Alan di Perna - Guitar World

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 10:14 PM

Yes Guitarist Steve Howe Discusses the Making of 'Fragile' and 'Close to the Edge'

By Alan di Perna

published 10 October 2014

“Somebody called me the granddaddy of prog-rock,” Steve Howe says with a laugh.

“I’m not ashamed to be called that. But the thing that matters most to me is musicality. I don’t think prog is all about technical playing. Much more important are your musical ideas. What choices and decisions are you making in the music? If that’s still an intelligent force within the music, then I like being considered a part of prog.”

More than just a part of progressive rock, Howe is one of the music’s great originators.

From the moment he joined Yes in 1970, he staked out a bold and vast territorial range for the guitar in a musical form often dominated by keyboard virtuosos like Keith Emerson and his former Yes bandmate Rick Wakeman. What those guys needed banks of pianos, organs and synthesizers to achieve Howe could often attain with just six strings and a boundless imagination.

His contribution, moreover, transcends prog-rock or any single musical genre. Steve Howe is one of the most distinctive and original guitarists in all of rock, a brilliant musical colorist whose evocative volume pedal swells and echoey textures possess all the subtle and complex expressiveness of the human voice itself. Howe’s palette has always been incredibly broad, drafting everything from classical and flamenco fire to psychedelic expansiveness to jazzy archtop electric abstraction into the rock guitar vocabulary.

At age 67, he’s still in top form, as can be clearly heard on the brand new Yes album, Heaven & Earth. On the disc, Howe is joined by longtime Yes members bassist Chris Squire, drummer Alan White and keyboardist Geoff Downs, who has been an on-and-off Yes-man since 1980.

On vocals is the group’s newest member, Jon Davison, who joined in 2012 and does a superb job of channeling the dulcet melodicism of original Yes vocalist Jon Anderson. Davison even shares Anderson’s spiritual perspective on lyric writing and fondness of Indian guru Paramahansa Yogananda.

While some tracks on Heaven & Earth evoke the prog symphonic majesty of Yes’ Seventies heyday, others skew in a lighter pop direction more in keeping with radio-friendly Eighties Yes recordings, such as their 90125 album. But in working with legendary producer Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, the Cars, Smashing Pumpkins), on Heaven & Earth, Howe had one supreme mandate.

“I told Roy, ‘It’s gotta be Yes.’ ”

The prominent presence of Howe’s guitar work on the album is a sterling guarantee that the disc does indeed sound like Yes. Howe’s inventive melody lines and otherworldly textures are woven deep into the polychromatic musical fabric. Never an overtly flash player, Howe will nonetheless sometimes conclude a tuneful guitar passage with a brief burst of sheer incandescent brilliance. The effortlessness with which he executes these dazzling little interludes offers understated testimony to his mastery of his instrument.

“I don’t think guitarists should concentrate on being guitarists,” he says. “They should concentrate on being musicians. Being a guitarist can be a dangerous thing if you just want to race off and steal the show all the time on bended knees with your tiddly tiddly tiddly. I think that’s pretty dead in the water. I daresay most people agree.”

Once famed for bringing a vast arsenal of guitars with him onstage and in the studio, Howe has taken a more streamlined approach in recent years. His rig is based largely around his Line 6 Variax guitar and Line 6 HD500/Bogner DT50 digital modeling amp and pedal board, which allow him to cover a wide range of traditional guitar and amp tones.

“I think the Variax is one of the most overlooked instruments in the guitar universe,” he says. “The first time I saw it, I knew it was made for me. I like affordable guitars that can make lots of sounds and textures. I’ve got to tell you, the Strat, ’58 Les Paul and Gibson ES-175 models, in particular, are sensational on the Variax. Okay, it doesn’t feel like a Les Paul. But when you plug it in and it sounds like one, what’s the problem?”

Howe does augment this digital setup with several “real” guitars in his live rig, however, all of which made it into the studio for the Heaven & Earth sessions. These include his mid-Eighties red Fender Stratocaster; a 1955 Fender Telecaster which he has modified with a humbucker in the neck position, six-saddle bridge and Gibson-style toggle switch; a Martin MC-38 Steve Howe signature model acoustic; a Fender dual-neck steel guitar; and a Gibson Steve Howe signature model ES-175 electric archtop.

“That one is actually Number One—the first-ever Steve Howe production model 175,” he says. “And I added a third pickup to it, because at the time I was using it cover the sound of the Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster that I used on Yes’ Fragile album.”

This signature model 175 is based on Howe’s 1964 ES-175D, his first serious electric guitar, purchased new when he was just 17 and an instrument with which he has been closely associated ever since. These days he uses the guitar only in the U.K. where he lives, “because the airlines have been such an effing pain in the butt over the years,” he says. “But I have actually got a ’63 175 as well, which a friend of mine in Fort Wayne Indiana found for me. That was there with me in the studio as well.”

Another key instrument for Howe onstage and in the studio is his guitarra portuguesa, or Portuguese guitar. Heard on the track “To Ascend” from Heaven & Earth, it is also featured prominently on classic Yes tracks like “Your Move/All Good People” and “The Preacher The Teacher” and “Wonderous Stories.” Strung in six double-string courses, the instrument is tuned unconventionally by Howe: low to high E B E B E Ab.

“That one came from Spain,” he says, “My sister bought it for me when I was a kid. It has a slightly ringy, sitarish kind of sound that I really like. It has become a real identity thing with me.”

To this array of instruments from his live rig, Howe added a few more items during sessions for Heaven & Earth. “The only extra guitar was a Steinberger GMT that I really like,” he says. “And the studio had some really nice Marshall and Vox amps that I used. I also rented a Fender Deluxe that was customized by a good friend of mine, Rick Coberly.”

So while Howe wasn’t exactly lacking for guitars and amps while making the album, the setup was minimal compared with the days of Seventies prog-rock opulence. “Usually I would do a whole setup for an album, which could be anything from 15 to 30 guitars—a bit extravagant,” Howe says, with a laugh. “Plus various amps—things I liked and had tried out. The whole fiddly process. But this time, we really didn’t have time for that. Nobody did in their own departments. Basically, we wanted to streamline the whole process.”

Howe’s relatively compact live rig will also serve him in good stead on the current Yes tour, which will feature live performances by the band of two classic Yes albums, Fragile and Close to the Edge, in their entirety. Released in 1971, Fragile was Yes’ breakthrough record. It featured what for many is the classic Yes lineup: Anderson, Howe, Squire, Wakeman and drummer extraordinaire Bill Bruford. But what really put the album across at the time was its lead track and hit single “Roundabout,” a perfect amalgam of melodic accessibility, driving rock, deft arrangement and superior musicianship.

“We’ve been playing ‘Roundabout’ and ‘Heart of the Sunrise’ from Fragile for years,” Howe says. “But in performing the entire album live, I really wanted to revisit the way we actually did those songs on the record—to capture the understatement, the subtleties and the playing down. Because playing onstage is often—too often for my liking—all about playing up. But I really like the subtleties and less expected moments of tranquility and gentleness. I think people sometimes forget that that’s the key to Yes. There’s no bash and crash about Yes.”

“Roundabout” is one of many classic Yes songs that Howe wrote in collaboration with Jon Anderson. “Jon and I were in a hotel room up in Scotland when we started writing that song,” Howe recalls. “We seemed to find a lot of time to do that in the Seventies. We had a private plane. We got to places. People sat by the pool. And Jon and I were in this hotel room, kind of going, ‘Well, what have you got that’s a bit like this?’ We used to quiz one another like that. We did those exchanges in our music, and lyrically as well. This was the era of cassettes, and I’ve still got all of them—Jon and me fooling around in hotel rooms.

"And with ‘Roundabout,’ we had all these bits of music, tentative moments. I was big on intros back then, and the classical guitar intro I came up with for ‘Roundabout’ was really one of the most signature things. And I believe I thought of the backward piano also in the intro, but I won’t lay 100 percent claim to that, in case I’m wrong. But basically the song just kept developing. Jon and I presented as much as we had to the band, and the band did a fair amount of input and arrangement. What Yes were brilliant at, even before I joined, was arranging skills.”

Another key feature of Fragile were its solo tracks, written and performed by each of the five band members. Howe’s contribution was “Mood for a Day,” a solo piece he performed on a Conde classical guitar and which toggles neatly between baroque decorum and flamenco passion.

“It was Bill Bruford who thought of the concept of doing individual tracks, not to mention the album title Fragile,” Howe recalls. “But his original idea wasn’t that each guy should do a completely solo track, the way I did mine and Rick Wakeman did his. Bill’s concept was more like he did with his own track, ‘Five Per Cent for Nothing,’ where the group were utilized at his command—like, ‘You play this and you play that.’ I think we could make up our own notes, but we had to play his beats, which was a marvelous way of doing it. I was really excited about doing that live, but other people in the group were like, ‘Are we really gonna do this?’ I think the guitar part is one of the easiest parts in it. But there was a fair amount of struggling with some of the other parts, because they have to mix together. Bill wasn’t the kind of drummer you could just busk along to.”

Howe’s main electric guitar for Fragile was the aforementioned Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster, which he recalls playing through a Dual Showman amp. “In 1969, I toured with Delaney & Bonnie as guitarist for the opening act, P.P. Arnold,” Howe narrates. “On that tour, both Eric Clapton and George Harrison were playing with Delaney & Bonnie, and they both had Dual Showmen. So when I joined Yes a year later, I was hell-bent to buy a Dual Showman. And I did.”

Yes’ 1972 masterpiece, Close to the Edge, was the triumphant follow-up to Fragile. While capitalizing on all the strengths of Fragile, Close to the Edge also took Yes into a new compositional dimension. Occupying all of side one on the original vinyl release, the album’s title track is a tour de force of brilliant, recurring melodic and lyrical themes that overlap in myriad permutations—transposed, superimposed, reharmonized, contrapuctualized and melded into one of progressive rock’s proudest and finest moments. “Close to the Edge” is another outstanding compositional collaboration between Anderson and Howe.

“Jon was more competent than me lyrically,” Howe says. “But I wound up writing lyrics for ‘Close to the Edge,’ and our next album Tales from Topographic Oceans. My stuff was more lateral, more earthbound, as opposed to his skybound stuff. The lyrical phrase ‘Close to the edge, down by the river’ was originally about the River Thames! But Jon converted that into the river of life, which was a wonderful thing.” As with “Roundabout,” Howe and Anderson began by amassing the musical fragments that would eventually go to making up “Close to the Edge.”

