Progressive-rock icons Yes are still going strong after more than 40 years of recording and performing. Throughout their reign as one of the most influential rock bands of all time, having sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, they’ve endured personnel changes as well as stylistic changes.
The current incarnation includes Benoit David on vocals, Steve Howe on guitar, Chris Squire on bass, Alan White on drums, and Oliver Wakeman on keyboards. Their latest studio album, Fly From Here, was released in 2011, while In The Present – Live From Lyon documents their current live set. VG caught up with Howe to talk guitars, and find out how that new singer is working out.
“David Bowie was an absolute genius. I learned more from him than from anybody I’ve ever worked with.” Rick Wakeman’s epic tales of sessions with Bowie, Bolan, Lou Reed and more
By Dom Lawson Classic Rock
Former Yes keyboard maestro Rick Wakeman has played with rock’s great and good over the years – and he’s got the memories to prove it
We may know him best as the ultimate progressive rock keyboard maestro, celebrated guzzler of curries, fearless wearer of capes and perennially grumpy bon viveur, but even a figure as deservedly legendary as Rick Wakeman had to start somewhere. Five decades on from first finding fame and fortune as a member of Yes, Rick can look back on his glittering career with a real sense of satisfaction – but never let it be said that the great man didn’t earn his stripes and pay his dues prior to scaling the sequinned ladder to stardom.
For several years, starting when he was still a snotty but precociously talented schoolboy, our hero slaved away over a hot Hammond organ, making a humble crust as a professional session musician, performing on an ear-watering selection of notable – and not so notable – recordings, and enjoying what he describes today as “the best possible apprenticeship”, steadily earning himself a formidable reputation as the premier ivory-tinkler of the late 60s and early 70s.
It all began when Rick was 17 years old and beginning to frequent the Red Lion pub in Brentford, London, where a gaggle of noted professional musicians – including no lesser a rock icon than The Who’s bassist John Entwistle – would regularly gather to play together.
“John Entwistle lived round the corner in South Ealing at the time,” Rick recalls. “People just used to come and sit in and play. The guys that played did a lot of the BBC sessions. In the early days, when Radio 1 started, there was an agreement they had with the Musicians’ Union of what they call ‘non-needle time’, because they were only allowed to play so many records per day and the rest had to be live music. It was obviously a little bit tricky to work out how the hell they were going to do that, so they came up with this scheme of doing sessions. They did them all down at Maida Vale, which is where all sorts of people like Jimmy Page and Keith Moon worked before they became famous.”
Having discovered this inspirational hotbed of talent right on his doorstep, Rick soon found himself rubbing shoulders with British rock’s great and good and, as seems only fitting for such a prodigious talent, it didn’t take long before he ended up being presented with his own golden opportunity to enter the session musician world.
“There was a singer called James Royal, and he had a band called The Royal Set who used to do a lot down the Red Lion,” says Rick. “He did quite a lot of these sessions for Radio 1. What happened was that one day, I think in 1966, I’d been down to the Red Lion and James Royal said ‘Do you wanna do a BBC session with us next week?’ and I said ‘Oh, not ‘alf!’ So I found myself at Maida Vale for the first time. John Entwistle played, James Royal was there, and the guitarist was Mickey King, a phenomenal player who’s sadly no longer with us. We did Hey Joe, Morning Dew and one other number that I can’t remember, and we had to do them all in three hours. It was all played live.
“It was just great, going to Maida Vale and recording for the first time. I always remember that at the studio, sitting in the corner, was an elderly lady doing her knitting with mufflers over her ears. And she was the producer! They still had lots of women left over from the war who used to do producing for the BBC, and they were all on lifetime contracts so they just did things like these sessions. But they hated the rock‘n’roll stuff. They just sat in the corner with earmuffs on, and we got on with it.”
Although still at school, Rick had managed to wedge his foot in the door that stood between him and a career in rock‘n’roll. As a result, it swiftly became necessary for him to bunk off school on a regular basis in order to make use of his extensive classical training and earn a bob or three. Session work was something of a closed shop at this time, with hard-nosed ‘fixers’ overseeing the burgeoning careers of the majority of hired instrumental hands; making inroads into this prestigious scene depended upon a great deal of persistence, dedication and a hefty dose of dumb luck.
In Rick’s case, a stroke of good fortune fell into his lap when a singer named Jimmy Thomas – the male vocalist in the then-hugely successful Ike & Tina Turner Revue – came to the UK to record some new material.
“Jimmy was over doing some sessions with a bass player called Chas Cronk, who later joined the Strawbs,” Rick says. “Some of Jimmy’s band were coming in from America and got held up at customs at Heathrow Airport, because apparently they were carrying a little bit more than Night Nurse, if you know what I mean! So they had these sessions booked but no organ player. I knew Chas because of a wonderful music shop in South Ealing called the Musical Bargain Centre, which everybody used to hang around.
“I was there one day when Chas came in, and he was panicking. He said ‘We’ve got these sessions coming up and we’ve got no organ player!’ The guy who owned the shop, a chap called Dave Sims, said ‘Oh, Rick’ll do it!’ So, the next thing I know I’m booked to go to Olympic Studios to play with this big soul band. The producer was the great Denny Cordell, who had worked with Joe Cocker. He had Tony Visconti as one of his sidekicks, and the late great Keith Grant was engineering, so I was seriously in at the deep end – and although I love soul music, I didn’t play in that style at all. So when Denny Cordell came up to me halfway through the session and said, ‘Hey Rick, come into the control room, I wanna talk to you!’, I thought ‘Oh shit... Here we go…’”
Rather paranoid that his unique talents were about to be sent packing for not blending seamlessly with the rest of the session band’s sharp soul sound, the young Mr. Wakeman shuffled forlornly into Cordell’s office. Much to his surprise, however, the legendary producer was genuinely impressed with the teenaged Londoner’s performance and had absolutely no intention of showing him the door.
“He said ‘I like the way you play! I’ve never heard anybody play like that before. Where’d you learn to play like that?’ I said ‘Well, I’m classically trained.’ He asked if I did many sessions and I didn’t want to tell him this was my first major one. He said ‘You and I need to talk. Come up to my office at Dumbarton House, 68 Oxford Street, tomorrow morning and we’ll have a little chat…’ That’s when I blew it, because I said ‘Oh, I can’t!’ He said ‘Why? You got another session on?’ and I said ‘No, I’m at school!’ Oh shit, what have I said! Ha ha! So then he asked how often I skived off from school, I said ‘Every now and then!’ and he said ‘Well, skive off tomorrow morning and be at my office at 11 o’clock…’ So I was in his office the next day and met Tony Visconti and Gus Dudgeon and they started giving me sessions with a few people, including Marc Bolan.”
One of the biggest pop stars of the early 70s, Bolan was at the height of his chart-conquering powers when he enlisted Rick to perform on his band T. Rex’s 1971 number one smash Get It On. But rather than hiring the young keyboard player for his exemplary chops, Bolan’s motivation was based on far more altruistic and benevolent principles.
“He gave me the gig because he knew I needed eight pound for my rent that week and couldn’t pay it!” Rick laughs. “So I went along to the session and he said ‘you could do this. I could’ve offered you the money and you’d have turned it down, so now you’re earning it!’ He was a good lad. I was a nobody, except for a few sessions and bits and pieces, but Marc was always supportive. I did a lot demos with Marc and yeah, I did Get It On, but it was the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do. It was just piano glissandos. But it meant I could pay the rent!”
After recording Get It On, Rick and Marc would soon work together again, hatching a plot to record a one-off single attempting to mischievously disobey T. Rex’s employers at Fly Records, with whom the glam rock star was decidedly dissatisfied at the time.
“I was called up to Dumbarton House one day and Tony Visconti was in his room with Marc. I went in and sat down and Tony said, ‘Look, Marc’s really unhappy with his record company at the moment, so he’s going to deliberately defy them by making a record under another name. We’ll just press 500 copies of it, I’m gonna play bass, Marc’s gonna play guitar and he wants you to play piano.’ We went in at midnight at Trident Studios and knocked out a single under the name of Dib Cochran And The Earwigs. It’s one of the most collectible singles ever! You can find it in Record Collector and it changes hands for fortunes of money. I was told that an absolute mint copy with the original cover could sell for four figures!”
It comes as no surprise that working with such a mercurial talent as Marc Bolan had a profound effect on the young Rick Wakeman. Groundbreaking pop maverick and sartorial pioneer, Bolan’s brief but prolific heyday had a huge impact on British music in general, not least because he proved that music could be both artistically substantial and unashamedly accessible to a huge mainstream audience.
“What I liked about Marc was that he loved music but he also wanted to entertain,” agrees Rick. “It didn’t matter what it was, whether it was folk music or an orchestral work, it could be great music but it entertained people too. I loved his attitude. He was well respected. I remember I did some sessions with John Williams, the classical guitar player, and we performed a live concert at the Royal Festival Hall and afterwards we ended up at John’s house in Little Venice in Maida Vale. Marc lived just down the road so he came up too. It was a real strange combination but absolutely brilliant. I sat in John’s house with a bunch of other people who’d been at the concert, and Marc had a guitar, John had a guitar and the two of them played together in the corner. Oh, for a tape recorder or a camera…!”
The only pop artist whose impact on British music in the early 70s was even greater than Bolan’s was, of course, that crazy-eyed visionary David Bowie. Seemingly determined to end up with the most mind-bending curriculum vitae in musical history, Rick Wakeman was blessed to work with Ziggy Stardust himself on several occasions, including playing Mellotron on his breakthrough single Space Oddity in 1969, and on the whole of the magnificent Hunky Dory album in 1971. As with Bolan, Bowie’s penchant for flamboyant presentation must have rubbed off on Rick to some degree, but it is his resolute professionalism and supreme artistic focus that prog’s chief caped crusader is most eager to salute.
“The man was an absolute genius,” states Rick. “There’s no other word for it. I learned more from David Bowie in the studio than from anybody else that I’ve worked with, ever. The thing about David was that he knew his own mind. He liked to have people around him who he felt had something to offer, people who he thought would understand what he wanted and help deliver it, and more. And he had little or no respect for the attempted input of record companies and A&R men. He could not understand why these people, who didn’t know a hatchet from a crotchet, would try and come in and dictate to him what he should do. That is undoubtedly the secret of David’s success, because everything he did was on his terms.
“He also gave me amazing freedom. When we did Hunky Dory, he said ‘You play as you want to play’. In fact, the band had to play around me, which was great. I can vaguely remember coming home from the session and my wife asking me how it went, and I said ‘you know what? I’ll never get to play on another album like that in my life again!’ It was just chock-a-block full of fantastic songs and arrangements. It was light years ahead of its time.”
Over 40 years on from its birth, Bowie’s first major hit Space Oddity is not only one of the most celebrated pop singles of all time, but also one of the most peculiar and groundbreaking. This is due, not least, to its creator’s wildly inventive approach to studio recording. And, as every rock trivia geek knows, the song also included the first use of that strange and slightly clunky instrument known as the Stylophone.
“I seem to recall David arriving at the studio and he’d bought a Stylophone from the shops when he was buying sweets or something,” Rick remembers. “I think it was [legendary bass player] Herbie Flowers who bet him a fiver that he couldn’t get the Stylophone on the record, and of course he did! I played Mellotron on the song, and David had this clever idea that I’ve used ever since. It involves having real strings played by an orchestra and then blending a Mellotron in with it. I’ve done it on the new Journey... album. You get a very unusual sound, and David was the very first person to ever do that. It really is, if you listen to Space Oddity…you’ll think ‘that’s strings! No, it’s a Mellotron! No, it’s strings!’ It’s incredibly clever.”
