Geir Myklebust transcribes Penny Valentine's October 21, 1972 interview article from Sounds for his blog:
"How Yes stopped being the little band round the corner and learnt to cope with success Part 1"
Down at Middle Earth a band took the stage for two appearances. Under the unlikely name of Mabel Greer`s Toyshop they consisted of one bass player, a singer, a guitarist and a drummer.
It was 1968. The bass player was Chris Squires, the singer Jon Anderson, the guitarist Clive Bailey and the drummer a guy called Bob – neither destined to stay in the band much longer or indeed have his surname remembered.
Nobody, that night, fell over with surprise. In no way was it the dynamic start of a band that were over the next four years, to consolidate a very special position for themselves as elite maestro`s of a new form of rock music.
In those days the format was rough and almost flung together. The energy that was there had no real direction, the ideas were fuzzy. There was no sign that a sophisticated set of entrepenours was about to bud.
Eddie Offord sits in his penthouse flat, way above the traffic that thunders down the Vauxhall Bridge Road past Victoria.
The flat is big and comfortable, built above an office block that allows him to play his music as loud as he likes through the JBL monitor speakers suspended from the ceiling, long through the night, until the office workers come in to do their daily chores at nine.
Since his success with the Yes album, Eddie has become one of the most sought after engineer-producers and one of the most successful, with Yes and ELP among the top acts he works with and for. Currently, before he leaves for the States with Yes in the middle of this month, he is working full steam to finish albums by Pat Arnold, ELP, Johnny Harris, Heads, Hands and Feet, and Terry Reid. The last one being a particular hustle because as yet Terry can't get his words finished to complete the back tracks that have been laid down. The day I saw him he had two sessions at the same time at Advision during the night, one of them with ELP.
Eddie came into the recording business after deciding to go to university to study physics. To fill in time he settled into a job at Advision and never left. He hustled his way into being a trainee engineer, and within a short time was working as an engineer. Now he often works in other studios, because of the pressure of getting time at Advision. But he still prefers to work there whenever he can because they have the machines he knows best.
He talks in a slow relaxed manner about his job as a producer, and stresses continually that the most important part of recording now is for the artist to feel relaxed in the studio.
In that context, he is well aware of how to get people relaxed, and a main part of this is his total knowledge of recording and how to get that relaxation by getting the sound an artist wants. But what of ELP, I asked him. Surely their music does not need relaxation? Surely it needs the complete opposite?
That, he feels is completely different. Their music is mechanical and does not have a feel to it like most rock and roll. It is strong effects music. It seems that the steady hustling presence Greg Lake puts over would be totally removed from Eddie. But he is a sound freak and digs working with a band purely into sounds.
"I do record them because I like the sound, and it gives me a chance to experiment in sounds, especially with the Moog. I think Keith is a brilliant player, technique-wise. Their music is a forceful type of thing that does not need relaxation."
As a producer, he thinks he has to try to determine what type of sound an artist wants to achieve. They usually know the sound they want in their own head. It is up to him to suggest things he can see and to find what they want themselves. Also, being both producer and engineer, mans that there is no middle man to come between the artist and engineer, a point that he feels is very important to an artist.
"If an artist is into what they are doing, they know how their music should sound in their heads. I have to work with a person and try to get their ideas on to tape, and obviously I need to have my own ideas. Not being a producer as such means that there is no middle man and I am in direct contact with the artist.
"I worked with an engineer once, but it was totally frustrating. I know what I want exactly and to go through someone else is pointless.
"Basically I'm a sound freak, I just sit and think of ideas to really blow people's minds... I like to know that when they hear that sound they are going to smile. But obviously it has to be subtle. I think what I do is a cross between arts and science. Working behind the desk is an art and I think things can be done in two ways, they are either subtle or totally brash."
Offord has an amazing memory for the recordings he has made, and he says that each recording he hears that he has worked on is from a certain part of his life. At the same time, his wife Kay says that he can't remember a thing in his ordinary day affairs.
"It's amazing. Every record you do is in your mind. If you're listening to records and something you have worked on comes out you are immediately alert.