“Jon and I put together a lot of the shape of that song. We’d been working live with the Mahavishnu Orchestra at the time, and it might have been Jon who said to me, ‘Why don’t we start this with improvisation? That would be really scary.’ Normally you start off with something you can grasp—an intro or a hook. But we inspired Yes to go into this improvisation. All I had on guitar was that octave jumping two-note phrase you hear on the record. But that was enough to kick off an improvisation. After that it was purely freeform. Although we did have those stops arranged. i.e., climactic moments that give way to a single a cappella chord in vocal harmony. I can only look back in amazement that we were able to do some of that. But we did. We didn’t always count everything out. It was almost like we could remember things that were quite complicated. So that intro then spawned the whole idea of a thematic approach—the musical themes that come in and out of the track.“Jon and I really had a certain magic going on at that time,” Howe continues. “That level of collaboration ended after we wrote ‘Awaken’ from 1977’s Going for the One, which is another really epic piece. We did some good work after that, like “Bring Me to the Power” on Keys to Ascension 2 1997, some songs on The Ladder 1999 and a few on Magnification 2001. But I think that greatest time was ‘Roundabout’ through ‘Awaken.’ ” Howe’s main electric guitar for Close to the Edge was a Gibson ES-345 stereo model. He is one of the few rock guitarists to fully exploit the atmospheric potential of stereo guitar. Each of the 345’s two pickups would be routed to a separate amp with a separate delay line and volume pedal for each. “A lot of the panning I did live with my feet between the two pickups,” he explains. “I had a volume pedal for each pickup and panned them in opposite ways. When one went down, the other one went up. I had a lot of fun! You can hear it if you listen with headphones.” The volume pedal has always been a key element to Howe’s guitar approach. He’s used a variety of pedals down through the years, including Fender, Sho-Bud and Ernie Ball units. Since 2006, he’s employed the volume pedal on the Line 6 HD500 pedal board. “As soon as I got an electric guitar I also got a volume pedal,” he says. “And that really started my relationship with phrasing, effects and being able to alter the way a guitar sounds. And of course delays are also very important. The way you can play into a delay with a volume pedal is also a very exciting thing I developed. And then of course the fuzz box, wah and all kinds of guitar processing.” Close to the Edge was also Bill Bruford’s last album with Yes. He departed the band to join King Crimson not long after Close to the Edge was completed. “I see him as a quintessential Yes member,” Howe says. “And when he ran off from us to join Crimson, that was a really painful experience for me. Because I didn’t want him to go, not one bit. Yet what he proved to me is that a musician always has to follow his music. And I tend to do that. That’s why I left Asia a year or so back. Because I listened to myself and said, ‘I can’t do this now.’ And I’ve done that often in my career when I’ve made decisions. It’s good to remember that, no matter who the paymaster is, or what you’re going to lose, if you don’t follow the direction your music takes you in, then you’ll fall. You’ll lose much more than a few bucks.”In the years since Yes’ early Seventies classic run, Howe has kept up with old band mates like Bruford and Anderson through projects like Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford and Howe in the late Eighties/early Nineties. He’s currently planning to record a few of Bruford’s compositions on the next release by his side group, the Steve Howe Trio. Meanwhile, he still keeps an ear out for exciting new guitarists. “I really love Martin Taylor as a jazz guitarist,” he says. “He does everything I love. Wonderful guitarist. Wonderful technique. And yet he isn’t stifled by technique. By the time you’re a virtuoso, you don’t think along the lines of technique. Your technique is solid enough to enable you to do anything you want. Another guitarist I really admire is Flavio Sala, a young guitarist from Italy. He’s just over 30 now. "And he’s got all the classical repertoire under his belt, which is a huge goal to be at by your 30th birthday. But now he’s looking at music in a more general way, and not shy about it. I met him a few years ago. We recorded a track together, which we haven’t released yet. But whenever I see a guitarist, I can’t help but want to understand more about, Where’s this guy at? What’s his repertoire? With a guy like Flavio I think, That’s a true international guitarist. And I think that’s the goal for all of us as players—to become an international guitarist.”

Jo Kendall - The Blues

Thursday, April 11, 2024 9:10 AM

"At the end, Jimmy says to me: 'I want you in my band'. I say: 'But I've got a maths exam in the morning!'": Rick Wakeman, and the blues records that changed his life

By Jo Kendall
The Blues
September 2014

It all started with a love of trad jazz and Etta James – plus a baptism of fire in an after-school session with R&B star Jimmy Thomas

Beneath the rock-star locks and the cape of prog rock, keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman has a heart beating for R&B and blues. Growing up in northwest London as trad jazz, skiffle and blues were setting minds on fire, young Rick found himself in a number of aspirational bands. He’s known best for his time in The Strawbs and Yes, but it was R&B that got him a foot on the music industry ladder.

“When I was a teenager, everyone was in an R&B band," says Wakeman. "Twelve-bar blues was the easiest thing to learn, and once you had three chords you had a band. Moving on a couple of years, I was skiving off school to work in a music shop in South Ealing. One day Chas Cronk [future Strawb] came in and was talking to the owner, Dave Simms, saying he was in a spot, trying to find players for a session with Ike Turner’s singer Jimmy Thomas. His own band had been ‘detained’ at Customs. Dave looked at me and said: ‘Rick will sort that for you.’ Chas went: ‘Brilliant. I’ve got a demo on quarter-inch. I’ll bring it in. If I find and score the brass section, you do the organ bit, my problems will be solved.’

“My brain was saying: ‘Excuse me, I’m still at school.’ But my mouth said: ‘Yeah, no problem.’ I got the tape and played it. It was a fun track called Running Time. But I needed the players. Because I was already working at Watford Top Rank, I got some numbers from them for session guys. I called one of the trumpet players, who said: ‘We’ll do trumpet, trombone and tenor sax doubling on alto.’ All I had to do was score the brass parts – which I’d never done. Brass instruments are in a different key to concert pitch – I didn’t know that yet. It was the night before the session and I’ve got school during the day, so I’m up at midnight copying out these parts, getting to bed at four a.m., up at six, dog-tired.

“That evening I get to Olympic Studios for eight p.m., with my parts under my arm, and meet the engineer, Vic Smith, who takes me in. Apart from me, Chas and Vic, the rest of the band are Afro-American, and I’m so nervous I can’t understand a word they’re saying. I’m trying to be cool – I’m still a teenager and I’m trying to act older.

“We start playing, and they’re funking away and I end up doing almost a classical organ thing. I’m thinking: ‘This ain’t good. They want Booker T.’ But what was really daft is producer Denny Cordell says: ‘Love the organ sound!’ He tells me they’re looking for new organ players, so I should go into his office and see him.

“Then the brass players arrive. The track is running, and they start to play my score. It’s a cacophony of complete and utter rubbish. I’m going: ‘Oh shit.’ The trumpet player walks away from the mic and calls me over with the parts, saying: ‘You’ve copied them all down in concert pitch.’ I panic. He says: ‘Alright son, don’t worry,’ sits down with the other two, says: ‘Concert’, and they nod and transpose all the parts while playing. Now it sounds great. Then Denny Cordell says: ‘What was that all about?’ And I say: ‘I just wanted to try something different out, but it didn’t work.’ So I bullshitted through that!

“At the end, Jimmy says to me: ‘I want you in my band. I want you everywhere I go.’ And Denny Cordell calls down to me: ‘I want you to come up and see me tomorrow – Regal Zonophone, Oxford Street, about eleven, twelve o’clock.’

“This is the ridiculous bit. I say: ‘I’ve got a maths exam in the morning.’ And he goes: ‘What?!’ I knew I’d blown it. ‘Are you at school?’ he says. ‘Erm, yeah.’ And he said: ‘Well skive off tomorrow and come and see me.’ “So I met him, Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti. They played the track back, and asked me why I did the organ in this style. I said: ‘That’s the only way I know how to play. But I suppose you want Booker T-type stuff.’

"Denny Cordell said: ‘That was what we were expecting, and it’s always interesting when you don’t get what you expect. Don’t change. Don’t try and copy what everyone else does. You do what you’re doing now, almost like bringing classical stuff into rock. Give it a few years and everybody will be copying you.’”

Kenny Ball - I Still Love You All (Pye, 1961)
This inspired me to form a trad jazz band when I was thirteen – Brother Wakeman And The Clergymen. I didn’t get to meet Kenny Ball until Lonnie Donegan’s memorial concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004. He introduced himself: “Hello, I’m Kenny.” I said: “I know exactly who you are!” He just looked stunned. I said to him: “You originally had a clarinet player called Dave Jones.”

He said: “Yeah, I did. How the hell did you know that?” I said: “Dave Jones worked for my dad – he was a rep in a building firm.” I remember my dad coming home one day saying Kenny Ball and his jazz band were turning pro from being amateurs – his friend Dave had told him. They remained great friends up until my dad died.

Lonnie Donegan - Seven Daffodils (B-side to Have A Drink On Me) (Decca, 1961)
As a kid, pop music was nice, but there’s a bit more to skiffle. On Rock Island Line, what comes across is his great sense of humour, the excitement of a live recording and how very well put together it is. But what’s even better, but rarely played because it’s a B-side, is Seven Daffodils, one of the great blues tracks of the time. I love it. I was asked to play at Lonnie’s memorial service, and I chose Seven Daffodils with Chrissie Hammond, who didn’t know the song but loved it when she heard it.

Inez & Charlie Foxx - Mockingbird (Symbol, 1963)
That really was an influence, taking a classic song, ripping it apart and putting it back together. I thought that was sensational. Ashley Holt [from The Atlantic Blues, then Warhorse, and still Rick’s vocalist today] played me that first, at the Top Rank club. Anyone can copy something note for note, but if you can do what Inez & Charlie Foxx did you’re special. Mockingbird is the blues stuff that’s very danceable too. The problem is I can’t dance. Except in the time signature of 13/8.

Various - Pye Golden Guinea Rhythm & Blues Volume 2 (Pye, 1965)
I remember going to the little record shop down by my house in Perivale, and LPs weren’t really an ‘in’ thing yet, but there was the Pye Golden Guinea series of long-playing compilations costing one guinea, or twenty-one shillings. I bought a blues one because it had Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, a blues organ player, on it, and his track Rinky Dink, which was just a three-chord trick. It was a great sampler, and on the first volume [from 1964] there were old original black blues singers from the past included. Sadly I don’t have it any more. With so many divorces gone by it’s probably been melted down and turned into a bendy toy.

Tom Jones - Chills And Fever (Decca, 1965)
I can’t get this record again for love nor money. Tom Jones was a blues singer originally, and his band were called The Squires. This was his first single, and I heard it just once on the radio. I went straight to the record shop. Very soon The Squires were kicked into touch and Tom became a pop star. But that wasn’t the Tom Jones I liked. The interesting thing is, he’s very much gone back to those days. If he was in concert now and he did Chills And Fever, that would do it for me.