Other notable successes from the early 70s that were enhanced by those nimble Wakeman fingers include Cat Stevens’ ageless Morning Has Broken, Scottish troubadour Al Stewart’s 1972 album Orange, and Rotten Peaches, a track from Elton John’s Madman Across The Water. He also made a memorable appearance on former Yes touring buddies Black Sabbath’s 1973 masterpiece Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, contributing exuberant piano flourishes to the thunderous Sabbra Cadabra. But the most unusual session that Rick ever booked happened when former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed embarked on his solo career and came to the UK to record his first album. The eponymous opus came out in the spring of 1972 but was widely panned by critics and failed to achieve any real commercial success, possibly due to the extremely eccentric way in which the record was pieced together.
“Yeah, that was weird one!” chuckles Rick, at the memory. “I got booked for that. It was at Morgan Studios in Willesden. He also wanted Steve Howe on it and a few others. It was a bizarre day. I remember at Morgan Studios they had a bar there, which I headed for, and I was told to wait until I was called up for the session. Anyway, someone came and said ‘Rick, you’re needed now please’.
“Normally you’d go up to the control room, meet the artist and have a little chat but no, this time I was sent straight to the piano. It was absolutely pitch-black in there, with just the tiniest of little lights shining on the piano. Lou’s voice comes over the speakers, saying ‘Put your cans on. I’m going to play you a piece, so have a listen. Then I want you to play as fast you possibly can.’ I went ‘Okay, anything in particular?’ but he just said ‘Go!’ and played this track. I started playing as I was going along doing bits and pieces, and he played it again. I was working out a few things and trying to play as fast as he wanted and then there was silence. I was expecting him to say ‘Okay, now this is what I want…’ but he just said ‘That’s absolutely fantastic, thank you very much!’ That was it! So I got up, went down to the bar, had a drink and then left for the next session, and I never actually got to meet him.”
Despite such bizarre encounters with sardonic New Yorkers, Rick Wakeman’s career as a session musician clearly provided him with an invaluable crash course in the art of studio recording and artistic collaboration. Occasional guest appearances aside, his status as a gun-for-hire slowly began to fizzle out when he joined Yes in 1971 and entered the world of bona fide rock stardom, and a relentless cycle of touring and recording. As it turned out, Rick jumped off the session treadmill at precisely the right point: the music business was changing at an exponential rate, and the golden age of session work was spluttering to an ignominious halt. But as he explains, those magical, formative days contributed hugely to making Rick Wakeman the extraordinary musician he is today.
“What happened was, the session scene as I used to know it collapsed. Session fees started soaring through the roof, and nobody could afford to use the musicians anymore, and that meant that the studios started to close down. By the time we reached the mid 70s, it was dead. But it was an exciting time, and I loved every minute of it. The most valuable lesson I learned was that you should never waste any time in the studio. I look at the studio as the assembly line for putting together all the components that I’ve been working on. The studio is a special place. And if you don’t consider it to be a special place, then you shouldn’t be doing it!”
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
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Dom Lawson has been writing for Metal Hammer and Prog for over 14 years and is extremely fond of heavy metal, progressive rock, coffee and snooker. He also contributes to The Guardian, Classic Rock, Bravewords and Blabbermouth and has previously written for Kerrang! magazine in the mid-2000s.
Lately, Chris Squire has been on the crest of the wave. Not that this bear of man ever slowed down yet 2011 brought a new album from YES, a band he formed back in 1968 and still leads, and 2012 saw the release of "A Life Within A Day", a highly anticipated result of SQUACKETT, his collaboration with the fellow art traveler Steve Hackett. And there’s more projects in the works. We linked up on a hot day when the bass giant was gearing up for another concert trek but he generously took his time to talk about recent events and existence in general.
– Chris, judging by your photos, you and Steve have struck a real friendship. How much did it inform the music of your album?
I guess you know the story of how this came about, that Steve originally played on my “Swiss Choir” album, right? Obviously, the friendship was a very important element of the situation. We have already had become very good friends, so it was easy to work with Steve during (the work on) the album and, of course, with Roger King who was involved as a keyboard player and producer. So it went very easily along, with no pressure, and it was very easy for us to write music together. And it was a pleasurable thing. I can’t really say more than that. We had a good time making it.
– Was that a plan from the very beginning to do a song-based album as opposed to a typical prog one that many expected from such collaboration?
Ah no, there was no plan. It’s just we liked songs of each other and I was playing on some of those already – Steve game them to me to play some bass on – and after awhile, we just realised that we were making an album, in a way, together. And we agreed to carry on in that direction so it just evolved, really, into, as you said before, a friendship and also a musical journey.
– Not so many people pay attention but you have interesting harmonies in YES, while Steve likes vocal harmonies and also plays a harmony guitar. And there are quite notable harmonies on “A Life Within A Day”. So how important those harmonies are to you?
It’s a strange thing but, when we first met, in 2007, I thought Steve was a guitar player. I did not know that this guy was actually a good singer. I realized that after he played me his demos of songs, and the good thing that happened was that after we started singing together and doing harmonies together it sounded very good. And once again, thanks to Roger King for his production of the vocals. So yes, the harmonies are important.
– Did Steve realize that you were also a singer?
I think so, yes. (Laughs.) I think he was aware of my singing in YES, yeah.
– I haven’t listened to “Fish Out Of Water” for a long time and somehow I remembered it as purely instrumental. But recently, I gave it a new spin only to rediscover it was a vocal album…
Yeah, both – both instrumental and vocal.
– That goes to show that people mostly see your instrumental prowess. So how important are vocal harmonies for YES?
In the beginning of YES, the idea for the band was to be very strong instrumentally and also strong vocally. We started off in that style and then eventually we developed YES to become a vocal band as well as instrumental band. Really, everything I’ve ever been involved with has both of those elements, I think.
– I like your last album very much but found it a bit unexpected: there’s a pop side to it. While most prog bands seem to be static, you’re progressing all the time.
Well, I hope so. I’m glad you like “Fly From Here”. I like the album; everybody was happy with it when we finished recording. It’s been pretty successful, so it was definitely a project worth doing.
– Is this happiness a vital part of any project you’re involved with?
It’s not always achievable – you know, sometimes music can be difficult and can strain relationships but it can also bring people closer together. So obviously you hope it’s going to be more on the positive side…
– Calling yourselves YES, you have to be on the positive side!
Yeah, exactly, we have to try. But not every album I’ve been involved with has been perfectly happy but most of it has been a good ride.
– Speaking of inner feelings, why almost everybody in YES has been releasing solo albums year after year and you took a long gap between “Fish” and “Swiss Choir”? Does it mean you were so satisfied with your work with YES that you didn’t venture off solo?
I have been involved with other projects outside of YES – you know I had CONSPIRACY with Billy Sherwood – and I liked working with other people, like Steve Hackett. You know I’m not so concerned about whether to do solo records, with nobody else, so that’s the way it’s carried on.
– In 1975-1976 each of YES’ members including Patrick Moraz had a solo record out. While analyzing, with those albums in mind, each musician’s contribution to the band, I realized that YES were you. Would you agree that you’re the axis of the group?
Well, I don’t know. It’s no a plan, really, that I’ve had, and the reason why I’ve been always in YES is only because other people left. (Laughs.) And sometimes they would come back: Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe all left and came back, left and came back. So I’ve just been there the whole time, so it’s just the way the history has been.
– Still, those albums sound quite different from YES, but listening to your records, I hear that it’s you who is the YES. So again: are you the YES mastermind?
Thank you very much for that compliment. But I don’t think so, it’s not a plan of mine to be the mastermind. It’s just that, as I said, I’ve just been there the whole time, and obviously my influence is strong on YES. And as you know there’ve been different keyboard players, different guitar players and two drummers as well. Let’s not forget that Alan White has been in YES from 1972, he’s been for forty years also with me! And people forget about that. (Laughs.)
– In the beginning of our conversation, you used the word “strong”, and physically, you’re just killing your bass, you play very muscular bass.
Thank you!
– So do you work out to be able to fight with your instrument?
(Laughs.) I do actually go to gym to train three times a week, yeah! But I don’t know if that translates into fighting with my instrument. I think it’s just a plan to try and stay healthy.
– Your bass style reminds me of Freddie King’s on guitar.
It’s an interesting comparison. I’ve never heard that before.
– Then, which comparison you’re used to be hearing?
Oh well… Um… Different people have different ideas: people compare me to Jimi Hendrix in some ways. I used to like Jimi Hendrix’s bass playing very much (laughing) so I’m sure I borrowed some ideas of his for the bass. But then again, I had many great influences in my career, like Paul McCartney and Bill Wyman and, of course, the late great John Entwistle and Jack Bruce – all these people have been great influences on me. And of course, all the members of YES that have been coming and leaving and coming back: I’ve learnt from all those musicians a lot, too, from their influences onto YES which has given YES maybe a different look every time we changed somebody. So that’s been a big learning curve for me.
– Was the biggest one from Alan White, your partner in rhythm section?
Yes, of course, my relationship with Alan is very good and we have learnt a lot from each other, I’m sure.
– What’s more interesting for you: to play a melodic line on bass or use it as a rhythm instrument?
I don’t consciously think about how much percentage is this and how much percentage is that. I don’t decide before I do a piece of music whether this one should be more melodic or this should be more rhythmic, I just start to play it and think of a good way around the song. And maybe some songs come out more rhythmically and others more with melody.
– And how interesting from this point of view was XYZ where you played with Alan White and Jimmy Page?
That never did get to fruition, unfortunately. It was a good idea, and I guess we would have gone further with that if Robert Plant had been interested in it but at the time I think he was very sad that John Bonham had died and he didn’t really want to become involved in something (else) so quickly. That’s what I understood from Jimmy anyway. But it could have been really good.
– But you could be the singer!
Well, we made some demos and I was the singer but I don’t think we wanted to really do a three-piece band. We wanted it to be a four-piece and it would have been better like that.
– How did you meet Jimmy Page?
You know I can’t exactly remember the first time I met him but during the Seventies, in England, we were always at the same “Melody Maker” and “New Musical Express” awards lunches, so probably it was one of those. And, of course, also both LED ZEPPELIN and YES were Atlantic Records bands, so maybe I met him in the office. (Laughs.)
– What’s the reason behind the recent surge in your activity? You reformed THE SYN, you started experimenting once more with YES, you formed SQUACKETT…
I think it may seem so because everything has sort of come out at the same time or quite close to the same time. We spent 2010 and 2011 making the “Fly From Here” album, which was great to work with Trevor Horn again as producer as well on that. And then the SQUACKETT album had been finished already before that, two years ago but it took a while for us to find the right record company that we wanted to work with to service the record that’s just come out. So it seems like I’m doing a lot at one time but actually I’m not. And yes, YES is back on the road and doing a new tour – in fact, I’m leaving next Tuesday for Toronto to start the US summer tour with PROCOL HARUM. That is going to be a lot of fun because we have a new singer now, Jon Davison.
– Who is different from Jon Anderson!
Well, he’s not so different, he has a similar kind of voice, these high vocals. We’ve already been in Australia and Indonesia and Japan with him, and he did a great job. So I’m looking forward to the tour.
– Are you especially looking for singers with similar voices?
Oh yeah. It just makes sense because the singer has to honor the old material.
– But you took a different direction with “Drama”!
“Drama” was a good album. In the last couple of years we’ve been playing tracks from that album. I think that the “Drama” album actually has some of Steve Howe’s best guitar playing on it, so it’s a pleasure to play that material with him now on stage because he still plays really, really well – probably, better. And, of course, it was an interesting time for us and the first time that Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn were performing with us. So there’s a lot of good memories from that time.