"I've been making one album after another, and you can imagine when you are doing an album a month from the age of 19 that's a lot of your life in there. It's funny when you listen to old tracks you remember all sorts of things that happened to you," said Eddie.
This month he goes on the road in America with Yes, recording a number of concerts for a live double album that will be released during the middle of this year. He's looking forward to the whole road bit of plane, hotel, gig, and especially to recording a live album. That, he says, is something completely different to working in the studio where a bad take can be done again. On live recordings everything has to be done at the moment and there is no going back on mistakes.
The next facet in his life is going to be a studio that he hopes to get built in the country around London sometime this year. As he says the thing is relaxation, and he can't believe that that's possible with all the hustling in London.
His success he puts down to being in the right place at the right time. There's been a gradual change in the recording industry that started to evolve when the Stones and Beatles were prominent and he feels he came along at a time when people didn't want straight producers any more.
"Five years ago you could have been a great engineer, but no one would have recognized you. It's changed a lot."
Jim Bickhart and John Tobler
Saturday, August 12, 2023 12:50 PM
NOTES ABOUT THE BAND by Jim Bickhart and John Tobler Phonograph Record Magazine - March 1972
Atlantic Records, a fairly successful operation by most standards, has developed a functional approach to English rock and roll over the last few years. With a lot of money to spend, the company ventures forth in relative caution, studying the schizophrenic English "scene" and generally chasing after only those entities showing promise of commerciality. That means someone in Britain must do the actual discovering and initial contracting, say Island or Polydor Records (both of whom Atlantic works with more than rarely), leaving Atlantic to merely buy American rights. The bands acquired this way have included Cream, the Bee Gees, King Crimson, and Mott the Hoople. Actually recruiting an English band is not the sort of thing Atlantic is prone to doing, probably because their few attempts have not paid off in spades. There is one exception, Led Zeppelin, who in 1968 certainly weren't much of a risk. Lulu falls in the middle, having had a hit or two, but then take Cartoone and Dada. You've probably never heard of either and it's not surprising, since neither were very spectacular.
Cartoone, a Scottish band, came to Atlantic thru some tie-in with the Lulu deal. Such arrangements are always dubious propositions. Dada purportedly had tenuous musical connections with the art movement of the same name. One might have connected the confusion of Dada with the group, but hardly the originality. The band did one Lp, much like an equally temporary dadist newspaper, and split up. Their remnants are now Vinegar Joe, signed to Island in England. They are most likely still using the mass of equipment acquired at Atlantic's expense.
Such an introductory digression as this is prompted by the fact that Atlantic probably invested more money in failures like Cartoone or Dada than they did in more creative artists they acquired for one disparate reason or another but could not successfully market for a long time. Take Yes. Three years on, they are popular on both sides of the Atlantic (the fiscal and the artistic, as well as the east and the west), and Ahmet Ertegun is no doubt overjoyed at what he must remember as his good taste back in 1968. Certainly, a show of perseverance, inadvertent or otherwise, is what Mr. Ertegun must be credited with, since most Americans (and especially American radio programmers) didn't want to know about the band until after their first American tour in 1971.
Yes, like most multi-personed organizations, have been through a few personnel changes over the years. The three-man core of the group, vocalist, songwriter and ersatz leader Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire and drummer Bill Bruford, are still present. Pete Banks on guitar and Tony Kaye on organ have been replaced with Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman, respectively. Some say that the most noteworthy thing about early Yes was their logo, a bubble emerging from invisible lips, proclaiming "Yes. " A bloody great bright red and blue Yes bubble found its way to the back cover of their first Lp and rates no artistic awards in its blatancy.