Otis Redding - Shake (from the album Otis Blue) (Volt/Atco, 1965)
Back in the old days, you got your record and you read who was on it, why and what, where and when. Shake is when I noticed Steve Cropper. I loved his great, chunky guitar playing, so accurate and such a good sound. English productions at the time were shrouded in echo, while everything was crystal clear on all that Stax and Atlantic stuff. I never understood the ‘this is black music, this is white music’ idea – if you don’t see who the person is, you don’t know. However, I was taken aback when I met Steve Cropper for the first time, because it never occurred to me that he’d be white.

Etta James - You Got It/Fire (Cadet, 1968)
I heard You Got It on a jukebox, bought it, loved it to bits. What a great voice! Many years later I was living in Montreux and she came to play the jazz festival. [Festival organiser] Claude Nobs said to me: “I’ve got a problem.” Like a repeat of the Jimmy Thomas story, Etta’s band had been detained at Geneva airport and Claude needed help. “There’s a great band called Stuff,” he said. “They’re gonna fill in. They’re just short of a clavinet player. Can you do that?”

I said: “Yeah!” Etta came down to rehearsal, walked over to me and said: “So what do you know about my stuff?” I mentioned a few tracks, then she said: “Name me an obscure one.” I said: “Fire.” She went: “Okay, let’s see if you can play.” We went through a few things and she then said: “Well, you’ll do for me.” It was lovely, and a big thrill for me. Afterwards Claude asked how much money I wanted for the job, and I said: “Nothing. It was a joy.”

---

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper's Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she's been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators.

Dave Ling - Prog

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:19 PM

Fame: Chris Squire

Dave Ling
Prog

16 JUL 2014

Yes cornerstone. no dancing shoes.
Most musicians start out seeking stardom. Was that you?

Yeah, because I’d been brought up on The Beatles. I was fifteen when they broke in 1963. The screaming girls... Yeah, I wanted a bit of that. It looked like a good job.



When did you first realise that you had really made it?

The Yes Album came out in 1970 and reached Number One [it was actually released in February 1971 and peaked at No.4] and we toured the States for the first time. We realised the American fans were more excessive than the British ones. Everyone got caught up in all of that, because I was still only twenty-three years old at the time.



Presumably you have used your status to get restaurant tables or other perks?

In a manner of speaking. We were in Glasgow once and I was using the pseudonym of Jim Nastics. I wanted to have dinner with my daughter but the hotel restaurant was fully booked. Our tour manager called up and asked: “Sir James Nastics would like a table. Can some space be found?” And, magically, it could.



How would you react to an offer from I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here?

In the same way that you’d never get me on a dancing show. That’s not for me. But I would consider a rock-star cookery show. What’s my signature dish? Scrambled eggs. But they’re very good scrambled eggs!



Have you ever uttered the immortal words: “Don’t you know who I am?”

I think I probably have, though the circumstances escape me. I’d have had a few drinks, I know that.



Are camera phones now the blight of your life?

They can be annoying. People often ask for photos. But I don’t mind too much. Because I’m six-foot-five, maybe they assume I’m unapproachable. I quite like it that way, but it doesn’t stop some.



Have you ever declined an autograph or photo opportunity?

I don’t think so. One always tries to be accommodating, but everybody has off days.



Did Yes experience a different kind of fame circa the 90125 album and Owner Of A Lonely Heart?

Yeah, for a while we were pop stars again. I really enjoyed all of the attention from females – that was quite fun.



Do you ever wish it would all go away?

Not really. I’ve learned to take everything in my stride, and also work out who’s an eBay autograph hunter and who isn’t.

Sid Smith - Prog

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:11 PM

"I look back on it and I think, ‘Oh my God, we were really crazy!'"
Yes's Relayer in their own words

By Sid Smith
Prog

Published November 21, 2014

Relayer is one of Yes' most daring albums, and became one of their most acclaimed. Sid Smith hears the inside story of how it was created, and how it could have all been so different…

From The Yes Album through to Tales From Topographic Oceans, Yes’ capacity to assimilate and harness differing ideas and influences gives the impression of the albums being incremental, each one building upon the successes and lessons learnt from its predecessors.

By contrast, 1974’s Relayer is perhaps the most radical departure in the group’s 1970s catalogue. Startlingly different to anything preceding it, the record incorporated adventurous time signatures and other harmonic elements more usually associated with jazz-rock acts such as Return To Forever or Bundles-era Soft Machine. Never content to rest upon their laurels, Yes required their listeners to take a leap of faith as they enthusiastically dived into uncharted waters. Though significantly shorter than its predecessor, Relayer is just as multifaceted and, in its own way, just as challenging as Tales.

Although possessing many recognisable features, including Roger Dean’s striking cover artwork, it also included some of their most angular and dissonant music up to that point. Despite the ambitious and sometimes difficult musical terrain it mapped out, upon its release in the winter of 1974, it hit the Top 5 in the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic. In the ensuing 40 years, Relayer’s reputation and stature has continued to grow. Yet at the end of May 1974, following Rick Wakeman’s decision to quit the band, such outcomes were by no means certain, and the members of Yes settled down in their rehearsal room to consider their next move.

Alan White: “Morale was low and obviously people were disappointed he’d gone because Rick was an important part of the band. I think we’d started working on some of the Relayer material before Rick left, but he had a bad taste in his mouth after playing and touring Tales From Topographic Oceans, and I guess he just wanted to carry on with his own music. We all got a grip and obviously started looking for a new person and started working as a four-piece to get the flow going. We spent a long time rehearsing, getting the basic ideas for Relayer together.”

Steve Howe: “We’d tried working with ex-Aphrodite’s Child keyboard player Vangelis Papathanassiou. Musically it would have been fantastic with Vangelis – he had a fantastically strong direction – but the reason it didn’t work out with him was that when we said, ‘Let’s play that again,’ he’d say, ‘Well, it won’t be the same.’ We were kind of improvising but were learning parts as we went along, and I think that’s when we realised he was such a spontaneous player that Yes was going to be a problem for him. We were really about working out a solid arrangement and relying on him at any given point to play something that we’d recognise. Vangelis felt he didn’t really need to. He was always going to play off the cuff which would have been wonderful, but we’re not a jazz group!”

Alan White: “It took a while before we found the right keyboard player. I used to joke, ‘Whoever turns up next week is recording the next album!’”

Steve Howe: “Well, there was somebody before Patrick Moraz and I called him and made the offer but he said, ‘Why do I need to join Yes when I’ve got ELP?’ Musically, it would have been amazing to work with Keith Emerson, but whether or not the personalities would have blended, I just don’t know. We were starting to realise that the personalities in the group is a very important thing and it doesn’t matter how much the music seems to be the goal, it won’t work unless you all get on.”

Alan White: “The first time Patrick played with us, he had this jazzy, prog kind of intro that became the opening of Sound Chaser. It didn’t really have a fixed time to it but rather it was something that was felt between the keyboards and drums. I come in with the drum pattern that’s in fives and sevens. I got to know the lick real well and played it note for note on the drums around the kit. I don’t think we took that many times to nail it. It was one of the real early takes and we used one of them. It was pretty off the cuff.”

Steve Howe: “I think the confidence of the band really comes from the union of the five people, and once we had Patrick there, we were up and running. Patrick, with his flamboyance, brought something like fresh blood to the thing, like I had and like Rick did. Patrick was brilliant and more than capable of holding the fort, so to speak.”

Alan White: “The Gates Of Delirium was one of the hardest numbers we ever did. It demands a hell of a lot of energy and precision and, of course, if it’s played sloppily, it just doesn’t work. I look back on it and I think, ‘Oh my God, we were really crazy!’ It’s certainly out there.”

Steve Howe: “For me, every Yes album was always a journey to find better sounds and ways of interpreting the music on guitars that excited me. When it came to Relayer, I decided I was going to go Fender, but not a Stratocaster because the sound was so common at that time. The Telecaster’s one of the greatest guitars ever designed and I was so excited to have a great 1955 model. It just felt right for the album. The guitar on Gates rarely stands still. I move from being sweet and the next minute I’m scratching at the melody.”

Alan White: “We were very prog-minded and experimental in those days. We were looking for anything that sounded different. From a percussion point of view, it extended to Jon and myself going to a scrap yard and banging pieces of metal in the morning for about an hour to see what sounded good. We actually built a frame in the studio made out of springs and car parts which, of course, ended up on the album in the battle section of Gates – it was pretty crazy stuff.”

Steve Howe: “Jon wrote most of Gates, though we get credited in a very discrete kind of way that Yes invented. There was a balance in the way that members of the group contributed to each other’s music – that was the whole key to what we did in Yes. None of us could stand up and say we wrote that whole thing because it was all a collaborative process. The way we operated from Topographic onwards was to give everybody more credit. Some guys did a lot and some did very little, but it was a way of involving the whole band.”

Alan White: “I came up with the theme that comes out of the battle on Gates. I used a rhythmic technique and my basic knowledge of chords and wrote the changes between chords in seven. Patrick liked that progression and Steve took it and developed it.”

Steve Howe: “The other highlight of the album is definitely Soon. To end Gates with what is in effect another song entirely really is such a cool thing to do. We were trying so many things. Patrick added quite a flair to the album generally, but it was very noticeable on Sound Chaser. That was the most crazy, OTT number where we all had to think on our feet every single second of the track. In the middle there’s what’s in effect a cadenza for electric guitar, synth and percussion. We’d got to that point and said, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I had this idea, which was a kind of rock flamenco. I was using flamenco guitar technique with a plectrum. There was a diminished chord which we used to refer to as the ‘Hammer Horror’ chord and I used that a lot in that section.”

Alan White: “The whole thing about Yes is we would work things out melodically and do all the technical side, working out parts. When it comes to putting it down, then you add the feeling on top and that’s what makes a difference with Yes. It’s very complex, technical stuff with feeling.”

Steve Howe: “The other instrument I use on To Be Over is the pedal steel, which is a complicated instrument. I cite this track as one of the most beautiful things we did that wasn’t actually a slow song. It’s mellow, soft and gentle, but it’s also quite bouncy, and I like that quality. Overall, it’s a pretty important album without too many comfort zones.”

Alan White: “Relayer is in the top three albums Yes ever did, the other two being Tales and 90125. We were all totally into it. We were in the studio and coming up with new ideas on a daily basis. An album doesn’t sound good unless you’re having fun and that’s what you hear when you put that record on: Yes having fun.”

Mark Blake - Prog

Sunday, February 19, 2023 12:23 PM

Chris Squire: the hands that built prog

Mark Blake
Prog

13 Aug 2014

In 1968, 19-year-old Chris Squire came round in the geriatric ward of the Chelsea And Westminster Hospital, convinced he was dead. He’d ended up there after taking homemade LSD, and being found, crazed and gibbering, by his girlfriend at the flat they shared in nearby Kensington. “It was like being in God’s waiting room,” Squire recalls now. “For a while I really didn’t know if I was still alive.”

