Tony Bacon - Reverb

Sunday, October 6, 2024 5:45 PM

"Mood for a Day": Yes' Steve Howe on His Classical Prog-Rock Masterwork

Published November 24, 2021 by Tony Bacon

"'Mood For A Day' is quite a mixture of influences and segments of music," says Steve Howe. It's almost exactly 50 years since the release of the Yes LP Fragile, and Steve is talking about his classical-guitar solo spot on an album that now sits among the prog masterpieces of the '70s.

It was the drummer's fault. Bill Bruford came up with the idea that each member of Yes should have a solo track on the record where they might, as Steve recalls, "command the band." Or, in his case, adjourn the band.

And so it was that Steve had his Spanish spot, Bill conducted the brief, tortuous "Five Per Cent For Nothing," Chris Squire foregrounded his bass for "The Fish," Rick Wakeman went all symphonic synths for "Cans and Brahms," and Jon Anderson tracked multiple vocals for "We Have Heaven."

Steve had joined Yes in time for their previous long-player, The Yes Album, where he also had a solo spot, "The Clap," although he performed that on his steel-string '53 Martin 00-18. His main instruments in the band were certainly electric, and many fans will know him as primarily an electric guitarist. But here was an opportunity to showcase his growing interest in nylon-string classical guitar.

It was a rare inclusion on a rock record at the time. Among a select few others, George Harrison played a Ramírez classical on "And I Love Her" for the Hard Day's Night album in 1964, Robby Krieger of The Doors had a go at Albéniz for "Spanish Caravan" in '68, and José Feliciano hit with Krieger's "Light My Fire" the same year. Around the time Yes were recording Fragile in '71, Tony Iommi comforted Black Sabbath fans with "Orchid" on Master Of Reality, and Jan Akkerman set a classical guitar amid Mellotron strings for "Le Clochard" on Focus II (a.k.a. Moving Waves).

Steve Howe's interest had started when his older brother, Phil, switched him on to Vivaldi and the classical guitar world, including the two British titans of the instrument, Julian Bream and John Williams. "To me, they were both astoundingly brilliant," Steve says, "but there were differences. Bream was a very intense, emotional sort of player. On stage, it could seem like his emotions were pouring out on the guitar."

John Williams, meanwhile, possesses something else that Steve admired. "He has this incredible professionalism to really focus on what he's up to and what he's doing, and not to be fussed—a more calculated sort of player. I did eventually meet him, and I'd always wondered what he'd say if I asked how hard it is to play Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. I said, 'How does it rate; will I ever play it?' And he replied, 'Well, it's actually pretty damned difficult!'"

As he had done with "Clap," Steve says that when it came time for Fragile he considered his influences and what he might do with them. "I thought, well, I can't play that, this, or that very well. But I could write my own tune. I met my wife Jan, we settled down in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London, and I wrote 'Mood For A Day' for her."

He reckons the piece, like many of his compositions, is something of a mixture. "It has several ingredients, and for me the art is always in finding how I can make them fit together. It starts with that flamenco-esque G to F-sharp-7, so I immediately set myself a mood. You knew you were somewhere," he says with a laugh.

What were those ingredients? He cites the classical guitarist Carlos Montoya as one. "My opening phrase [sings the sequence], well, Carlos did that kind of thing lots of times. So I felt that was a movement I could do. But the biggest influence on my Spanish guitar work was Chet Atkins. The second album of his I bought was The Other Chet Atkins, and there was a drawing on the cover of a guy with a Spanish guitar."

Following on from the Teensville album, which he loved, Steve would buy more or less anything by Chet. "The Other Chet album is all Spanish guitar, though it wasn't serious classical music, it was the popularized side. He even starts off with 'Begin The Beguine.' That album showed me what a versatile guitarist Chet was, and that made me want to be the same. I wanted to do this kind of stuff as well."

Steve says that today he finds it hard to listen to that original recording of 'Mood For A Day' on Fragile, when he sat alone 50 years ago in front of a mic at Advision studios in London. "My ears are a little deaf to it" is how he puts it. "Because soon after that, I started playing it in a much more controlled way—not so slashy-clashy flamenco, but more classical. I really beat the hell of my guitar in that studio."

The guitar in question was a Conde flamenco, though not long after that Steve got fed up wrestling with its wooden tuners, and a few years later he hit upon an excellent Kohno No. 10 classical while Yes were on their first Japanese tour. It remains a treasured instrument. He did play "Mood For A Day" live sometimes on his steel-string 00-18, before he'd considered taking a classical out on the road and messing with the relatively crude amplification measures available back in the day.

His favorite captured live performance of the piece features in Yes's 1993 Symphonic Live film, when he picks up the Kohno (by now with a decent onboard pickup system) and plays some Vivaldi followed by 'Mood for A Day.' "That to me was a high spot," he recalls. "I was on stage, I was classical, and I had my gear. I adore that video."

He also used the Kohno for on-stage classical pieces when he did solo tours, starting in '93, and around that time with Yes he tried using a prototype Gibson Chet Atkins CE. "That's also the model I play on my most talked-about guest appearance, on 'Innuendo' with Queen," he adds.

Steve happened to be in Montreux in 1989, working with his friend Paul Sutin, and one day he had some time off and went for lunch near Mountain studios, which Queen owned at the time. A chance meeting there with an old Yes tech, now working for Queen, took Steve into the studio, where the band played him their work in progress for the album that would become Innuendo.

"They played the 'Innuendo' track last—it ended, and I'm blown away, in awe," Steve remembers. "And they said, 'Well, that last track, we want you to play on it.' But Brian May had already done some incredibly good arranged guitars in the middle, where all the Spanish things start happening. They said, 'Yes, but we want something else.' They wanted me to go kind of ape a bit on top! I think they mentioned Paco de Lucia, and I went, 'Ah, right, yes.'"

He recalls using one of Brian's Gibson Chet Atkins nylon-string guitars, improvising for maybe three takes through the section. "Then we talked a bit, and went to have dinner. When we came back, we did some editing between the takes, got the best of the bunch, and then I thanked them and left—I remember Brian gave me a lift somewhere. They wrote me a letter, said thanks very much, added me to the PRS performance thing, and that was it. It was an honor that I've never forgotten."

These days, the current version of Yes features Steve alongside drummer Alan White, keyboardist Geoff Downes, vocalist Jon Davison, and bassist Billy Sherwood, and their latest album The Quest was released in October. Steve's solo work continues, too, and he is full of praise for the Italian classical guitarist Flavio Silva, who he's recorded with. For classical guitar today, Steve still plays his favored Kohno, and for stage work a more recent Martin 000C.

He remembers another of the big names in classical guitar from the time back when he was starting to pick up the instrument. "I had an Andrés Segovia vinyl EP, a very important record to me. It only had four tracks, but it started me off. And I was lucky enough to see him perform when Yes were recording in Switzerland, probably late 1976 or early '77."

On to the stage in Lausanne stepped the great man, one of the most famous guitarists in the world. However, during the first half, Steve wondered what was going on. The maestro, then in his early eighties, did not seem to be on top form. "Then he came back from his interval," Steve remembers. "And he had it all reserved for the second half. He stunned everybody. An incredible performance. Then, right at the end, he did this great thing. After playing an encore, he went to the microphone and said, 'My guitar is tired.' And that was it. His guitar's a bit tired, so he's off! It was spellbinding."

Steve shows no signs of tiring of the guitar. "I'm amazed," he says. "I'm 74, and I still love the guitar. Give me a Fender, give me a Gibson, give me a classical, give me a Martin—I'm still so excited by the sound. I can't believe that's possible. When will it end?"

About the author: Tony Bacon writes about musical instruments, musicians, and music. His books include The Steve Howe Guitar Collection, The Ultimate Guitar Book (happy 30th birthday UGB!), and Legendary Guitars. Tony lives in Bristol, England. More info at tonybacon.co.uk.

Sid Smith - Prog

Friday, December 1, 2023 10:22 PM

Yes: the journey from The Yes Album to Fragile

By Sid Smith
Prog

published November 26, 2021

The amazing story of how Yes recorded two classic prog albums in just one year!

On the morning that Prog speaks to Rick Wakeman, the veteran keyboard player is in a very good mood and about as far removed from his ‘Grumpy Old Rick’ Twitter handle as is possible to imagine. The reason? “I’m going to get my Covid vaccine jab this morning,” he says with some enthusiasm. It’s also possible another reason the 71-year-old is so chipper is that he’s talking about the events of 1971, a year that saw his career coincidentally given a massive shot in the arm after joining Yes.

In February 1971, The Yes Album was released and, nine months later, Fragile: two remarkable albums representing the survival and arrival of a progressive rock institution. The first secured their future, protecting them from the whims of record label executives. The second was a new integrated unit marching in lockstep that defined their own destiny on their own terms. Both records were, in part, the result of a catalyst; two new members whose contributions brought about a decisive change. Both enabled Yes to finally slip into another league entirely after nearly three years of commercial stalemate and the looming threat of obscurity.