Harsher critics have called Yes' first effort, Yes, an eminently forgettable collection of music. Which is perhaps both fair and unfair at the same time. The two primary strains in early Yes music were both admirable in their own right, but can be considered almost mutually exclusive. The first was a propensity for reworking relatively known songs by other writers; no sample of this approach to finding material was anything less than striking, since Yes tended to address themselves pretty radically to the task. The Beatles' "Every Little Thing," which took somewhat of a back seat to other numbers of Beatles Six back in l 965, is nigh onto unrecognizable until the vocal begins, well into the track. The cut could be called "sophisticated heavy," and the band's ideas seemed to resemble those of the Nice when that group placed themselves in a similar position. There is the removal of emphasis from one segment of the song and the placing of it on another, the imposition of jazzy riffs and rhythms which didn't originally have anything to do with the song and soaring, adolescent vocal harmonies which now trademark Yes. The amalgamation worked for "Every Little Thing," and only slightly less so for the Byrds' "I See You" (from Fifth Dimension). The Byrds' original track was not so dispersed and therefore carried a little more of a punch, I think, and when they recorded it, McGuinn was doing all those pseudo-avant garde jazz riffs on his twelve-string, the likes of which haven't been heard again from rock guitar players. Pete Banks, on the other hand, played it with sleek, slim lines which are, most simply, not as aurally demanding.
The other direction of the band was that of original material. Jon Anderson was, and remains, prolific. Lyrically, he has always been a competent if not pioneering writer, and on Yes, his music (or, more accurately, the band's music, since the arrangements are so important) is quite straightforward and tuneful. One has some measure of trouble distinguishing between tracks for want of some hook to grab onto, but it's truthfully hard to fault a band for trying to write solidly good rock and roll numbers which are more than Chuck Berry chord progressions. Considering Yes' current level of acceptance, it is surprising that they didn't have any hit singles before "Your Move" in 1971; much of the material on Yes, while not as good, should certainly have had a good shot at an AM audience. Its structure is relatively simple and the band sounded tight more than anything else. "Looking Around" rated as the best of this lot.
The later trademarks of Yes, besides the vocals, proved to be staccato bursts (riffs, often played by several members of the band at once) and flowing melodic passages. Both are present in economic proportions on Yes. The album aroused interest mostly from relatives of the band members and a few critics when it came out, and made the bargain bins long before the group broke big. It would be a good buy if you got one cheap, otherwise this should be considered the most expendable Yes Lp.
Time and a Word, the second and last Lp done with the original lineup, was more or less a rehashing of the first, save for a change of producers (trade Paul Clay for Tony Colton who produced Taste and sings with Head, Hands and Feet ) and the addition of orchestral arrangements to some tracks.
Richie Havens' "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" was the big move for the album. Somehow, it got mixed up with the music from The Big Country, which was the Western epic movie theme epitomized. What seems to be a million violinists going diddle-iddle-iddle, then organ, guitar, bass and drums force their way in, making room for Anderson's voice. It's very powerful and impressive all the way through, but the high point is Banks' wah-wah echoing of the movie theme in the middle. The track should be played at neighbor-annoying volume to be really effective, and it is guaranteed to remove the breath from anyone forced to listen to it through large speakers at close range.
Also on Time and a Word is Steve Stills' "Everdays," which on Buffalo Springfield Again, is a muted, jazzy little ballad. Not so here. Yes make it another epic, but that's okay. Once again, the non-original material serves as the album's focal point.
It might be noted that while the group's original songs didn't initially seem so great, the band had already created a sound fairly recognizable as their own. Tony Kaye tended to adjust his organ a certain way, and there was an airy feeling in the proceedings. Their use of string arrangements was lush, but more like the extravagant practicality of a Procol Harum than the extravagant triviality of the Bee Gees. If a bit of precociousness, a bit of pretentiousness and some measure of ability to carry them both off were your ideas of something worth hearing, then Yes immediately struck you as a band to watch. It did not, however, make their rise to fame and fortune any less unexpected. The pop world simply hasn't progressed so far that one can predict the presence of complicated music on the top forty.
So Yes, undaunted by their relative lack of acceptance, slogged about Britain in their gig van, playing to audiences both hostile and friendly (they went down well with people ready to accept something different from the always-popular deafeningly heavy, get-it-together-in-the-country type of band who sing of green and purple tortoises sprinting across their consciousnesses). Instead of trying to reproduce the overdone sound of Time and a Word (unlike the Bee Gees and Barclay James Harvest, Yes decided not to bring their symphony orchestra to the concerts with them), the band continued to develop their material.