When he realised he wasn’t dead, Squire returned to the flat – and stayed there for months. “This girl looked after me,” he sighs. “She worked all day and I stayed in all day. The most I could manage was a trip to the shops at the end of the road.” There was, he insists, one good outcome to all this. “Day after day, I just practised and practised playing the bass.”

Squire’s drug misadventure was arguably the jumping-off point for a career with Yes that has lasted five decades and amassed around 30 million album sales. Despite those figures, the resolutely unsexy ‘prog rock’ tag means Yes never attracted the critical acclaim enjoyed by some of their contemporaries. Nor did they split up for any length of time and wait for their stock to rise. Instead, Yes just kept going, with Chris Squire permanently behind the wheel, and sometimes driving without due care and attention.

Yes’s line-up has changed with comical frequency, but Squire remains the one constant. His thunderous, acrobatic bass lines and harmony vocals have fired up every Yes album from their 1969 debut to this summer’s Heaven & Earth. But he remains an enigma: a multi‑million-selling rock star who can still go about his business without being accosted for an autograph or selfie every five minutes.

Today there’s more of Chris Squire than there once was. But, at well over six feet tall, he carries it well. Dressed from platinum-blond head to toe in black, the 66-year-old moves through the 15th-floor bar of London’s Langham Hotel with the unhurried, regal gait of a Tudor king, albeit one with an Alexander McQueen skull-print scarf draped around his neck.

His opening gambit – “Shall we get a glass of wine?” – is quickly followed by “How about a bottle?” And so, as World Cup pundits discuss Germany’s chances against France on a nearby plasma screen, Squire settles down with a glass of chilled Chablis.

“My first job was not far from here,” he says, casting an eye out of the window. “It was at Boosey And Hawkes, the music publishers. I’d been kicked out of school, and my mum took me to a recruitment agency and said: ‘My son likes music. Have you got anything for him?’”

Squire’s whole music career seems to have been marked by a series of happy accidents. Raised in the north London suburb of Kingsbury, he was a choirboy at his local church when he joined his first group. The church’s choirmaster, Barry Rose, who would go on to conduct St Paul’s Cathedral Choir, inspired Squire and friends to form their own choral group. “Barry turned us into the best choir in England,” he says. “When King’s College or St Paul’s went on holiday, we were the go-to choir.”

All was going swimmingly until 1963 when Squire heard The Beatles. “And I thought, fuck that, I want to be in a group that don’t use music stands.” Soon, one of his schoolfriends had pointed out “my big hands” and suggested they’d be good for playing the bass.

quire started playing youth clubs in a group called The Selfs and growing his hair. Before long the headmaster of his upmarket private school had given Squire and his schoolfriend two-and-sixpence to get their hair cut. “It was the last day of term and we wanted to keep our long hair for the summer holidays, so we took his money and walked out.”

The job at Boosey & Hawkes was only ever a means to an end. Soon The Selfs merged with The Syn, and the band started playing regular gigs at the Marquee. The Syn followed the musical arc of many mid-60s groups. “Like The Who, we started off playing Tamla Motown covers,” Squire explains. “But then psychedelia came along and we went a bit silly.”

Part of going “a bit silly” involved a weekly pilgrimage to UFO, a club in London’s Tottenham Court Road, where the budding Pink Floyd played. “It became a regular weekend thing,” Squire says. “Drop acid and go to UFO on Fridays, then the trip carried on through Saturday, and on Sunday you recovered.” Which is how Squire ended up sampling a friend’s home-made LSD. “I think I had a touch of flu before I took it, so it probably wasn’t a good idea…”

Squire freaked out in the middle of the night and ended up in hospital. Despite thinking he was near death, he was soon well enough to talk to the police, who wanted to know where he’d acquired the drugs. Pretending he was still disorientated, Squire gave them a cock-and-bull story about being approached by an Australian he’d never met before in the Earls Court Wimpy bar. And they believed him. In fact, you get the impression Squire has floated through life off the back of a side order of charm, cunning and good fortune, as well as his musical talent. Despite frying his brain cells with DIY hallucinogenics, Squire practised the bass day in, day out, convinced he’d found his vocation. “The Syn had opened for Jimi Hendrix,” he says. “So I saw what was possible, and I just had this innate faith that I was going to make it.”

The Syn didn’t make it, but by summer 1968, Squire had formed Yes with The Syn’s ex-guitarist Peter Banks and Lancastrian milkman-turned-lead singer Jon Anderson. Progressive rock fans usually work themselves into a lather about such albums as Yes’s Close To The Edge (’72), and not without good reason. But Yes had been breaking new ground ever since the jazzy rearrangements of Byrds and Beatles songs on their eponymous first album. “Emotionally intense and imaginatively conceived,” was music journalist and future pasta sauce maker Loyd Grossman’s assessment of Yes’s debut in rock magazine Fusion.

There are 13 ex-members of Yes to date, if anyone’s still counting. Squire isn’t, but agrees to offer a potted profile of some of them whenever their names come up. Gifted guitarist Peter Banks (who died last year) was the first to go, replaced by Steve Howe in time for 1970’s breakthrough The Yes Album. “Pete was always a grey, sad person,” Squire says. “And he really didn’t like the orchestra on [second album] Time And A Word.”

With Howe in the band, so began Yes’s imperial 70s reign. With it came a public persona: arty, virtuoso, terribly serious…. Close To The Edge was inspired by German philosopher Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Tales From Topographic Oceans by a Hindu scripture. On stage – and determined not to be upstaged by glittery cape-wearing keyboard ace Rick Wakeman – Squire sported a billowy blouson decorated with butterfly motifs, and played an extended solo titled A Bass Odyssey.

Unlike their hedonistic contemporaries Led Zeppelin or The Who, Yes were relatively clean living – to start with. “We were strictly a pot and hash band at the beginning,” says Squire, who’d sworn off LSD after his hospitalisation.

On one occasion, he and Steve Howe found themselves in a pub with Melody Maker writer Chris Welch and had no idea what to order: “We barely drank, so I think we asked for two Camparis.”

All of the band, barring Wakeman, were also vegetarian for a time. Squire lasted five years. “And then I went back to fish,” he says. “And then it wasn’t long before someone said: ‘Hey, there’s this really good steak restaurant I know…’” Only Howe still swears off meat. “Which is why Steve still looks like a fucking stick insect.”

In the meantime, Squire had been introduced to a new, less organic perk of life in a touring rock band. On Yes’s 1973 US tour, a member of their unknown support act, the Eagles, took him aside and, like the fictitious Australian in the Earls Court Wimpy bar, said, “Try this.” Squire dipped into the bag of white powder. “Cocaine,” he says, smiling.

At some point Squire also started drinking more than the occasional Campari. “I became very, very involved in wine,” he murmurs, peering into his Chablis like a fortune-teller pondering a crystal ball. Squire would go on to install a well-stocked wine and port cellar in the mock-Tudor mansion he shared with first wife Nikki and their three daughters in the rock stars’ enclave of Virginia Water, Surrey.

Then again, Squire could afford it. By the end of the 1970s Yes had scored eight consecutive UK and US Top 10 albums, and their bass player had made a solo album, 1975’s Fish Out Of Water, which featured his old choirmaster Barry Rose on pipe organ. Anyone needing a reminder should seek out a clip from a 1975 edition of The Old Grey Whistle Test, where Squire performs his pomp-rock single Hold Out Your Hand, backed by a string section and wearing what appears to be a cross between a kimono and a set of Laura Ashley curtains.

It was all getting “a bit silly” again. Yes’s 1974 album Relayer included a jazz-prog-fusion workout titled The Gates Of Delirium, featuring Wakeman’s replacement, Swiss keyboard maestro Patrick Moraz (“The best Hammond player I ever worked with,” offers Squire. “But Steve and him didn’t have a bond”). Unsurprisingly, NME denounced Yes as the “ultimate in Pomposity Rock”, and were soon championing the Sex Pistols and The Clash instead.

Not that Yes cared. “Did we notice punk rock? Not at all,” insists Squire, who claims that the closest he came to liking punk was when his 12-year-old daughter Carmen got him into The Police’s Outlandos d’Amour debut album. “We were getting the music papers sent to us in America, and we’d see we were being branded as dinosaurs by these new bands, and we’d think, ‘’Oo are you?’ – and then walk out and play to 120,000 people.”

Off tour, and back in Virginia Water, though, Squire barely had time to draw breath. There was always another album to write, another tour to plan, another vineyard to investigate… But he now had something to help keep him going.

“I got involved in cocaine,” he admits. “Blame the Eagles. But that was it. As far as I know, no one in Yes ever did heroin.” Apart from the time he and Nikki were at a party being thrown by Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott. “Phil was a naughty boy. He said: ‘Do you want a line of coke?’ And there was smack in it.”

Squire drove home from the party – “one did in those days” – in a euphoric haze: “We came to these traffic lights and I just stayed there. After a while Nikki said: ‘You do realise the lights have changed from red to green four times since we’ve been sitting here?’ I was just sat behind the wheel going: ‘Hmmm, this is good.’”

Yes had weathered punk, but the wheels were now coming off the band. Spiritually minded Jon Anderson would later grumble about how certain band members’ drug habits were putting his chakras out of balance. But Squire insists that drugs weren’t the problem, and that by 1978’s Tormato album, “We were all sick of each other and needed a break.”

Anderson and Wakeman walked out after aborted sessions with producer Roy Thomas Baker. Another band might have thrown in the towel. Once again, though, Squire’s innate faith carried him through. Anderson and Wakeman were quickly replaced by vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboard player Geoff Downes, aka The Buggles, whose Video Killed The Radio Star had just been a huge hit. “They were huge Yes fans,” says Squire. Another happy accident, then.

Downes, who is back in the current line-up, described what it was like joining Yes in 1979: “They all had their own limos, and were buried in that ‘rock star with a big house’ image.”

The next Yes album seems to have been recorded to a backdrop of screeching Rolls-Royce tyres and urgent phone calls to managers, wives and drug dealers. It had the appropriate title Drama. “We’d sold out four Madison Square Garden shows in advance,” recalls Squire, “so we had five weeks in which to get the album done before then. That’s where the cocaine was useful. Because it was night after night of sixteen-hour sessions.”

Released in 1980, Drama fizzled with Class A’s, but its urgency and energy were preferable to the over-ripe Tormato.

Yet the line-up didn’t last, and Squire soon found himself at a Christmas party swapping numbers with Jimmy Page. “John Bonham had died, and Jimmy wanted to start playing again.” Squire roped in Yes drummer Alan White and the three met up at a studio in Maidenhead. Page was on a health kick. “Jimmy was really behaving himself,” says Squire now. “Only smoking cigarettes through a holder.”

