The news hit everyone like a concrete wall when it was dropped in the autumn of 1988: Fish was out of Marillion. The charismatic singer had finally had enough of what he perceived as the wrong decisions within the band and thus had decided to quit, leaving in his trail the seeds of a lengthy and somewhat pointless legal battle with Marillion. Fish, however, was not about to hang up his gloves, and, armed with manager John Cavanagh, began his search for the right musicians in order to form a solo outlet.

During the following year, the vocalist worked together with Peter Hamill (Van der Graaf Generator) on the latter's opera The Fall Of the House Of Usher, but, due to the fact that their voices were too similar, Fish had to be replaced by Andy Bell, and thus ended up singing only on some of Hamill's demos. The solo band, meanwhile, had already stabilized, albeit only for a short time, upon keyboardist Mickey Simmonds (Camel, Mike Oldfield), drummer Mark Brzezicki (Big Country, Pete Townsend), bassist John Giblin (Brand X), and guitarists Frank Usher (John Martyn) and Hall Lindes (Dire Straits) in order for the singer's debut album sessions to take place.

With the aforementioned formation, Simmonds as Fish's principal co-writer, guests such as John Keeble (Spandau Ballet) and Janick Gers (White Spirit, Gillan, Iron Maiden) on the record, and Jon Kelly as producer, the singer proceeded to record his first effort, Vigil In a Wilderness of Mirrors, at Townhouse Studios. The album was released by EMI in January of 1990 with Mark Wilkinson-designed cover art, and was enthusiastically received both by fans and critics alike, with its second single, "Big Wedge," soaring through the charts up to the UK Top 20.

By then, however, Lindes and Giblin had already been replaced for touring purposes by Robin "Itchy" Boult and Steve Brzezicki respectively, with Fish's first solo gig having taken place in October 11th, 1989. The delay had been caused by EMI, which had asked the singer to delay the release date of his debut in order not to coincide with the release of Marillion's new album, thus hoping to avoid negative publicity. That didn't affect the touring band, however, as it was soon well geared for the rest of the tour, and, curiously enough, Usher and Boult had strong previous ties to the singer, as the former had played with Fish in Blewitt and then in the Border Boogie Band, which opened some shows for Marillion. Boult, meanwhile, had stood in for Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery during a couple of concerts in 1986, while the missing guitar player was on his honeymoon.

Not everything was as bright afterwards though, as finances were going awry due to inadequate spending of the subsequent world tour's budget, the session musicians' salaries, and the fact that Fish was equipping a demo studio that had been built in some outbuildings of his farmhouse in Scotland. The tour, nevertheless, was a critical success and reached thousands of fans before ending on July 9, 1990 with a negative tab of approximately 125,000 pounds.

The losses, however, were about to be Fish's last concern, as his belief of EMI not making as hard a promotional effort as it should have impelled the singer to try to renegotiate his deal and then try to leave the label after failing at the renegotiations. The result was a tortuous and expensive legal dispute between both camps, in which EMI managed to stop Fish from releasing any material while the litigation went on, until the case reached the High Court in April of 1991, with Fish being told while he was playing the part of a hired heavy in the BBC drama Jute City. With the singer being unable to continue with the legal process due to monetary constraints, the result was near-bankruptcy and the absolute loss of his initial momentum within the music scene.

It was time for Polydor to then enter the picture, with David Munns, formerly of EMI, signing Fish after a great deal of underground negotiation had taken place and earned the singer a two-record deal with absolute creative and recording copyrights control. Meanwhile, outside investors had been used in order to finance the further upgrading of Fish's studio in Haddington, East Lothian in order to turn it into the residential studio Funny Farm Studios (a name suggested by John Keeble), but the UK had just gone into recession and all studio rates with it, so that the project ended up being a financial mess.

