Out Of This World

Thirty years ago, Marillion released their final album on EMI, their first not to reach the UK Top 10. Afraid Of Sunlight has since been hailed as one of the band's greatest recordings, but tragedy lay at its heart, even though it kickstarted their career as one of the most successful independent groups. The band recall the challenging times that threatened their career and, at times, their sanity.

- Philip Wilding

Do you know what was really amazing?" asks Steve Hogarth. "It was like it had sunk the day before, but in fact, it had been down there for nearly 40 years.

It still had the Union Jack on the tail fin, and it was still so blue, so much of it was still intact." "I was at the end of the pier taking photos, as the craft broke the surface of the water and they hauled it out of the lake, while all of the world's press were a hundred yards behind me behind a barrier," continues Steve Rothery.

"It was quite spooky when I think about it. Like someone raising the Titanic." "I remember watching [the accident] happen on the news, I was just a kid," says Hogarth. "This weird, lobstershaped machine suddenly doing a backflip and noticing that my mum was crying and wondering what the significance of that was. I was too young to really get it." On January 4, 1967 Donald Campbell would make history for all the wrong reasons when his Bluebird K7 craft

"The album just flowed. Top to bottom it took something like three months to make." Ian Mosley Laye flipped over during a water speed record attempt on Coniston Water in the Lake District, shattering into pieces and killing Campbell instantly. The infamous footage of Campbell's craft flying helplessly into the air to its doom sparked something in the young Steve Hogarth and inspired him to begin writing a pivotal part of the Afraid Of Sunlight album: Out Of This World.