In late summer 1970, Pete Banks left the band to join Blodwyn (Pig), which proved an unprofitable move, since Blodwyn held together another three months. Replacing him was Steve Howe, who had been with an embryonic underground group, Keith West's Tomorrow. They did one album and had a couple of singles which garnered attention; "My White Bicycle" and the later"Excerpts From a Teenage Opera." Marc Bolan has said that Tomorrow was as good a band as you'd find in England for a brief timespan of 1967, and he characterized Steve Howe's guitar work as excellent Roger McGuinn rip-offs. Howe's next band was Bodast, a short-lived group whose main claim to fame was a bottom-of-the-bill gig at the Albert Hall when the Who were bombarded with pennies by a bunch masquerading as Chuck Berry fans. Chuck was below the Who on the bill. The same day, there'd been a concert just across the road from the Albert... the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park. It was quite a day, and Steve Howe almost figured in it.
Anyway, by the time Howe joined, Yes were doing several numbers which would prove to be staples on their third Lp, not to mention another "interpretation" which has never been recorded; Paul Simon's "America." Honestly, this rates as the most impressive thing they've ever done, and would undoubtedly do well as a record. It runs about twenty-five minutes, giving each instrument a solo section, and doing as good a job as Yes can do lending proper poignancy to a set of lyrics.
In general, Yes concerts at this point were spectacular enough simply as evidences of ensemble gymnastics. All the members of the group have always been technically good craftsmen attuned to the concept of contributing to an overall effect before worrying about making a flashy individual showing. Chris Squire's bass sound, not propelled by any amazing speed or inventiveness on his part, was improved by giving him better equipment, and Tony Kaye's organ work continued to be totally appropriate to what the band were doing. Steve Howe picked up nicely where Banks left off, and drummer Bruford was a good deal more than a simple percussionist.
A tour of Britain with Iron Butterfly in late 1970 proved important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Chromium Ferret were blown into oblivion by Yes. Yes were then subsequently able to take-over all of Butterfly's excellent if somewhat abused P.A. equipment. It was the signal that Yes were about to become headliners themselves, and the final kick was given by The Yes Album.
Produced by Yes with Eddie Offord, The Yes Album was the band's first show of unique original songwriting. Which is to say they were finally able to combine the irregularity usually reserved for their versions of other people's songs with the tunefulness always present in their own work. The resulting hybrid sent a few skeptics to their notebooks to try to chart the flow of influences so they might have their ledger of criticism ready at the next Intellectual Discussion of Rock Music, but most listeners simply ran out and bought the album.
The best tracks on the record were "Starship Trooper" and "I've Seen All Good People." Both were in several " movements," independently structured but well tied together and filled with ensemble virtuosity of great magnitude. Steve Howe and Tony Kay shined throughout, their playing going from showy speed and volume to subtlety and quiet with nary a whimper of discomfort. The "Your Move" segment of "All Good People," which depicted a sort of chess game of human emotions, became an American hit single, its choral vocal effects ringing majestically out of little radios everywhere during the summer of '71.
The first American tour took place soon after the release of the third album. Though the band was already playing only large venues back home in Britain, they had to pay their proverbial dues in the States. Long gigs at places like L.A.'s Whisky were quite like metabolic overhauls for Yes; they played some clubs which to them probably seemed no bigger than dressing rooms for their concerts back in England. But to audiences, it was a bit of a treat, since Yes close-up, with lovely permanent stage lighting and good equipment, were a feast. As one Englishman delighted to find himself in the audience put it, "seeing them up close like this is great. It would never happen in England, you know. And they're like a well oiled machine... they just get up there and do it, with no monkey business. " Not, perhaps, a wildly favorable testimonial if you're the Who, but Yes never have made any bones about what they were doing. It's always been precise and preconceived. Their first American tour opened enough ears to get "Your Move" that all-important airplay, and the band has not looked back since.
