IQ

Southampton

IQ grew out of The Lens, a band that had come apart, when Mike Holmes and Martin Orford started again under a new name in Southampton in 1981, with Tim Esau on bass. Singer Peter Nicholls and drummer Paul Cook joined in 1982, the year of a cassette-only debut, Seven Stories Into Eight. Holmes would go on to produce most of the band's records, and Nicholls wrote the words and drew most of the covers.

The first album proper, Tales from the Lush Attic, was recorded at Flame in London over four days in August 1983 and opened with the almost twenty-minute The Last Human Gateway. Alongside Marillion's Script for a Jester's Tear it was one of the first records of what came to be called neo-prog, and IQ were soon being compared with Genesis in its Peter Gabriel years.

The Wake

By 1985 most of the band were sharing a cramped, run-down flat in Harlesden, London, a time Prog later called the darkest in their history. Orford remembered mould in the bedrooms and a dead mouse in the toaster. Out of it came The Wake, recorded that spring at Falconer Studios in London. Nicholls built the lyrics around death: the central figure dies at the end of the opening Outer Limits, and the rest of the record follows his soul. It spent a week at No. 72, the band's only appearance on the UK albums chart, and AllMusic later counted it a classic.

On 13 May 1985 ITV filmed IQ at the Camden Palace in London for its series Live from London, while they were promoting the new album. That set, with the title song The Wake, came out in 1986 as Living Proof without the band's consent, and has since been reissued, most fully as Live From London in 2026. Later in 1985, after a UK tour with Wishbone Ash, Nicholls was out of the band. He has always disputed that he quit: "I didn't leave IQ in 1985. They left me."

It's always easier for me to write a gloomy song than a happy one.

Peter Nicholls, Words on Tape

Return and Ever

Paul Menel sang on Nomzamo (1987) and Are You Sitting Comfortably? (1989), records that yielded the singles Passing Strangers and Sold on You. Then Menel and Esau left, Les "Ledge" Marshall took over on bass, and Nicholls, who had first come back for an encore at the Marquee, rejoined. He said it felt like coming home. Marshall died suddenly in the summer of 1990, and in the words of Words on Tape the members came together again as friends.

In 1991 the band founded their own label, Giant Electric Pea, and John Jowitt became their bassist. Ever followed in 1993, made in the shadow of loss: Nicholls and Holmes had both lost their fathers, as well as their bassist. Its opener, The Darkest Hour, was the first song of the re-formed band, and The Progressive Aspect credits the album with setting what fans call the IQ sound in motion. Subterranea (1997), a double concept album about a man kept from all sensory input until he is released into the world, went further still, and was adapted for film by the American company Birdman Films in 2016.

The long run

Seven Stories into '98, The Seventh House (2000) and Dark Matter (2004) followed. Cook left in 2005 and Orford in 2007, so Frequency (2009) was made with Andy Edwards on drums and Mark Westworth on keyboards. It won Best Album at the Classic Rock Society Awards in 2010, when IQ were also named Band of the Year. For The Wake's 25th anniversary that year they played the album in full for the first time and issued a deluxe box.

Neil Durant joined on keyboards for the band's 30th anniversary in 2011, when Esau returned, and Cook was back behind the kit. The Road of Bones (2014) reached No. 36 in Germany and also charted in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Ever had its own anniversary in 2018, with a new mix by Holmes and full live performances. Resistance arrived in 2019 and Dominion in 2025, the 13th studio album and their first new music in six years.

IQ were never a major commercial success, but they have kept a loyal following, and Loudwire placed them among the best British prog bands of all time. The Wake remains the song they have played most, more than two hundred times. In 2026 they marked 45 years with dates booked into 2027.