Financial disasters notwithstanding, Fish began work on his second album, which's material he'd worked on with numerous people during the previous nine months; the result being an augmented contribution on behalf of Usher and Boult and a decreased prominence of keyboards on the material. The band's rhythm section, meanwhile, was renewed, with bass duties going to David Paton (Pilot, Elton John, Camel, Rick Wakeman), whom Fish had met at a Rick Wakeman gig, and the drummer stool being occupied by Sensational Alex Harvey Band Ted McKenna, who would later be replaced during the sessions by Ethan Johns.

Meanwhile, Fish relied upon his trusty Marillion acquaintances of producer Chris Kimsey and sound engineer Thomas Stiehler, the winning combination of Marillion's Misplaced Childhood, to guide the album, which was then mixed by Chimsey with the assistance of Mike "Spike" Stent. Before the album was released, however, it was decided to release the title track in September as an initial single in order to set the way for the album's sales, with the song going briefly into the UK Top 40 before promptly proceeding to disappear. A track that had been previously recorded for Vigil In a Wilderness of Mirrors but kept for later, "Internal Exile" had been received skeptically due to its nationalistic sentiment and its release just before a Scottish general election, which made the singer's English fans believe that the song was an anti-English track. A rather ironical outcome, as the single had originated during the Dalnaglar castle writing sessions with Marillion in the summer of 1988 and had been rejected due to its highly nationalistic content, despite Fish's protests.

The fact that Mark Wilkinson's cover art for Internal Exile was a homage to Fish's roots and thus appeared very Scottish in nature didn't help much when the album was released in October 1991 either. The following single, "Credo," flopped just as its predecessor had after being released in December, and the next one, a cover of Thunderclap Newman's "Something In the Air," didn't even manage to reach the UK Top 40. The simultaneous and overambitious tour was a financial disaster as well, despite its critical success; in no small part due to the fact that Bandstand, the tour's UK promoter, had filed for bankruptcy just before the tour's kick-off; certainly not the best welcome for recently acquired drummer Kevin Wilkinson (Waterboys, China Crisis).

To make matters worse, the album was released domestically in the USA by Polydor during the summer of 1992 (with an alternate cover) for a very short time only, due to Fish's conflicts with Polydor UK. The label's accountants were less than impressed with the singer's lack of success, and the latter was upset with the label due to the haphazardous promotional campaign that had surrounded Internal Exile.

The resulting pressure left Fish devastated, so that instead of opting for a new original studio album, the singer decided to record an album of cover versions; an idea that had been with him ever since Marillion had rejected his 1988 idea for a cover versions project to be called Gheisterfahrer. He went over to Polydor with the idea that summer, and the reaction on behalf of the label's personnel was decidedly negative, as a new studio album was expected to close the two-album deal. Fish convinced the label anyway and recorded the album in the summer of 1992 while writing for his next original studio effort.

Before that, however, Fish's production manager, Andy Field, had passed away while the singer was away on a trip in Kenya, and Simmonds, devastated by the loss, decided to leave the band in order to work again with Mike Oldfield. Weeks later, the singer lost his publishing deal, adding to an unfortunate string of disheartening events that left him to take solace in the recording of the cover versions album; a period that he was later to describe as one of rediscovery.

Auditions resulted in the acquisition of new keyboardist Foster "Foss" Patterson (Julia Fordham), who had played together with Usher during a stint in John Martyn's band, and the new line-up went through a brief summer tour of Scotland and Northern England at the same time as it was recording the album in order to earn money for the sessions. The situation was not exactly promising, and it led to the dismissal of manager John Cavanagh by Fish due to the fact that the former was not receiving enough money for his troubles; a result of the band's less-than-spectacular commercial results. Ex-Yes manager Brian Lane was brought in to replace Cavanagh, but incompatibility led to his firing after only nine months of work. The separation, however, didn't take place before giving Fish the opportunity of working with Steve Howe (Yes, Asia, GTR) on a version of the Yes classic "Time and a Word" at the Funny Farm Studios.