– Is Geoff your current keyboard player?
Yeah, yeah, he is, and it’s going very well.
– Back to your album with Hackett, how did you record it? You live on different sides of Atlantic.
No, I was living in London at the time. Now I live between the two countries but mostly in America.
– Recently, you took part in a “Prog Collective” project and SUPERTRAMP tribute album. Was it all down Billy Sherwood?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. (A cute child comes up and kisses Chris.) Here’s my little girl, she’s three and a half years-old.
– My boy is five.
A lot of fun, aren’t they?
– To say the least!
(To his daughter) Daddy’s doing an interview. (Laughs.)
– If the family calls, the last question: what’s next after the tour – a new SQUACKETT album, perhaps?
We are looking at the offers to do some live SQUACKETT shows at some time: I’m not sure exactly whether it will be September, October, November or December – some time in there. Nothing definite yet, we just have that space available. Also Steve and I will probably have no problem to do another one record but it wouldn’t be this year or next year. Maybe, 2014.
BASS PLAYER FS, FEATURE STORIES MARCH 6, 2012 BY SCOTT KAHN
Chris Squire is one of those bassists who hardly needs any introduction. As the bassist for legendary progressive rock band, Yes — now in its 44th year of existence, Squire’s unmistakable sound and style is instantly recognizable to bassists and guitar players alike. He is one of those gifted players who knows how to weave "songs within songs," and his bass lines are immediately identifiable because they regularly forge their own path that is more musically intriguing than simply following the guitar parts. Add the ability to sing vocal harmonies on top of bass lines in odd time signatures and you’ve got one monster musician who makes it all seem embarrassingly easy.
We grabbed twenty minutes of his time while on the road in support of the latest Yes studio release, Fly From Here. It wasn’t much, but just enough time to get some background on a few things that you may have been wondering for just about as long as we have.
MPc: Talking about the new album, Fly From Here, to many people, in some ways, it’s a reunion of the Drama era lineup, where you got back together with Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn. How did that come about?
CS: Okay, well, I met with Trevor Horn in 2009, I guess. I asked him if he’d be interested in working with the band again as a producer, and he said he would be, and I was very happy about that. And then we went on to talk about what sort of an album we would make and Trevor brought up the fact that we had left… the “Fly From Here” original song was one of the contenders for the Drama album, but back in those days of course when you could only get twenty minutes of decent quality sound on the vinyl record, there wasn’t enough space there to get it on there with the others.
So it had remained in demo form, and so he brought up the fact that we should maybe revive that and update it and try and do a 2010 version of it. So that’s how that all started off, really.
And then, as part and parcel of that same conversation, not at the time, but later on, Trevor came to me, once he was getting invested in working on the record, that he thought we’d be in better shape if we got Geoff Downes back in and try and sort of get back to some of those… yes, I guess some of the vibe of the Drama album, but I think Trevor just thought Geoff would just fit the bill for what we were trying to achieve. So we went with that and that’s how Geoff came back in.
CS: So in a way, it was the Drama lineup —yeah. Even though Trevor, of course, wasn’t singing, it was a bit like the same lineup, plus Benoit David, of course, doing vocals.
MPc: Did Benoit contribute to the lyrical content?
CS: He did a little bit. I was trying to encourage him to get into the idea of writing tunes and lyrics. And he had a go at that. So, at the end of the day he did contribute a small part of “Into the Storm.” So that was good. He sort of, you know, broke new ground for himself there by becoming a writer. And we used his lyric on the chorus of that. Well, we modified it a bit, but it was good.
MPc: Now, the other new album that I’m listening to is the new concert album, Live from Lyon.
CS: Which of course was recorded prior to Fly From Here. laughs And it has Oliver Wakeman on the keyboards. And one of the reasons why I thought it was a good idea for us to put that out is because it documents the time that Oliver was with us, a couple of years, and he did a great job on it. And so we were… I thought it was worth having it exposed, and the record company liked it and wanted to put it out, so that’s where it’s at.
MPc: It was interesting to notice on there that you actually revisited Drama on that tour.
CS: Mm-hmm.
MPc: It makes an interesting precursor to the new record, the fact that you played “Tempus Fugit.”
CS: Yeah, well, I guess when we got Benoit in to sing, it just came up that we’d never really been able to perform anything from the Drama album with Jon. Even though he always used to say that he’d be quite happy to do it, it never came about. So having Benoit as the singer was a good excuse to revive some of those songs, which of course Alan White and Steve Howe and myself were very proud of that album, and it had always been a shame that we hadn’t been able to do anything from it before.
So that’s why we dove into that and did “Machine Messiah” as well as “Tempus Fugit.” And then there’s a little irony, of course, it ended up that Geoff then came back in and was obviously comfortable within his own skin playing those songs.
MPc: And of course you had to go and skip playing my favorite song from the album, “Does it Really Happen?” laughs
CS: laughs Okay, well, I’ll bear that in mind, then. Yeah, that’s a pretty good song, I like that.
MPc: Something I recently discussed with Jon Anderson was some of the historical things and how there have been so many personnel changes over the years, with you being the one constant — the only guy who’s been a part of every single recording.
CS: Yeah.
MPc: You’re the rock; you’re the foundation. So, from your perspective, what is Yes to you, as a musical project?
CS: laughs Well, it’s just been part of my life, really, since 1968. And Yes has had, I believe someone told me the other day, there’s been 17 members of Yes in all through the personnel changes. And I think that makes it difficult for us to ever get in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because I’ve always said, ‘Well, if Yes ever does get noticed and they want to put us in there… it would only be fair to put everybody who’s ever been in the band up on the stage.” So I’m still wondering if that will happen one day, but I’m not stressing about it.
The other thing is, of course: the fact I’ve been there the whole time is more by default than it has been by design. I’ve just been there and other people have decided to go off and pursue solo ventures or ventures with other outfits and in many cases, as in Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson, either they’ve left and come back and left and come back… And so I’ve just gotten used to the fact that I’ve kind of been there the whole time and never really wandered off to do something else, even though I’ve done other projects. I seem to have been able to have worked it so I was able to do other interests as well as maintain Yes. So that’s really the answer to that.
MPc: So with various members coming in and out of the band over the years, apparently, it’s been much more about schedules and various projects than it has ever been about personal conflict.
CS: Yes, I think so. Yeah, I mean, we’ve never had any dramatic or overly dramatic… I mean, maybe slightly dramatic, but no overly dramatic scenarios in the comings and goings of Yes. Just been things that have taken place and, as I said, I seem to have just been the one that always there. And, of course, let’s not forget, Alan White has also been there since 1972. Even though he wasn’t on the first five albums, that’s still 39 years ago. So you’ve got to give him a bit of credit, too.
So to sum this up, I don’t discount the fact that Yes is more of an idea than it is actually any of the personnel in it at any one time. And I’d like to think that there might still be a Yes in a hundred, two hundred years’ time. Presumably, I won’t be there then, but…
But, as there are famous symphony orchestras all over the world that have existed for hundreds of years, maybe Yes as a musical entity will still be going strong in, I don’t know, the year 3000. It’s possible.
MPc: Now, how is it, with all the various lineup changes, how come we haven’t seen a reunion of the 90125 lineup, with Trevor Rabin?
CS: Well, of course, we did have that in 1991, with the Union tour. Which included both Trevor and Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe, of course. So, and I think we probably didn’t do so many songs from 90125 on that tour, but that is also something that I would like to do at a certain point.
Trevor and I stay in touch pretty regularly and, you know, it’s not something that is so impossible that it could happen. But all I know is that this year, 2012, we’re still invested in promoting the Fly From Here record, and that’s really the main focus of the band for this year. But anything could happen in the future.
MPc: Now, who’s playing keyboards on the present tour?
CS: Geoff Downes played on the album and is playing live with us, too.
MPc: Let’s talk about your playing and gear now. For many bassists, you are the voice of Rickenbacker. If anyone ever wants to know what a Rickenbacker sounds like, look no further than putting on any Yes recording.
CS: Okay, well, that’s very complimentary of you, but it’s not the… there are other players — Paul McCartney being one — who used a Rickenbacker. But when he plays, when he plays the Rickenbacker, he sounds like himself. But of course I did impart a certain style and sound and obviously became very recognized for that. And so, thank you for the compliment.
MPc: You’re welcome. So, what is it that you love in particular about the Rickenbacker sound?
CS: Well, I think that it just happened. It’s something that as a teenager, I think I was 16 years old when I bought my first 4000. And I just grew up with that guitar, really, and we developed a relationship together. Which just is still developing to this day, actually, in the way that I play that particular instrument. And of course it’s my main go-to guitar and has been, and probably always will be. Even though I have a vast collection of other makes and styles of bass. It’s just the one that I started off with and probably will always be my main guitar.
MPc: Historically I think you used to route the bridge and neck pickup outputs to two separate amps. How did that contribute to your signature tone?
CS: I routed the two pickups differently because of my use of effects. And I didn’t use effects on some, on one of the pickups, certain effects and then on other effects I only used them on the other pickup. But then I would combine the sound again prior to it going to the amplifiers. So it was only through the effect routing system that they were split. And then they come together again and go into the mono sound into my Marshall 100-watt, which I’ve also had since the ‘60s. And my Ampeg rig, as well, which I use. So I have two amps on stage, basically. Which is also a good thing to have, should one of them ever break. And on the odd occasion, that has happened.
Time ran out for Chris to continue our discussion, but the effects of which he spoke include a Maestro Fuzz Unit, a custom built tremolo, TC Electronic chorus, reverb, and delay units, and a Mutron pedal from the ‘70s.
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Scott Kahn, Editor in Chief, was the co-founder and associate editor of Korg Connection, the first official user group publication for users of Korg musical instruments. During a decade of work in Silicon Valley, CA, Scott wrote professionally for computer industry publications including PC Week Magazine and NewMedia Magazine. Outside of work, Scott is an accomplished musician and producer with many independent CD credits writing, playing, and producing. Scott launched MusicPlayers.com in 1998 as a simple website hosting musicians' classifieds for the first few years, but he knew that when the time was right, he would turn his attention to building MusicPlayers.com into the kind of destination site that he wanted to visit as a serious musician himself. In March 2006, MusicPlayers.com was officially re-launched as an online magazine focused on the needs of serious musicians, and in December 2017, the site underwent a next-generation overhaul to position it better for continued growth. Scott is also author of the popular Hal-Leonard book, Modern Guitar Rigs: The Tone Fanatic's Guide to Integrating Amps & Effects, now in its second edition.
The fall of prog: The insane excess of Rick Wakeman and Yes.
Rick Wakeman, Yes, and the insane excess that doomed prog.
BY DAVID WEIGEL SLATE - AUG 16, 2012
The order, Rick Wakeman remembers, was for chicken vindaloo, rice pilau, six papadums, bhindi bhaji, Bombay aloo, and a stuffed paratha. This was November 1973 and Yes had sold out the Manchester Free Trade Hall for a performance of Tales From Topographic Oceans. The album consisted of four songs that rolled gently together, over four sides of vinyl, for 83 minutes. “There were a couple of pieces where I hadn’t got much to do,” Wakeman would recall, “and it was all a bit dull.
During every show, a keyboard tech reclined underneath Wakeman’s Hammond organ, ready to fix broken hammers or ribbons and to “continually hand me my alcoholic beverages.” That night in Manchester, the tech asked the bored Wakeman what he wanted to eat after the show. Wakeman, the lone carnivore in Yes, ordered the curry. “Half the audience were in narcotic rapture on some far-off planet,” Wakeman wrote in his 2007 memoir, “and the other half were asleep, bored shitless.”