Taken together, those two albums last a little over 81 minutes and stand as a testament to tenacity, decisiveness, and a remarkable flowering of creativity. With them, the transition from earnest hopefuls to bona fide stars was achieved. Yes would soon be able to say goodbye to gigs at Portsmouth Poly and bask in FM Radio’s heavy rotation in sun-drenched California and beyond.

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Rock Cellar - February 2021

Monday, April 11, 2022 5:48 PM

I’m Still Standing: Jon Anderson Unearths Garage Stash for ‘1000 Hands: Chapter One’ (& Dreams of Yes Reunion)

As a founding member of Yes, Jon Anderson co-wrote many of the prog rock group’s classic songs, including “Owner Of A Lonely Heart,” “Roundabout,” “Your Move,” and “I’ve Seen All Good People.” Anderson has remained busy after three stints with Yes, releasing a new solo album in July 2020 and working on reissues from his vast library of material.

Anderson’s fans in the UK look forward to the 2021 re-issue of Anderson’s debut solo album, 1976’s Olias of Sunhillow. The concept album tells the tale of Sunhillow, a planet that suffered the catastrophic eruption of a volcano. A magician, Olias, builds an ark to transport its people to another planet. “I created all the music and vocals on my own with the help of engineer Mike Dunne,” says Anderson. “You could call it a true solo album.”

Olias follows the November 2020 UK release of the remastered and expanded version of Song of Seven, Anderson’s 1980 second solo LP. Anderson was joined on Song of Seven by guest musicians that included Jack Bruce of Cream, ex-Humble Pie guitarist Clem Clempson and Ian Bairnson of the Alan Parsons Project.

“I was able to work on Song of Seven with musician friends I had connected with while living in London,” recalls Anderson. “The album helped me musically with my understanding of ‘structure.’ And it gave me a chance to compose more as I did with the title track ‘Song of Seven.’ The rest of the songs were everyday ideas with a very relaxed musical group of friends.”

Olias of Sunhillow and Song of Seven will include bonus tracks and booklets. Vinyl editions will also be available.

1,000 Hands: Chapter One, Anderson’s most recent solo album, was released by Blue Élan Records in July. Its original tracks were recorded in 1990, but wound up discarded and forgotten after Anderson stored the master tapes in his garage. An all-star lineup of friends including Steve Howe, Ian Anderson, Carmine Appice, Chick Corea, Jean-Luc Ponty and the Tower of Power horn section contributed to the album, which was finally unearthed after three decades in storage.

Rock Cellar talked with Anderson, who was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Yes in 2017, from his home in California.

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Prog Magazine #118

Friday, March 11, 2022 3:35 PM

Yes' journey through 1971 features on the cover of the gift-packed March 2021 issue of Prog #118.

Bret Miller - Guitar Player

Thursday, August 4, 2022 9:15 PM

“I Was a Bit of a Lunatic!” Steve Howe Speaks About His Number One Ax

By David Mead, Rod Brakes

published September 21, 2021

The Yes legend reflects on his love affair with the Gibson ES-175D.

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Andy Greene - Rolling Stone

Wednesday, August 24, 2022 9:06 AM

Tony Kaye on His Years With Yes, David Bowie, and Badfinger

The keyboardist is a founding member of Yes and backed Bowie on the legendary 'Station to Station' tour

BY ANDY GREENE
ROLLING STONE

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features keyboardist Tony Kaye.

Keyboardist Tony Kaye has come and gone from Yes no fewer than five times over the past 50 years. This goes all the way back to the formation of the band in 1968 when his organ powered early classics like “Yours Is No Disgrace” and “Starship Trooper.” It continued in the Eighties when he played on their comeback hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and carried all the way through their 50th-anniversary tour in 2018 when he was a “special guest” every single night of the long run.

But there are long gaps in his Yes career and he filled them with stints in Badfinger, Badger, and even David Bowie’s band on his 1976 Station to Station tour. In recent years, the English musician found himself backing William Shatner on a brief California club tour. We phoned up Kaye at his new home in Florida to hear about the entire saga and why every time he thought he was out of Yes, they pulled him back in.

You live in Florida full-time now? Oh, yeah. I moved two years ago. I had enough of L.A. after 30 years. I got the hell out.

How has your pandemic year been going? It’s given me a chance to actually set up a studio and make some music, which is a good thing since there’s hardly anything else to do. We got a little taste of Florida life for about a year and then everything changed.

I want to go back here and talk about your life. What’s the first music you recall hearing as a child that really reached you? Well, I came from a fairly musical family. My mother was an accomplished classical pianist, so I was on her knee at a very young age. It was a sort of classic upbringing where I learned classical piano. That was going to lead to me going to the Royal School of Music, which didn’t happen because I got into different kinds of music. At 15, I was playing with a 16-piece big band doing [Duke] Ellington and [Count] Basie and playing dance shows. It really kind of changed everything.

I played clarinet too and I was playing in a traditional jazz band and piano in a blues band. It kind of went on from there. And, of course, rock & roll happened.

In your teenage years, did you get into Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and all that stuff? Yeah. Very much so. We were playing American rhythm & blues rock. And my band went to Germany. It was post-war and were playing American music to American serviceman that were at the nearby military bases. Of course, the Beatles went there too. My first trip to Germany was playing opposite the Beatles in a club.

Did you see them play a lot? Yeah. We played all day and night. It was one long set, hours and hours. And they did that too. In between sets, we’d go between and see them and meet them. It was the beginning of rock & roll.

Did you see the huge potential in them? Oh, yeah. You knew. They were just great. You knew that they had the look. Of course, they weren’t in the silly suits. They were James Dean–influenced at that point, as we all were. We were all in leather pants back then.

What was life like for you in the Federals? They were really my first professional band that I joined since they were actually making money and traveling. They played shows all around Europe and we went to Turkey and Romania, Germany, and Italy. It was a working band. For a young lad, it was a thrill.

Tell me about first meeting the guys in Yes. We all ended up in London and hanging around the Marquee Club. That was basically where it was all happening. The Rolling Stones were playing there and I was a big fan. I used to go see bands there. It was before Yes, but also before any sort of experimental music. It was more of an R&B club, in a way, but different bands started to play there. The Nice played there and we started hanging out at a bar next-door called La Chasse.

At that time, [bassist] Chris [Squire] was in the Syn and [singer] Jon [Anderson] was in another band. I was playing with Pink Floyd–style acid bands. I was starting to be experimental. It was a place for everyone to hang out and that’s where it all started. [Guitarist] Peter [Banks] was there. [Drummer] Bill [Bruford] came a little later, but it was the nucleus of the band with Chris, Jon, and Peter.

What were the goals of the band at that formation stage? It was long before “prog rock” was even a term. Yeah. “Prog rock” came later, but it was starting to emerge. We were not that interested in playing R&B blues, Stones music. But in the beginning, we had no original material and were sort of jamming on rock songs. But we kind of knew that we wanted to do different things and Pink Floyd, Genesis, and the Nice were all starting at that time. Everyone was pushing each other to develop a new music, really.

And because we didn’t have any original material, we took other people’s songs and completely messed them up. That’s why you have [West Side Story‘s] “Something’s Coming” and Beatles songs and [Simon and Garfunkel’s] “America.”

You did them in really interesting ways. Jon has such a high, distinct voice and Chris and Bill were this incredible rhythm section. It led to something very unique. I can’t think of another band that would have interpreted the Beatles’ “Every Little Thing” like you guys did. Yeah. I don’t know why or how it came out. It was just us experimenting with music and these were great songs. You could really say that it was sort of accidental. You had to be there at the time. I couldn’t really explain it definitely or in proper context. We were 20 years old. Who knows where it came from?

This is the exact same time that King Crimson and Genesis are starting, but they didn’t have the harmonies like you guys. That really set you apart. Yeah, the harmonies between the three guys were definitely a bonus over, say, Floyd or Crimson and Genesis. Interpreting those songs was definitely challenging. People certainly took notice and we got a residency at the Marquee club, which was kind of difficult to get. We were there Tuesday nights and the Nice would be there Wednesday night. It was a party, really.

Meeting Ahmet Ertegun and signing to Atlantic was obviously a big step. Yeah. There wasn’t that much action, or even hope, of getting a record deal. You had to have original music and we didn’t have a lot. But Ahmet liked the band, and unlike today where you have to have it all together, we were allowed to learn and write and progress, which was nice. And the first record was done in about a week in a tiny sort of radio studio. We played it live.

Did you like the end result? We all knew that we could do better. Everyone strove to do better. We’d go out and suddenly there was Vanilla Fudge and King Crimson. You’d start thinking, “OK, we’ve got to get better.” That definitely pushed us forward, especially Crimson.