In 1971, Tony Kaye left because the rest of the group wanted him to continue to diversify on the keyboards. He, on the other hand, wished to simplify, sticking mostly to organ. A ready made replacement was found in former Strawb Rick Wakeman, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music who had been sumptuously decorating the Strawbs' converted folk-rock for a little over a year. Wakeman, a master on piano. organ, synthesizer and mellotron, made the transition smoothly and has since been seen playing four and five instruments almost simultaneously on stage. The Strawbs, meantime, replaced him with a fellow named Blue Weaver, who, amazingly enough, has responded to the challenge of filling Wakeman's shoes quite admirably; the Strawbs never truthfully taxed Wakeman's full range of skills, but they certainly do Weaver's. Indeed, they now sound more like what one might have expected them to sound when they had Wakeman than they did when they had Wakeman!
The fourth Yes Lp, Fragile, was recorded shortly before they did a second, more extensive U.S. tour. The record is a kind of expository statement on the current abilities of the group. Each member is given an entire track to play with, not unlike the format of half of Pink Floyd's Umma Gumma, and the other half of the Lp is given over to group songs. Unfortunately, the individual tracks are as much self-indulgence as they are entertaining. Steve Howe's acoustic guitar picking is certainly nice enough, as are Wakeman's extracts from Brahms, but these cuts, and those dominated by Bruford and Squire, are more useful for academic reasons than for anything else.
The two cuts on Fragile which have made it a big hit album are "Roundabout" and "Long Distance Runaround." The former is very catchy, being one of the better amalgamations of simple, memorable rhythm and trickiness the band has yet done, while the latter is mostly tricky while remaining simple enough to be understandable. Parts of it resemble some of Captain Beefheart's work in an obtuse way, but the basic effect is more esoteric than impenetrable. There's also a King Crimsony mellotron number, "Heart of the Sunrise."
If you are wondering why all the celebration over a group most of whose albums can be faulted to some substantial degree, perhaps the best conclusion we can reach is that Yes' good intentions are being rewarded. It is said, and not without some basis in actual fact, that most everything Yes do can be found done just as well by someone else who did it first. But, to Yes' credit, it can also be said that few others have come as close to successfully integrating so many varied elements into one repertoire and making it sound like anything more than an uncomfortable collage of noises. America's Seatrain are probably Yes' counterparts in this achievement.
If Atlantic Records are now feeling a bit smug, with Fragile top twenty, and Yes concerts selling out in America as well as Britain, they have probably earned their self-indulgence. Most bands whose debut albums reached the cast-off racks as fast as Yes did don't get the chance to record a fourth album let alone see it go top twenty on two continents. But Atlantic is definitely functional and success is their favorite function.
DISCOGRAPHY
Yes Atlantic Sd 8243; Time and a Word, Sd 8373; The Yes Album, Sd 8283; Fragile, Sd 7211; not to mention Tomorrow, Sire SES 97012 and Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios, the Strawbs A&M; SP 4288; From the Witchwood, the Strawbs A&M; Sp 4394.
"A great insight into the back-story of Yes-man Howe. There is not much doubt that he would always have been a musician. If he hadn't succeeded with Yes, he would have played for whoever paid the bills as long as he could live and breathe music. A really talented man that luckily for us found his home in Yes."
"Yesman Steve Howe: A self-assessment"
By Pamela Holman New Musical Express February 5, 1972
The idea of CLOSE TO THE EDGE was born with the murmur of river water
THE REAL BRAIN OF YES
JON ANDERSON
translation:
When we were introduced at the Crystal Palace festival site, the first thing Jon told me was that his brother [singer Tony Anderson] is in Spain with Los Bravos. Maybe it was this which made it easier for us to chat with him, when it was barely half an hour to the beginning of the performance of his group. He is short, he always has a wallet in his hand, he is extremely nervous, even though later on stage he is quite calm. He has a very personal sense of things, as you will see through this dialogue.
Mr. Anderson, can Close to the Edge be the job to pass to Yes’s posterity?
