Interview: Steve Rothery

Interview: 5th August 2025

Ahead of the official release of the new Bioscope album - Steve Rothery's collaboration with Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream - Hotel Hobbies spent some time talking to the Marillion guitarist about this new project, his ongoing solo work, his upcoming album with Steve Hackett and his approach to writing and playing with others.

Hotel Hobbies: First of all, how are you? You seem to be as busy as ever!

Steve Rothery: Yes, it’s a little manic at the moment. (laughing)

Hotel Hobbies: We are here to talk about the new Bioscope album (read my review here). How did you first meet Thorsten and what convinced you it was worth working on something together?

Steve Rothery: We both played Cruise to the Edge in 2014. I have always been aware of Tangerine Dream. I had a couple of their albums when I was growing up in Whitby. I was fifteen or sixteen and had Ricochet and Stratosfear. Thorsten is a big Marillion fan. He came along to our show in Berlin December 2018, and we met for a coffee and a chat. We talked about the possibility of maybe trying to work together one day. In 2019, I flew over to Berlin for just for a couple of days to see how things were and it was quite promising. Then in March 2020, he was in London for a solo show, and he had a day off the next day. So we did a session at the Racket Club, which went really, really well. In December of the following year, after the pandemic had calmed down a bit, I started this pattern where I would fly to Berlin for five to six days at a time and we gradually developed the ideas that finished up on the album.

Hotel Hobbies: How was the atmosphere working together when you had those groups of days?

Steve Rothery: It was incredibly relaxed, actually. There has been nothing stressful about this whole process. I think we understand each other musically. We inspire each other and there is no ego. Just like a musical conversation between two friends. It was a pleasure.

Hotel Hobbies: You have also played with Tangerine Dream live. I saw you play with them at the Roundhouse in 2022 and you feature on the live album they have just released.

Steve Rothery: Yes, the Coventry Cathedral show (read my review of Tangerine Dream's live album here). It's a slightly different thing when I play with Tangerine Dream. There is more repetition in their music and it is slower to evolve. With Bioscope and a track like Vanishing Point, it might be twenty minutes long but it goes through so many different changes of mood. Playing with Tangerine Dream did give me some inkling of how important the space was in that kind of music. You don't have to be playing all the time. You've got to let the music breathe.

Hotel Hobbies: The playing between you and Thorsten on the album feels very balanced. There are different points where each of you takes the lead. Was that sort of chemistry quite instant or did it evolve during the sessions?

Steve Rothery: It was pretty instant really. One of the things I liked doing when I did my additional overdubs was to find really unusual sounds. A lot of the strange sounds you hear on a track like Vanishing Point is actually the guitar using two different pedals – an Eventide-H90 and a Meris Enzo. Sometimes how I phrase things is very different to how maybe he would phrase things. I didn’t want to just fill in the blanks exactly but to create a patchwork of sound and melody. It was very interesting to build. It cost me a fortune in pedals! Every other day the postman would be at the door and my wife would say,  is that another one? (laughing) I've used a lot of those pedals during the writing sessions from the new Marillion album so it's not money wasted.

Hotel Hobbies: An increasing amount of pedals seems to have been something you have enjoyed collecting over the years.

Steve Rothery: It's like different colours on a painters palette. You know you want all these different sounds because you will play and write according to the sound that you have. You want variety in your tonal palette.

Hotel Hobbies: With the Bioscope album, some fans will have heard it because it has been available through the Marillion website and at shows. Is there a particular kind of excitement for the official release when it is a brand new project?

Steve Rothery: Absolutely because there is maybe only two thousand people that have heard the album so far. Obviously, others will have heard the tracks already released on YouTube but it is a little bit of nervous anticipation I suppose. The response I have had from everyone had been fantastic. People seem to love it so I hope when it has mainstream release that will continue.

Hotel Hobbies: I published my review a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed writing about it. It is a great album.

Steve Rothery: Thank you!

Hotel Hobbies: You are known as a guitarist with melodic clarity and emotional expression. How did you approach adapting to the more ambient moments on the album?