Meanwhile, Songs From the Mirror, the cover version album, was being produced by Irishman James Cassidy, whom Fish had worked with during sessions for Jeff Wayne's Spartacus; one of the singer's activities while he was stuck in his legal battle with EMI (he'd sung on two tracks representing the character Cruxis). The album's title came from Fish's memory of performing in front of a wardrobe mirror to other band's songs at his family's home in Dalkeith, and consisted of British seventies songs that had been related to the singer's formative years.

With the Keith McIntyre (coincidentally Cavanagh's brother-in-law!) charcoal drawing The Guddler as cover art, Songs From the Mirror was released in January 1993 by Polydor to an extremely poor response, with the release of the Argent song "Hold Your Head Up" as a single being Fish's lowest chart entry ever. The failure took place after Polydor had undertook an intense and expensive campaign in order to promote the track, so that the singer's relationship with the label was well on its way towards its proverbial end. Even then, the label's Holland and Germany branches tried to invade the airwaves later on with an edited version of David Bowie's "5 Years," but the response was lukewarm at best.

The following European tour, in rather sharp contrast, was the best attended and received since the one that had taken place for Vigil In a Wilderness Of Mirrors, which, together with the rekindling of struggling spirit that Songs From the Mirror had symbolized, led Fish to release five official bootlegs to the public. Among those were Pigpen's Birthday (at the Hammersmith Odeon) and Uncle Fish and the Cryptkeepers (in Düsseldorf), and their release through makeshift record label Battleside was intended to raise funds for the singer's next plan. Soon afterwards, Fish was inaugurating his own record company, Fishy Records, and releasing the various artists album Outpatients, with three of the album's songs being his (and one of them being his collaboration with Steve Howe on "Time and a Word").

The record label's name would almost immediately be changed to The Dick Brothers, however; its namesake being a blacksmith business that had been started by his grandfather and the latter's two brothers, and which had been chosen due to a medium's suggestion. Under the new name, the label would then release the double live album Sushi, which had been recorded at the Vredenburg Hall in Utrecht, Holland, during the Songs From the Mirror tour, and which would provide enough money for the costs of Fish's next studio album, Suits.

The title for the album had originated from the singer's trip to Kenya, during which at one point he was looking at archaeological exhibit 1470 in the National Museum of Kenya (Nairobi); namely a skull. The skull was one of the earliest specimens ever found, and while taking pictures of it, the singer began wondering what a primitive human being would think of the materialistic and stressed agitation of modern lives. The reflection then led to the fact that everyone in the music industry was wearing suits at the time, and thus gave Fish the perfect chance to take a shot at the people behind it.

The studio effort was also funded by what was to be called the "Toile" tour, which took place right in the middle of the Suits recording sessions and would be a rather strenuous endeavor, with the band driving back and forth every night in order to avoid the expenses of staying at a hotel. Live sales were beginning to form the backbone of The Dick Bros., and it would show during the tour for the May 1994-released and James Cassidy-produced album, in which the producer went as far as to co-write some songs. With the album's first single, "Lady Let It Lie," hitting the UK Top 30 (and the album hitting number one on the independent charts), Fish's band went into an extremely lengthy tour that would last until the next year and would see the band heading into previously unknown territory, including South Africa. Part of the exploration was enabled due to the fact that Fish embarked on a tour of worldwide acoustic sets after the electric tour was over, having taken inspiration from the "Lady Let It Lie" acoustic in-store promotions and radio sessions.

Before 1995 saw the Suits tour's ending, however, Fish managed to appear in the 1994 movie Chasing the Deer, in which he played a Scotsman named Cameron. Later on, a second single for the Suits album would be released in the form of "Fortunes Of War" as part of a four CD single set to be released sequentally and which included practically an entire acoustic live show. However, the song, inspired by a discussion with a Vietnam veteran that had taken place in 1987, failed to do anything after the set had erroneously been sold by record stores as a package. December, meanwhile, would mean the departure of Wilkinson and the admittance of drummer Dave "Squeeky" Stewart, who, ironically, had been previously rejected from the band in favor of the former due to lack of experience.