Wakeman kept on at the keyboards, adding gossamer organ melodies and ambient passages to the songs. And then, around 30 minutes later, his tech started handing up “little foil trays” of curry, and Wakeman began placing them on top of his keyboards. “I still didn’t have a lot to do,” he wrote, “so I thought I might as well tuck in.” The food was obscured by the instrument stacks, further obscured by Wakeman’s cape, but the aroma danced over to Yes’s lead singer, Jon Anderson. He took a good look at the culinary insult. Shrug. Papadum in hand, he returned to his microphone to sing his next part.
Tales From Topographic Oceans just might be the recorded ur-text of prog rock excess. No band had ever tried to fill each side of two LPs with long, multisection suites. Yes did it, and voila—a No. 1 album. They went on tour with a sci-fi lullaby backdrop, designed by their three-time album cover artist Roger Dean. He had seen the sort of enormous venues they’d booked, realized how hard it now was for faraway audiences to see the band, and so voila—phantasmagoric eye candy. Their set began with 82 minutes of new music before they played an old familiar tune. They played in their biggest-ever concert halls, and they sold them out.
But as the tour went on, Yes dropped the third section of the album from the show, then the second. Soon, Wakeman vented to reporters about the band’s screw-up. “Tales From Topographic Oceans is like a woman’s padded bra,” he told one interviewer. “The cover looks good but when you peel off the padding there’s not a lot there.” Yes had gotten too damn silly. The music had collapsed in on itself.
This is what the most spiteful critics of prog say. With the decades behind them, it’s what even the other members of Yes say. “We’d made the decision that all the music we’d ever write for the band would be for stage, not for radio,” says Jon Anderson. Their music became more virtuoso, more ambitious, more spiritual, with even denser transcendental lyrics. Yes’s long pieces were just that—pieces, not jamming. This, they discovered, was just a little more ambitious than audiences wanted. Just as they’d rebelled against the three-minute pop song, so did their ornate music give the next wave something to rebel against. “When we were stretching our musical wings, that’s when punk and disco came in heavily. People gravitate to that—Oh, that’s what we’re supposed to listen to!”
Is that why audiences turned on them? The most successful prog stars (and the ones who took longest to adapt) are convinced of it. They were sold out. “None of those genres had any musical or cultural or intellectual foundation,” says Greg Lake. “They were all propositions of the media or record company/media conspiracies.”
But Lake and Anderson are describing changes to which their bands attempted to adapt. By 1977, Yes and ELP and Genesis were writing shorter pop songs. Less popular, wildly divergent bands like Camel, Caravan, the Soft Machine, and Renaissance went the same route. The second wave of progressive bands, North Americans like Rush and Kansas, wrote thoughtful hard rock in the form of suites and epics. They didn’t much expand on what the English bands had built. The prog wave was rolling back.
Tales was recorded in the summer of 1973. The shared goal of Yes members: Outdo themselves, again. Their previous album, Close to the Edge, had consisted of one compelling side-long symphony (the title track) and two shorter songs that stayed consistently catchy. Surely the songs could get longer.
There were signs from the start that this might not go over. Jethro Tull had just put out A Passion Play, full of metaphor-rich wordplay and surprise-twist melodies. It got panned on the front page of Melody Maker by a critic who’d wanted to like it. “If this is where ten years of ‘progression’ have taken us,” wrote Chris Welch, “then it’s time to go backwards.” But Yes never thought about scaling back. They wanted to reach transcendence, not radio. “We’re close to the edge of spiritual awareness within the framework of the group, making music,” vocalist Jon Anderson told the New Musical Express. “We have this long song, which we felt could hold a listener’s ear for the whole length, rather than just a track here and there that they like.”
The band debated whether to record in the country, for inspiration, or in the city, for convenience. The compromise: They booked London’s Morgan Studios and made it look like the country. Drummer Alan White remembers placing his kit “inside a picket fence, facing a cardboard cow someone had brought in.” Rick Wakeman’s keyboards were balanced on hay bales, near potted plants. When Anderson decided that white tiles would enhance the acoustics, gaffers put up a bathroom wall.
“About halfway through the album,” producer Mike Offord would tell the author Paul Stump, “the cow was covered in graffiti and all the plants had died. That just kind of sums up the whole album.”
Offord put on a braver face for the contemporary press, inviting an NME writer to hear the work in progress. “You cannot turn on creativity at the turn of a studio clock,” he proclaimed. “No one would have asked Picasso to start work at 2 o’clock and paint a masterpiece by five.” The interviewer bought it. “Yes,” he wrote, “sounded gutsier than I’ve ever heard them before.”
Everything was hyper-ambitious. “We got Slinkys, put mikes on them, and threw them down stairs,” said Steve Howe in a 2009 BBC interview. “If you put a lot of reverb on it, it sounds great. … It’s a nice kind of insanity.” The gatefold cover, Roger Dean’s third for the band, smashed together wonders from all over the planet. Here was a rock from Stonehenge, there were the plains of Nazca, over in the back was the temple at Chichen Itza. “I was accompanying the band to Japan,” he recalls, “and the wives and girlfriends put whatever dope they had into a cake, which nobody knew about. On the flight, Jon served us slices of the cake. And so, from Alaska to Tokyo, I was talking for hour after hour after about this book I was working on about landscapes. I talked his ear off about religious-spiritual significance of them, of ley lines, of dragon lines, while all the while the most beautiful landscapes of Siberia were passing underneath us.
Inside the sleeve was Anderson’s spiritual schematic for the album. “Leafing through Paramhansa Yoganda’s Autobiography of a Yogi,” he wrote, “I got caught up in the lengthy footnote on page 83.” He had thought deeply, then taken his ideas into the studio, and then the band had composed on the spot, standing or sitting amid the cows.
Here’s where the album’s reputation betrays it. At first, the music produced by those sessions sounds fantastic.
“The Revealing Science Of God / Dance Of The Dawn” starts with 30 seconds of soft sounds meant to evoke lapping waves. Then comes Steve Howe’s guitar, playing sustained, single notes, imitating whalesong. Wakeman—who, remember, would claim to have hated every minute of this—arrives on an organ and quickly dominates the mix. At two minutes, Anderson’s high, Welsh whistle of a voice starts in on a chant.
Dawn of light lying between silence and sold sources Chased amid fusions of wonder in moments hardly seen forgotten Coloured in pastures of chance dancing leaving cast spells of challenge
The rest of the band arrives until every instrument is engaged. Alan White frantically hits his cymbals. Chris Squire plunks the bass, faster and faster. Anderson picks up the pace, too: Dawn of our power we amuse redescending as fast as misused. At 3:33, Wakeman bends a note on the synthesizer and the song transforms into 4/4 pop. The band bears a load, moves it slowly in one direction, snaps back quickly, and moves again. You can listen but you can’t relax. For twenty minutes, the experiment comes off.
We eventually reach the limits of rambling composition and ramped-up mysticism. There are dull stretches of music, like the vaguely Eastern drum pattern and whining Howe guitar lines that dominate the beginning and middle of Part 3, “’The Ancient’ / Giants Under The Sun.” But the band scattered hooks in every song. The vocal/organ duet in “Ritual / Nous Sommes du Soleil” sounds like Funkadelic. It would show up three decades later as the key sample in De La Soul’s “The Grind Date.”
The record went gold in the U.K. based on advance sales alone—75,000 copies. Yes sold out everywhere, booking three nights at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Audiences at the Tales shows were given a warning: There would be no seating after the performance had started. You grabbed your place for the show, and you were locked in to a piece of music longer than almost any individual baroque symphony.
“Already the piece is being applauded as a masterpiece of contemporary music,” wrote Tony Palmer in the Observer, “classical in structure, mystical in realization.” But in concert, he continued, “the players themselves appeared confused as to what was expected of them, the lead singer being unsure whether each section should be described as, for example, the second movement or the second side of the record. … No amount of frenzied presentation … could hide the paucity of musical invention.”
As the tour went on, Yes faced up and started dropping sections of the suite. “We could tell the audience wasn’t reacting,” says Anderson. By the end, they were only playing the energetic first and fourth sections, then switching over to the hits. They rented a 63-foot-high balloon with the Yes logo, hoping it would follow them around the country. They scrapped it when the balloon and their bus nearly crashed. Wakeman finished the tour, and then, in June, quit the band with a phone call.
Here’s the oddity of Wakeman’s solo career. Tales, he would say, was too pretentious—boring, pompous, obese music. That wasn’t for him. He was going to write concept albums based on classic British themes. His first attempt, 1973’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII, had gone gold everywhere, eventually selling 15 million copies. His second, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, was recorded during a pause in the Tales tour, and it went to No. 1 in the U.K. the very day he quit Yes.
British audiences weren’t yet done with pomp. Wakeman’s excess was just more accessible than Yes’s excess. Journey, a four-part compression of the Jules Verne story, was recorded live with the London Symphony Orchestra, who beefed up Wakeman’s 12 keyboards—three of them, Mellotrons. There are no strange time signatures in Wakeman’s first solo songs. This is pop music.
Yes, minus Wakeman, worked with the experimental Swiss-born keyboard player Patrick Moraz and produced Relayer, with some songs as ambitious as anything on Tales (“The Gates of Delirium” interprets scenes from War and Peace), and others that shrank their ambitions back to single-length (“Sound Chaser”).* Wakeman, meanwhile, performed The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table outdoors at Wembley Stadium with a full cast, ending in a fight sequence for “The Last Battle.” The stage couldn’t be de-iced before the show. So he hired skaters instead of dancers. “Lancelot,” wearing a dummy horse on his torso, glided back and forth across the ice to battle a similarly attired “Black Knight,” as Wakeman commanded the action behind his tripartite wall of keyboards.
Then came Lisztomania. Ken Russell had just directed Tommy, the hit adaptation of the Who’s quasi-plotless rock opera. The natural follow-up was an impressionist biopic about Franz Liszt, the pianist who made European audiences lose control and applaud after every piece. Wasn’t he the true ancestor of the sexualized rock star? And if it was 1975, and you were looking for a keyboard player, how could you not choose Wakeman? Russell gave him control of the entire soundtrack.
“Liszt was a bit of a rock and roller at heart,” said Wakeman in a Creem interview, “but he was a bit of a puritan on his sounds. I just had to update the guy’s music to fit his image.” He wrote a score to accompany scenes in which Liszt (Roger Daltry) rode a hippo-sized rubber penis, and a gigantism-afflicted Nazi slaughtered Hasidic Jews with a guitar/machine gun, the victims dropping gold on the ground as they fell. “I think the sun shines out of Ken Russell’s asshole,” said Wakeman.
The movie is basically unwatchable by humans. That doesn’t mean that Russell failed. His vision of rock excess and brain-dead rock fandom is bleak and cruelly cynical. In his world, pompous music is produced by men with monster egos and unresolved sexual hang-ups. Wakeman, who appeared on some promotional posters, got one of the strangest cameos. (We can’t forget Ringo Starr, who plays the pope.) At the start of the film’s third act, Richard Wagner summons Liszt to his lair, over to an operating table surrounded by Hammer Horror electric poles.
“We need a superman,” cries Wagner. “Such virtue will never be born of woman, Franz! Such a creature must be—created!” He turns the levers. “They do say music is the gay science, Franz! My music, and my philosophy, will give him—life!”
