“We used to travel in Clark Gable’s Cadillac, refurbished by Rolls Royce. We had a TV in there, and two bars, just for the band”: Secrets of Rick Wakeman’s excess
By Henry Yates Prog
published 19 July 2023
Keyboard icon's grandiose live shows lit up the 70s, but behind the pomp and majesty lay bad reviews, heart attacks and near ruin
While the music of Yes has always been large-scale material, former keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s ambitions went even larger. In the 70s he began delivering massive, complex live shows based on his epic concept albums, even though doing so meant he risked his home, his health and his reputation. In 2012 he and his colleagues looked back on a decade of excess, and Wakeman insisted he had no regrets, explaining: “I never believed in short-changing people, and still don’t.”
Ask Rick Wakeman if there’s some underlying psychological reason for the opulence, the grandeur, the sheer spectacle of his infamous live shows, and he’ll offer up a blokey shrug.
“Not really, I just like grandiose. I’ve loved the idea of telling stories with music since I was about eight, when my father introduced me to Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf, but over the years, I got bored going to concerts. The music was great, but I came to the conclusion that a concert should be a multi-purpose entertainment.”
There have been plenty of other artists who went the extra mile: Pink Floyd and The Wall; David Bowie and the Glass Spider; AC/DC and Rosie. Still, when it comes to the multi-sensory assault-and-battery of eyes, ears and brains – not to mention a flag planted deep in your memory banks, for good or bad – nothing has comes close to Wakeman’s epics. “Dad doesn’t do things by halves,” agrees son Adam Wakeman, a note of baffled endearment in his voice.
That’s the only understatement you’ll find in this piece. The truth is, Wakeman does things by multiples: whether that’s wives, knights, ice-dancers, dinosaurs, cameramen or choirboys. To this prog rock ringmaster, the industry-standard format of four blokes in jeans plugging away on a bare stage is anathema. “How boring would that be?” he grins.
Even in the Yes years, hints of grandiosity were there if you squinted, with a caped Wakeman presiding over his paddock of synths. But it wasn’t until 1973, when his solo career left the blocks with The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, that he took a first stab at the huge-time. In an unprecedented move by a British rock star, Wakeman requested to perform Henry at its spiritual home of Hampton Court Palace, and was duly turned down (“The idea of having a rock concert there was tantamount to treason,” he notes). For a less tenacious visionary, that might well have been that. Wakeman, however, was just getting started.
In retrospect, the only thing that was small about 1974’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth was the project’s beginnings. The band for Wakeman’s second solo album had met in inauspicious circumstances, at a boozer in Buckinghamshire where a gang of mid-table session men played low-key jams on Sunday nights. “Rick just turned up one night in his white Rolls and said, ‘Can I sit in?’” recalls bassist Roger Newell. “That’s how it all started”.
Wakeman’s grand entrance was a telling sign of the direction Journey was headed. With a full orchestra, choir and narrator integral to the music, the payroll was deemed too costly and sprawling to fit in a studio, so recording moved instead to the Royal Festival Hall, for twin concerts on January 18, 1974, where crowds of 3,000 watched the London Symphony Orchestra and English Chamber Choir super-size Wakeman’s musical vision. Even then, financing the spectacle required Wakeman to flog his cars and remortgage his house – soon to become a familiar theme.
“I remember Rick coming into our dressing room at the Royal Festival Hall,” says Newell. “And he was obviously nervous, bless him, because this was the first thing completely under his name. And the road crew had put up a dartboard, so we’re like, ‘Well, do you want to throw a few darts…?’”
“Despite Rick’s rather lofty abilities,” adds drummer Barney James, “there were several what you’d describe as basic, blokey factors.”
“Then we went out onstage,” continues Newell, “and there’s Steve Howe in the audience, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Ringo, McCartney with Linda, politicians, Peter Sellers with Britt Ekland, and God knows who else. Just faces everywhere. That was when we all went, ‘Blimey, this is serious’. I think it’s only then that it really hit us.”
“I did realise then that I was into playing with the big boys, and the high budgets,” recalls James. “We all had to follow Rick into his dreams.”