—You never really think that a certain album will be successful or not. I did not compose the lyrics and music thinking of releasing “a masterpiece”. Emerson, Lake & Palmer made "TARKUS” without foreseeing the subsequent apotheosis. There are people who wonder where I want to go with my compositions. I wonder if I know their caliber. You can write about love, the moon or … spring; or you can even ask yourself what is the political state of the earth … but they are questions that cannot be answered exactly. The idea of "Close to the Edge" was conceived with the murmur of river water and then progressively began to develop music … it is difficult to explain the context of the album.
Would you say that the album is a reflection of yourself, and of your way of thinking?
—In a way yes. It is the first thing I have actually written that is a fact concerning me. The rest are dreams that I would like to see. The only thing to transmit is your vibrations, your concerns about a particular topic.
If this album is a reflection of your mental and emotional state, was it difficult to transfer this state to the rest of the band to release an album like this?
—Not exactly, because a band that stays together for a long time seeks the utopia of musicality at all times. That is not saying much considering that each one can expose what they want, since we are five heads to think and not one that directs the others.
There is no leader in Yes. I am the oldest of all and in certain things I can approve or suggest some projects, but on a musical level, I am not above them. I really can plan the future of the band faster than them, but simply because they are less complex within the group, I mean that they only contribute once, while they have to continually improve themselves both technically and musically.
According to your latest statements, Yes will have a long life as a group?
—And the best way to get it is to play less in England to the public, and when it is done, it is to offer something really worked and superior. In this way the band does not wear out and renews energies. To achieve longevity you have to progress and offer people a job that they appreciate. After the tour in America, with Alan our new drummer, everything went so well that we are planning to record a new album to present his possibilities and those of the band, in general, in this new stage. In any case, it is also a matter of hard work for eight years that Yes has been running. In eight years, there is plenty of time to perfect and know the direction that has been taken. It is now when I myself begin to savor our own music. I am embarking with my companions on a journey whose trajectory we already know, now we must take advantage of it.
Why do you give such a spiritual and religious meaning to your lyrics?
—People in general are realizing the importance of the Earth, that we have to save it, saving ourselves with it. It is not a question of saying, we are going to clean this lake or this river of pollution. The planet Earth has all the ingredients to save us and if we look at it in perspective we will realize better. Hence the meaning of certain compositions of ours. I am very concerned about people who vote for a party or do something systematically, because they have been told to do so. You have to make sure. In our last performances in the United States, I told the crowd from the stage to vote, but vote for what they believe and not for a certain political fashion leader, simply because they can.
The moment of the performance is approaching. Our talk now transpires at the back of the stage. We talk about Spain and the difficulties of performing in our country. Anderson says that the reason why they don’t come play in Spain entirely depends on managers. Chris Welch, the most important music journalist in England, arrives. Jon introduces us and the photo is testament to the friendship between Jon and Chris. Our dialogue continues…
Before you told us that you care more than the other components of the future of Yes, what is that future?
—That cannot be stated for sure. I never believed that: Bill was going to leave the good way. And he did. I never thought he was going to be replaced and yet there is Alan. I don’t know … we have talked about many innovations that have not come to fruition, but they are waiting there. The future, although we form it unconsciously, is taking shape without realizing it. We work, we investigate in the music and without noticing it we are establishing that future, even with the perfection and experience that we seek. It seems to me that we have been lucky and have learned directly from the experiences of other groups. I do not explain or conceive of one of us speaking ill of others in the future, as John Lennon is doing with Paul McCartney. John in his lyrics speaks of beauty, love, peace, union and then in interviews he bathes Paul in the mud. I hope we have not joined primarily to make music. I don’t know if we will continue together or if there will be new musicians in the band in the future. God knows. We have no musical barriers and we can play anything within reason, which is why I think our next album would be even better than “Close to the Edge”.
Anderson speaks as he thinks, so the dialogue takes on a very particular spontaneity in the way he expresses himself. The great hour has rebounded; fifteen thousand young people sharpen their ears for the super-show that in a moment the Crystal Palace will invade with musical grandeur. At the end of the interview, Jon tells us that when we arrive in Madrid we greet his brother. We wish him luck on this afternoon of total apotheosis. Great guy, this Jon Anderson.
VICENTE ROMERO special delivery
(Thanks to SANTIAGO ALVAREZ for their translation service)
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