Wagner’s machinery emits beeps and fart noises as his sheet music is fed into it. Thus arises Siegfried—Rick Wakeman, painted in silver and dressed to look exactly like the Marvel Comics version of Thor. He stands up, his 6-foot-3-inch height elevated by golden boots with elevator heels. He drains a stein of beer before Wagner commands him to “go forth!” Wakeman/Siegfried trudges out of the laboratory. He stops at a fireplace, grabs his crotch, and urinates all over the flames.
“Who’s going to follow him?” laughs Daltry-as-Liszt.
Wagner, chagrined, puts Siegfried back on the operating table. The experiment was over.
"We thought, There's no way people won't buy what we're doing, because we're too good"
The 1971 prog-rock classic discussed in full
“We were certainly cocky and chirpy," says guitarist Steve Howe, recalling the late months of 1970 when he, singer Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, keyboardist Tony Kaye and drummer Bill Bruford recorded Yes' third long-player, which was simply called The Yes Album. "There was a feeling of confidence in the room that we were doing something ambitious and fresh."
It would be Howe's first record with the band (he had replaced Yes' previous guitarist Peter Banks), and he remembers that he had no trouble at all fitting in immediately. “I’d been playing well, doing things in various bands," he says, "but I needed something that would move the air. When I got in with Yes, I said, ‘This feels good. We’re all equals, and everybody’s outstanding.’ It was like joining an orchestra, where all of the members are of a very high level. I thought, We’re going to do something pretty great."
The group worked up material, mostly at a farmhouse in Devonshire, England, before heading to Advision Studios where they tracked with producer-engineer Eddy Offord. Many of the songs were long (two of them come in at over nine minutes a piece), and as Howe sees it, they set a standard that Yes would follow on future discs.
“We weren’t going to be obvious and predictable," he says. "We didn't want to do three-minute songs for the radio, although we did manage to get a lot of radio play. Bill loved to play challenging music – I don’t think he was very used to 4/4 time, in fact. And I was one of those people who dug in and said, ‘I’m not going to play blues.’ We had a lot of musical integrity and held tightly to our ideals."
Much like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who also recorded at Advison and would compete with Yes for studio time there, the band had total freedom to create – no pesky A&R guys lurked about asking for hit singles. "But it wasn’t like we were just jamming with no point," Howe says. "Everything had to matter. You had to play parts; you had to know what you were doing."
As for being deemed 'prog,' the guitarist says that he didn't hear the term until years later. "Prog has a certain stigma to it – flared trousers and grandiose indulgence," he says. "Yes were more of a feet-on-the-floor band. We knew we were quality, and we thought, There’s no way people won’t buy what we’re doing, because we’re too good.” [Laughs]
Released on 19 February 1971, The Yes Album made a big splash on both sides of the Atlantic, hitting No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 40 on the Billboard 200 in the US. Starting 1 March 2013, Yes will play the album in its entirety, along with other classics, Close To The Edge and Going For The One, on tour in the US.
"I came up with the idea that we should play an album in full," says Howe, "and then it went to two and eventually to three. Certain venues will only allow us to play for an hour and a half, in which case we'll play The Yes Album and Close To The Edge. For the places that let us play as long as we like, we'll do all three. It's going to be a great night, and I can't wait to explore all of this exceptional music live."
On the following pages, Howe looks back at the writing and recording of The Yes Album, a record that he says came about because the band operated as "five like-minded people. Bill thought I was a bit of a hippie, so was everybody. We loved music, and we thought that was the key to survival in the universe."
1. YOURS IS NO DISGRACE
“It’s quite an exceptional song, isn’t it? It’s big. We started with a percussive idea. There was a television program that had this opening – the ‘da-da-da-da’ thing – and we just changed the chords and moved everything around. It was slightly kinky, really. Our idea was orchestral: We’re going to start with something, and then we’re going to play a theme, then we’re going to stop, then we’re going to sing, and then we’re going to play more music. [Laughs]
“Bits came up as they were needed. We wanted to take our time and flesh out this idea where everybody could contribute the same kind of balance. I brought in guitar structures and stylized them around the possibilities that we had as instrumentalists.
“I played two guitars on it – my Gibson ES175D from 1964 and my Martin OO-18, which came from 1953. The fact that I didn’t have a lot of guitars didn’t really matter, because those two offered me a lot of beautiful sounds and options.
“There is a basic rhythm track I did with the Gibson. We recorded the song in sections. We weren’t going to just go in and play the whole thing for 10 minutes, but there is a lot of group playing and not a whole lot of individual things.
There’s some great effects and things for the ear. You’ve got the panning of the guitar, the wah-wah which goes into the acoustic and then into spacey guitar sounds and the jazzy stuff. I’m just a crazy, mixed-up guitar player, so I won’t just make one sound – I’ll do them all.
“Jon had written some lyrics with his friend David Foster, a Scotsman. So that’s what came in when we started singing, ‘Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.’ I must say, Jon was brilliant at what he was doing, which helped bring about an enlightenment that we were now going to be making music that people wanted to listen to.”
2. CLAP
“I was so happy that Yes were open to having this type of song on the album, but I didn’t have a title. Jon said, ‘Why don’t you call it Clap?’ And I said, ‘That’s great – Clap.’ It was so simple and innocent.
“We recorded it live with Eddy Offord [at the Lyceum Theatre in London]. He used a Revox A77 going at 15 i.p.s. on quarter-inch tape. I think he put up a couple of really good mics up, but I’m not sure what they were. The only problem with the song was when Jon mis-announced it on stage and called it ‘The Clap,’ when it’s really just called ‘Clap.’ On the new CDs it’s written out correctly, but on the old albums it’s called ‘The Clap.’
“It’s the first song I ever wrote, and I think it’s really a good piece. I wrote it on the 4th of August in 1969, when my oldest son, Dylan, was born. The very night that he was born, I finished the song. Originally, it was a dedication to Chet Atkins, but then it became a dedication to Dylan.
“It combined a lot of things I’d learned or imagined. I always wanted to write music, and when I decided to write solo guitar music, it was earth-shattering inside, because suddenly I was an independent person. I could stand up on stage and play Clap. That meant as much to me as it did to be in Yes."
3. STARSHIP TROOPER
“We started with a good guitar sound, but it wasn’t what exactly we wanted to hear. So we sat down with a Bell flanger, and we basically put the whole track through it. It gave everything a lot of movement.
“The song wasn’t rehearsed; it was constructed in the studio from various pieces. I had the Wurm part from another band I used to be in called Bodast. It was in a song called The Ghost Of Nether Street. We’d recorded an album, but the label closed down, and so the record never came out.
“I always loved the section as a whole piece of music, so I decided to carry it over to Yes. I like the way it goes from G to E-flat to C, but different things happen on the roots. Although it repeats endlessly, it sometimes has the fifth below roots on the chords. It sounds like a lot going on, and of course, it’s flanged.
“The build-up of it is very impressive. It splits into two guitar tracks, one side taking a solo. Somehow, we did a bunch of takes, and so we’d pick the best of each. They were all done as complete takes. I remember thinking that I was sort of jamming with myself.
“The rest of the song is wonderful too. Jon had some fantastic writing on it. It’s arranged nicely. We did very little overdubbing, really.”
4. I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE
“We had the song pretty much worked up in rehearsals. The beginning of it, the parts where I’m playing the acoustic, they never sounded right, however, and so when we got in the studio, we got a click out and I played to it. I did a whole take that way. The click was Bill’s idea. What he’s playing with Chris, that ‘ba-doot’ beat, we made a loop of that.
“The guitar I’m using on the opening is a Portuguese 12-string tuned to a unique way that I think sounds right. The rock section does have a bit of a Western swing to it. That guitar solo is great – I wish I could keep writing them like that. It’s very much like a Bill Haley-type solo. When I played it, I believe I was thinking about how I liked that beboppy guitar approach. It sort of softens the rock but edges up the swing.
“I remember at one point saying that we needed some recorders, which everybody liked the idea of. A guy [Colin Goldring] came in and played them, and they sounded fantastic. I’m not sure if the organ is a Hammond or an actual church organ, but it rises up and it’s just incredible.
“When we do the song live on tour now, we’re going to move the keys down for the ‘I’ve seen all good people’ harmonies at the end. We do love to sing. In Yes, we’ve always had so many ideas for the various instruments, our sonic story, but the vocals are always a lot of fun to do too.”
5. A VENTURE
“This one definitely came up in the studio. I have that jazzy guitar part, and there’s the tinkly piano – lots of great stuff in the song. Tony was such a terrific player for me to work with because he was so comfortable supporting me and helping me, but he would find his moments too.
“I’ve always liked it. We’ve tried it on stage in different guises. In the early years, we used to jam on it a lot and make it quite complicated – just massive things happening. But now we’re determined to do a very good version of it live and make it as close to the record as we possibly can.”
6. PERPETUAL CHANGE
“This is a song that really echoes the feelings of the Devon countryside where we were rehearsing. Jon was looking out at the scenery, and he just said, ‘There it is – perpetual change.’
“I just worked on the song with Geoff Downes, and when we looked at it, we realized that there’s only a few structures to it, but they come in different ways and with different irregularities, and they come together in a battle in the middle.
“How we started on the song was, we started on the fragility of ‘I see the cold mist in the night and watch the hills roll out of sight,’ and we build, getting some nice, jazzy chords in there. But returning as we do to the intro, it’s kind of very anthemic. Of course, it’s rocky too. We were doing it all very well. Then the monster bit happens in the middle. It’s going to be good fun playing the song on stage soon.
“I played the ES-175 on this as well – it’s on Good People, Disgrace, Starship Trooper and A Venture – but at the end of this song, I played an Antoria. Or it might have been a Guyetone. It was definitely one of the two. They looked the same. One was a copy of the other one, but I never really worked out which came first.
“The song is joyful, and it ends the album on such a nice note. Once again, it gives people the signal that Yes can be kind of classical.” --
Joe Bosso
Joe is a freelance journalist who has, over the past few decades, interviewed hundreds of guitarists for Guitar World, Guitar Player, MusicRadar and Classic Rock. He is also a former editor of Guitar World, contributing writer for Guitar Aficionado and VP of A&R for Island Records. He’s an enthusiastic guitarist, but he’s nowhere near the likes of the people he interviews. Surprisingly, his skills are more suited to the drums. If you need a drummer for your Beatles tribute band, look him up.
Interview: Yes' Chris Squire on Rickenbackers, critics, Trevor Horn and more
By Joe Bosso published January 09, 2012
MUSIC RADAR
"Being called a 'music legend' is a very funny thing," says Yes bassist Chris Squire. "It's nice to know that my work has been appreciated and that people have given me that status. On a personal level, however, I can't think about it too much. It means a lot...but then it doesn't."
Which is another way of saying that Squire isn't letting accolades (especially those of MusicRadar readers) go to his head, nor is he resting on his laurels. In 2011, Yes released two albums, a glorious studio set, Fly From Here, helmed by longtime producer (and onetime band singer) Trevor Horn and featuring classic-lineup members Squire, guitarist Steve Howe and drummer Alan White, along with returning keyboardist Geoff Downes and 2009 singer recruit, Benoit David.
In addition, the group recently issued an elaborate live set, In The Present: Live From Lyon, also produced by Horn, which highlights the talents of Oliver Wakeman, son of legendary keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who temporarily assumed his father's spot in Yes. (Downes has since rejoined the fold.)
Recording the studio album was, in Squire's words, "a fantastic experience. In fact, Steve Howe said something that was pretty amazing: 'My God, I think we've actually made an album that everybody in the band likes!' That has never happened before. The vibe was quite good the whole time. And working with Trevor was a real pleasure."
Horn's association with Yes is a long and interesting one, and so that's where our conversation with Chris Squire begins.
Trevor Horn has worked with Yes as a producer on various occasions, but there was that brief period in 1980 and '81 when he was singing with the band.
