Speaking of singles, as I mentioned two were released from the album, the first being "He knows you know." Around the time of their first three albums Marillion became somewhat known for including interesting and often unavailable elsewhere tracks on their twelve-inch singles, however this was not one. Backed with the interesting (and not available anywhere else) "Charting the single", the 12-inch simply added the single edit of the A-side and so was not good value for money. Didn't stop me buying it at the time of course!
You would think, as I did, that with a single suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly in the charts, Marillion would have just written an instrumental and called it "Charting the single", in an effort to allude to their efforts to push the song up the charts. But no. As a matter of fact, Marillion would not record an instrumental track at all until twenty-five years later, and it would turn out, so far, to be their only one. So the song "Charting the single" was actually a very clever one, with lyrics that referred to various European cities as a lothario travelled around Europe leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him.
Fish's love of wordplay could not be better demonstrated here: lines like "Schnapping my fingers on an alcoholiday, sniff round a fraulein when I'm scent to Cologne" and "Plastered in Paris, I've had an eiffel" show how well he used words to mean more than one thing. The title itself is a double meaning, referring certainly on the surface to the pop charts but underneath it, and supported by the lyric, it's a song about the joys of being single and how you only have to look out for number one. Not a terribly sensitive song, but then, as he sings "I got no claws in my contract, got no shares in my name, I'm just charting the single in a bachelor's game", who could sheepishly say they hadn't either been there or had those thoughts?
Despite all the clever wordplay on the B-side and despite --- or more likely, because of --- the mature themes of the A-side, "He knows you know" did poorly in the charts, making a paltry showing of only thirty-five in the UK --- none of Marillion's singles have ever charted at all in the US --- while its followup, the equally risque but perhaps easier to take in jest "Garden party" was fated to do much better, even leading to the video being played on "Top of the Pops". Yeah, cool man!
The twelve-inch version of this single is much better value for money. Not only do you get the full versions of both "Garden party" (the seven-inch has a shorter edited version that cuts down the synth solo and I think also removes a verse, or part of one) and a live version of "Charting the single" --- odd choice, since those who had bought the twelve-inch of "He knows you know" would possibly be the only ones who would know of the song --- but also a twelve-minute live recording of a song they called "Margaret", in which Fish paid tribute to his Scottish roots, basically rewriting the song "Loch Loman" and jazzing it up. The shorter, edited version appeared on the seven-inch but to get the real sense of fun in this song you had to hear the full version.
"Garden party" got to number sixteen in the charts, making some people for the first time aware of Marillion, and setting the scene for their biggest commercial success, two years later. More to the point, their somewhat controversial video was not banned or edited by the BBC, though they had to, as already mentioned, change the word "
fucking" in the bridge to "miming". Onstage at TOTP, Fish did not mime the word, but just pointed at his lips as it played in the lipsynch, making his feelings quite clear on the subject of censorship and the Nanny State.
It's not surprising that there were no other singles off "Script for a jester's tear". In fact, it's almost amazing there were any, given the length of most of the tracks. However, Marillion had quickly established themselves as a band who were not chasing chart success, didn't really care about singles and even despite their inability to crack the charts in any appreciable way, fans flocked to their shows and bought their albums, "Script" going to number seven in the UK album charts. Not a bad showing for a debut album from a band nobody had heard of.