, which we’re quite happy with. We’re quite happy for it to build and to take its own course - the whole thing’s always been a very organic process”. The organic comment triggered a series of jokes and at some point the Stereophonics were mentioned. Tony supplied a “trivia point”, that they were the first band they ever recorded at the PL studios. “They came here and recorded as Tragic Love Company. They did demos over the course of a weekend and I reckon it must’ve been those demos that got them their deal.”

I asked about the other artists on Positive Records. Mentioned first was David Booth, who Mark described as “sort of a cross between Crowded House and …”, but Tony talked him down. “It’s a sort of rockier version of that, with a few other elements thrown in. He’s a very talented songwriter, a great singer. That is the sort of album that I would go out and buy. When I heard it, it blew me away. I mean this wasn’t an album that I was unfamiliar with, cos I did the keyboards for the entire album. By the time I got back [from the Fish tour] Mark had finished doing all the work on it and got it mastered. When I heard what he’d done it was like ‘Wow!’ Seriously, one of the best albums I have ever heard.”

Next up is a guy who records as The Party, who Tony described as “extremely odd.” Mark calls it “a good record. Strange record”. Tony again, “He won’t do solos. If there’s a chance of a solo cropping up, he’ll chop it out. Very strange approach, very odd songs too. You’ve got titles like When the evening comes, Samantha.” Mark explained they “made the album in 19 days. I’d done lots of demos with him, and really liked working with him, so I decided to make a record with him, and we signed him for that.”

I asked about the studios and whether they rent them out, and Mark replied, “The preference is for stuff that we’re involved in. This year’s been a case of Tony being out on the road a lot with Fish and I’ve made five albums over that period. [Tony’s] played on some, or most, of them, but that’s been a case of him coming in, doing his bits and going. Really, this is the first Positive Light record that he and I have made together and the first one of original material. Obviously with the Marillion thing and the Fish thing, someone else was writing the lyrics. So this is the first time we’ve actually done an album together top to bottom and chosen the players ourselves. Because we haven’t worked together for over a year, it’s just happened really easily. It’d be nice to think we didn’t have to do anything else – if this was it, it would be very healthy, and we’d actually get some time off. But inevitably, we’re still in the building process, so we have to hire the place out sometimes. So I take on production jobs and do a package deal on the studio and accommodation.”

Tony suggested that “by the time the new kit’s in here, we’d be quite happy to do a dry hire on the studio, as long as we’ve got somewhere that we can work”. “But,” Mark pointed out, “at the end of the day, I live here as well. It’s my home, so it would be nice not to have the commercial work happening too often. But sometimes someone comes along and offers you an amount of money that you can’t really say no to, and you make a record for someone else. That kind of pays the bills really.

I decided it was time for the obligatory question on influences. Production-wise, Mark mentioned Trevor Horn, and “later Beatles stuff”. He also said, “I’m very into real instruments, which will probably surprise people, cos I guess a lot of the stuff we’ve done is electronic”. Mark named Marillion as a huge musical influence, but no others in particular. Tony said, “My thing is very much on dynamics – I just love things that have got great dynamics with them. Anything that goes from nice and spacey to right in-your-face suits me to a T. I love big sound type things, which marries quite well with what Mark likes with the natural sounding instruments and making them sound really punchy”.

They talked about how they like to make records you can listen to many times and still discover new things in. Tony says that although “your average punter won’t necessarily be picking out thing like that, because it’s so rich it still sounds fresh.” Mark agreed, “I hate really over-processed records. I don’t really like Tales from the Engine Room that much on reflection, because I think we completely over-cooked it. Most of the tracks actually sounded better about two weeks before we finished them”. So how do they stop themselves over-cooking it? “I don’t know – I don’t know that we always do. It is easy to go over the top, but at the same time it’s a question of finding space for everything in terms of frequencies and where you put it. There’s a lot of width there to play with, between two speakers. As things progress and you get into 7.1 Surround, you’ve got seven, eight channels effectively to chuck stuff out of. Suddenly you can make mixes that are more complex, but aren’t going to turn into mush.

Don’t you run a serious risk of disappearing up your own arse, I asked? Mark’s reply was “I think we probably did a while back. I guess there is the danger of going to the nth degree of making a record that no-one’s even going to notice where the fire crackling is coming out of.” Tony countered “It’s all a matter of just keeping perspective. And as long as you remember that what you’re doing, someone else is going to have to listen to, then hopefully you can stop yourself disappearing too far up your own arse.