"That's right, he had done the Drama album with us. I remember there was a lot of pressure on us at the time. We had a US tour booked, which was pretty much sold out everywhere, including four nights at Madison Square Garden. But we had a change of personnel: Trevor came in for Jon [Anderson], and Geoff came in for Rick. At this point, before such a tour, we thought that our fans deserved to know who the new members of the band were, and so we made an album.
"Drama was put together quickly; there were a lot of intense, 16-hour days. Despite the pressure, it was a lot of fun, and the end result was an album I'm very proud of. I think Drama defined Yes as they had become at that point in time, and it's stood the rest of time, as well."
During the '70s, the critics were brutal to Yes. You were called things like "self-indulgent," "dinosaurs..."
[laughs] "Sure. That's right."
And then the New Wave bands joined in on the criticism. Did that sting? Did you take it to heart? Or because you were so successful, did you not care?
"Well, at the time, Yes were doing extremely well, filling arenas and stadiums. I saw those things in the press, but I can't say they had any kind of impact on our career. [laughs] Initially, of course, the whole New Wave thing was much more of a Euro-based movement. People will point to The Ramones and a few other bands, but I don't think it was as big a deal in the US as it was in other places."
You've been a longtime Rickenbacker player. When did you come out with your signature model bass?
"The one that came out in the '90s…I can't remember when that was. It was probably towards the beginning of the '90s. One thing that's always been something of a mystery, and I've never been able to pin them down on it, is the actual number of instruments produced. There seems to be some confusion as to whether it was 900 or 1000.
"I remember John Hall, the owner and CEO of Rickenbacker, called me and said, 'I think we only made 900 of them, but I'm not quite sure.' So I said, 'Well, if you're not sure, John, then go ahead and make the other 100!'" [laughs]
The first Rick you bought in the '60s, the RM1999 model - how did you come to acquire it?
"What happened was, I had left school and took a temporary job while I tried to figure out what to do with my life - this was before I became a full-time musician, obviously. I was working in a music store in London, and this particularl place happened to be the importers for Rickenbacker guitars into England. So I started seeing these basses coming in.
"I think the first three Rickenbacker basses were imported around 1964. Pete Quaife, the bassist for The Kinks, bought one. Then John Entwistle from The Who bought one. As for the third one, I asked the manager of the store if I could get an employee discount. He said I could, and so I picked up that one. [laughs] I went on to live with that guitar and perfect my style, really."
You got your first Rickenbacker before Paul McCartney?
"I think so, yeah. If this was '64, then yes, that would be true. I don't think Paul went with his Rickenbacker until a little later."
So many bassists cite you as a major influence, but when you were coming up, who did you listen to? Who helped to shape your playing?
"When I was 16 years old, I had great influences. There was Paul McCartney, of course. I was greatly impressed by his playing and his ability to sing at the same time. I strove to make that my goal, to be able to do both things.
I loved Bill Wyman from The Rolling Stones. Jack Bruce, too: At this point, I started going to clubs, so I saw Jack play with The Graham Bond Organization, his band before Cream. And John Entwistle, he was a huge influence. I was at just the right age in 1965 when The Who broke out in London. I was one of those 17-year-olds who went to see them everywhere they played. When I was a teenager, they were my favorite band. I really adored The Who."
Back then, your gear options weren't what they are now. In a way, did that make things more interesting? You had to rely on your own creativity…
"It was fun, sure. In the '60s, you were limited to whatever guitar you chose to play and the amp you decided to play it through. Those were about your own options. [laughs]
"Eventually, the fuzz and the wah-wah pedals came into play, but originally, it was all about your guitar and amp. It's interesting, though, and I was thinking about this just the other day: With The Beatles, George and John played Rickenbackers, as did Paul, although at first he was playing his Hofner. But it was the combination of those instruments that made their sound.
"Later on, they got into Fenders and Gibsons and other things. But the quintessential Beatles sound came from Rickenbacker guitars and the Hofner bass. With The Who, Pete Townshend played Rickenbackers before he started playing Fenders and Les Pauls. So it was just that: the guitarists got their sound with the instruments themselves.
"You could make them sound different by using certain things, like different speaker boxes and amplifiers. And Townshend obviously started with the feedback idea and using volume. It was very much every man for himself and what you could come up with!" [laughs]
Because you favored a more trebly sound for your bass, on the early records, did you ever have frequency wars with Steve Howe?
"Strangely enough, it all seemed to work quite well. Steve was playing that big hollowbody Gibson ES-175. That was basically a jazz guitar, and it had a lot of body and low-end to it. Somehow or other, the two sounds worked well together.
"But something else you have to consider is that Bill Bruford was the drummer on the first Yes albums. He was more of a jazz player, which made me have to fulfill some of the drum role a bit more than the drums did. Bill sort of played around me. In theory, it's supposed to be the other way around. We had a unique way of playing, and so the engineer was able to combine the sounds and turn them into something that people liked."
Did you change your playing a bit when Alan White joined the band?
"It didn't change a bit, it changed completely! [laughs] Alan had come from a basic rock drumming background. As we all know, he had played on the Imagine sessions and was part of the Plastic Ono Band. So it was all very solid rock drumming, but very different from Bill's playing.
"When I first started working with Alan, it took a little while to get the chemistry; it was all a bit foreign to both of us. As time went on, we modified our styles to fit each other, and now here we are, we've played together since 1972. It's like riding a bike!" [laughs]
Do you have a general philosophy as to how you approach bass playing?
"The song is the main thing, so the melody and, to some extent, the lyrical content is important to what you come up with. There's all kinds of approaches, really. You may be doing something that has a riff, or the song might be written around the riff - there's all kinds of ways you can go about it. I can't say I'm limited to doing just one thing. When it comes to looking at the bass part, all kinds of information plays a role."
What is your relationship like with Jon Anderson? Several years ago, Yes decided to continue without him. Are there any hard feelings?
"I don't think so; there shouldn't be. We just had to move on and brought in Benoit David to come in and sing. At the time, it was looking less and less likely that Jon could do it, mainly because of his medical status. And, of course, he was reluctant to commit to long-term touring - and I understand why. So we had to make that change. I always hoped that Jon would see it as a business decision and nothing personal. That's where it stands."
What was it like playing with Oliver Wakeman? Having performed with his dad for so many years, was it a little strange?
"Oliver's a really nice guy. We spent a few years on the road together, and we get along very well. It was a little strange. [laughs] Probably 50 percent of his is exactly like his father, and then the other half is all him - he's his own man. But when it comes down to playing, he's as accomplished as Rick."
Speaking of Rick Wakeman, here's probably the most important question of all: Did you ever tease him about that whole King Arthur on ice thing he did in the '70s?
"Uh…no, not really. At the time he did that, people were going for the lavish productions, and Rick just took it one stage further - onto the ice rink! [laughs] I didn't actually see it. I assume there must be some film of it. What can I say? Those were the days."
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Joe Bosso is a freelance journalist who has, over the past few decades, interviewed hundreds of guitarists for Guitar World, Guitar Player, MusicRadar and Classic Rock. He is also a former editor of Guitar World, contributing writer for Guitar Aficionado and VP of A&R for Island Records. He’s an enthusiastic guitarist, but he’s nowhere near the likes of the people he interviews. Surprisingly, his skills are more suited to the drums. If you need a drummer for your Beatles tribute band, look him up.
In Set List, we talk to veteran musicians about some of their most famous songs, learning about their lives and careers (and maybe hearing a good backstage anecdote or two) in the process.
The artist: The lineup of Yes has repeatedly fluctuated since the band’s inception in the late ’60s, but one musician—and only one—has played a part in every permutation of the band: bassist Chris Squire. The A.V. Club recently spoke with Squire in conjunction with the release of Yes’ latest live album, In The Present: Live From Lyon, and asked about as many of the band’s seminal tracks as the limited amount of interview time would allow.
Yes, “Astral Traveller” (from 1970’s Time And A Word)
Chris Squire: That originally was recorded in ’69, back on the second Yes album. It was pretty much right when we were starting to write more and more of our own original songs, and that was pretty representative of where our heads were at the time: spacey lyrics and quite hard-hitting playing. We revived it, of course, for touring when Benoit [David] joined the band in 2008. Strangely enough, Steve Howe suggested we do it, and he didn’t even play on the original. [Laughs.] But he thought it was something worth doing, and it turned out great. And we added a little drum feature on the end for Alan [White] that was built into the show.
The A.V. Club: It’s the oldest of the tracks on Live From Lyon.
CS: I’m sure it is, yes. [Laughs.]
AVC: Didn’t anything from the self-titled album warrant revival?
CS: Well, I don’t know if we’ve ever really played anything from that album in a long time. I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles’ “Every Little Thing,” but I don’t know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don’t think we ever did it actually in the show.
AVC: In a perfect world, you might launch into “Beyond And Before” some night.
CS: Yeah, “Beyond And Before,” that is a classic Yes song. Originally written for [the band] Mabel Greer’s Toy Shop, actually, before Yes was even around.
AVC: Time And A Word also marked a notable use of orchestra, which wasn’t necessarily a big thing in rock at the time.
CS: Yeah, well, exactly. Jon Anderson and I, we really liked a lot of classical music, and we wanted to get some orchestral arrangements going on Time And A Word. And, of course, at that time, I also discovered that guitarists hate it when anybody suggests having an orchestra on anything. [Laughs.] Because it tends, I think, to detract from the art of the lead guitarist. And that also was with Peter Banks, and it was one of the reasons why we actually parted company with Peter Banks after that album. Because he just thought we were going in a different direction from the way he thought. But that wasn’t really the case. We just wanted to use some orchestral arrangements. But anyway, he left after that album, and Steve Howe came in, and then we did The Yes Album. And that all worked out really well.
Yes, “Starship Trooper” (from 1971’s The Yes Album)
CS: I remember it was the last thing we did [on that album], and it was pretty much put together in the studio. You know, it sort of developed, and… it’s probably one of our first experiments of actually creating in the studio, and that’s why it had one piece Jon had written, a piece that I had written, and a piece Steve Howe had written. And we sort of Sellotaped them together. [Laughs.] Which was a fairly modern technique around 1969 or ’70, or whenever we were doing that. ’70, I think. And of course, you had to have an engineer who was capable of physically editing tape, which was quite an unusual thing amongst studio engineers, because up until then, they’d just been used to taping things in one piece, and that was it, whether it be pop music or orchestral music. But Eddie [Offord] had become good at actually cutting the… probably that was a 16-track. Maybe it was an 8-track. [Laughs.] But Eddie had perfected the art of doing it, so we took advantage of that and started editing bits of music together that didn’t necessarily… We hadn’t played it before we edited it together. And then, strangely enough, “Starship Trooper” became a song that we never, ever played. For years and years and years. It never seemed to be that good in the show. And then I guess sometime in the later ’70s or something, we decided to reintroduce it, and then it turned out to be a really good live song.
Yes, “I’ve Seen All Good People” (from 1971’s The Yes Album) AVC: Steve Howe really stakes his claim as a key member of Yes on “I’ve Seen All Good People.”
CS: Oh, yeah, exactly. [Hesitates.] Although, really, everything on The Yes Album is part of Steve Howe’s first effort out there with us. But yeah, he definitely put it out there with his Portuguese sort of mandolin-ish guitar he had. That definitely gave that whole song a sound. And that was also, on the “Your Move” section of the song, our first experimentation with a loop tape, because we just recorded the bass drum and the bass guitar together playing a “duh-dumph,” and we put that on a loop and ran it through a quarter-inch tape machine, and then recorded that again back onto the 1-inch or 2-inch—whatever it was at the time—and then we overdubbed everything on top of that pulse.