The trio demo’d four instrumental tracks, and Squire’s dad suggested a name for the blossoming supergroup: XYZ. According to Chris, though, Zeppelin’s over-protective manager, Peter Grant, objected to the Y for Yes coming before the Z for Zeppelin. It was the first big problem. The second was that they didn’t have a singer, and despite Page’s promises, Robert Plant never showed up. “For that reason it just fizzled out,” he says.

In the meantime, Steve Howe and Geoff Downes went on to enjoy a US No.1 album in 1982 with their new group, Asia. Squire must have been just a bit jealous and hungry for revenge?

“No, not jealous,” he insists, as I refill his glass. “I did think, though, that Asia was a bit corporate American rock and sounded as if it had been assembled by radio programmers.”

A year later, Jon Anderson had rejoined Yes, and Trevor Horn was ensconced as producer. Yes emerged, as if from cryogenic storage, with a hotshot young guitarist, Trevor Rabin, and a state-of-the-art Fairlight sampling synthesiser. The subsequent album, 1983’s 90125, become Yes’s biggest-seller ever, and delivered a UK and US hit with Owner Of A Lonely Heart. A harsher critic might call that album corporate American rock. But what saved 90125 was that Yes again broke new ground by using sampled sounds left over from Horn’s last production gig, punk svengali Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock album. “Nobody had heard those sounds before,” says Squire, proudly. “It was all very new.”

By now, though, Squire’s marriage had broken up and he’d moved to Los Angeles where he began his blurry Hollywood phase: “There was a party every night.” Meanwhile, the redux Yes could be seen performing on MTV and disguising their forty-something wrinkles behind Dynasty-style hairdos. It couldn’t last. And it didn’t. Anderson walked out after 1987’s Big Generator.

“I never wanted to call that version of the band Yes,” Squire insists. “But it was [Atlantic Records executive] Phil Carson who said: ‘Why try a new brand when the old one has been so successful?’”

You suspect that Squire has been adhering to that maxim ever since.

“I know I’m the only member of Yes to have been in the band the whole time, but it’s not by design but by default,” he insists. “I’ve always been the one left holding the baby, and what happens is new people come along to help me hold it.”

Current members Steve Howe and Geoff Downes have been in and out more than once. Jon Anderson is currently out, due to ill health, and their new album Heaven & Earth has American vocalist Jon Davison helping to hold the baby – and sounding remarkably like Anderson.

“I spoke to Jon Anderson not long ago,” reveals Squire, who gives the impression that some ex-Yes members are sitting on a substitutes’ bench just waiting for the nod. “We had a nice chat. I think we will do something together again – it’s just that he may not be up for full-scale touring.”

As for Rick Wakeman – a fully paid‑up member of the ‘No Jon Anderson, No Yes’ club, and King Rat of the showbiz charity organisation The Grand Order Of Water Rats – Squire’s not so sure. “I don’t think Rick’s interested,” he sniffs. “He’s in his own world, working his way towards his knighthood.”

Life for Chris Squire seems more sedate now. These days he lives in Phoenix, Arizona with third wife Scotland and their five-year-old daughter Xilan. “It’s been good for me to have a young kid again,” says this father-of-five, “especially one that’s had an iPad since she was two.”

For Yes, the days of limousines, mock-Tudor mansions, 120,000-seaters and the Eagles’ marching powder are a distant memory. So too, though, are the brave new sounds that typified the likes of Drama and 90125 in the 80s. Yes albums nowadays sound like old Yes albums but without what Loyd Grossman might call the “emotional intensity”. When Squire spends five minutes dissecting the shortcomings of Yes’s current label, Frontier Records, there’s a sense that he misses those good old bad old days.

Nevertheless, Yes are still in demand. By the time you read this they’ll be deep into a US tour. Just don’t expect to hear much from Heaven & Earth. “The tour had been sold as ‘Yes does Close To The Edge and [their 1971 album] Fragile,’” admits Squire.

Which is fine, except Fragile contains solo compositions by three ex-band members, some of which could be described as ‘challenging’. Right now drummer Alan White is tackling his predecessor Bill Bruford’s atonal solo workout Five Per Cent For Nothing. “It’s some sort of exercise in drum logistics,” Squire laughs. “We’ve rehearsed and rehearsed it.”

However, as Squire drains the last of his Chablis and prepares to toddle off, you know he’ll weather this storm like he has every other storm in the band’s history. “I still enjoy it,” he says. “It’s part of me. It’s what I do.” From lapsed choirboy and would-be acid casualty to CEO of Brand Yes, it’s not been a bad life for Chris Squire.

Graham Reid - Elsewhere

Wednesday, January 4, 2023 7:16 PM

CHRIS SQUIRE OF YES INTERVIEWED (2014): A career that's no disgrace

Graham Reid | Nov 7, 2014

Chris Squire – bassist and sole constant in Yes, the prog-rock band he founded – is reflecting on the group's longevity using the only reference point he had when the group formed.

“Oh yes. 'Who knew?' is the catch phrase about this.

“When Yes first started in 68 that was a year prior to the Beatles breaking up. Their visible career was really just 63 to 69 and when I started Yes I thought it would be amazing if we could have a five or six year career. Not knowing that here we are year 46 or something now,” he laughs.

And in that time Yes has seen an interesting revolving door of members: a quick count reveals – aside from Squire – 18 names including keyboard player Rick Wakeman, producer and onetime Buggle Trevor Horn, on-again off-again drummer Bill Bruford, keyboard player/violinist Eddie Jobson (for a few months), keyboard player Patrick Moraz, drummer Alan White who was a former member of the Plastic Ono Band . . .

And as the sole surviving member of the original line-up, is 66-year old Squire the archivist, the keeper of the keys?

“That role has fallen to me more by default than desire. I never left. The only difference between me and some of the others like singer Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman is they left the band on more than one occasion to pursue solo careers, and then rejoined and left again. That's their legacy in the band.

“But I was just there toiling on the whole time. But let's not forget that Alan White has been there since 72. That's a good innings.”

Indeed, and it hasn't been a bad one for Yes which, despite the musical chairs and going out of the business for a year or so in the early Eighties, is not only still here but still recording and touring widely.

“We never thought that was possible. It was a young man's game when we started and not something you thought you could do for life. But I was wrong about that. It's a testament to the prog-rock genre that it has lasted.

“Also – and I know this from touring the last couple of years – that, apart from fans who came to the band in the Eighties which was a successful period with 90125 album and are still there in the audience, there are a lot of younger people coming to the shows. They've either been influenced by their parent's record collections . . . or just peer pressure because a lot of younger kids are into this music now.”

Although it something of a senior musician's cliché about attracting younger audiences, that's true for Yes.

In the August issue of Britain's Prog magazine their '72 album Close to the Edge was voted the top prog album of all time by its readers and musicians.

Fragile from '71 came in at number 10. Of the 100 greatest prog albums Yes had seven entries, one more than Genesis, Pink Floyd and Marillion in a list which included contemporary prog bands like Dream Theatre, Porcupine Tree, Tool, Opeth and Haken.

“I hadn't seen that, so thanks for the news. They didn't include Fish Out of Water my solo album, did they?”, says the man known by the nickname Fish and who counts among his passions Formula 1.

I don't have the heart to tell him no, but say I'll check while we speak.

Business is brisk in the prog world for Yes who released their 21st studio album Heaven and Earth earlier this year – the first with singer Jon Davison who wrote much of the material. They then toured in Canada, did the Miami prog-rock Caribbean cruise (“Cruise to the Edge”), dates across Britain and Europe and then an American summer tour which finished in mid-August.

“Fortunately I've had a couple of months off to chill out, then we come down your way.”

And for their return visit to Auckland on November 10 – they were here in early 2012 – they will play those classic albums Fragile and Closer to the Edge in their entirety, and close with new material from Heaven and Earth and some of their hits.

“By now we should know how to play those albums,” he laughs. “And it's not as if they haven't been on-and-off part of the repertoire over the years. Especially And You and I the 10 minute piece on Close to the Edge which has been more a staple song than Close to the Edge itself or Siberian Khatru. They've all been in different sets at different times so are pretty much in our DNA.”

But having played these songs, if not entire albums, for the past four decades is it possible to still enjoy them?

“There's always the joy of the performance and the fine-tuning of new interpretations and over the years we've all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that gets thrown in that wasn't there in the first place.

“That contributes to the joy of the performance by not only the audience but ourselves. And the band's has been playing at a great level in the past year or two.”

The problem for Yes however is that no fan – old or new – wants to hear them say, “We hope you like our new direction”. Yes is a band with an autograph style and that's what people want to hear in concert, or as on the new album Heaven and Earth.

“True perhaps, but Yes has been flexible over the years. In the Eighties when Trevor Rabin was the guitar player we definitely made a diversion from the core of prog-rock and got more into regular hard rock to an extent. And the 90125 album with the hit single Owner of a Lonely Heart was a slightly different Yes to that of the 7Seventies.

“I'm not afraid of change, I quite like messing around with different styles and new ideas. And of course every time there's a new member of the band they bring in ideas and the music subtly changes again. It's nice now to have our singer Jon Davison far right, above as a writing member as well as a performer, and the last album was musically successful to me because of that.

“And the Yes Appreciation Society certainly seem to appreciate him.

“Strangely enough we've been playing a couple of tracks from Heaven and Earth and I'm surprised how well they are received.

“I saw the Who in London a few years back when they had a new album out and there was a distinct lack of interest from the audience when they played new songs.

"In contrast our fans are enjoying the songs from the new album.

“But no, this is nothing I could have foreseen all those years ago.”

Oregano Rathbone - Record Collector - 2014-08-02

Friday, April 22, 2022 9:07 PM

Heaven And Earth | Yes

For an encouraging number of “heritage acts” the urge to prove themselves dies hard. Take Yes, concocting Heaven And Earth four years shy of their 50th anniversary. Only Chris Squire remains from the 1968 line-up: nevertheless, Steve Howe joined before decimalisation, Alan White signed up when the Austin Allegro was still in “development”, and even Geoff Downes was conscripted before the advent of deely boppers. Only vocalist Jon Davison counts as a newbie, and he’s a real find: so similar to Jon Anderson that even his name only differs by two syllables. Are we sure it’s not actually him? You never see them together.

Musically, Heaven And Earth is (generally) concise and catchy. Davison and Squire repeatedly sing “one step beyond” during Step Beyond without alluding to Madness, which is indicative of actual madness: but you’ve got to admire their balls. From a safe distance. Believe Again’s sing-song refrain is so simple that even Jimmy Crack Corn would feel slighted, but then Howe peels off one of his scalding scalar runs, and suddenly you’re bobbing on a topographic ocean. Likewise, Light Of The Ages is propitiously cut from much the same cape cloth as Nous Sommes Du Soleil.

