Fish: Credo

Official music video.

Credo was the second single, released in December 1991 from "Internal Exile", my second solo album released a few months earlier. The lyrical idea was again a hangover from the Dalnaglar sessions with Marillion in '88 but didn't really come into shape until early '91 soon after the birth of my daughter Tara on January 1st who I can remember cradling in my arms while watching the "shock and awe" of the first Gulf War explode on my TV screen and wondering just what kind of world I had introduced her into. There was a lot of anger in me at that time after a debilitating and expensive legal battle with EMI records that wouldn't conclude until April of that year combined with an ongoing court case with my former band members in Marillion over various financial and other issues. It was a difficult time and I had perhaps foolishly decided to build my own recording studio amongst all this confrontation and the immense drain on my finances in order to give me creative independence away from major labels I had been beholden to. The "Internal Exile" album was the first album to be recorded in my own studios with Chris Kimsey (Misplaced Childhood, Clutching at Straws) producing. As expected the writing sessions had been strained as I came to terms with my "difficult" second solo album during this insanely stressful period. I channelled my anger into the songs and tried to look outward rather than inward. The album became a mixed bag of song subject matters and styles as I was slightly overwhelmed by my freedom and at the same time searching for a new direction and identity. The album had the original title of "Internal Exile - a collection of a boys own stories" with the cover , designed by Mark Wilkinson, reflecting the composition of a book cover of the sort of compendium I used to be given at Christmas when I was younger. "Credo" was born from a certain feeling of helplessness and frustration after watching too much satellite television of a world in chaos. The religious allusion in the lyric harked back to a desperate last ditch dependence on prayer in the face of total adversity and what I knew in reality was the uselessness of it all. The line, "It don't mean nothing" in the lyric was inspired by a scene in the movie "Hamburger Hill" when soldiers created a mantra to deal with the pain of loss of a close comrade. With the first Gulf War raging it seemed apt! It was a question of faith to which I still don't have the answer.