Photo: Fish (Derek Dick) | By Neil McCormick, Telegraph | “My name is Derek, and I am a fish for two more weeks,” announced Derek Dick, at the close of a passionate, powerful, moving and elegiac farewell concert at the London Palladium. The burly, balding, bearded and bespectacled Scottish rock singer who answers to the nickname Fish is retiring at the age of 66. “My bookkeeper called and said, ‘What’s this money going into your account?’” he explained in a lilting Edinburgh brogue that peppered every sentence with implicit amusement. “I said is it more than fifty quid? Well, it’s not Spotify then! Then it dropped what it was: it’s my pension. It’s nice to get money off the government for a change.”
Fish has been an interesting presence, making wordy, elaborate, theatrical and deeply unfashionable progressive rock with Marillion and solo for 44 years. He has had some hits but he’s not a big star, walking away from the flashier Marillion in the late 1980s when they were on the cusp of stadium-conquering stardom. He has spent most of his career in the margins crafting deeply personal albums that he often funded and released himself to a loyal but shrinking fanbase. “It gets harder this life as you get older,” he admitted, in one of many frank, funny, touching monologues, underpinned with slyly humorous bitterness about the music business, the paucity of streaming royalties, the encroachments of AI, the bureaucracy of touring Europe after Brexit, and all the “corporate shite” he feels he has endured over the years. Taking a swig from a bottle, he wryly noted “It’s water. I’m a grown up! Besides, I can’t afford the price of wine in this gaff.”
> > > > > > > > > >
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/fish-the-marillion-frontman-bows-out-with-dignity/
Photo: Fish (Derek Dick) | Photo by Les Linyard
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1197240378430013&set=pb.100044321864997.-2207520000