Tell me about Time and a Word and the decision to bring in strings and move toward a more orchestral sound. I don’t really remember too much about that except Jon was very into orchestral music. He went through a period where classical music was all he listened to and he wanted to add that to the band. Of course, back in those days, there were no Mellotrons or samplers or anything we could do. You had to do it with an orchestra.

I thought it was pretty successful. There was one person in the band who particularly hated it. Actually, in a way, although it was sort of becoming a progressive-type band, Peter and I were more rock-oriented from a Hammond [organ] point of view — the loud, distorted Hammond. And Peter was a sort of a Pete Townshend–influenced character, which was really the reason for the split, eventually.

How did Steve Howe’s arrival change the band? Well, it was over a period of time. I was quite responsible, I think, for Steve. For a while, we had no guitar player. It was sort of news to me that Peter was fired, but that’s what happened. I just happened to be at the Speakeasy one night and Steve was playing with his band Bodast. I thought, “Oh, this guy is really good.” I suggested him to Jon and we had him come down and that was it.

Of course, at that point, we got a chance to do a third album with Atlantic. We went off to the country and composed The Yes Album, which was the start of the way the band was going to progress.

I can tell it’s a different band from the first second of “Yours Is No Disgrace” kicking off Side One. It was a huge leap forward for the band. It just kind of happened. It had a lot to do with Steve. And we were stuck in this little cottage down in Devon, which is still Steve’s house, by the way. He bought the place and still lives there.

What led to your departure from the group? It was complicated. Well, it was easy and it was complicated at the same time. It was not a big deal in a lot of ways. I had my own band going at the time, which was Badger. It was the beginning of the Moog synthesizer and the Mellotron, instruments I didn’t particularly like. It was not that pleasant to my Hammond ears, so to say. I was not particularly happy in doing that. I was working with David Foster, who was a co-writer with Jon on early Yes stuff. We had this band and I enjoyed playing with them more than with Yes at that time.

Jon and Chris, but particularly Jon, wanted to create this orchestral thing. And obviously, Rick [Wakeman] fit perfectly because that’s what he was playing. And so it was a split that had to happen.

After you left, did you listen to Fragile and Close to the Edge? Did you follow their work? A little bit. They came back from an American tour at one point and had no equipment. Jon asked my band, Badger, if they could rehearse where we were rehearsing. We actually had only been in operation for about two weeks and we had enough material for an album. But we had no intention of recording or even getting a recording contract.

And so the band came to the studio and we chatted and Jon said, “We’re going to record the next show,” which was at the Rainbow. They were recording a live album. And so we tagged along and supported them. One Live Badger came out of that. After that, Badger wasn’t exactly a huge success. I did another album in New Orleans and decided I wanted to move to Los Angeles.

I read that you signed away all your rights to Yes royalties for $10,000. Is that true? Yeah. That was a typical [Yes manager] Brian Lane trick. I very, very reluctantly went along. You knew that it was the wrong thing, but shyster managers are very good at getting what they want. And I wanted to leave and get out of England. It was the money I used to get to L.A. And I got it back eventually.

You lived at the Hyatt House in L.A. in the mid-Seventies. Yeah, the Riot House. That was all I knew in L.A. It was from my early Yes tours.

That’s the most famously debauched hotel in rock history, and this was the peak of it. What was the most insane thing you saw? John Bonham, I think. [Laughs] Nothing could be crazier than Jonh Bonham driving his weird car … whatever it was called with the open top. It looked like Mad Max. We lived next door to each other. He was at the Rainbow every night. Every night, we’d hit the bar at the Riot House and then go to the Rainbow. That was a nightly thing until I got serious.

How did you meet David Bowie and wind up on the Station to Station tour? I vaguely knew his tour manager from England and I was going through … it wasn’t called rehab at the time, but after going through three months at the Riot House, I had some fairly serious things going on. I went into a sort of rehab seclusion.

I rented an apartment. I didn’t know many people, but one of my few friends took me to the Rainbow on my birthday for my first outing after the long seclusion. I bumped into Bowie’s tour manager. He said, “Can you be on a plane tomorrow?”

That was it. I said, “Sure.” He said, “Well, I’ll have a limousine come pick you up.” I didn’t even know where I was going. The limousine picked me up, and before you knew it, I was in Jamaica at Keith Richards’ house with David and the band rehearsing.

It was such a great band with Dennis Davis, Carlos Alomar, George Murray … Killer band. Just great guys, too. Carlos was the guy. He was kind of my mentor, really. I learned everything about David’s music from him.

David described this as a very difficult time where he was doing way too much coke and not sleeping. Did you sense that he was struggling, or was he doing better by the time the tour started? I didn’t get to see much of that, admittedly. But look at him on that tour. He looked great. He was the persona of the person on that stage. He didn’t look raggedy at all.

Yeah. He was the Thin White Duke. [Laughs] He was the Thin White Duke and it was a great show. I loved that tour.

It’s one of my favorite tours by anyone ever. The vibe you created when you all walked out and slowly went into “Station to Station” was just incredible. Yeah. All those white lights and the band got to jam for 10 minutes before he came on. It was sensational. I remember playing Madison Square Garden. … It’s a shame not a lot of it was recorded or filmed. I do have tapes that I tried to get to David just before he died. I found in a box a board mix of two shows. One at Madison Square Garden and one in Paris that are just fantastic performances.

Did you give those to the Bowie estate? No. I tried to get a message to David that I had them right before he died. Of course, I had transferred them to digital since they were cassette tapes. I messed around with them, but they just sound so great. For board mixes, they are unbelievable.

You should really find a way to get them out. The only one show they released from that tour was Nassau Coliseum. I only have two shows. I did hear that [Nassau Coliseum one] and the shows I have are really so much better. Maybe someone will want to release it just as a one-off thing. I should probably give Carlos a ring and see what he thinks. He’s the master Bowie dude.

Anyway, the Madison Square Garden shows were so great. Everyone was there, like Lennon, Liza Minelli … I don’t think there’s anyone since that has been as cool as Bowie was at that moment.

What’s funny is that you’re playing “Life on Mars” and “Changes” at every show and Rick Wakeman played those parts on the original recordings. Meanwhile, he was back with Yes the next year and he’s playing “Starship Trooper” and “I’ve Seen All Good People” and doing your old parts. It was like you swapped roles. [Laughs] Yeah. I had no idea that Rick recorded with him. That was kind of news to me. I think David knew, sort of, that I had been with Yes. He didn’t really care, I don’t think. We never really talked about it. I certainly don’t think the band really cared who Yes was. They were a bunch of New York session dudes.

Tell me about forming Detective with Michael Des Barres. Well, I had been on the Bowie run for quite a long time. I came back to L.A. and was just sort of retiring, really. It was a retiring time. I thought I should stop. And so I decided to become a tennis player. And I had a house close to tennis courts in Hollywood. Although I sort of knew Michael, we became friends around that time. I was learning how to play tennis all day. He lived around the corner and he put Detective together. He invited me down to play with the band and I became part of it.

Then the band was signed with Swan Song [Records] and we were kings at that Starwood in Hollywood and played there exclusively and packed it out every night. Jimmy [Page] played with the band. People thought it was going to be fairly successful, but it probably sounded too much like Zeppelin to be super successful.

How was the tour where you guys opened up for Kiss? It was horrible. We were booed off every night. An entire 20 rows of children dressed as Gene Simmons. It couldn’t be worse.

Oof. That’s the worst nightmare of so many performers. I think other bands fared better opening for Kiss. Trying to think who …

Rush and Cheap Trick fared better, I’ve heard. Cheap Trick! I think it was Cheap Trick. But we were pretty intense, Led Zeppelin–esque. The Kiss fans didn’t want to know.

You joined Badfinger after that. How was that experience? Well, you know, what can you say? I love Badfinger. I guess at the end of the Seventies, I bumped into Tommy [Evans] for the first time in a long time. I loved Tommy. He was such a character, such a great guy. They just finished [1979’s] Airwaves and Tommy asked me to come down to the studio. They wanted to go on the road. I just started playing with them. That was the beginning of a lot of craziness with Tommy.

They were such a great band, but this wasn’t an easy time for them. It was a very disappointing … I can’t even say “period” because the whole thing was disappointing. It’s hard to understand how wrong it went.

You recorded Say No More with them in 1981. Was that a good experience? Well, that was fun. I must say, I really kind of like that album. It had a certain something. Of course, we recorded it in Miami. The band was living in a house on Key Biscayne. There was a lot of drinking and stuff going on. But the band was performing in the studio and we’d go and play a bar in Key Biscayne after we finished. We became very close, actually.

