Steven Rothery (born 25 November 1959) is an English musician. He is the original guitarist and the longest continuous member of the British rock band Marillion. Outside Marillion, Rothery has recorded two albums as part of the duo the Wishing Tree and an instrumental solo album, The Ghosts of Pripyat, released in September 2014. He also founded the British Guitar Academy in 2011.
Rothery was born in Brampton, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and from the age of six he lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire. He began to play the guitar at the age of 15. In an interview for Johnnie Walker's Sounds of the Seventies on BBC Radio 2 in 2013, Rothery revealed that his musical tastes always differed from his friends, who were getting into punk rock while he preferred progressive rock, which he had been introduced to through the Alan Freeman show on BBC Radio 1.
In 1979, he saw an ad in the music press for a band called Silmarillion that needed a guitarist. He auditioned successfully for the band (19 August 1979). From this point he concentrated more on melody, composition and mood in his playing, and less on his technique. Later, Silmarillion shortened its name to Marillion.

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