Frontiers

Oregano Rathbone
Record Collector #431
August 2, 2014

Terry Staunton - Record Collector - 2014-11-29

Friday, April 22, 2022 8:55 PM

Songs From Tsongas: The 35th Anniversary Concert | Yes

Terry Staunton
Record Collector #435
November 29, 2014

Though some fans may contest the claim, the five men who comprise Yes on this 2004 show represent what’s generally perceived as the band’s “classic line-up”. The gig, at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts, was the final date of the tour where Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman and Alan White performed together for the last time.

It’s worth noting, however, that a sixth man played an integral role, the elaborate stage set having been designed by Roger Dean, responsible for the bulk of the group’s iconic album sleeves. Visuals aside, it’s an occasionally intriguing setlist, taking in relatively unheralded album tracks such as 1970’s Sweet Dream and 1997’s Mind Drive, though the band seem more assured on home bankers Yours Is No Disgrace and Going For The One.

Arguably, the acoustic portion of the set makes the most impact, Anderson’s vocals less swamped by instrumentation on Wondrous Stories and Roundabout, giving the songs more room to breathe. A second disc features 70 minutes of a show from earlier in the tour, filmed in Lugano, Switzerland, on a stripped-down stage where the players – guitarist Howe in particular – let rip on rockier versions of old favourites.

Eagle Vision | EREDV 1026 (2DVD)

Sid Smith - Prog

Monday, August 29, 2022 10:11 PM

Q&A: Patrick Moraz

By Sid Smith (Prog) published November 03, 2014

The classically trained pianist on The Moody Blues , Gentle Giant and why he'd play with Yes again

Patrick Moraz isn’t slow in coming forwards. Back in the mid-60s, when he was still in his 20s, he won the support slot to tour Europe with legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. In 1973 he co-founded Refugee with ex-Nice members Lee Jackson and Brian Davison before being poached to join Yes a year later in time to record Relayer. He followed that stint by joining another progressive rock institution, The Moody Blues, in 1978, staying with them until 1990. He’s won awards for his film scores, collaborated with ex-Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford, and has even spent time in the jungle with Arnold Schwarzenegger during the filming of Predator. Forever busy with one project or another, we try to understand what makes this Swiss-born precision pianist tick.

**How’s your Alpine horn these days? **

You know, I still have that Alpine horn! Unfortunately it’s in Los Angeles and I’m now in Florida. Nowadays I can use samples of the horn although I always enjoy playing the real one. Every time I go to Switzerland, there are friends I can borrow one off and I can always go into the mountains and play the Alpine horn there. It really warms my soul!

**You were one of the artists performing at sea on the Cruise To The Edge earlier this year. How did you find that? **

Oh man, it was unbelievable being reunited with all kinds of friends like Alan White, Steve Howe and Chris Squire. I got to spend a bit of time with Alan, which was great. We were talking about his Ramshackled album. It was great seeing Steve Hackett as well. The camaraderie when all the musicians get together is wonderful. Presto Ballet were a real discovery for me and, of course, there were so many bands I’d not seen before, like Tangerine Dream. I met Eddie Jobson from UK and it’s not impossible that we might record something together in the future. He’s a great guy.

**No seasickness then? **

No, although one of the concerts had to be rescheduled when the ship was diverted to Mexico instead of sailing to Honduras because there was a huge storm brewing! The second concert I did on the last day of the cruise, I included an impromptu version of Soon, the end section of The Gates Of Delirium, with Renaissance’s Annie Haslam – she did a fantastic job.

**You’ve recently recorded a Gentle Giant track for a new symphonic rock album, haven’t you? **

Yes, and it’s funny because not only did Gentle Giant open for Yes but I also saw Gary Green and Three Friends while I was on the Cruise To The Edge. Anthony Klein, who is a producer overseeing the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductor James Graydon got in touch asking if I would be interested in delivering a piano interpretation based on James’ arrangement of Gentle Giant’s Think Of Me With Kindness from Octopus. It took me a nanosecond to say yes! It’s a beautiful song. It’s not really what some would call prog, but it’s prog enough for me!

Have you always liked working with orchestras?

Of course. For many years, a long time before I was in bands, I was writing for film. You know, by the time I did Relayer I was 30 years old and I’d done around 30 scores for movies, so I had a lot of experience at working with orchestras and scoring for strings. After I joined Yes I did the score for the chamber orchestra on Steve Howe’s first solo album Beginnings, which I enjoyed enormously.

**It’s 40 years since you recorded Relayer. What was it like joining Yes and working on that album? **

It was a huge honour. I loved Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman’s work in the band. I first met them in 1969 when they were invited to play at the Golden Rose Festival in Montreux and I organised a party for them. Even then they were one of my favourite groups. It was a real thrill to get a call in 1974 from their manager inviting me to attend a Yes rehearsal. I’d never seen so many big joints as I did that day! I loved my time in the group. I jumped from seven keyboards at the time, plus my alpine horn, to 14, because in those days there were no sequencers or computers. It was all magically done by hand! The best thing about being in Yes was the quality of the playing and the audiences. Everywhere we went was sold out!

**If Yes rang tomorrow and asked you to rejoin them to play _Relayer _on tour, what would you say? **

Absolutely! Of course! I know the album by heart even after all these years. Any time!

**What are the moments that stand out from your time with The Moody Blues? **

I’d been with them for a couple of years when we recorded the album _Long Distance Voyager _in 1980. It stayed at No.1 in the US charts for several weeks – a fantastic breakthrough at that point in their career. That made me feel really good and very secure for all our future recordings and live concerts as well. I always had an impeccable rig of keyboards and machines, and I was always using my three mellotrons in order to recreate the original sounds Mike Pinder had created so well before me. It was a truly magnificent part of my life and I felt it could have lasted much longer than it did. We used to have a real camaraderie.

**Have you had any thoughts about retiring? **

No! I’ve never been busier. As a musician you never retire. I’ve got so many things I want to release. I compose every day and I’ve got two new albums which I’m currently in the process of finishing. The only thing I would love to do is to play more concerts and I’m even thinking of the best way to do that, so check back with me for news of that!

Yes’ Relayer is being reissued by Panegyric on October 27. For more information, see www.yesworld.com and www.patrickmoraz.com.

Aaron Slater - Songwriting

Thursday, September 29, 2022 8:32 AM

Interview: Trevor Horn

24 February 2014

The legendary producer who reputedly ‘invented the Eighties’ reveals he’s an “awful engineer” and often didn’t take any songwriting credits
urham-born Trevor Horn is a prolific music producer, songwriter, musician and singer, whose influence on popular music was such that he has been dubbed ‘The Man Who Invented The Eighties’ and continues to produce some of the biggest names in pop. At the height of his commercial success, Horn helped launch the career of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and has since gone on to produce a staggering array of stellar artists including Paul McCartney, Tom Jones, Cher, Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Lisa Stansfield, Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Simple Minds, Eros Ramazzotti, Mike Oldfield, Marc Almond, Charlotte Church, t.A.T.u., LeAnn Rimes, Genesis and Robbie Williams.

Although widely known for being a groundbreaking record producer, Trevor Horn’s songwriting credits are almost equally successful and as varied, starting with writing Baby Blue for Dusty Springfield in 1979. His co-writer then was Geoff Downes with whom he joined forces as The Buggles, and continued to collaborate with on a string of hits in the early 80s, including Video Killed The Radio Star that went to No.1 on the singles charts of 16 countries.

From The Buggles, Horn moved to Yes, where he co-wrote all of their 1980 album, Drama and returned to the band in 1984 to co-write their biggest ever hit Owner Of A Lonely Heart. In the meantime, he’d also managed to write four Top 20 singles for Dollar’s The Dollar Album in 1982, and formed a winning songwriting trio with Malcolm McLaren and Anne Dudley to achieve worldwide chart success with Buffalo Girls, Double Dutch, and Duck For The Oyster, as well as co-wroting McLaren’s subsequent album Swamp Thing in 1985. Art Of Noise was another successful synthpop group and songwriting team, with whom Horn co-wrote Slave To The Rhythm which became a major hit for superstar model Grace Jones, and has eventually become her biggest chart success.

During the last decade, Trevor Horn wrote three international hits for Russian female pop duo t.A.T.u – All The Things She Said, Not Gonna Get Us and Clowns (Can You See Me Now) – the official 2004 Olympic song Pass The Flame, and co-wrote the title track from Lisa Stansfield’s 2004 album The Moment.

As well as remarkable chart success, Horn has earned widespread respect and acclaim across the industry, receiving a Grammy Award in 1996 for Seal’s second album, being appointed CBE in 2011 for services to the music industry, and most recently the Outstanding Contribution to UK Music award at the 2014 Music Producer’s Guild Awards.

It was during the weeks prior to the MPG Awards ceremony that Songwriting caught up with Trevor Horn to reflect on this long and illustrious career in music production, how he chooses projects now and what he’ll say when a song isn’t good enough!

How did you get into music?

“My father was a civil engineer during the day, but he was what they used to call a semi-pro musician – he played five nights-a-week in a dance band playing the double bass. We’re talking about the 1940s and 50s when I was a kid, and I loved records. One of the first records I had was Audie Murphy singing The Last Round-up. I loved that song. I never knew it was about death, but when you’re six you never give a damn about that.

“I never thought much about playing music until everybody in school got a recorder and had to learn to play them. I came back after a weekend and I could play! I thought it was easy, but I was one of the only people in the class that actually could. That was the first time I ever realised that I had any kind of minor musical talent. Then when I was 11 years old I played the double bass in the youth orchestra and I used to stand in for my dad sometimes. I ended up playing in the Ray McVay band and used to do all the big functions; Come Dancing, the World Ballroom Championships and all those kind of things.”

I KNEW I WANTED TO BE A HIT RECORD PRODUCER. I THOUGHT IF I COULD KEEP GOING IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

What took you along the route to production and pop music?

“I’d always been fascinated by studios. I built one in Leicester and started to record people. Then I had five years working for a music publisher on Denmark Street, where he’d sign the artist and I’d do the demos for them. After about three or four years, a couple of writers got deals from my demos and somebody gave me the shot to let me produce the master. Of course, I fucked it up, which everyone does at first. So we had five years of making demos before we made Video Killed The Radio Star, so Geoff [Downes, the other half of pop duo The Buggles] and I had a lot of time in the studio before we’d made that record, so we’d started to know what we were doing. We put everything into it.”

Did you know straight away that being a producer was what you wanted to dedicate your life to, or was it just a job?

“Oh I knew I wanted to be a hit record producer. I thought if I could keep going it was only a matter of time and I’d get there.”

Who were your idols?