Tell me how you got roped back into Yes for 90125. It started just by chance in Miami, recording the Badfinger album. The house the band lived in just happened to be next door to the house that Chris [Squire’s] wife Nikki and the kids had rented in the summer while the band was on tour behind Drama with Trevor Horn and Geoff [Downes]. Chris turned up one day and I got to hang out with him. It was quite out of the blue and quite ridiculous.

I wound up at his place playing Beatles songs until 4 a.m. I got to chat with Chris and he said, “What did you think of Drama?” I said, “Well, it’s not really Yes, is it?” He said, “Well, no. We thought we’d try something different.” And actually, the album is good. I like the album. But live with Trevor Horn didn’t really work.

Chris said, “What do you think? Maybe we could do something? And I found this guitar player. He lives in L.A. His name is Trevor Rabin. Maybe you should get together when you get back to L.A.” And so we did. A year later, we were in England with a band called Cinema.

Do you recall first hearing the demo for “Owner of a Lonely Heart”? I do.

Did you like it, or see it as a hit? I was kind of the only one that potentially saw it. Trevor and I were sharing an apartment, [Atlantic Records Vice President] Phil Carson’s apartment, somewhere in Knightsbridge. Trevor had tapes, and basically, [it was] a lot of the songs that appeared on 90125. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” I thought was potentially a hit. He said, “No, it’s not.”

It was never rehearsed. It was never played. Everything else practically on 90125 was rehearsed and played for a year. But never “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” It was conceived at the end of recording the album. Trevor Horn says that he’s the one that found it, or at least recognized the potential.

How did you feel about Cinema becoming Yes? Well, I left the band. I was not particularly enamored with [producer] Trevor Horn in a lot of ways. I think the feeling was mutual. I just left. I was getting tired of what it was becoming and tired of London and tired of Trevor Horn. I missed home. I missed L.A. Kind out of the blue, Tommy had organized a Badfinger tour. I felt it was just what I needed, really. And so that was the plan. I went back to L.A. and it was only a matter of weeks when I heard that Tommy had killed himself.

Oh, God. [Softly] Yeah. And so that was the end of that. I missed the finale of Jon [Anderson] coming into the band and re-recording the vocals and all of that.

Then they pulled you back in? [Sighs] Then they pulled me back in, yes. What happened was, I had a rock & roll T-shirt company. I was at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet and was selling T-shirts and making money. I had a portable radio next to my chair and this song came on. And there it was. And then they played it 10 minutes later and five minutes after that. You couldn’t get away from it. I thought, “Well, it’s a hit record. Could be fun.” Which it was.

How was the tour? You’re playing all these songs they recorded after you left, like “Roundabout” and “Long Distance Runaround,” for the first time. I knew the songs. I mean, the songs were in my head. The bigger challenge was to learn how to play 90125 with all the samples and all the stuff you play in the studio, but then you’ve got to play it live. Thank God, Trevor [Rabin] had his little accident in Miami and the tour was delayed. [Ed. note: Rabin was swimming in the pool of the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami when a woman coming down a slide rammed into him and ruptured his spleen.] That gave me a little more time to set up a keyboard rig with samplers. These were early samplers and not very sophisticated, but MIDI had just come out.

It must have been weird that you guys are now veterans about 15 years into this and suddenly you have a giant pop hit and you’re playing to enormous crowds. It was shocking to everyone. They discovered that at least 60 percent of the audience were just fans of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” It was odd. The entire front of the stage was young girls. For Yes, that was completely a phenomenon since it’s always been completely male-dominated.

Did you have fun? Yeah. It was great. The band got on really well. Everyone was having fun. What can you say? It was a hit. We had our own plane. We did anything we wanted to do, and everyone was getting along and having a good time.

When the tour ends and you start thinking about the next album, did you feel pressure to create another “Owner of a Lonely Heart”? Yeah, there was pressure. But the band is just doing its music. There wasn’t that much pressure. There was pressure getting together to produce another album. Of course, it took a good long time, and probably way too long to capitalize on what had gone before.

It was three years before Big Generator came out. Right. We spent an awful lot of time and money recording it because it started off in Italy at a castle in the middle of nowhere. It was just an odd situation with Trevor Horn, who probably still hated me. … At that point, I had co-written quite a lot of the material. Trevor [Rabin] and I had actually demoed the album before we ended up at the castle. It was sort of a change, really.

I love Big Generator. “Rhythm of Love,” ‘Big Generator,” “Love Will Find a Way,” and “Shoot High Aim Low” are fantastic songs. They are. It’s an under-estimated album, I think. What I think about it is that I like earlier mixes of it. I think the mix destroyed it a little bit for me. They just went in too far with remixing it. Some of the earlier mixes were, for me, a lot better and showed the album a lot better. I liked it.

Did you enjoy the tour? Yeah. It was fun. I liked it. There was oddness in the States that probably could have been different. Jon was having his own ideas when it came to portraying Big Generator. We had these inflatable, big balls hanging from the ceiling that had to be inflated. [Laughs] It was a little bit funny.

That sounds like Spinal Tap. Weren’t you almost a part of that movie? We were definitely an inspiration for Spinal Tap. And I was almost a part of it, yes. I was a friend of the drummer and he wanted me to come in. Thank goodness I didn’t do it. First of all, the guy they got [David Kaff] was perfect. Secondly, as a serious musician, to be tied into Spinal Tap could have been the kiss of death. I’ll never know.

How did you feel about Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe when they started doing that? Well, I didn’t think anything about it, really. Jon was being Jon, musicians being musicians. He did his own thing and he’s always done his own thing. You kind of go along with it. We were all situated at that time on the West Coast, really. Alan [White], Chris was living there, Trevor was living there. And I think that, pretty much, the idea was that we’d get another singer and see what happens. [Laughs] We were kind of busy doing that.

You auditioned new singers? Yeah, but I don’t quite remember … what’s his name from Supertramp.

Roger Hodgson? Yeah. Roger. He was a strong contender, but he didn’t really want … you know, the band was a little dysfunctional at that point. Chris was off in his own little world. We were fresh out of Big Generator and fresh out of good ideas. Nobody knew quite what to do. I have demos to prove it.

How did you feel about the Union idea when it was first floated? Someone came up with the bright idea of everyone playing together. We were told that it was probably not going to work and it was a bad idea and, “How could it possibly work?” [Laughs] Consequently, the financial deal was fairly minimal. And we all got together in Pensacola, Florida, and of course, it was a huge success.

When I interviewed Rick Wakeman a few years ago, he said he enjoyed the Union tour, but he hated the album. How did you feel? Well, I wasn’t a part of what had gone on on the recording for most of it. I had no idea what it was. From what I heard, a lot of Rick and a lot of Steve were replaced by other people, people that I know very well now.

It’s pretty funny that there were two keyboard players, two drummers, and two guitarists, but they still brought in outside people to play on the record. Yeah. It’s a mess and they tried to get it done. The thing that came out of it was that Steve’s replacement was Jimmy Haun, who is now the guitar player in the new Circa band. We’re playing together right now. And of course, Billy Sherwood’s brother [Michael Sherwood] plays most of the keys on Union. But I don’t know. That’s what I heard.

Tell me about the tour and how you and Rick learned to share the keyboard duties. Well, Rick’s a comedian, as you probably know, and nothing is ever that serious with Rick. He wasn’t drinking or being bad and naughty at that time. He had turned over a new leaf, but he’s still a really fun guy. If you can believe it, we’d never met. So meeting up in Pensacola was really something. And we got on really well.

People seem to think that you’re rivals and it’s not true. There’s probably a perception of that. People on the internet like to create those animosities between people, but it’s not true at all.

You became friends. Yeah. It was the easiest thing. We just said, “You kind of did that. Why don’t you do that?” I was playing a lot of Hammond on that tour anyway. It was divided up really simply. And, of course, Rick is a great player and plays all that Seventies Yes stuff like nobody can play it. We got on really well. Generally, the whole thing with eight guys really worked. Drum-wise, Bill was playing the electronic drums. Maybe the guitars were a little at odds.

I’m sure Steve didn’t love playing the Eighties stuff. No. He was not that thrilled about playing Eighties material, I don’t think. Steve’s got his thing. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. When we toured two years ago, we became very close.

The tour ends, and it reverts back to the Eighties lineup for Talk. What happened? Well, it was a record company saying, “Can you do an album?” And everyone was everywhere. Nobody knew what to do. Trevor [Rabin] was really coming into his own. It was the beginning of recording digitally. He’d set up a studio at his house. People started to really dial in their part. It was what has become normal. That was the beginning of it, though drums were recorded live in a studio, but not with a band. It was composing an album and it was Trevor’s thing.

This was 1994. It’s the grunge era and the appetite for new Yes music was pretty minimal. It was definitely minimal. The band was not that happy. The tour proved to really … it was the beginning of the end of that era.

You played 77 shows that year. It was a hard time? There were conflicts. It’s not easy to keep everyone happy. The album was not being received that well. I liked the tour. I only have that bootleg in Chile of the entire concert. I thought the band was actually great.

