And so, The Masquerade Overture.

Pendragon hat pretty much stumbled through the 80's first supporting Marillion, playing Reading Festival in 83, making The Jewel album then nose diving at the end of the 80's when it looked like curtains for the band. However after The World album it was obvious the band were back with a new invigorated way of thinking and the world truly was our oyster. We had released The Window Of Life which was the follow up to The World - The Window sold even better than The World and it was a steady path upwards, that was until The Masquerade Overture, which produced a very sharp path upwards! Nothing could have quite prepares us for how well The Masquerade would do.

To cut cost we decided that for the pressing of the special edition 2 CD (2nd CD included King Of The Castle and Schizo) we would put all the parts together ourselves. Bear in mind we were still very much a cottage industry and running our own record label, Toff Records. I only lived in a small terrace house then in Cookham and we became totally swamped, the lounge was full of thousands of CD booklets and piles of discs, plastic double CD cases and cardboard boxes, you couldn't move in there. We could not pack the CDs fast enough for the orders we were getting. Holland desperately wanted 2000 more CDs by the end of that week and the only way we could do it was to let them collect the CDs in an articulated lorry that happened to be in the vicinity that afternoon. So, small country lane, artic trying to turn around in narrow driveway, wet road, cars coming screaming round the corner slamming brakes on, you get the picture? It was a nightmare!!

At the same time the phone would ring approximately every 15 minutes for interviews but were we complaining? Not likely! This was the best thing that had ever happened to Pendragon and catapulted the band much more into the public eye.

Sure, The Masquerade was no multi million seller but it sold incredibly well for a band running their own label and notched up a very respectable 60000 copies. Which is probably one of the best, if not the best selling prog rock album of the era that wasn't signed to a major record company.

The artwork was once again undertaken by our now "5th" member of the band, Simon Williams, and production was taken care of by our, er… other "5th" member of the band, Karl Groom who had worked with the band on everything since The Window album. The artwork once again captures all the characters that are featured in the songs, the main theme of the album is about good versus evil, hence the two representative characters on the cover battling it out. We included an llustration that reflected the whore of Babylon too, and just to keep an edge of humour added a condom (you can just about see it on the CD cover under a pile rings near the medusa character). The cover background was inspired by Venice, where I proposed to my wife, I loved all the drama of the place, I has a very strong atmosphere and with all the masks and strong creative sense makes a superb backdrop for an album cover.

In places, the sound was quite rocky on The Masquerade and Karl managed to get a crisp, powerful sound that was really starting to become a trademark for the band. With the release of The Masquerade it really felt we had lifted the profile, everything was going very well for Pendragon, the best it had ever been. It was a very happy time. However, trouble… big trouble was just around the corner. Something I never envisaged would happen that would put Pendragon in the prog rock wildness for some time. It was strange because when I was writing "there's a man who's followed me just about all of my life, being to you what I couldn't be, I call him my insecurity", I remember writing this very clear and feeling there was a slightly strange atmosphere about that day in the studio, little did I know how prophetic that line would become. I was about to head into a real messy divorce, hey but that's a story for another day!

Nick Barrett