Steve Rothery: I suppose we had little elements of that in Marillion’s music so it wasn’t as much an adaption as being aware of the space. The role of the guitar with Bioscope is a little bit different. We obviously don't have a singer, so I try and play melodic hooks, even if it's not something that repeats a lot within the song. Kind of memorable lines that people can  - when they've heard the album a couple of times  - latch on to and enjoy. Thorsten says that I sing with my guitar so that's how I approached it. I tried not to play the obvious thing and wanted different things that could be played across the moods and atmospheres.

Hotel Hobbies: When Ghosts of Pripyat was released, you mentioned that the tracks were written like cinematic pieces that could create images for the listener, mini-film soundscapes. Using the name Gentō for the Bioscope album, you evoke a feeling of early cinema and visual storytelling.

Steve Rothery: Well the naming kind of came afterwards but we were very aware of the cinematic qualities. I think it’s just how I approach writing music. The album I have nearly finished with Steve Hackett is also very cinematic but in a completely different way, a lot more guitar based. Soundtracks were some of my earliest influences growing up. Either John Barry’s work with the Bond soundtracks or Ron Goodwin who did the music for a lot of famous war films like 633 Squadron and Battle of Britain. Also music like Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas and Vangelis’s work, especially that on the Blade Runner soundtrack. That permeates my kind of approach so it’s quite a natural thing for me to take that path.

Hotel Hobbies: Talking about the cinematic aspects, your daughter created a video for Gentō, the latest single.

Steve Rothery: Yes, she did a brilliant job. I found a basic, short time lapse thing from Tokyo at night  and I thought that this kind of thing could work really well for Gentō. So she tracked down the footage and the website – that cost a fortune! She then downloaded loads and loads of clips. First of all, she put it together and edited it to the music and then manipulated it. She is a computer games journalist. Well, an editor, actually for a big company called IGN. So I think she kind of brought that aesthetic, almost like a video game aesthetic to the way that the video was edited. It kind of follows the patterns of the rhythm of the music.

Hotel Hobbies: I think it fits really well. To talk about some individual tracks on the album, Vanishing Point is a twenty minute epic. The build up in Part 2 is one of my favourite sections on the entire album. Was it intentional to have a much longer piece or was it smaller parts that went together naturally?

Steve Rothery: Yes, that’s just kind of how it evolved. Obviously, a lot of the stuff that Thorsten does normally is very long, but it doesn't usually evolve at quite that rate. It's odd trying to describe how it worked. It just grew in an organic way. Sometimes we would both edit sections. There’s that great guitar loop in Vanishing Point where he’s taking a phrase of my guitar, putting it through a heavy Moog filter and it becomes a deep, pulsing kind of sound. There are other times where I've maybe thought, well, hang on, this section's going on a bit too long. We need to chop something out here. Or maybe there was one of the tracks where we had something that didn't quite work. The great thing about this is that neither of us are precious. We can take the razor blade to chop things out without the other person being offended. We share a common aesthetic when it comes to music.

Hotel Hobbies: Yes, the album seems to have mutual respect between the two of you. Different parts have each of you taking the lead but on some others, you are both at the forefront.

Steve Rothery: Exactly, it’s effortless. We just both wanted to create something special. There’s been no ego, no cross words, no tantrums. Even though it has taken about six years, (laughing) the time we have spent in same room has been about five weeks. So it's quite remarkable. We did work on ideas when we were apart but I’d say that ninety percent of the work was done when we were in the room together.

Hotel Hobbies: With instrumental music, listeners will interpret the music in different ways. At the start of Bioscope (the track), I feel there is an aquatic atmosphere, like bobbing on the ocean.

Steve Rothery: The great thing is we have amazing videos for all the tracks that a guy called Patrick Dunn has made for us – apart from Gentō which Jenny did. I think you experience the music in a different way when you have those visuals with it. We had the Dolby Atmos playback in London and it was amazing to see the visuals at the same time. I think we are going to have another playback in London in September but you’re the first person to hear about that! I was thinking afterwards, we should just do a tour of cinemas and show these movies and experience this and the full Dolby Atmos thing. I think people would love that. None of that dragging equipment around the world (laughing).

Hotel Hobbies: The album goes through a range of emotions. The last track (and first single) Kaleidoscope is full of light and joy. Was it always planned to be the first single?