What did you do when the tour ended? I went into retirement. That was the beginning of Billy [Sherwood] playing with the band. It went into a whole new direction that I know nothing about. And it was quite a few years, really, until Billy got hold of me and persuaded me to unpack the Hammond.

During those years, did you think you were done playing music forever? It’s weird to contemplate that now since so much has happened between Circa and doing all those albums with Billy. But I thought it was over. I was happy retiring.

Billy pulled you back in. He really did. I had no inclination. And so we started working and I thought the first Circa album was pretty good. Billy is such a boss. He’s so talented and can do anything. He’s great in the studio.

How did you guys wind up working with William Shatner? He got together with Billy. The record company wanted him to do something. Basically, Billy wrote the album. I thought it was a pretty good album. And then we got the Circa band together and did a mini tour with him. William is pretty unpredictable, so you don’t really know where he’s going or where his head is at. We ended up doing the Christmas thing at the Hollywood parade. I actually thought it could have continued, but it was a weird concept.

It must be weird to be playing a show with Captain Kirk as the frontman. [Laughs] It was definitely an experience.

When Yes got inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017, I saw everyone in the band onstage besides you. I didn’t go.

Why? [Sighs] Well, you know, there’s the truth, there’s the near-truth, and probably what I’ve said before. Number one, they omitted Peter [Banks]. I tried to right that and make a little bit of a stink and a statement about that. I just thought it was wrong. I thought getting the award was great, but it would just wind up as bad vibes.

The band was very split at that point [into two competing bands]. I just knew they’d be at separate tables and that it would be a mess. I kind of knew that Billy was not going to be invited to play in the band. I was kind of projecting because I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I just made the decision to have my own party, which turned into a very good party. [Laughs]

They did play together, but I sensed the tension. It was like two bands thrown together. I can imagine. Actually, I haven’t watched it. I can’t bring myself to actually watch that. I don’t know. Steve playing bass? I don’t know. It’s gotta be a train wreck.

I imagine it’ll be the last time they all play together. Ah, yes. I would think so. But with Yes, you can never tell.

How were you pulled in yet again for the Cruise to the Edge and then the 50th-anniversary tour? Well, I’m not sure. I think it was just down to Steve. I think he thought it was a good idea. Enough time had gone by and I was sort of getting old. [Laughs] He probably thought, “Let’s rope him in for the last time.” I’m kidding, of course.

It was probably Steve. The fact was, Billy was in the band. Jay [Schellen], who is in Circa also, and who has been a friend of mine for years, is the drummer, really. I did think about it and I did reject the idea for quite a long time. But then, the concept of me just coming out at the end and making an appearance for the encore numbers, yeah. I thought it was probably a good idea.

And the cruise was the whole inspiration for me moving to Florida. And so a good thing came out of it. The cruise is out of Tampa. Instead of going back, I rented a car and came down here. I wound up on Siesta Key and loved it and six months later I was moving here.

The Cruise to the Edge changed your life. It really did. It added a lot, actually. And then it was very fun and the band asked me to do the anniversary tour.

You and Alan only played on the encores during the tour. Were the two of you just chilling backstage together most of the show? Yeah. There would be Alan and I in the dressing room drinking Stella.

Was it fun? You gotta love Alan. He’s a great guy and seen it all. And still playing, obviously, but he can’t play for a long time. He’s still playing really well. We were just having so much fun. I couldn’t believe how much fun it was. And of course, I had never met Geoff [Downes], ever. We just hit it off so great. It was one of those instant things. We became instant friends. I have so much regard for him.

So you really like one of the two Buggles, but not so much the other one. [Laughs] Yeah. How weird is that?

I’ve seen them play “Starship Trooper” and “Yours Is No Disgrace” with Geoff and with Rick. But when you came out and played your original parts, it was a whole other deal. I understand what you mean. I don’t know quite what it is, whether it’s the sound or the attitude. But playing it takes me back a long time. They were songs from The Yes Album. I loved it.

Do you see any chance of a future Union tour with you, Steve, Rick, Jon, Trevor, and Alan? No.

Why? I just don’t see it happening. I think the main reason I can come up with is that this band actually likes each other. They’re all good friends. Everybody gets along. Jay and Alan are close. As a band, it works.

I just think fans are frustrated because Jon is the lead singer and he wants back in the band, but they won’t let him. From a fan’s perspective, it’s like seeing the Stones and Mick isn’t there, but he wants to be. Yeah. I understand that. But the band works … it may not “work” for everyone, fans. But it just works together. Jon Davison is such a cool guy. Such a nice guy and a great singer. They do great justice to the music — I think they don’t want to lose that. Anderson can be a weird guy. There’s a lot of history. That’s really all I can come up with. The band just loves each other and has a great time together.

What are you working on now? Well, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and there’s a very important album that has been percolating and written and re-written for 20 years. It is a musical commemoration that takes you through that day. It’s pretty intense. It’s basically an orchestral album and I’m just at the end of finishing it now. I’m mixing the last tracks now.

Do you miss playing live? Not really. I didn’t think that I was going to until I got up there for the 50th-anniversary tour. And it was pretty nice to see all the old faces in the audience and to have an audience. It was pretty much fun. And of course, it was going to happen this year. Of course, everything stopped.

What do you want to accomplish in the next few years? Play tennis. Have fun here. I have a beautiful wife that is also a musician. We’re starting a new album. Play more tennis.

You are living in the right state if you want to play lots of tennis. Yeah. It’s perfect here. And if the band asks me to do something in the future, I think it’ll probably happen.

I think the Yes story is never quite done. There’s always one more chapter. That’s a good way of putting it. You’ve wrapped it up. There’s nothing more I can say.

Daniel Griffiths - Computer Music

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 10:47 PM

Keyboard legend Tony Kaye: “I get asked if I left Yes because of my disdain for the ‘new’ electronic gear - the Moog and the Mellotron - and there’s a lot of truth in that”

By Daniel Griffiths (Computer Music) published September 10, 2021

Most famous for his early work with (and subsequent returns to) prog giants Yes, the Hammond maestro is back with an album to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11

After famously leaving Yes due his desire to steadfastly stick to his Hammond, Kaye subsequently embraced the synth and went on to work with some of the biggest names in rock, making a triumphant return to Yes on their biggest album, 90125, in 1983.

Now, the original keyboard wizard returns with his first music since 1996. End of Innocence is an album 20 years in the making, inspired by the events of 9/11 and released on the 20th anniversary of that day.

We caught up with the English prog legend to discuss gear then and now, and what it was like writing, recording and touring with some of the biggest names in rock.

Your new album is inspired by the tragic events of 9/11. After stopping in 1996 you’re now making music again?

“Yes, it’s amazing how it transpired. Along with everyone else I watched what happened that day, and it made me go to the yard and take out my keyboards, which I hadn’t done for years.

“Largely, the album started out as a classical, orchestral thing. I went to the garage and started playing and there are three or four tracks that came out of that day - the day after 9/11.”

You’re famous for your piano and Hammond organ sounds and it’s great to hear these on the new album. You really went back to some old favourites.

“I did. They’re still my favourites. I love the Hammond and, of course, I had to get a little classical piano in there so the track Let’s Roll was my outlet for the piano.

There are so many interesting textures on the elements. Non-western textures, classical elements…

“It started out with old Yes tour equipment. All the modules MIDI’d together which I’d been using. Roland and Korg… In the beginning I put together whatever I had - I wasn’t very specific. I had a practice keyboard that I used to have on the road - just a cheap Casio. So it started off hap-hazzardly but really came together down the line.

“Most of the sounds I would say are from the [Roland] Fantom X7. I love that keyboard. It has such a range of sounds, orchestral sounds and non-western sounds. I got inspired by the flutes and pan flutes that are scattered on the album. It gave me the eastern sense that I wanted.”

What are you using to record these days?

“For the Yes album, Talk, I was working with Trevor Rabin and that was very much the start of us using Digital Performer for recording. For this album I transferred everything I’d done to Digital Performer.

“The song on the album, Sweetest Dreams, which my wife sang on, was actually recorded on an eight-track cassette. I transferred it, but I kept it as it was. I thought about re-recording some parts as the project went on but it was what it was and I found I didn’t want to change it.”

Let’s go back to the start. What first got you into playing keyboards?

“My grandmother was a classical pianist and I learnt classical piano til I was 15-16 years old. But my first real musical experience was with the Hammond, at my first real rock ‘n’ roll club.

“It was the first time I’d gone to see a band - The Graham Bond Organisation. Graham was a jazz organist [with Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums] and he was one of the first to crank the Hammond through a Leslie cabinet and turn it into a lead instrument. The track 285 Fulton Street on the End of Innocence album -which is a jazz/avant-garde crazy mish-mash - is a homage to Graham Bond.