AVC: It’s turned up in more than a few films and TV series over the years.
CS: Oh, absolutely, yeah, I know. And I think it’s even used for a Chase Manhattan Bank ad.
AVC: Do you have a favorite use of the song?
CS: Ah, well, not really. But, strangely enough, “I’ve Seen All Good People” is, I think, the second most played Yes song on American radio after “Owner Of A Lonely Heart.” And then I think “Roundabout” is third. So it’s definitely had a lot of usage over the years. And it’s still being played. So that’s great.
AVC: “I’ve Seen All Good People” and “Roundabout” have both been used on Fringe. Did you guys cut them a deal?
CS: Oh, I know Fringe, yeah! I hadn’t noticed that, though. I haven’t seen every episode, either. But I’ve seen the show. In fact, I’m quite surprised it’s still going, ’cause it seems to keep having new seasons, and I never thought it was that great. But now I know they’ve used our music, I’ll support them. [Laughs.]
Yes, “And You And I” (from 1972’s Close To The Edge)
CS: Well, of course, by that time, we’d already developed the idea of doing our songs in sections and recording them in sections. So there was the first section, which, once again, had sort of a pulse thing from the bass and drums, and a strummy guitar. Then there’s the middle section I wrote, which is called “Eclipse.” I wanted to make that sound orchestral, and that was also because at that time… well, actually, I think we started on Fragile. When Rick Wakeman joined the band, he brought in the Moog synthesizer and the Mellotron and everything, so those instruments were sort of part of our arsenal then, and we were using them to do quasi-orchestral pieces. Which worked very well for us. Once again, that was recorded in about four different sections and edited together.
AVC: The Yes singles of that era… a lot of times, you’d have half a song on one side and half of the song on the other side. Do you cringe when you hear those edits?
CS: [Laughs.] Oh, God. Uh, yeah. Yes. But, I mean, at the time, I guess we couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to do anything like that. I guess it was some form of quality control. In a way, I’m sort of happy to think that people would buy something of ours even in that butchered state. It showed they liked the band that much. So in a way, that was good.
Yes, “Onward” (from 1978’s Tormato)
CS: Well, “Onward” was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down. [Laughs.] To nothing. So we were doing some kind of a financial tax year where you only could have a limited time in England in order to qualify for certain tax regulations, and it would save you a bunch of money in taxes. So we elected to go to the studio—because they had a studio, to start with—on the lake, and it was a beautiful place. And I actually was living in a rented house that was right on Lake Geneva, which coincidentally was across the road from where [Igor] Stravinsky used to write a lot of his compositions. So it was obvious the vibes around there were kind of good. And I wrote “Onward” there, and it ended up on the Tormato album, which came after Going For The One.
AVC: Did you guys have any particular reaction to the punk movement that was going on right around that time?
CS: Yeah, I’ve been asked that so many times, and, of course, we were… You know, right around that time—’76, ’77, ’78—we were selling out stadiums in America, so the punk movement was sort of just… We looked upon it as quaint. [Laughs.] So we didn’t think about it very much, really. But I recognize the validity of that now. It was a certain revolution against perceived pomposity, I guess, on the part of bands like us and ELP and Genesis, I guess, to an extent, too. But, you know, we didn’t really notice it that much.
Yes, “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” (from 1983’s 90125)
AVC: You worked with producer Trevor Horn when he was a member of Yes for the Drama album, but who put you in touch with Trevor Rabin?
CS: You know, Trevor had just been… around. Sort of. He was originally from South Africa, but he’d moved to London and was doing something in London with a label he was trying to put together. So I was aware of him. And one day somebody gave me… Well, back in those days, it was a cassette tape of Trevor. And I was amazed, because it sounded like… The whole thing was just like a new Foreigner album. To me, anyway. [Laughs.] And it was Trevor’s demos! And I thought, “Well, that’s amazing!” And of course I was told he’d played and sung everything on it. And I thought, “Well, this guy’s really clever, but he sounds like Foreigner,” so I didn’t take too much notice of him. And then a year or two went by, and his name came up again, and… This was after Yes was on hiatus for a while, after we’d made the Drama album with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes. We’d toured that ’round the world, and we just needed a rest. So we’d had some time off, and then once again his name came up, ’cause Steve Howe was off with Geoff Downes with their Asia project by then. And I said, “Yeah, okay, I know who this guy is: He sounds like Foreigner. But let me meet him.”
I remember he came to my house and… [Laughs.] I think we were just drinking and stuff like that, so by the time we went down to the studio—which I had in my basement, which was very sophisticated, actually, and was pretty much like a commercial studio, except I’d had it built under my house—we went and had a jam for about five or 10 minutes, and it was dreadful. And after that, we just said, “Oh, well, okay, let’s just form a new band, then.” [Laughs.] Because we got on very well, so it didn’t really matter what the playing was like at the time. Looking back, it probably wasn’t as bad as all that, anyway.
Ironically, this album’s title is now out of date, for Oliver Wakeman’s keyboard stool has been taken by Geoff Downes, returning to the Yes fold. Thankfully, however, this live set records Rick’s son’s efforts over 13 tunes which, on the whole, are a faithful, if sometimes Yes-lite take on the band’s classics.
The set opens with the simulacrum of Siberian Khatru, Steve Howe’s skittering guitar atop Wakeman Jr’s keys and Benoît David’s lofty vocals. He also puts in a good shift on the likes of I’ve Seen All Good People and the trilling Onward; but Astral Traveller – with drum solo – lacks a certain presence, as does a less slick Owner Of A Lonely Heart. Still, Yours Is No Disgrace speaks for itself, Southside Of The Sky continues the monumental tradition ably and, with bankers such as the ecstatic Heart Of The Sunrise, clapalong Roundabout and all-action Starship Trooper, most fans should consent to begrudging approval.
Nearly 45 years after saying “Yes!” to progressive, symphonic-style rock music, British band Yes still rolls strongly, but through plenty of changes.
Although the band's music has earned it many fans since the '70s and '80s, flexibility seems to play a key role in the band's longevity. Yes is a “mysteriously determined band” that has such a long heritage, partially because of its revolving door, with numerous member changes, says guitarist Steve Howe, who still lives in England.
Since Yes began in 1968, the band has had four guitarists, two drummers, and more than six keyboardists. Yes is on its fourth singer: Jon Davison, who joined the band in February because of lead vocalist Benoit David's illness. Bassist Chris Squire is the only original member remaining in the five-man band, although Howe joined in 1970, shortly after Yes was formed.
“When you put all that together, that's the answer to your question: We change,” Howe says about the band's long lifespan, minus a two-year disband in 1981 and a four-year hiatus in 2004. “We're like an orchestra; an orchestra can change membership.”
Howe and Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes also split their time between Grammy Award-winning Yes, which is coming to the Carnegie Library Music Hall in Munhall on Tuesday, and Asia, another '80s British rock band that is coming to the music hall Oct. 31 for its 30th anniversary tour. Howe also has nurtured a solid solo career outside of his bands, and released his 19th solo album in 2010.
Yes has sold more than 50 million albums, and put out a studio album — “Fly From Here,” its first studio album in a decade — last year. The album worked out well, but Howe doesn't know if Yes — known for hits including “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” “Leave It,” “Long Distance Runaround,” and “Starship Trooper” — will make another new studio album in the future.
Focusing on continual touring and live performances has helped Yes continue to thrive and connect with fans in a personal way, Howe says. Stage charisma and energy make live shows entertaining, but Howe prefers to express them in a less flamboyant way than some bands do. He's not one to put on a show that's reliant on stage movement, theatrics and “that kind of razzmatazz.”
“It's a good thing — the audience likes to see the whole package,” Howe says about live shows. But, “Kneeling at the edge of the stage is cringe-worthy ... the music police should come on. I like to move around ... but certainly I'm not going to be wiggling on the (back) with my legs in the air.”
Kellie B. Gormly is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at kgormly@tribweb.com or 412-320-7824.
Yes' Chris Squire on Tribute Singer's Exit, Broadway Reunion Talks
'He started to get a little wobbly onstage,' says bassist of Benoit David
By ANDY GREENE MAY 25, 2012
Just four years ago, Benoît David seemed like the perfect solution to Yes' problems. The prog-rock giants were in the midst of a four-year hiatus from the road as lead singer Jon Anderson recovered from a respiratory ailment, and they'd grown weary of sitting around. So the band decided to hire a new singer, and David was the perfect choice – he was the frontman of Canadian Yes tribute act Close to the Edge, and he could recreate Anderson's soaring tenor vocals with stunning accuracy. In a storyline straight out of the movie Rock Star, Yes gave him the job. "Benoît came in and he seemed real good," the band's bassist, Chris Squire, tells Rolling Stone. "The fanbase seemed to really like him and everything was going well."
Last year, Yes released Fly From Here with David on lead vocals and hit the road on a co-headlining tour with Styx to promote it. "At that point, he started to get a little wobbly onstage," says Squire. "I thought he was having a cold or had gotten sick on the road. That happens all the time, but in Benoît's case it seemed to not be getting better. We toured Europe after that, and once again he started to go a little soft. But it was more than that. He just seemed to not want to carry on doing the job. I assumed that after the Christmas break he'd feel differently, but he didn't. We figured it was time to change partners."
With David out of the picture and a big year of touring quickly coming up, Squire remembered a singer that Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters had once suggested: Jon Davison, the lead vocalist of Tennessee-based prog-rockers Glass Hammer. "Taylor is my friend and he told me on numerous occasions that Jon Davison should have the gig," says Squire. "We got together with him and realized that he would be a very good fit. Like Jon Anderson, he's a tenor, but he has a different pitch to his voice. We just returned from our Pacific Rim tour and he did a fantastic job, so everything is happy again in the Yes realm."
All of this begs an obvious question: why not just reunite with Jon Anderson after David left the group? "I've always had the same attitude about that," says Squire. "I would never close the door on that possibility, but we're in the throes of promoting our new album and Jon Davison is doing a good job with that. If anything in the future happens regarding a possible collaboration with Jon [Anderson], I'm sure we'd look at it, but right now we're in a good place and not even thinking about it."
When Rolling Stone spoke to Jon Anderson last summer, he was none too pleased about getting replaced by a vocal doppelgänger in a group that he co-founded. "People get into that place where they don't care about people," said Anderson. "To them, it's just business." Needless to say, Squire has a different take on the situation.
"I don't think Jon has anything to be bitter about," he says. "We cancelled a whole tour in 2008 when his respiratory problems came back. Touring is a tough business. One of the main reasons we aren't working with him now is that he's only able to do a certain amount of shows a week. It would limit our ability to move and make money, really. After we canceled the 2008 tour, the rest of us wanted to work. We all enjoy playing and we wanted to feed the fans' needs – their Yes injections."
Squire is open to the idea of a Yes reunion as part of a residency at a Broadway theater in New York. "The idea of 'Yes on Broadway' has come up," he says. "It would reflect the history of Yes. It requires the collaboration not only with Jon Anderson, but also other ex-members, including keyboard players like Patrick Moraz and obviously Rick [Wakeman] would be looked at as well. Of course, it would have to depend on if there's any interest from that side as well. It's something that's brewing, but it's very much on the backburner."
A big project on the frontburner for Squire right now is Squackett, a new collaboration with former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. Their debut LP, Life Within a Day, comes out on June 5th. "For years I've been trying to do a follow-up to [1975 solo LP] Fish Out of Water," says Squire. "Every time I tried to do it, the songs got diverted onto a Yes album or some other project. This time I was writing in London and I brought Steve in. Towards the end of the project, we were actually writing songs together from scratch. Also, we started singing together and realized that our voices sounded great together. I didn't even know that he sang!"