Steve Rothery: We had lots of lovely, long ambient sections and I think I suggested it would be really fun to try and do something a little more up-tempo. For a while, it was called The Friday Pop Song but gradually it kind of took shape. I added some extra guitar riffs and parts to it, Thortsen added some cool keyboards and it eventually turned into Kaleidoscope.

Hotel Hobbies: It ends the album in a very optimistic way.

Steve Rothery: It’s a nice contrast but maybe not quite representative of the whole album but I think it’s a strong track. The antidote, like Made Again on Brave.

Hotel Hobbies: A very different sort of antidote that one!

Steve Rothery: Yes!

Hotel Hobbies: Drummer Alex Reeves from Elbow was also involved in the making of the album. How did his involvement come about and what do you think he brought to the project?

Steve Rothery: On the last session in Berlin in December of last year, we were listening to the tracks and thought, you know, we have to really try and finish this! We were very close to having a complete album and both agreed that what might really add something was real drums. We tried a different drummer first; a female drummer we had seen on Facebook playing along with some Beatles stuff and I thought she did a great job on those. We tried her and it was okay but it wasn't quite the thing that we were looking for.

So then we spent a few hours looking at videos of different drummers. I messaged my friend Matt Prior, who plays guitar with Bonnie Tyler, to ask if he had any suggestions and he suggested Alex because he'd done a few sessions with him. I messaged him to see if he would be interested. He was on holiday in Australia at the time but he said send me some ideas and I'll get back to you. I sent him the ideas and he absolutely loved it and we thought, yeah, we'll give this a go. Thorsten flew into London in March of this year, and both of us went to Alex’s studio in north London and he recorded the whole album in two days, which was a fantastic achievement.

We were just really impressed by what he brought to it. He brought this organic quality; it made the music sort of breathe. It just added another layer, I suppose, of rhythmical complexity to some of the things. It made us both smile, listening to him. He is a phenomenally creative player. A little bit of jazz in what he does. He only ever stopped because he wanted to change the sound or change the drum. He didn’t make any mistakes. It's exciting to know that we're going to be playing with him in December when we do these five Bioscope shows.

Hotel Hobbies: And you also have Dave Foster joining you too.

Steve Rothery: Yes – trusty friend and co-guitarist in my projects so it's going to be a lot of fun. We have Andreas Fink, who does the lights for Tangerine Dream, doing the lights for us as well as the incredible videos. We have a full video wall and have Ian Bond – who works with Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson - doing the sound so it should look and sound fantastic.

Hotel Hobbies: Do you think you will be able to fit in some UK gigs at some point?

Steve Rothery: Yes, I just need to know how long the Marillion album is going to take before I can put anything in. I’d like to do something in April or May of next year. Maybe Cadogan Hall if we could do one in London and maybe one in Manchester too. It’s kind of out of my hands really.

Hotel Hobbies: Always hard to predict with a Marillion album!

Steve Rothery: As always, we have lots of ideas but its arranging those ideas into songs and then arranging the songs in a form we are all happy with. You can’t put a time stamp on that. This year has been taken up by the Marillion weekends and last year, we obviously lost a big chunk of time due to Pete's medical issues. So it'll be ready when it's ready. The most important thing is for it to be a great album, not for it to be out even next year. Who knows how many more albums we've got left in us. We're all getting on a bit. You want every album you make to be as good as humanly possible.

Hotel Hobbies: Going back to Bioscope and the artwork by Simon Ward, was there some kind of brief?

Steve Rothery: Yes, I gave him a brief. I sent him all the imagery for all the different tracks on the album. On my Facebook page, my background picture is of a bioscope, which is this strange deice that has like portholes in it. It’s like a mobile cinema that’s still used in part of Africa and India. They show moving images for eight people at a time. The one on my Facebook page has even got one of the old fashioned record players on top of it to have the soundtrack too. So I had that idea for the theme. Simon came up with idea of Gentō being Japanese for the Magic Lantern and about using some of the Japanese type imagery in combination with the Bioscope porthole. I think the combination works really well.