“And then there were other organ players I saw when I first moved to London. Brian Auger, Keith Emerson, Jon Lord… Various people, all of whom were using Hammond.”

Your early big break was working with Yes, of course. What was it like writing, recording and performing back then?

“Well, the third album - the Yes album - that was the first album where we used multitrack. The first two albums were really just recorded live at a radio recording studio. They were recorded in a day. It was only when we were recording the third album that we started exploring more, with more sounds, and that continued even more with the albums Fragile and Close to the Edge. All with [Producer] Eddie Offord at the helm.

“But The Yes Album was a very special album. It was the beginning of the Yes ‘road’… And it was very nice to be able to play those songs again having played Yes’s 50th anniversary, which brought me back into the world of playing live and being together with Yes. For the first time I got some enthusiasm that I took to this new album.”

And you’re using new gear alongside your piano and Hammond?

“Something I get asked about is my leaving Yes because of my disdain for the ‘new’ electronic gear - the Moog and the Mellotron - and there’s a lot of truth in that. I did eventually use them in my work with Badger, but I was somewhat of a purist. I just loved the textures and the sound of the Hammond. The ‘new’ equipment didn’t really appeal to me. And, of course, it was all out of tune. So it was very difficult for me to get into.”

After leaving Yes you moved to LA and worked with some great names.

“I moved to LA in 1975. We recorded the second Badger album in New Orleans and I loved America. I just wanted to live there. So I went back to the UK, sold up and moved to LA. And almost immediately got asked to join the Bowie tour - the Station to Station album. Of course that was an amazing opportunity. I had a great time with a great band on a great tour.”

How did you find those long world tours?

“It all comes down to getting on stage every night and playing. It’s the rest of it that can be a little daunting. I was glad to be out of that and I retired at the end of the ‘70s. Any musician will tell you that they miss performing on stage, that’s what we do, but I was just fed up with the whole business. It wasn’t just being out on the road. I wanted out.

“And then I bumped into Tommy from Badfinger and he brought me back. We were friends, so I played with them, but I’d retired even then. That’s when I first learned to play tennis. And it became a second life for me. And I got to compete and play and I had a great time. I didn’t miss anything.”

Then Yes came calling again? For the 90125 album?

“Well, that band started out as the group Cinema. It wasn’t a Yes project at all. We rehearsed the album for nine or ten months without Jon [Anderson].

“Originally Trevor Horn was the singer and he’d been in Yes before of course, but that didn’t quite work out. They were mostly Trevor Rabin’s songs and so he became the lead singer. It was mostly recorded apart from a couple of songs before Jon even joined.”

Turning Cinema into Yes can’t have been a decision that you all took lightly.

“There was a certain degree of corporate interference, shall we say. We were signed with Atlantic records - the band had always been with Atlantic - and it was a natural thing. Jon loved the album and did his thing at the end and the record company was ecstatic and persuaded us to change the name back to Yes.

“And thanks to Trevor Rabin it was a musical rebirth of Yes. Which - I have to say - that a lot of dedicated Yes fans didn’t really like! But it did bring in a whole lot of new fans and it was a great album. It paid homage to the band of the ‘70s but it had all that new music and, of course, it was a hit record. It was a great time for the band, it was a very popular tour and we all had a great time.”

And after Yes you retired… again?

“Well, Trevor [Rabin] and I left the band after the Talk tour in 1996 and I made no music. I just didn’t have a life. I had been on the road for a long, long time. It had been a great run, a great life and I enjoyed every minute of it but I really wanted to get back to doing nothing. And playing tennis.”

The new album is your first music since then. How’s your home recording setup?

“Having a home studio has two aspects to it. There’s no doubt that when a band plays together and rehearses together and records an album together that it becomes something else. Recording separately as a band is not an optimal thing.

“But on a solo level I’m very happy with my recording setup and my keyboards. It’s a perfect thing. You can record whenever you want and, with Digital Performer, you have it all there and it sounds beautiful. I’ve never been much of a sound guy but this album was a chance to really learn how to record. It was a good thing.”

Do you have a favourite piece of gear? Something that you would never get rid of?

“Well, they’re not like guitars or saxophones or violins, you know. Keyboards are a little dispensable in that they’re upgraded all the time.

“I’ve got my Roland stuff and I love my Hammond soundalike, the Roland VK-8. I put that through the ventilator Leslie gizmo. For me that’s the best of all the soundalikes.

“Originally when Circa were playing live, right at the beginning I used it through a Leslie cabinet. A Leslie just goes together with a Hammond whether it’s a real Hammond or not. But they are a little impractical. So when the Ventilator came out… You’ve got the sound of the Leslie, you’ve got the rotors of the Leslie… the distortion… You can, if you mess around with it, get a decent Hammond sound. It’s not a real Hammond but I enjoy playing it and that’s what’s on this album.”

As someone who’s enjoyed a long and successful career - what advice would you give to anyone starting out?

“I’d tell them to join up with Jon Anderson! He seems to get these great young musicians out to play with him on stage. What a great thing to do. Young musicians need encouragement to pursue a career in music - especially rock music. I have a couple of friends that I try to inspire down the right path - get them into playing rock.”

And who do you personally find inspirational these days?

“Well, a few people have said that the new album reminds them of Vangelis. I can see that and I’m a great fan of Vangelis. I loved his work on Blade Runner, so I think I have a little influence from him. I got to see him live once and it was very inspirational.”

You’ve played with so many great people. Is there anyone you’d like to play with that you haven’t as yet?

“Yes. The Rolling Stones. I’ve got that blues thing in me! Right from the beginning. I’m not that great a blues piano player but I was certainly listening to that music. And I used to go see the Stones right at the beginning. When they played Eel Pie Island in London. I always wanted to play with the Stones. That would be the greatest thing.

So now you’re back to recording, and you’ve got your new album out, do you think you’ll continue?

“I think it’s a one off really. Just because of what it is. But who knows? Maybe next time, I’ll try something completely different.”

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Tony Kaye’s debut solo album, End Of Innocence, is out now on Spirit Of Unicorn Music

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Daniel Griffiths is a veteran journalist who has worked on some of the biggest entertainment, tech and home brands in the world. He's interviewed countless big names, and covered countless new releases in the fields of music, videogames, movies, tech, gadgets, home improvement, self build, interiors and garden design. He’s the ex-Editor of Future Music and ex-Group Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Musician, Guitarist, Guitar World, Computer Music and more. He renovates property and writes for MusicRadar.com.

Daniel Griffiths - Computer Music

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 10:56 PM

Yes keyboard giant Geoff Downes: “At one stage I had up to 28 keyboards out on the road - I filled up half a semi-truck on my own!”

By Daniel Griffiths (Computer Music) published September 30, 2021

“I think there was a bit of cockfighting going on! Certainly with Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman"

With a musical legacy over 50 years old and roots that reach into almost every rock family tree, the famous revolving door policy at club Yes means that this multi-headed prog monster only ever gets stronger.

Yes circa 2021 unites members both new and old for The Quest, a new album with a classic take on the band’s sound.

As an early exponent of the 1980s’ new synthesizer tech, Geoff Downes first came to prominence alongside future super-producer Trevor Horn as part of new-wave duo The Buggles. But his early influences, remarkable keyboard skills and classical training soon conspired to make him the ‘go-to’ keyboard maestro for some of rock’s hardest hitting, longest running, and most respected bands.

High time, then, for a catch-up...

The Quest has a great mix of classic and modern keyboard sounds. What’s the Yes keyboard rig like these days?

“What was nice with this album was to go back to fundamentals in lots of ways. So there’s a lot of piano and Hammond organ and Minimoog. It’s really a ‘retro look’ in many respects. If you look at when Yes started out with Tony Kaye on keyboards it was very much based around Hammond and acoustic piano and those two instruments take centre stage for me.

“But of course there’s stuff that I like to add. I’m very much into the technology of software synths and the comprehensive emulations of older analogue instruments. So it’s a mixture, really, of analogue and digital. That’s something I’ve always been very interested in.”

What’s your preferred source for that classic Hammond sound?

“We hired in a vintage B3 and that’s something that’s very close to my heart. I think that Yes music throughout the generations has always featured the Hammond organ. Certainly Rick Wakeman was a big Hammond exponent. And Patrick Moraz and myself on the Drama album, there’s a lot of Hammond on that.

“It’s very much an instrument that blends well with the rest of the band and the rest of the instruments. It doesn’t get in the way of the guitar or the bass. It has its own space.”

Are you still using a big keyboard rig live?

“I still like to have hands-on stuff. That’s why I take about a dozen keyboards with me still. That ability to grab something quickly… Yes music is very musically complex. There’s a lot of switching parts and different sounds coming in. Mellotrons, and all of this kind of thing. So it’s good to have those to hand with the sounds available.

