Following the success of the Steven Wilson remixed ‘Brave’ and accompanying box set earlier in 2018, the Marillion reissue campaign continues with an expanded ‘Clutching At Straws’ this November.
Although not as commercially successful as its predecessor ‘Misplaced Childhood’, the 1987 album reached the UK top ten, spawned hit singles and remains a firm favourite with long-time fans.
For a year or so now, there have been rumours that Howard Jones would be releasing his 1984 debut LP ‘Human’s Lib’ as a super deluxe box set. It has now been confirmed that will be released in November, along with a similar box set for the follow up ‘Dream Into Action’.
A full press release from Cherry Red follows.
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The landscape of hard rock music in 1988 looked very different, in comparison, to that of a decade earlier. When Saxon began their recording career in the late 70s, rock and metal were solely the reserves of the readers of Sounds magazine, the devotees of the Radio One Friday Rock Show and festival goers. By the late 80s, it was no longer considered such a niche genre: bands like Europe and Poison had scored chart success on both sides of the Atlantic; Def Leppard‘s ‘Hysteria’ was one of the biggest selling albums of the era and Guns N’ Roses were on their way to becoming a worldwide, stadium filling phenomenon. Whitesnake‘s ‘1987’ was selling by the bucketload to a broad demographic and even Metallica – a band that only a couple of years earlier seemed entirely marginal – were on the cusp of UK singles chart success, and yet Saxon, in terms of commercial success, appeared to be floundering.
Following the tour for 1985’s ‘Innocence Is No Excuse’, founding member Steve ‘Dobby’ Dawson quit the band, leaving Saxon without a bassist and with far less of a moustache quotient. Without securing a replacement, the band re-entered the studio. With Biff Byford handling vocals and bass duties for the recording sessions of what would eventually become ‘Rock The Nations’, Saxon wouldn’t lose momentum. This seemed like the natural solution until a permanent replacement could be found.
As 1984 drew to a close so, too, did Saxon’s contract with Carrere Records. The past few years had been good to them, though: in a little over five years, they’d released seven albums for the French label, which scored six top twenty UK chart positions. That year’s woeful ‘Crusader’ aside, it represented an impressive body of work, one of which any classic metal band could be proud. Obviously, with Saxon being one of the decade’s biggest metal acts, a new deal wasn’t hard to secure and Biff Byford and the boys subsequently signed with giants EMI for a three album deal that would last the rest of the decade.