Amidst the constant touring for Suits, Fish would attend a worldwide convention of the music industry, M.I.D.E.M., in January of 1995, and there would come up with the idea of releasing two greatest hits albums, Yin and Yang, in order to break through to countries that he'd previously had very little exposure in. The year would also mean an audition for the Alan Parker film Evita, a job at the German Viva2 music channel in the Highlander program, and plans for upcoming work, which included an album to be named Sunsets On Empire, another studio album, and a cover versions album.

The September 4 release of Yin and Yang, meanwhile, had been preceded by the spring re-recording of half of the tracks on the greatest hits albums by Fish and his band under the production supervision of James Cassidy, which in turn had the singer contribute with The Party Boys (formerly Sensational Alex Harvey Band) for a short time. By the time the re-recording was finished, Mark Wilkinson had the cover art ready, and everything was set for an extensive world tour to ensue. The plans were almost cut short, however, when Paton decided to leave the band on October 1st, and thus left Fish with an initial financial drawback and precious little time to find a replacement, who was to be Deacon Blue bassist Ewen Vernal. With Vernal thus on board, the band went on with its world tour, visiting places such as Latvia, Japan, South Africa, and several other countries before work for Sunsets On Empire began.

Fish had begun writing for Sunsets On Empire after he had undertaken a tour of Bosnia playing for UN IFOR troops, drawing inspiration from the experience before calling Porcupine Tree mastermind Steve Wilson and asking him to help with the new album. The contact between both was Wilson's' publishing company, which had formerly worked for Fish as well, and it allowed Wilson to accept the invitation and go to Funny Farm Studios in March 1996, the collaboration resulting in a new musical direction for Fish, that being one that was much more modern and aggressive. By the next month, four songs had already been done, and the ground was set for Wilson's coming back in summer in order to finish up work on the album, a time during which Fish got to sing the Scottish national anthem at the European Football Championship.

With tentative plans of turning Funny Farm Studios into a multimedia complex of enormous proportions, Fish began recording Sunsets On Empire with Steven Wilson contributing on guitar aside from Usher and Boult, as well as handling the production duties and co-writing seven of the album's ten tracks, which ended up being mixed by Calum Malcolm and engineered by Elliot Ness. The result was to be a considerably dark album that reflected the singer's views concerning society, life, and politics and was to be released on May 19, 1997, with the cover art once again being taken care of by Mark Wilkinson. The album was not without its pressures, however, as Yin and Yang had failed to reach the hoped-for sales figures of 150,000 copies respectively, and thus had left the new album without a strong monetary backbone.

Before the tour for Sunsets On Empire began, however, Usher, Boult, Vernal, and Patterson all decided to leave the band due to different reasons (Patterson was actually and unwillingly "told off" by Fish because of the former's contractual obligations), which meant that Keith More (Arena) would go in and take care of guitar duties for a part of the tour and Steve Vantsis (Horse, River City People) would be the group's new bassist, with Mickey Simmonds coming back to the band soon afterwards.

The Sunsets On Empire tour was to be the longest yet for Fish, as he had to promote the album through live appearances due to its otherwise underfunded promotion plan, which meant that the singer would return to the US and Canada for the first time since 1987, a time during which J.J. Belle replaced More, only in order to be replaced himself by Boult sometime after the former's on September 9th. The tour would come to an end in December, but hadn't raised album sales enough, so that Fish was in danger of losing his home and studio and was tempted to leave music for good, as the Dick Bros were bankrupt and financing a new album would require the support of an external record label. Fortunately, however, Fish was invited in May 1998 by Miles Copeland to the Castle Marouatte in France in order to partake in a writing session period with other songwriters from all over the world. The experience meant that one would be placed in a room with other people who worked in entirely different areas of music every day, and would then have to write a song with those people, and the writing retreat came just in time to lift the singer's spirits.

