How did you get interested in the Tibet situation?
Marks: "I used to read a lot of books about Buddhism and mysticism and sort of magics and religions and so on. Tibet always seemed to be portrayed as this really special, pure spiritual culture which to an extent may be idealized but as far as I could gather really was a very unique place. Later on, I started reading more about the recent history and what's been going on since the Chinese invaded and I was really shocked A) that this incredibly rare and unusual culture could be destroyed that way, and B) the brutality by which the Chinese were going about it, the sort of version of genocide. There's not much in this world left that is sacred, so you've got to go try and protect what there is because the idea of just the usual world politics destroying everything of value just seems like a really shame. So I got involved with a Tibet support group in England and then when I was doing this album it ended up being called "Last Train To Lhasa" and I thought, well it would be really nice to actually do something useful for the cause. One thing which occurred to me is that people tend to read the notes on album covers, they tend to look at the artwork and read what's written there. And so rather than just put a track listing and thank people, I thought I could use the space as an advert and get information across to people who maybe didn't know much about what's going on or what they could do about it."
What has the reaction been like?
Marks: "It's been really good. The people at the support group say that since that album came out they've had a lot of new enquiries from people who wanted to join up or wanting to know what then can do to help. So the basic aim of getting the information out and making people aware worked really well. One thing that worried me slightly at the beginning was that possibly I might get people suggesting that I was using it as a gimmick to get attention and publicity and I didn't really give a shit. but I haven't had any criticism like that at all, which is really nice. It seems to be that people are just genuinely intrigued."