“I didn’t really model myself on anyone. Back then there was no education for producers. One producer had no idea what another producer did. The only way to learn about a recording studio was to be in one! There was no literature – there was no way of finding out how to do the job other than to learn on the spot yourself, so I’m pretty much self-taught. I think the most I learnt from anybody was Bidu [pioneering disco producer] and his backing track for I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) by Tina Charles. I just listened to it and listened to it, then after that I just made it up myself.”

Have there been any other songs that inspired you with their production?

“I thought the best produced song ever was I’m Not In Love by 10cc, where the production really made the song. So I always used to say if you’ve got studio fever and you think your tune’s really good, listen to I’m Not In Love and that’ll sort you right out!”

What would you say is the key to being a successful producer?

”It’s funny, people always say my records have a certain sound to them. I suppose because I used to be a musician, I’m ‘manic’ about how people play on my records – I make sure every overdub is really great. If you took a look at one of my multi-tracks and soloed any of the musicians you’d be impressed. I always use really good musicians and I try to give them the space to work and enjoy the session. I mean, I’m a songwriter and a musician, I’m not an engineer. In fact, I was an awful engineer, but I know what’s going on in the desk. I know how it all works and what it’s capable of.”

Before you’re about to produce a track or an album, how do you like to hear the raw material?

“I don’t like fantastically produced demos. I’m absolutely immune to production. You could do anything with it and that wouldn’t sell it to me. All I’m interested in is the song and the idea, so I prefer to have the roughest demo possible. Then I don’t have to worry about reproducing it.”

When do you get involved in the songwriting?

“It depends who’s written the song. Because I used to be a singer, I’m very conscious of how a singer feels on a song and I try to make the song so it’s good to sing. Sometimes I’m lumbered with a song that I don’t particularly want to do, and then the challenge for me is to get it so I like it.

I FIGURED IT WAS EASIER IF I DIDN’T CLAIM ANY SONGWRITING… THEN PEOPLE WOULD LET ME GET ON WITH IT

How would you deal with that situation if the songwriter is in the studio with you?

“I don’t get the songwriter in; I generally like them not to be there. They’ve written the song, so I want them to let me get on with it and make it into a record!

“I don’t really like to songs by professional songwriters unless they’re really well written. Diane Warren is a great example of somebody who really spends time finishing her songs off properly, so when you’ve got a song from her you’ve generally got everything you need to make a record – you’ll have the bridge, the middle eight… you’ll have everything. I find with other songwriters what I tend to get sometimes is a verse and a chorus, no middle eight, no bridge. Then I have to start working it into something or change all chords. I do all of those things frequently but I don’t often take song publishing. Sometimes I completely fit people’s songs up, changed them around, changed all the chords, but I figured it was easier if I didn’t claim any songwriting, then people would let me get on with it.

You got a writing credit on Owner Of A Lonely Heart with Yes. What was your contribution with that song?

“The verse. I never really liked the one that Trevor Rabin had originally written, so I wrote that. The chorus was so good and the idea was good as well.”

You’ve worked your way to a point where you could work with anyone. How do you choose projects now?

“I choose them purely on the material. It’s whether I like the songs and the person and whether I can add something. They can bring things that are very well produced, and I have to tell them I can’t hear anything else on it. I’ll say ‘You’ve done it, it’s finished, you don’t need me!’”

Interview: Aaron Slater

Simon Jay Price - Rockshot

Wednesday, October 12, 2022 4:37 PM

INTERVIEW: ALAN WHITE. YES DRUMMER.

Simon Jay Price
Rockshot
August 7, 2014

Alan White, a 40 year mainstay of the innovative rock group Yes, took some time out of his busy New York schedule to get all transatlantic with progster questioner Tim Price. They talk about working with the famous Queen producer, roller skating with Virgin’s top dog, the ins and outs of line-up changes and all things Plastic.

Alan, I am calling you in New York from here in the Black Country, in the heartland of the UK and am conscious we only have limited time as you have to do rehearsals today for the new tour?

Yes, I have to take off for rehearsals for the Radio City Music Hall show here in New York straight after this interview.

I saw the promotion for these latest YesShows, are you still doing three classic Yes albums in their entirety?

Actually, we are only two this time, Fragile and the Yes Album.

What about the new album, Heaven & Earth are you not going to be playing that on this current tour?

Yes, but we have to make the overall show a little bit shorter as we have an opening band, so we are cutting down to two classic albums and fielding some of the old hits and favourites which people like.

Excellent, they always go down very well live. The first question I have got for you is after 35 years, and that initial 1979 attempt which never got completed, why did you choose to work with Roy Thomas Baker (RTB) this time around?

Well, the first time around things did not work out so well, which was all basically my fault, as I broke my ankle.

I remember that, were you not on roller skates or in-liners, or something?

That was with Richard Branson, he and I happened to be roller skating around Paris at one o clock in the morning, unfortunately. (Laughs)

That’s a famous old Yes story! Are you pleased with the outcome of the new Yes production, ‘Heaven and Earth’?

Well, yes, I am pleased with it, we have pre-released some tracks on the website, have you heard all of it yet?

Certainly most of it, but I am still exploring some of your rhythms and drum sounds. I have read your comments whereby you claim that under RTB’s production some $50,000 has been spent on the microphone sets ups for your drum sound. How does that work?

Roy would want to get heavy on some tracks and a tidier sound on other tracks and would get microphones around the drums and paying attention to details basically, he is very much into drum sounds being the focus and centre of the recordings.

Which track on the new album you play on is the heaviest? I mean Alan White himself has a unique pedigree sound which you have created on John Lennon’s ‘Instant Karma’ and particularly the opening minutes of Sound Chaser. Do you see moments when these massive signature drum movements are re-created within the new album?

The music on the new album does has a longer approach in some cases, we I adjusted accordingly on different songs, and on this album I think it is actually very song orientated, when we wrote Sound Chaser and that stuff there were a lot of deep sounds and song rallies but there is a mixture of both on this one. It is one of those albums which really grows on you as-well

I think you are right but the first track I heard, Believe Again I thought my goodness the opening keyboard sequences with the Geoff Downes seemed to be very 1980’s?

Well, that is an interesting perspective but my personal favorite, I like Regain, that is a good track and another is To Ascend which is a track I co-wrote with Jon Davison.

Well, there you are, as that was actually my next question I had down for you. How many of these songs did you write yourself?

Basically, I wrote To Ascend and Jon (Davison) went round to each member of the band (actually traveling to their homes to personally visit) and was writing with each member of the band and that is what came out. Jon (Davison) and I had a couple of days to finish things and he also spent a couple of days with Geoff, Steve and Chris. So, we did it that way.

Good, that is quite a unique way of recording and writing, certainly a new way for Yes. Then you bought in Billy Sherwood to finalize the mix, was Billy the last aspect of pulling everything and everyone together?

We were still recording things and we ran out of time basically , so Billy was bought in and he mixed the album and did the vocals.

Well, in old English terms Billy lives just “down the road” from where you are in Seattle and to where he has his recording studios in LA. Have you worked with him on other projects in recent times?

Well we have not seen that much of each recently as he is so busy with his Studio projects and I am committed to Yes touring and my solo projects.

Alan it was 1973 when you came into Yes and we are now talking about Yes life some 40 years later!

Well, actually it is 42 years!

There you go, and you are still churning out those drums as frantically as ever!

The band has just been playing in Europe and we did a Canadian tour and then Cruise To The Edge and that is so far what we have done this year, and of course we are now embarked, as we speak, on yet another US sell out tour, but I have to say Jon Davison has been a real inspiration to the band, we are all keyed in.

Going to the period when you broke your ankle, not finishing that first RTB studio project in ‘79 with Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman leaving, that is when Trevor (Horn) and Geoff (Downes) joined Yes as the Buggles. Back then there was a lot of flak from hard core fans who could not accept an Anderson replacement. Do you think that today Jon Davison is getting a harder time with it all?

The Drama days you mean?

I am sure you know where I am coming from, the current ‘Drama’ more to do with the fact that Davison has now replaced Anderson. There are still many Yes followers who will always want to have Jon Anderson as the singer of Yes.

Well, there is always that but I think what we have seen people go through the changes and the American people, and now Europe, have accepted that Jon Anderson is not in the band anymore. Many have accepted Jon Davison as the voice of the band and he is a great promoter and does have a good voice.

Yes, Jon Davison does have a good voice, I would say that. So, going back over the last 42 years, you have never actually left the band and along with Chris Squire and you are the backbones of Yes. For a long time now you are still considered to be the best rhythm section in the rock business. It is incredible the way you two have stuck together through thick and thin. How do you do it?

Well we are so used to playing with each other, we brush off each other really well (laughs), sometimes we know when we are going to do this bit slowly, but, you know…

You now often use a drum kit constructed from pure glass to create a totally dead sound and next to you have the ‘Squire Meter’, in order that you can hear what Chris is doing as it gets so massively loud, all of these details sum up your total polished professionalism.

The Squire meter is one of those things which have developed over the years but my rhythm relationship with Chris is really tight, and we have small signals we can give each other which have been developed through over 40 years of playing together.

Your own song writing compositions such as ‘Shoot High Aim Low’ (From Big Generator) are often the best tracks on the album. Why don’t you do more writing?

Well, it is the ideas, it just takes a while, you know, on the new album I wrote ‘To Ascend’ and I wrote ‘Changes’ from 90125 and songs like ‘In the Presence of’ from Magnification (the only Yes album credited to only four players replacing the keyboardist slot with an orchestra which was released in 2001)

That is when you came up front stage, from behind your drum kit, to play the opening on keyboards, you wrote the lyrics on that or just the music?

Yes, that was generally just Jon Anderson and myself who wrote In The Presence Of.

I did actually meet you once in 2004 during the after show events in the Oxford Theatre on that Acoustic Tour. We spoke for a while and you told me that you had played on all of the tracks for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass triple album.

Yes, that was a unique show, small theatre, with opening acts including comedy stand up performers and a fire eater! Thinking back it may have only been 2/3 as the other tracks were played by a guy called Jim……….

Was that Jim Keltner?

No, that was not the same Jim, this particular guy played on ‘Delaney and Bonnie’ (Eric Clapton) and he tried to kill his mother, he went nuts, it was Jim Gordon, he went on to play on Material World and some other George Harrison albums.

Of all the Yes Solo Albums from 1976 I believe your own effort of Ramshackled came out as one of the most listenable. Those opening tracks of Ooh Baby and One Way Rag still sound very up to date and have credence. Did you write all those songs yourself?

One Way Rag was a Reggae song and it came via a band I had been rehearsing with which was originally Griffin and turned into a number of different things when Graham Bell got involved, but I think at the end of the day Chris (Squire) did the best solo album.