“If you’re working with a couple of keyboards you have to be pretty clever with layers and so on. Which I’ve done in the past, but Yes music is a very full-bodied sound and so I think that to have an acoustic piano, Hammond organ, Moog, a brass synth, a string synth and string samples all on different keyboards is how I prefer to approach it live.

“But certainly - when we’re recording with the band or working solo - there’s a lot more time to really experiment and work on sounds ‘in the box’.”

Back in the day with musicians like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, there seemed to be a bit of an ‘arms race’ with the amount of hardware being taken on stage.

“I think there was a bit of cock fighting going on! Certainly with those two. They were both people that I very much looked up to and they were the first guys that really took keyboards into the limelight. Before Keith and Rick the piano was just rattling away in the corner and it was the guitarist who was swinging the axe, chucking the shapes and pulling all the women. These guys came up and took the keyboard to a whole new level.

“Keith Emerson was a showman. Straddling the Hammond organ, playing it back to front, slamming on the reverb unit. That was great. It really inspired me. When I saw The Nice at the Isle of Wight festival around 1968 it blew my mind. Seeing Keith Emerson chucking the Hammond around. He was the star of the show.

“I got to know Keith. And Rick, Tony Kaye, Patrick Moraz. I’ve got to know all of them over the years. It was great to go from seeing Keith and then having him as a great friend. A real dream come true for me.”

So how did you get started? Why keyboards?

“My Dad was a church organist and I would sit there with him and turn the pages. The organ was obviously a classical organ at that point and I was singing in choirs and would pump the organ bellows. I always wanted to have a career in music but not so much in the classical field.

“I started to get into bands in my early teens and that gave me the inspiration to move on. I borrowed a Vox Jaguar when I was in a skiffle group when I was 14. I got my first Hammond organ when I was 16, which my Mum bought me. I was destined to do it. I went to music college and studied keyboards and piano and organ. I was constantly surrounded by music and that’s a great thing to have in your childhood and teens.”

Your first big step into the public eye was with The Buggles of course. How did you and Trevor Horn get together?

“I moved to London once I’d graduated from music college and Melody Maker was the Bible for the musician back then. That’s how you got work. There was a whole column - ‘musicians wanted’. I would look through that and there was an ad saying ‘chart act wants keyboard player’. And it was from Trevor who was running a band for Tina Charles who’d just had a big hit record - I Love to Love - all across Europe.

“And Trevor gave me the job. Then when Tina came off the road and stopped to have kids Trevor and I stuck together. We started working together, rescuing people’s dodgy demos! Trevor would be producing and I would do all the music and we’d make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. In the end we thought, instead of doing all this for other people, why don’t we do something for ourselves? And that’s how the whole Buggles thing came about.”

And there was a real explosion of new music technology at the time...

“Oh yeah. We were really technology-driven. We wanted to get every sound out of every gadget we could. When we were doing that first album - when we got signed to Island Records - we got signed as producers and writers and artists. So when we started to record that album, and in particular for Video Killed the Radio Star, we really pushed the boat out.

“We went to all the big studios in London. We drove the engineers mad because we were trying crazy things that the guys at EMI or Abbey Road hadn’t done before. They were very strait-laced in their approach, then these two guys off the street came in with a record deal, telling them how to get all these crazy sounds…

“We were very much into the studio. The instruments we were using like the Minimoog and the Solina Strings, I used them to create our own ‘wall of sound’. It was very important to The Buggles that we had that ‘technology edge’. Using all kinds of delays and distortion to get something different. “

Would you describe yourself as a player or an engineer back then?

“The two things are not disconnected. I think that I like to be able to use the technology in a good way, in an artistic way. I don’t see the two things as being disjointed. Sometimes people are a ‘musician’. They can play very very fast runs on the guitar, but they haven’t got a good guitar sound. You’ve got to have a combination of the two things where you’re able to create your own feel and your own sound but at the same time you need a certain amount of technique in order to be able to pull it off.”

The classic song of that era was, of course, Video Killed the Radio Star. Was that just one of many songs you were working on at the time?

“I think we always knew that that was the leader. That was the one that got us a deal with Island in the first place. Chris Blackwell, the head of Island Records, heard the demo and told the UK office to sign us lock, stock and barrel. We took the demo around to a lot of places and got rejected until Chris came in and said, ‘we see this, we see what you’re doing here’ and we were snapped up.

“On the strength of Video we knew that we had to pull the rest of the album out of the bag, but that one was the one that took up all of our time. It was the first single. It went to number one when we had the rest of the album still to consider. It was the kickoff for both of our careers, Trevor as a producer and me as a keyboard player.”

And it was the first song played on MTV.

“And that’s a Trivial Pursuit question! It was a point of history for Trevor and myself. It was the first music played on MTV and the intro is all on keyboards. But when that happened Video had been out for two years and at that time MTV was only on a few cable networks. It wasn’t even in New York.

“So at the time, it was something of an afterthought. We’d already done the Yes thing; Trevor had produced Dollar and I was making the first Asia album. So it was something someone said to us one day. “There’s a new channel started up in America and they used your video to start the whole thing.” And I thought “Ah, that’s nice.” At that time nobody knew it was going to snowball and six months later it was everywhere.”

Tell us about the transition of Buggles to Yes. That seemed quite a leap at the time. How did that move come about?

“Well, it was down to the fact that we were managed by the same management company. The Buggles and Yes were stablemates and that’s how we got to meet the guys, in the management’s offices.

“At that point they’d just come back from Paris, from the aborted sessions there with [producer] Roy Thomas Baker. Rick had gone off to do solo stuff and Jon was doing Jon and Vangelis. There were just the three guys left and Trev being a singer and myself being a keyboard player, there was that opportunity to work together.

“And they really loved The Age of Plastic album and asked if we’d like to do some writing for them. That’s how we got into the rehearsal studio. We made I Am A Camera which turned into Into The Lens. Machine Messiah - Trevor and I had quite a big hand in that. We just joined forces and then Chris [Squire] said ‘This is going really well. Why don’t you guys join us and we’ll call it Yes and we’ll go out?’ There was no secret formula. It’s like we morphed into them.”

And then there was the Asia album. That was a huge record, especially in the States.

“Yeah, it was the biggest album of 1982. Which, considering it was our debut album, is pretty amazing. I think a lot of people think that it was by these ‘four prog heroes’… Though not so much myself. Despite being in Yes I wasn’t ‘prog royalty’ like the other guys. It was just very natural. It was a great thing.

“The thing that clicked for me was when I started to work with John [Wetton] and those songs became the fabric of that first album. Heat of the Moment, Sole Survivor, Only Time Will Tell. The record label started seeing this and saying ‘this could be pretty big’.

“It was a perfect storm for us. We were the first band signed to a new label [Geffen] and they had a lot of money to throw at promoters and publicity. We had the material. We looked the part. We didn’t look like a bunch of guys from the ‘70s with beards and pullovers! We were a summer band. It was goodtime music. There were a lot of things going for us at the time and that’s why it took off in the way that it did.”

It really set the tone for the time. A modern rock sound. A lot of it is really keyboard led.

“At that time I was really building up my arsenal of keyboards. I had these big sounds. I had the very first [Sequential Circuits] Prophet-10 in the UK and it was really groundbreaking. I had the Fairlight and that was a very original sound to hear. The intro to Only Time Tell, with the horns from the Fairlight with the Minimoog. I was using all this stuff. Anything I could get my hands on to create something fresh and unique.”

Is there anything from that era that you still have?

“I have a few bits and bobs but I got rid of most of it. It was too complicated to store it all and too complicated to fix it when things went wrong. That was a problem with a lot of the old gear. It didn’t last very well - especially on the road, and I took a lot of stuff out on the road. At some stage I had up to 28 keyboards out. I filled up half a semi-truck on my own!

That magic number 28. Wasn’t that the world record for keyboards on stage?

“I think so, yeah. I don’t know anyone who’s ever had more than that. That was on the Asia tour in 1983, in Japan, live from the Budokan. I had four remote keyboards, bass pedals… all kinds of stuff. Those [Moog] Taurus pedals used to shake the auditorium. They sounded great.

“I’d certainly still like to have a Solina - or the ARP String Ensemble as they were also called. I’ve still got a Minimoog and that’s something that I’ll always cherish the sound of. But the Prophet-10 was the big sound that I liked to have under my fingertips. It was a power synth. You could put two sounds either side so you could have a big brass undercurrent on one side and a string sound for the crash on the other. Good times. I really enjoyed it.”

As a great soloist is there any particular instrument that you like to solo with?

“Well, every keyboard feels different so they require a different approach depending on what you’re doing on it. Certainly the Minimoog has a very light action. You could play a lot faster than you could on a weighted action keyboard. There was no resistance. Generally I do prefer a weighted action because you can get a lot more expression out of them.

