Gazpacho

Album: Afraid Of Sunlight (1995)
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Songfacts®:

  • Gazpacho is a kind of tomato soup. In this song, Steve Hogarth sings:

    Did you carry out those threats I heard
    Or were you only playing macho?
    And the stains on her Versace scarf
    Were they really just Gazpacho?


    This is a vague reference to the O.J. Simpson trial, which was the big news story around the time the song was written. In the trail, the American football star was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and a waiter named Ronald Goldman. Despite blood evidence pointing to Simpson, he was found not guilty in a trial that garnered massive news coverage.

    Gazpacho never factored into the case, but it's a great word to sing, letting Hogarth flex his vocals a bit.
  • Steve Hogarth wrote the lyrics with John Helmer, an author he often collaborated with. In addition to the Simpson case, the movie Raging Bull, starring Robert de Niro as a tormented boxer, was an inspiration. The line, "Now the ring is just a band of gold" is something Helmer came up with, referring to how life in a boxing ring gave way to marriage.
  • Musically, Hogarth says the band was "trying to capture the spirit of early Yes" on this track. The bass is out front in the mix, which suited Marillion bass player Pete Trewavas just fine. "This is the perfect song for a bass player to show off in," he wrote in press materials. "It has the pounding verses and lovely high runs in the choruses. I remember us writing this and getting the verses together. I instantly started playing the heavy Rickenbacker type bass line for the verse and wonder if I would get away with it."
  • The bit at the beginning which sounds like John Lennon was taken from a film called John Lennon: A Journey In The Life, where the actor Bernard Hill speaks his words. The passage used comes from Lennon's 1980 Playboy interview, where he said, "I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and complete."

Comments: 2

  • Alan from Doulting, United KingdomA lovely accoustic version of this song can be found on the album Unplugged at the Walls. Well worth a listen.
  • Ryan from Minneapolis, MnWhile it's true that there are some O.J. references here, particularly in the closing sound effects. The song (whose lyrics are primarily by Marillion colaborator John Helmer) is inspired more by the life of Boxer Jake LaMotta and the film 'Raging Bull' (1980). The entire _Afraid of Sunlight_ album is an examination of stardom and fame and all the good and the bad that comes with them.
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