The Royal Festival Hall gave Wakeman a taste for the epic, and from there, Journey rolled across the planet, choir and strings attached: a whirlwind of logistics and luxuries that fairly haemorrhaged cash. “It didn’t make me stressed at all,” Wakeman insists. “Back then, you toured to ‘advertise’ your music. You sold records off the back of these tours. I always knew that Journey as a tour would lose money, but I also believed it’d help sell the albums, which it did, and it undoubtedly sold far more than it would have if I hadn’t toured.”
He shrugs: “Journey was recorded with an orchestra and choir, so that’s what I toured with. I never believed in short-changing people, and still don’t.”
That went for the band, too. “For the Journey tour, we used to travel in Clark Gable’s Cadillac,” beams Newell, “which had been refurbished by Rolls Royce. We had a TV in there, and two bars, just for the band. Wherever we went, we were always picked up from home and chauffeur-driven. When we went to the States, the band travelled in their own plane, and the orchestra flew in the plane as well. Most of them were coke fiends. They were nuts!”
The Journey tour reached critical mass with a show at the Crystal Palace Bowl in July 1974, complete with inflatable dinosaurs, and the grand finale of Wakeman collapsing over his synths, suffering the first of his heart attacks. Did it feel like time to pare things back, perhaps? “Not at all,” he replies.
No kidding. As vast as Journey was, it’s but a pub gig in an upstairs room next to Wakeman’s most opulent hour. Ask the average progger about 1975’s The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table, and chances are, they’ll cite the shows before the album. “My dad says that people come up to him in the street, and they remember the show on ice, because it was just so ridiculous,” says Adam. “Brilliantly ridiculous: that’s what I mean. You know, it was just such a bizarre thing to do.”
The band had been incorporating the Arthur material into concerts for some time, but by May 1975 Wakeman was eager to play a dedicated concert in Britain, on a lofty scale, putting enough bums on seats to satisfy promoter Harvey Goldsmith (“Harvey Goldmine, we used to call him,” says Newell). Wakeman’s management pushed for the Royal Albert Hall; the keyboardist insisted on three nights at Wembley Arena. There was just one minor detail.
“The ice was an accident,” admits Wakeman, “because the time I wanted to do the Arthur shows was just before the Ice Follies were going to play Wembley and the ice rink was in place. I said it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“So it was this weird situation,” recalls Newell. “They said, ‘Well, look, if you’re going to do Arthur, it’s going to have to be on ice.’ So at that point, Rick just said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!’ We were all going, ‘Well, it sounds stupid… but why not?’ I mean, it’s a giggle. Those shows were a lot of fun.”
The bean-counters at A&M, too, were surprisingly laissez-faire – no doubt because Wakeman had staked his own cash. “I don’t think they cared as long as I sold records and made them money,” he says. “A lot of the people who worked at A&M loved what I did and were tremendously supportive. My accountant thought I was completely mad, and the management did shake their heads on more than one occasion. But there were so many exciting possibilities back then, and I grabbed them with both hands. I wasn’t being told what to do by record companies and management at the time. You had freedom to do what you wanted – and so I did.”
And how. Wakeman and his six-piece band were just one cog in this son et lumière spectacular. “If I recall,” he calculates, “there were around 72 in the orchestra, 64 in the English Chamber Choir and 16 in the bass choir. I recall 60-plus ice skaters and a crew of 50. I had a tremendous choreographer who worked with the skaters, who’d come from all over the world. I learned very quickly that it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle putting these extravaganzas together, and the secret was to get the right people involved, who could visualise the finished article the same way you could.”
“Arthur was just this crazy show,” smiles Adam, “with loads of people dressed up as horses, and knights, and shit like that. Back in the 70s, putting on a show and doing it on ice wasn’t practical and wasn’t really feasible, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, he wanted to do it – so they did it.”
“The funniest thing,” continues Newell, “is that Rick said, ‘Look, there’s gonna be a lot of girls skating round while we’re playing: what should they wear?’ Of course, we’re young guys, so we say, ‘stockings and suspenders’. And that’s what they wore for one of the numbers! I don’t recall stockings and suspenders coming into Arthurian legend, but, hey, it does now!”
Despite one ignominious incident when his cape got trapped in an elevated synth (“I was left hanging in mid-air!”), Wakeman admits he was surprised that such a complex show functioned at all, let alone that he enjoyed the Wembley dates. His band have their own take on it: “Absolute fucking chaos!” says James of the first night. “There were two elements that made it difficult. First, we had to condense the length of the concert. Then we had a French TV company come in, and they wanted pure, white, bright light. We had a complete white-out. All our faces were bleached, and we couldn’t see anything. I saw occasional glimpses of ice dancers crashing into each other. We got rather a bad press on that one.”