The new group is planning on touring England in the fall, and they might expand that into a broader European tour. Just don't expect to hear any Yes or Genesis tunes at the shows. "That's very unlikely," says Squire. "I have never played anything live – expect for a few special occasions – from Fish Out of Water," says Squire. "I've always wanted to play that material, and Steve has a wealth of albums he can draw from on his own. By the time we add all that up we'll have a pretty lengthy show, and there won't be time for any Yes or Genesis songs."
Before Squackett goes on the road, Yes has a 26-date North American tour kicking off on July 13th in Atlantic City. The group has been around for 44 years now, and Squire sees no end in sight. "It's quite an odd thing that Jon Davison is the 18th member to come into the circus ring of Yes," he says. "In many ways I think about the possibility that there could still be a Yes in 100 or 200 years from now, just like a live symphony orchestra. I don't think I'll be in it unless there is an extraordinary medical breakthrough. Just think of the Los Angeles Philharmonic: the members change, but the band keeps the same name."
In 1991, most of the members of Yes, both past and present, put aside their differences for the Union album and tour. If the Broadway residency never comes together, the only place where a reunion would be likely to happen again is at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. "That would be fantastic, wouldn't it?" says Squire. "It would be great to get every member up there onstage. Fortunately, I think every member is still alive, so they shouldn't wait too long."
Squire isn't holding his breath, though. "I don't know what happens at those meetings where they pick the inductees," he says, laughing. "They're probably like, 'Oh, Yes? Of course they won't be getting in. Next!'"
Jon Anderson talks Yes' Close To The Edge track-by-track
By Joe Bosso published December 02, 2012
"We told stories and created moods. It was all very daring and wonderful."
Jon Anderson talks Yes' Close To The Edge track-by-track "We were on top of the world when we made Close To The Edge," says singer-songwriter Jon Anderson, recalling the early months of 1972 when he and his Yes mates (guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, keyboardist Rick Wakeman and drummer Bill Bruford) holed up inside London's Advision Studios to record the follow-up to their breakout hit, Fragile, which was released a year earlier.
“The band had just done a huge tour for Fragile,” says Anderson, “and we were quite pleased at how the audiences were loving the longer pieces that we played live. Roundabout was eight minutes long, Starship Trooper was nine, and Heart Of The Sunrise was over 11 minutes. These are well-constructed pieces of music that really worked on stage. We were feeling very powerful, like we could do anything.”
And that they did. Comprised of just three songs – the title track along with And You And I, both four-movement epics, plus the relatively short (at eight minutes, 55 seconds) Siberian Khatru – Close To The Edge was the result of the progressive rock band’s musical impulses running on full, a broad canvas of dizzying instrumental exchanges supporting Anderson’s sublime, mystical poetic vistas.
“It’s very representative of what I think is the Yes style,” Anderson says. “We experimented a lot, but we also had the talent to back it up – it wasn’t just solo after solo. We told stories and created moods. It was all very daring and wonderful.”
The group eschewed making demos, preferring to work on rough ideas while co-producer Eddy Offord rolled tape. After several weeks, concepts were sewn together into elaborate song structures. “We’d get the basic sketch of something, and then it was a matter of refinement,” says Anderson. “A piece would start to feel complete, but then I’d look to Steve and say, ‘We need a very poignant 12-string guitar introduction.’ He’d come up with it, it would be great, and we’d be off.”
Released on 13 September 1972, Close To The Edge bested the performance of Fragile, reaching No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart and placing a spot higher on Billboard’s Top 200 in the US. “FM stations really supported us, particularly on the college campuses in the States,” says Anderson. “They weren’t interested in what was commercial – they were just into playing great music.”
On the following pages, Anderson looks back at the writing and recording of Close To The Edge, offering his insights into the record track-by-track (and, more specifically, movement-by-movement). “It was the beginning of my musical journey in terms of really understanding structure,” he says. “I was able to help guide the band into Tales From Topographic Oceans, The Gates Of Delirium and Awaken. Everybody was so talented, so we could play these epic songs marvelously. The biggest thing was that we were all in harmony. We were truly connected.”
Close To The Edge - The Solid Time Of Change “I had been listening to an album called Sonic Seasoning by Walter Carlos, who’s now Wendy Carlos, and it gave me the idea for this sound effect that came from outer space. It came towards you and then bang! – the band started charging. At first, there’s this wonderful musical chaos, and then we have the guitar riff.
“The idea of the chant was key to the song. [Sings] ‘A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace/ And rearrange-da-dada-dada-dada-da-da-daa.’ It’s a rhythmic thing. I worked that out with Steve.
“The band started playing, and I said, ‘Guys, maybe you should be doing something more syncopated instead of a straight-on beat.’ So while Bill and Chris worked on a drum and bass thing, I looked at Rick and said, ‘OK, how fast can you play?’ And, of course, he could play very fast. The whole idea was to make it musically entertaining even before we put the voices on.
“For lyrics, I did a rough sketch of the whole piece, but as the sections came together, that’s when I rewrote the words. It took about three or four revisions till everything was there. It’s all metaphors. Simply put, ‘A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace’ – that means your higher self will eventually bring you out of your dark world.”
Close To The Edge - Total Mass Retain “We’ve laid the foundation of where we’re going to go, and now we’re into the second part. This is about the relaxation of life and being close to the edge of the realization of our universal experiences. That’s what the song is starting to explain.
“This part flows. It shows you that you have to let music guide you. It’s best to open up and not force the situation. Everything will come to you.
[Sings] “’Sudden cause shouldn't take away the startled memory/ all in all, the journey takes you all the way.’ The idea is that life is an ongoing journey, and you have to enjoy it, you know?”
Close To The Edge - I Get Up, I Get Down “We have the ‘the I get up, I get down’ part before it goes into a beautiful ocean of energy. You’ve gone through nearly 10 minutes of music that’s very well put-together, but then you want to let go of it. You relax a little bit.
“The song came about because Steve was playing these chords one day, and I started singing, ‘Two million people barely satisfy.’ It’s about the incredible imbalance of the human experience on the planet.
“The vocals came together nicely. I’m a big fan of The Beach Boys and The Association – such great voices. Steve and I were working on this, and at one point he said, ‘I have this other song…’ And I said, ‘Well, start singing it.’ And he went [sings], ‘In her white lace, you could clearly see the lady sadly looking/ saying that she'd take the blame for the crucifixion of her own domain… ’
“When I heard that, I said, ‘Wait. That’s going to be perfect! You start singing that with Chris, and then I’ll sing my part.’ We have an answer-back thing.
“I heard a record with a church organ. I can’t remember what the album was, but I remember that it really woke things up. Going into the end, we needed something really big. Sonically, it changes all the textures.”
Close To The Edge - Seasons Of Man “The arrangement had gone to where Rick was doing a solo. We’d always tried to give Steve a solo, then Rick a solo… Chris and Bill were working out the drum and bass parts. I said, ‘There’s got to come a time where I can get back in with [sings] The time between the notes relates the color to the scenes.’ Because the band is just cookin’ away, so I knew we needed a crescendo, and that’s where I came back in singing. They rehearsed it a few time, and this phrase then came out of the keyboard-organ solo.
“The line that goes, ‘Then according to the man who showed his outstretched arm to space/ he turned around and pointed, revealing all the human race’ – I’d had this dream where I was up on a mountain. This man was holding me around the shoulders, and he was pointing and saying, ‘That’s the human experience.’ And I smiled because I realized that it was true.”
And You And I - Cord Of Life “And You And I was written in maybe five different sections, and then we put them all together. The idea was very straightforward at first. It was going to be a very pretty folk song that I wrote with Steve. Soon we decided that it was to be surrounded by very big themes.
“’A man conceived a moment's answers to the dream/ staying the flowers daily, sensing all the themes’ – I love singing this song on tour. In fact, I still sing it.
“When we were writing in those days, it was ‘Here’s the verse, here’s the verse, we’ve gotta get from the verse to the bridge.’ We had to make the bridge very, very different. ‘And you and I climb over the sea to the valley, and you and I reached out for reasons to call’ – and then we’re going to hold that note, and the theme is going to come back in.
“I would always record Rick when he was writing music. He was working on something at the time, and I said, ‘Let’s develop this theme.’ It felt really good.”
And You And I - Eclipse “You work on a solo section, and it gets to the point where you feel it’s finished, and maybe it’s time to get back to that part that we sang at the end of the second verse – and just double up on it. That’s how we brought this section back in.”
And You And I - The Preacher The Teacher “It goes to a totally different song and feel. Steve is a magical guitar player, and he could switch to a new style so easily. I said to him, ‘It’s got to be have a real country feel to it.’ He knew just what to do, and then Chris, one of the greatest melodic bassists ever, came in, and right there the song sat together so sweet.
“We wrote this section in one afternoon, but it probably took about a week to put the whole piece of music for And You And I together.”
And You And I - Apocalypse “Nearly all of the music we ever made had one thought behind it: what will it sound like on stage? We liked to make records, but our main reason for doing what we did was to perform live, surrounded by a sound system and under the lights.
“I remember when we did And You And I at the Spectrum in Philadelphia for the first time. The whole room was so alive with the music we were making – it was really overwhelming – and when we were finished, the audience cheered and clapped for 15 minutes. I’m not kidding.
“That’s what I think of when I remember the end moments of And You And I. It was one of those times in your life that you never forget.”
Siberian Khatru “I was playing this on acoustic guitar the other day. ‘Khatru’ means ‘as you wish’ in Yemeni. When we were working on it, I kept singing the word over and over again, even though I had no idea what it meant. I asked somebody to look it up for me, and when they told me the meaning, it worked for the song.
“I had already written most of it, but I needed help with some of the sections. I started playing it on guitar for the band, and then I realized that it needed a strong riff. Steve really helped out with some of the parts and, of course, the riff. The song could work with the riff and the vocals alone.
[Sings] “’Even Siberia goes through the motions… ‘” The idea is that Siberia is so far away. The Iron Curtain still existed, and Siberia was like this no man’s land. Russia is such a huge country, and the thought was that life still happens there as it does here.
“The verses have a different rhythmic feel. We had a lots influences and elements going on. Before Yes, I was in a band in the ‘60s, and we did all the R&B songs that were on the charts. I loved singing those songs, but I didn’t want to write about the same things subject-wise. ‘My babe don’t love me no more, what am I gonna do?’ – why should I compete with people who were writing those songs so damn well?
“Steve’s guitar playing is brilliant. I’ve always been amazed at his incredible talent. Even on the last tour I did with him, I’d come off stage and say to him, ‘How do you do that?’ But the great thing about his playing here is that he’s always aware of the structure. He’s not just playing to play.
“The song builds and builds and builds and builds – you’re taking the audience on an epic adventure. People think it can’t get bigger, but it does. The vocalization I was doing – ‘Bluetail, tailfly, Luther, in time, suntower, asking, cover, lover’ – it builds and builds, too, and then it goes into the solo, and everybody goes crazy. A very cool song.”
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Joe Bosso is a freelance journalist who has, over the past few decades, interviewed hundreds of guitarists for Guitar World, Guitar Player, MusicRadar and Classic Rock. He is also a former editor of Guitar World, contributing writer for Guitar Aficionado and VP of A&R for Island Records. He’s an enthusiastic guitarist, but he’s nowhere near the likes of the people he interviews. Surprisingly, his skills are more suited to the drums. If you need a drummer for your Beatles tribute band, look him up.
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