Artwork: Simon Ward

Hotel Hobbies: Looking back over your career, obviously the bulk of it has been spent with Marillion but how do you feel your playing or creative instincts evolve or change through the collaborative work you have done – the solo material, Bioscope and even playing with Steve Hackett?

Steve Rothery: I think everything you do sort of stretches you and you never stop learning really. The whole thing about being a musician is you have to be open minded. I've always been more concerned with trying to find some original parts or interesting changes than shredding. That doesn't do anything for me. I wouldn't want to listen to that, so I wouldn't want to subject the audience to it but that's just my personal taste. There are some great technical players out there. It's just not something I particularly aspire to.

Hotel Hobbies: I have always thought that you are a guitarist who is more about colour and emotion.

Steve Rothery: Exactly, yes. Plus trying to play what's right for the song. I think that should be your first responsibility as a musician. Enhancing the song, not showing off.

Hotel Hobbies:  You are also working on your second album, which has been on and off in between Marillion. That gives you a different type of freedom, I suppose.

Steve Rothery: Yeah, that's the thing. I have a lot of plates spinning at the moment. I have been working on three albums. Obviously, the Bioscope album is finished. The one with Steve Hackett – which will be out next year - is eighty to eighty-five percent finished and the Revontulet album is about sixty-five percent finished. As you’ll know, I have always been a huge space and astronomy fan and playing at the observatories in Northern Chile was inspirational so I am looking forward to finishing that project too. The different albums have similarities at times but it is really a case of finding something interesting to do.

Hotel Hobbies: You have always mentioned Andy Latimer, David Gilmour and Steve Hackett as your early influences. How has it been to go from being a Steve Hackett fan to playing with him and now making an album with him as a friend and collaborator?

Steve Rothery: (smiling) It’s really quite strange and slightly amusing, I suppose. If somebody told fifteen year old me – when I was listening to Genesis Live – that not only would he be a very good friend of mine but that we would also make an album together and go – with our wives – up to Whitby for a few days, I would have fallen over. What is really nice about the album with Steve Hackett is what he said to me just the other day - that this album feels like an extension of our friendship.

This is how I collaborate with people. It’s not a competitive sport. It is something you do for the joy of creating and the desire to create something special and to pull out the best in people. I think there's some of the most amazing playing from Steve on the project that we have together, just beautiful. Bioscope is also very satisfying. Maybe one day it might lead to some film work because it is very cinematic. Tangerine Dream have done a lot of film work and so has Thorsten as a solo artist. We are already planning our second album together.

Hotel Hobbies: That’s already answered my next question.

Steve Rothery: That’s why I wanted to give the project a name and not just called it Rothery and Quaeschning, which doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue (laughing). I wanted it to be something that had its own identity so people would understand that this is something concrete, not just a one off collaboration.

Hotel Hobbies: Thinking further about what you said about friendship, I interviewed Steve Hackett lasty year and I have always found that both Steve and you are very down to Earth and friendly.

Steve Rothery: It depends on your basic personality I suppose but to sustain a career for this long in music – and he has been doing it for ten years longer than me – you have to be grounded, otherwise you will self-destruct or implode.

Hotel Hobbies: Looking back over the whole Bioscope project, you must be proud to have produced something different to what you have done before but maintain your personality across the album.

Steve Rothery: Yes, it’s very satisfying and it’s a contrast to the way Marillion’s writing has evolved over the years. You know, for the last fifteen or twenty years we've written more by just jamming and then putting these pieces together. Although Bioscope has some improvisation, it’s also got some real thoughtful between the two of us of let’s do this or let’s do that. Sometimes, if you if you're in a band, you can't help but write, or at least arrange, by committee. That wasn't really a factor with the Bioscope project.

Hotel Hobbies: You are currently more active than ever and show no sign of slowing down, which is great.

Steve Rothery: Yes, we have been busy over the years with all the touring, weekends and writing. There’s no reason to slow down or to stop at the end of the day. You have a finite amount of time to do this thing and if you love what you do, it kind of defines you. I suppose you should just do it to the best of your ability for as long as you can.

Hotel Hobbies: Thank you so much for your time Steve, it has been a pleasure to speak with you.

Steve Rothery: Absolutely. Thank you.

Gentō is released on 22nd August.