The song concerns the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The Earl of Mar, John Erskine, led the rebel forces (in the name of the Great Pretender), but was an incompetent general, who threw away all strategic advantage by encamping around Perth for a week giving the opposing Royal forces time to get organised.
My pet gripe is that it was the SIXTH Earl of Mar, not the eleventh who was responsible! Apart from that the song is pretty accurate and sarcastic about our friend the Earl and his master
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"One of the reasons we have so many different elements in one song, let alone an album, is that if the listener doesn't respond to one thing, he probably will to another thing. If you're going to lose them there, you'll catch them somewhere else.
There's another song in the middle of it as well which was intended to go somewhere completely different. It was a song by itself. I was working on the idea of wind, if you like. I had a title `The House and Four Winds' which I wanted to do as a whole kind of thing and that's what remains of it.”
~Steve Hackett interview with New Musical Express in December 1976
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28 авг 2024