“And the Hammond is a totally different technique from any other instrument. You‘ve got to change stops… You have to take your hand off. You never have that ‘two hands all the time’. You’re constantly adjusting things, speeding Leslies up, slowing them down. People think that you’ve got a keyboard and you make it sound like an organ. But it’s not like that.

“Things like the [Hohner] Clavinet D6 for instance had a clunky springy action to it that required a technique to get a good part out of it. I just built the techniques up, so I could play each intuitively.”

What’s it like being part of Yes? You’re all great players. Are you fighting for attention when you go in to write and record?

“This particular line-up is the longest standing Yes line-up in its history which is quite amazing, since we sadly lost Chris [Squire] in 2015. It’s a great feeling being in a band like Yes. It’s an ‘out of world’ experience when the band is on fire. You get carried along on the wave of it. They’re such a musical band. A powerful band. A dynamic band. The history of music in Yes goes back over 50 years. It’s incredible.

“You dig into those songs and realise the contributions that all the different members have made over the years. It’s a great experience to play that music on a big stage, with a big PA… The bass is growling, the drums are powering and Steve is thrashing his guitar notes out. It’s a great feeling.”

For the new album, The Quest, were you still able to record as a band?

“We did some of it after the alleviation of lockdown. I did manage to work with Steve and Jon [Davison] on certain things. The rhythm section were grounded in America so they had to record their parts over in Los Angeles: Billy [Allen], Alan [White] and Jay [Schellen].

“It wasn’t a painful way of working. We were very communicative. Our modus operandi these days is to utilise the ability to transfer files, to bounce ideas around.”

One last question. With so many line-up changes over the years. What’s your favourite Yes line-up ever?

“I can’t deny that the Drama line-up was my particular baptism of fire, going from a studio musician to suddenly being thrown into the spotlight. So that was an incredible thing for me to be included in that line-up.

“But I think you’ve got to look at the classic line-up of Rick, Alan, Chris, Steve and Jon Anderson as being the definitive line-up that did those great albums in the ‘70s. From Fragile to [Tales from] Topographic [Oceans] to Going For The One. There’s some incredible material on those albums.”

Are there plans to tour The Quest?

“Yeah. We’ve got a fantastic line-up. We’re hopeful that we can get this album out there and show people what we’re capable of.”

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New Yes album The Quest is out on 1 October.

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Daniel Griffiths is a veteran journalist who has worked on some of the biggest entertainment, tech and home brands in the world. He's interviewed countless big names, and covered countless new releases in the fields of music, videogames, movies, tech, gadgets, home improvement, self build, interiors and garden design. He’s the ex-Editor of Future Music and ex-Group Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Musician, Guitarist, Guitar World, Computer Music and more. He renovates property and writes for MusicRadar.com.

Jordan Rudess

Friday, September 16, 2022 7:07 PM

DREAM THEATER KEYBOARDIST JORDAN RUDESS INTERVIEWS YES BASSIST BILLY SHERWOOD (VIDEO)

June 13, 2021

Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess has uploaded a portion of his recent Patreon interview with veteran prog multi-instrumentalist Billy Sherwood (Yes, Asia, World Trade) to YouTube. Check it out below. For the full interview go to Rudess' Patreon page here:

[Link]

Rod Liddle - The Spectator

Saturday, October 22, 2022 1:43 PM

Yes man: Rick Wakeman on punk and prog

‘People choose the advice that suits them, including the politicians’

March 9, 2021

Written by: Rod Liddle

‘Classic rock’ is a term applied to the sort of chest-beating rawk that people of my generation admire: the Who, Bad Company, Blue Oyster Cult insisting, in timely fashion, that we should embrace death, and Lynyrd Skynyrd informing us, with unforeseen irony, that they can fly, free as a bird.

The classic keyboard player Rick Wakeman, once of the classic rock band Yes, has curated a triple album of classic rock from that most magical (for me) of decades, the 1970s. It’s called 70s Rock Down and is released in CD format on the new label Xploded TV. Why on CD, given that so much music today is simply digitally downloaded? Because Rick and the team are well aware that Dad, or Granddad, is sick to the back teeth of having to ask the kids how to download stuff. We are the generation that likes something solid in its paws. So, 60 tracks designed to ease this vulnerable section of the population through Britain’s COVID lockdowns; hence the title. All of those aforementioned bands are included, along with Deep Purple and Status Quo and — well, we’ll come to the rest in a minute. But one genre is wholly absent, as I point out to Rick during an early morning phone call.

‘Where’s the punk, Wakeman? Did 1977 not happen in your universe?’ There’s a weary growl down the phone. ‘I get pilloried for hating punk, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. I was the guy who got the Tubes [Los Angeles kind-of punks] signed.’

It is true Rick was not, in 1977, the most fashionable kid on the block. Partly it was the sweeping blond mane stretching down almost to his coccyx, partly his membership in hippy prog warblers Yes, and also his own solo career, which consisted of making very pretty piano and synthesizer pieces about King Henry VIII’s wives. Hardly ‘White Riot’, is it? And then there was his infamous involvement in the sacking of the Sex Pistols.

Rick takes up the story. Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and co. had been signed by Rick’s label, A&M, in March 1977. ‘I was at A&M when they were signed by the British branch. The American head office thought they didn’t fit with the label’s image and told London to get rid of them. But they also wanted to exonerate the London office. So they came up with the idea of getting me and Richard Carpenter to say: if they stay, we go. It was a total fabrication.’ They chose Rick because a) he fitted the bill and b) he lived miles from anywhere in Switzerland and wouldn’t find out about it all. But he did find out about it and went berserk. He ended up leaving the label because of the misrepresentation, not because he disliked being on the same label as the fragrant Mr Vicious. Shortly afterwards, the Pistols were sacked from A&M.

But back to the album. Wakeman concedes that maybe ‘London Calling’, by the Clash, or something by the Jam could have been included. But still, not much that came out of punk has endured, if we’re honest. The selections were made by Wakeman in conjunction with two music industry geezers, and he reckons that a good 10 of the songs he wouldn’t have chosen himself: that’s the problem with democracy. It is magnanimous of him to have allowed Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s crunchy anthem to stammering, ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’. It is taken from their album Not Fragile, which was itself a riposte to Yes’s rather winsome album Fragile — a lumberjack’s retort to epicene limey prog.
The 60 tracks major on hard rock with surprisingly few forays into that dismal blind alley heavy metal, and rather less prog than one might have expected from its arch exponent, although Yes’s surprise 1977 hit, ‘Wonderous Stories’, is there and Emerson, Lake and Palmer make an unwanted appearance. But then, the fun of such a compilation comes as much in disparaging the stuff one hates — such as Foreigner’s hideous ‘Cold As Ice’ (imaginative metaphor, gentlemen) and Geordie one-hit wonder John Miles’s ‘Music’, with its crushingly banal opening lines: ‘Music was my first love/ and it will be my last, / Music of the future/ and music of the past.’ Oh DO go on. (And he does, for six bloody minutes.) But it is pleasing they’ve found room for Jo Jo Gunne’s ‘Run, Run, Run’ — hardly a song at all, just a joyful cacophony of slide guitar full of spirit, literally and metaphorically. And indeed the Knack’s dimbo teen powerpop, ‘My Sharona’. I would have liked a bit of Captain Beefheart, Neil Young and maybe the New Riders of the Purple Sage, but I don’t think any of those really fit the template. I don’t think the good Captain’s ‘Dachau Blues’ would necessarily lift the lockdown gloom, still less the shrieks of ‘Bat Chain Puller’.

Wakeman had intended to launch the album with a live concert at the London Palladium, but that’s not going to happen. Rick is not a big admirer of lockdown. ‘People choose the advice that suits them, including the politicians. This [lockdown] has killed everyone in the music business. There’s nobody to help them. It is always the musicians who step forward when money needs to be raised for charity. But now it’s the musicians losing their livelihoods, there’s nobody there. So many musicians in dire straits, so many. The politicians need to understand that the world needs music, the world needs the arts. I know the damage this has caused. But I’m not giving up.’

I once went to see Yes, when I was 13, at Newcastle City Hall. Rick wasn’t there. He’d left the band as a consequence of its unfathomably awful album, Tales From Topographic Oceans. Rick always liked a good tune and this double album didn’t have any. The band came out of pods on stage, just like in Spinal Tap, and I was bored into stupefaction. ‘We were all on different planets back then,’ he laughs, ‘and we didn’t even know what planets they were.’ He rejoined them a few years later once they’d got that topographic nonsense out of their systems. A huge talent, Wakeman, an engaging interviewee and a refugee from that rather wonderful decade of power cuts, glam rock and terrorism, the 1970s.

Rick Wakeman’s triple album, 70s Rock Down, is out now on Xploded TV. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2021 US edition.

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By Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator. He writes a weekly column in the magazine, as well as contributing to The Sunday Times and The Sun.