“We knew our stuff backwards and it’s just as well,” notes Newell, “because the sound was bouncing about. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Thank God for monitors, because without them we’d be stuffed. But the thing I remember most about the ice shows – and you see this when they show it on the BBC – is they used a lot of dry ice, and because it was so bloody cold in there, it rose. There’s one bit where you can’t see me at all. I’m in a cloud!”
Reviews were mixed. “It never worried me what the media thought,” reflects Wakeman. “It’s always nice to get good reviews, but it’s just someone’s personal opinion at the end of the day. The public seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, and that’s all that matters. The critics who call the Arthur shows my ‘grand folly’ – good for them. They remember it, though. I’d love a couple of pounds for everyone who’s claimed to have been at one of those three shows. A total of 27,000 saw the three shows… but I reckon there’s about 127,000 claiming they were there.”
True enough: the Wembley shows sold out, but it wasn’t enough to turn a profit. Tales of Wakeman’s subsequent bankruptcy are exaggerated, but only slightly. “At the end of the day,” he insists, “Arthur made a profit if you lump everything into the same pot. Financially, everything I do puts me in jeopardy, as I play the blackjack doubling-up game all the time. I invest what I earned from the previous project into the next one, and so on, until unfortunately the inevitable happens and you lose, and then you’re back to square one. I’ve had a few square-one starts in my career, but that’s life.”
“Alright, so Arthur lost money,” says Adam, “but you know, people don’t think about the fact that he was selling a lot of records at the time, which subsidised doing the show. For him, back then, it wasn’t really about making money, it was about doing the things that he wanted to do and making every show more outrageous than the last.”
Still, that was the 70s. Post-Arthur, you might suppose the lesson was learned, the itch scratched. Post-punk, you might think Wakeman wouldn’t attempt anything so grandiose again. You’d be wrong. Fast-forward to 2009 – 36 years after Hampton Court first rebuffed him – and word finally came through that Wakeman had scored the gig that got away, scheduling two performances of The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, in its entirety, that May.
“The biggest headache originally was just convincing Hampton Court to let him have it there,” explains Adam, who played second keys for both shows. “There was this constant back-and-forward, for years, of Hampton Court saying, ‘No, we’re not having that here’. Finally, they agreed. So that was the first hurdle, I think, for him. As for the logistical side, all those practical parts of putting a show on are completely do-able; it’s just down to getting the money together, getting the right people, and making sure there’s somebody you can trust with the staging, lighting, all those technical things.”
But they couldn’t control the credit crunch. “It was a tough time to do something like that,” admits Wakeman. “The recession was biting hard, and had it not been for the fact it was Henry’s anniversary, we’d definitely have postponed until the climate was better. But sometimes, timing rules.”
As it did in the 70s, Wakeman’s schoolboy-in-a-sweetshop mentality kicked in, and he began throwing personnel at a concert that took in 95 musicians (not least the English Chamber Choir and Scott Ellaway’s Orchestra Europa), eight cameramen, the Seraphim troupe of fanfare trumpeters, innumerable backroom boys, and blustery narration from Brian Blessed. “I got to see him back to how he was,” explains Adam, “in control of a really big show. It was always his dream to do those again, like in the 70s: the Journeys and Arthurs. And it was such a lovely thing to see him… I don’t want to say ‘back to glory’, but back to something that meant more than a standard show in a theatre. That’s where his strengths are, as a sort of chief in charge of people.”
Even so, Wakeman’s fantasy show was fraught with potential mishap. “At every event, there are always eleventh-hour disasters,” says Adam. “And one of the problems as well is that Rick is quite a controlling person when it comes to getting things right – which is how you need to be, otherwise things get taken out of your control. I could see the frustrations and the stress that came along with putting on a show like that.