A couple of months later, Roadrunner Records signed Fish and proceeded to release the singer's entire solo catalogue in a remastered version, which Calum Malcolm would take care of, and which would be spearheaded by the release of a best-of album, Kettle Of Fish, in November of 1998. The album was designed to rekindle interest in the vocalist's material, and included two new songs that had been brought back from the Castle Marouatte sessions (after which he had sung on Ayreon's Into the Electric Castle). The action would mean, however, that Fish fans were to wait two records before a new official studio album was released, as the 1997-recorded double live CD Tales From the Big Bus had been released that year as well.

A month later, Fish appeared in the fifth episode of a British channel comedy/drama series called A Young Person's Guide To Becoming a Rock Star, in which he played the part of a producer named Derek Trout. The singer had previously auditioned for roles in movies such as Braveheart, Rob Roy, Aliens 3, and Gladiator without success, and the appearance on the aforementioned series thus meant a new return to the screens. Additionally, the singer was starting to give a lot more importance to his career as an actor at the time, not in small part because he considered that he'd lived the musician's lifestyle enough.

By January 1999, Fish's studio had been dismantled and its equipment sold, just a few months before his next album, Raingods With Zippos, was released. With Steve Wilson and new member John Wesley helping Boult on guitars, and Simmonds contributing some keyboard parts aside from those of dominating Positive Light keyboardist Tony Turrel, Fish had his new album ready on the wings. The effort featured the critically acclaimed surprise "Plague Of Ghosts;" a lengthy tracks that was based on an ambient piece from Positive Light members Mark Daghorn and Turrell called "All These Christs."

The Malcolm-mixed and Ness-eproduced and engineered record was preceded by the release of the single "Incomplete" on April 5th, with the album being released sixteen days later and the ensuing European tour lasting until December of that year. By then, it had become clear to Fish that Roadrunner was unwilling to promote his music beyond the scope of his already-existing fan base, and the realization meant an immediate split between both parties.

Meanwhile, Fish's latest studio effort, Fellini Days, has seen the vocalist bring John Young (Asia, Bonnie Tyler) into the keyboardist position and Alan Brown into the drummer's stool, with Wesley taking care of guitars alone due to Boult's departure. The material was written starting on autumn of 2000, and its title comes from the legendary Italian movie director Federico Fellini, with the inclusion of his name referring, according to Fish, to "a near perfect day during which time has no real meaning." Preceded by the April release of the new official double CD bootleg Sashimi, which's performance was recorded in Poznan, Poland by Radio Merkury in October 1999, the album will be released to stores worldwide on July 13. The effort will be released through the Chocolate Frogs Record
Company (Fish´s new own record label), and will feature art by Wilkinson, production by Ness, and a mix by Malcolm on the work recorded at the now-revived ex-Millenium Studios (formerly Funny Farm Studios).

The singer has also been particularly active in other areas as of late, as proven by his recent partaking in the STV crime drama Rebus and the Lab Ky Mo-directed film Nine Dead Guys, in which Fish represents a depraved homosexual. Add to that a role with Johnny Depp in the Roger Vladim movie about Scottish poet Robert Burns Clarinda (due out in September) and a part in the Andrew Loog Oldham-based Stoned; previous experiences with the Zorro and The Bill series; and recent work on the 180 page book The Masque with Mark Wilkinson (which's idea came up in 1988 but couldn't be pursued to to legal conflicts with Marillion), and one is to expect a very productive year from the vocalist.

As far as music goes, the tour for Fellini Days began in a Masonic Hall in Dalkeith on April 29th, with Europe to see the remainder of the short six week tour that was planned for the album's support, and after which the next studio album will be recorded after Fish's International Fan Club Convention in Scotland during August 24th and 25th. He may not be coming close to a town near you in order to play live anytime soon, but expect his acting to come knocking at your door in a couple of months!

Last updated: June 10, 2001