Talking about solo projects, with all the time you spend on Yes, is your own band White, with Steve Boyce, still active and kicking around?

Yes, I am doing some gigs with them straight after this current Yes US tour

Last year you cut a fabulous album with David Torn and Tony Levin simply called Levin Torn White with some drum technology where you spent time getting around new rhythms which you were exploring and expanding as never before.

Well, that was a strange album the way it all came together but basically I did the drum tracks I wrote a few years back and had a few Bach melodies in mind with piano, and then Tony Levin developed and contributed with MP3 tracks.

You made a great video explaining how new rhythms’ come to you and it can take days just playing them out. Are any of those Levin Torn White riffs used one on the Yes album?

Sometimes those new things are originally in my head but I am also a believer in playing what is necessary for the song, sometimes, the song is not leaning in that direction, but sometimes you have to let the song work, as song is always evolving and you have to listen to the melody, the vocals and the direction. That is why you will not hear so much of the Levin White Torn type stuff on this new Yes album.

Alan, how Long can you keep going on in this relentless way? Not being disrespectful, but both Bill Bruford and Phil Collins have now retired from drumming.

Well, Big Phil, he has a strong back but we don’t know about all this stuff and King Crimson are back so maybe Bill will return.

From the heavy drumming perspective you have to be the long term master has this something to do with your fitness created from your passion for sailing?

I generally just try to take care of myself, stay healthy eat good food and is pacing is everything now these days and of course am still married to the beautiful Gigi and have two great children, so that keeps me busy.

I don’t want to take any more time of your precious time Alan as I know you have to get over to Radio City in the heavy New York morning traffic!

Thanks, Tim; you have been a great columnist.

Tim Price interviewed Alan White on July 4th 2014. Wolverhampton and New York.

Mike Tiano - Something Else!

Friday, October 14, 2022 8:39 PM

It’s time for prog fans to forgive Rolling Stone magazine

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014
BY MIKE TIANO

Once upon a time when progressive rock was starting to bloom, Rolling Stone magazine looked favorably upon the genre, and particularly the one prog band that epitomized it: Yes. Early Yes albums generally received favorable reviews, and all was right in the Yes, er, world. Then came the monolith that crushed all of the Rolling Stone good will that had come before it: Tales From Topographic Oceans, the most divisive Yes album up to that time.

When it was released, this was the album that separated the true believer from the casual listener. The latter might have had The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge in their collection alongside releases by, say, the Eagles, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and Joni Mitchell but, for them, Tales From Topographic Oceans was the end of the line. And, in a sense, RS followed suit. After positive reviews for the Yes albums that preceded it, the largely negative review for TFTO — memorably titled “Psychedelic Doodles” — signaled the end of the magazine’s focusing on progressive rock in general.

Cameron Crowe’s interaction with Yes might be seen as an indicator of what happened to this song we once knew so well. Crowe’s first big article in Rolling Stone was about Yes’ tour right after Alan White replaced Bill Bruford. (Crowe has his articles archived on his own site, and this first about Yes can be found here.) Crowe’s experiences with Yes were later used in Almost Famous, his fictional account of his first flights into rock journalism. His inclusion of Yes songs in that movie was his way of paying tribute to the band that helped launch his own career.

Crowe wrote about Yes again for RS in 1975, but the band wasn’t the main focus of that article. Instead, it was about Rick Wakeman, who had also decided that Tales from Topographic Oceans was too much for him, and was embarking on what appeared to be a promising solo career. In the article Crowe documents a hostile interaction between a Circus magazine reporter and members of Yes. While that journalist found the TFTO concert boring and lacking in cohesion, one can read between the lines that Crowe felt that way too. (It can also be argued that Crowe preferred to attach himself to rising star Wakeman and leave a fading Yes in the dust; whether that is true or not the article about Wakeman can be found here.[Link])

After TFTO any reviews of Yes’ albums were farmed out to unsympathetic RS staff members who didn’t have an ear for progressive rock, instead being more reflective of the magazine’s overall editorial direction — where the focus was on punk and New Wave. And if there was any major news about Yes, it was relegated to a short blurb in Random Notes — even RS couldn’t ignore the news when Jon Anderson and Rick were out and the Buggles were in, but it wasn’t big enough news that it warranted an actual article. And it appears someone wasn’t looking when the first edition of Rolling Stone album reviews was published, as it gave high marks to many of Yes’ albums. Subsequent editions scrapped that and relegated Yes’ best output as merely mediocre, and the rest just plain garbage.

So after an RS about-face with regard to Yes specifically — and prog, in general — it’s understandable that Yes fans are still unforgiving when it comes to how what is arguably the biggest rock journal ignored what is also arguably the most influential prog rock band in the history of rock and roll — along with their brethren including Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and King Crimson), and full disclosure is that I was among those who thought little of Rolling Stone because of what appeared to be a deliberate snub.

Fast forward to the 21st Century. A few years after launching its web site (ironically with Yes magazine’s Doug Gottlieb on the original web management staff), something must have changed at RS. While having to be selective about what appears in a printed journal, a web edition doesn’t have the same constraints. Web traffic is important, and obviously the aforementioned selectivity probably worked against their web efforts — where the more visits to a site, the better.
(Note that while one is tempted to credit Doug Gottlieb here, he had left Rolling Stone long before the apparent change in attitude towards Yes and prog. While he possibly may have made attempts to influence key staffers, it was more to his professional advantage to not be a fanboy with an ultimatum.)

In the last couple of years, classic prog artists have received prominent space on Rolling Stone‘s web site. For Yes, this included the rift between Jon Anderson and the band; Benoit’s departure; the Cruise to the Edge; Squire on Yes taking a residency on Broadway; a flashback to the Union tour; polls, including the top ten prog albums of all time; and the Yestival. Other prog artists have also been prominently featured, including a recent glowing article by senior staff writer David Fricke on how the currently touring Mark VIII version of King Crimson, whom he dubbed the “best new band in prog.” While these articles indicate a definite shift in the web journal’s attitude towards Yes, I believe it was a bigger event that involved a different band that demonstrated how the times have changed: the induction of Rush into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Before examining the impact of the Canadian trio, let’s review the history (or lack of thereof) of prog in the Hall of Fame. A few years back, the HOF web side listed two bands that were perceived as progressive — the Who and Pink Floyd. Labeling the former as progressive might have appeared to be a bit of a stretch, but in a way the Who helped pave the way for that genre — particularly with Tommy. That album used many concepts that were usually associated with classical music, including an overture that introduced themes that would appear throughout the album, and the restating of those themes in various compositions. They continued to break tradition with compositions like “Won’t Get Fooled Again” they went beyond the compact, then-dominant singles-ready format by bringing expansiveness to their repertoire. Nevertheless, while the Who may have been progressive in certain aspects they never went as far as those acts that are identified with the prog moniker.

There might be some debate as to whether Pink Floyd could be considered prog, but if nothing else they should be from a conceptual standpoint, at the least. In some ways, Floyd initially had more in common with the Grateful Dead than they did with the Who: not in terms of composition, but from an experimental/improvisational standpoint.

Early on, Pink Floyd would delve into space-y forays, later dropping that in favor of more song-based structures that sometimes stood alone but occasionally introduced themes into a larger concept. (The Wall is a good example of this approach.) But the HOF seemed to recognize progressive rock only if the act in question hit it big and/or had a number of hits. Starting with Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s albums raced to the top of the charts, and would stay there In fact, Moon stayed on the charts from 1973 to 1988, according to Billboard, selling a whopping 50 million, and still counting.

While prog fans may have been happy by Genesis’ induction into the Hall, it was easy to be cynical that the reason Genesis made the cut was more because of the likes of “Invisible Touch” than it was of “Supper’s Ready.” Kudos to Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio for speaking for prog fans in general (“this is our moment”), for not downplaying Genesis’ prog roots in his introduction speech, and for later performing “Watcher of the Skies” with Phish (in its entirety!) to the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder and Meryl Streep.

I’ll leave it to those on forums like Facebook to argue if Rush is really prog or not, but it cannot be denied that they were influenced by prog early on — and that has colored their creative output ever since. The following video interview with Rush from 1980 illustrates the point at the 3-minute, 37-second mark… [Link]

Unlike Yes in recent years, Rush has continued to regularly release new studio albums and even sell out large venues, even if they aren’t the stadiums that are expected for the likes of, say, Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen.

OK, Rush didn’t play Safeco Field in Seattle, but their show last year at Key Arena sold out, while Yes tries to fill wineries or casinos. It’s ironic that while over a decade ago a board member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sneered that Rush would never (repeat, never) get in, their perseverance in staying true to their musical principles, pleasing their fan base while maintaining their musical integrity and, of course, their enormous talent finally couldn’t be denied — particularly when the newest crop of rock stars (e.g., Dave Grohl) went on record saying how much Rush influenced them, and that they thought Rush was always cool.

After Rush’s induction for 2013 it almost seemed like Yes was destined to follow suit, but unfortunately that wasn’t to be. While a nomination was a step forward, Yes didn’t make it to the finish line, and it didn’t help that there was some stiff competition from the other nominees — regardless of what the feverish Yes fan (and prog aficionados in general) may think of those other artists. But prog continues to gain support for induction.

One of the bands that beat Yes into the Hall of Fame this year was Kiss, and it was startling yet gratifying to read that guitarist Paul Stanley was quoted as saying that, even though he isn’t a prog fan, it is ridiculous that Yes wasn’t in the Hall.

If Rush is any indication, an induction would mean even more content of Yes on Rolling Stone‘s web site, as before and after Rush’s induction there were numerous articles and video clips prominently featured on the RS site focusing on both their current plans, and past history.

However, while one can surmise that progressive acts getting more exposure on the site is probably a good thing, I’ve noticed that anytime I post an RS article about the band on the Notes From the Edge Facebook page [Link] - inevitably there will be responses from folks who have not forgiven Rolling Stone for their past transgressions. For them, whatever RS does is too little, too late.

This attitude may have been understandable, if ignoring prog continued to be their editorial stance but it hasn’t. It’s time to let bygones be bygones and recognize the fact that prog is getting regular, objective coverage at Rolling Stone. That site is the most prominent one on the internet, when it comes to news about all genres of rock — reaching a large number of individuals who might have been those same casual listeners mentioned at the start of this editorial, the folks who remember buying Fragile and may become newly interested in the fact that Yes is still active, releasing new albums and still touring. As I indicated with Rush, if Yes is inducted, there will more than likely be more items appearing on RS that one could have ever imagined.

So should prog fans forgive Rolling Stone? I almost added a question mark to the title of this editorial. But I decided against it as I don’t see it as a question, but as a statement of fact. Who needs bad vibes?

Let it go.

This is an updated version of an editorial written for Notes From the Edge in October 2013.