“We actually only got the final run-through with the orchestra and the whole production on the afternoon of the first show,” he adds. “The stage had a big stairway that took Rick up to a big pipe-organ thing. He walked up the steps, and they rolled into the middle of the stage. This thing weighed about three-quarters of a ton, and when they pushed it back, it rolled over the power cables and audio cables that went to his keyboards. So when Rick got up there and went to start Jane Seymour, there was no sound. He came over to me and said, ‘If that happens tonight, you’re going to have to play Jane Seymour’. So it was like, ‘Erm, right, OK, I’ll just have a quick check on how the start of that one goes…’”
On the nights, both shows were triumphant, even if a possibly-refreshed Blessed went wildly off script, forcing Eagle Rock to cut the swear-words to avoid a ‘PG’ rating for the DVD. “I was really high up on a riser, about 10 feet above Dad,” recalls Adam, “so I had the best view looking down, and I could see everything. It was brilliant. It was such a great spot. If that show had been at the O2 or somewhere, it would still have been great, but it was so special because of the location, and I think everybody fed off it. Both days, it was such a special event.
“You know, with the Six Wives, I always loved that album as a kid, and I’ve played a few of the songs with my dad over the years when we’ve toured together. But the thing I really liked about that show was we got to play the album as it was intended. So that was a real special moment for me, getting to play the album in its entirety, and as it was written, or as close to that as possible.”
A critical success, a father-and-son bonding experience, a great night out… But perhaps more than any of these, Henry at Hampton Court was a symbolic return to live majesty for Wakeman, at a time when grandiosity was a foreign concept on the withering music scene. “It’s a great shame,” sighs Wakeman, of the age in which a half-hour set at the Camden Barfly constitutes a rock concert. “But the big shows are still there to be done.”
“I know that one of the things that frustrates my dad as an artist and as a musician,” picks up Adam, “is that people play things too safe nowadays, and they have done for such a long time. It’s complete role-reversal of how things were in the 70s, with people now touring just to maintain an income, so they can make records that don’t make money. Which is, unfortunately, the way things are. It’s just evolution.”
The question is: how does Wakeman evolve from here? After all, the Hampton Court dream is fulfilled, his bank balance is back on an even keel, the industry is unrecognisable… have we seen the last of his wonderful extravaganzas?
Don’t count on it. “You’re always looking to try something new,” Wakeman concludes, “and that’s always difficult, although I never really use that word – I think ‘challenging’ sums it up more. The shows will keep coming until the last nail in the coffin lid has been banged in!”
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Henry Yates has been a freelance journalist since 2002 and written about music for titles including The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Classic Rock, Guitarist, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer. He is the author of Walter Trout's official biography, Rescued From Reality, a music pundit on Times Radio and BBC TV, and an interviewer who has spoken to Brian May, Jimmy Page, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie Wood, Dave Grohl, Marilyn Manson, Kiefer Sutherland and many more.
Warner Acquires Recorded Music Rights to YES’ Complete Atlantic Records Catalog
Monday, January 23, 2023
Warner Music Group’s Global Catalog Division has announced the acquisition of the recorded music rights and income streams from YES’ Atlantic Records era catalog. More than 50 years after the British group’s debut, YES remains one of the most successful, respected, and influential rock bands of all time, with more than 30 million albums sold worldwide.
This acquisition continues a longstanding relationship between the band and Warner Music that now spans over a half-century, beginning with YES’ self-titled 1969 Atlantic debut album. The deal encompasses landmark works such as Fragile, Close to the Edge, and 90125. The full purchase includes 12 studio albums, as well as live recordings and compilations.
In making the announcement, Kevin Gore, Warner Music’s President of Global Catalog, said: “My introduction to YES came while working at a record store in Ohio in 1983. I loved the 90125 album and went to see the band live, where I was introduced to their catalog of incredible songs. I’ve been a fan ever since and we’re absolutely thrilled and deeply honored that the strong relationship between YES and Warner Music will continue forever.”
The band added in a joint statement: “The entire YES family came together and worked enthusiastically with Warner Music Group to secure this historic deal, ensuring that these iconic recordings will continue to be curated in the optimum manner to delight their fans across more than five decades, while also finding and developing new audiences for this timeless music.”
YES is among the most enduring, ambitious, and virtuosic bands in music history, with a dedicated legion of fans across the globe. When the progressive rock pioneers joined the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, Rush’s Geddy Lee noted in his induction speech: “The music of YES is still echoing down through the years, showing me that music truly is a continuum.”
The original members of YES – bassist Chris Squire, singer Jon Anderson, drummer Bill Bruford, guitarist Peter Banks, and keyboardist Tony Kaye – came together in 1968. In early 1969, the band auditioned at London’s Speakeasy Club for Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who immediately signed them up. Later that year, the group released its self-titled debut, mixing original material with totally reworked versions of songs by groups like the Byrds and the Beatles.
YES became an international arena band after Steve Howe joined in 1970 for The Yes Album and Rick Wakeman in 1971 for Fragile. The band’s sound evolved and its songs became more ambitious as they adopted a symphonic approach to their music and explored more enigmatic themes with their lyrics. Drummer Alan White joined in 1972 after the recording of Close to the Edge.
This era saw YES build a huge global following, enjoying both critical and commercial success thanks to a string of now-classic albums: The Yes Album (platinum), Fragile (double platinum), Close to the Edge (platinum), the double album Tales from Topographic Oceans (gold), Relayer (gold), Going for the One (gold), and Tormato (platinum). The ‘70s also produced some of YES’ best-loved tracks, including “I’ve Seen All Good People,” “Starship Trooper,” “Roundabout,” and “Heart of the Sunrise,” along with album-side length epics like “Close to the Edge” and “The Gates of Delirium.”
A new YES incarnation was born in 1983 when Anderson, Squire, White, and original keyboardist Tony Kaye were joined for the first time by guitarist Trevor Rabin. The landmark album 90125 was certified triple platinum and produced the band’s first and only #1 hit, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” An instrumental track on the album, “Cinema,” would go on to win the GrammyÒ Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In 1987, YES released its final album for Atlantic, Big Generator. It was certified platinum and featured the radio hits “Love Will Find a Way” and “Rhythm of Love.”
Studio albums, live recordings, and compilations included in the deal:
Yes (1969)
Time and a Word (1970)
The Yes Album (1971)
Fragile (1971)
Close to the Edge (1972)
Yessongs (1973)
Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)
Relayer (1974)
Yesterdays (1975)
Going for the One (1977)
Tormato (1978)
Drama (1980)
Yesshows (1980)
Classic Yes (1981)
90125 (1983)
9012Live: The Solos (1985)
Big Generator (1987)
Yesyears (1991)
Yesstory (1992)
Highlights: The Very Best of Yes (1993)
In A Word: Yes (1969-) (2002)
Yes Remixes (2003)
The Ultimate Yes: 35th Anniversary Collection (2003)
After Drama resulted in the band’s complete collapse, a massive revamp seemed the only hope for any kind of future. But that epic challenge resulted in an equally epic album.
Yes Refuses To Reunite With Singer Jon Anderson. He’s OK With That
'In my mind, I'm still in the band,' says Anderson, who's mounting a Seventies Yes tour of his own this year full of prog epics like 'Close to the Edge,' 'Awaken' and 'Gates of Delirium'
BY ANDY GREENE
APRIL 3, 2023
Jon Anderson started Yes in 1968 with bassist Chris Squire, and the prog rock band was at the center of his life for the next four decades through numerous permutations. But when illness forced him off the road after the group’s 2004 tour, Yes decided to hire a replacement vocalist and carry on without him. Anderson has been healthy and active for well over a decade, but the band — which now features Seventies guitarist Steve Howe, Drama-era keyboardist Geoff Downes, and hired guns — refuses to take him back.
That hasn’t stopped Anderson from bringing Yes music to concert stages all over the road. In 2016, he went out with fellow Yes alums Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin as ARW (later renamed Yes Featuring ARW), and last year he celebrated the 50th anniversary of Close to the Edge by playing the album straight through on tour with teenage musicians from the Paul Green Rock Academy.
When he kicks off his next tour April 14 in Westbury, New York, Anderson will be joined by the Band Geeks, which includes bassist Richie Castellano, keyboardist Chris Clark, drummer Andy Ascolese, keyboardist Robert Kipp, and guitarist Andy Graziano. They’re all ace musicians with decades of experience, and their plan is to play Seventies Yes epics like “Awaken,” “Gates of Delirium,” and “Close to the Edge” with incredible care and precision.
We phoned up Anderson at his Central California home to talk about the Band Geeks tour, the deaths of Squire and drummer Alan White, his estrangement from Howe, his dim hopes for a Yes reunion, and his five-year plan for releasing new music.
How did you discover the Band Geeks? My good friend works at Sirius Radio. He got in touch and said, “I’m going to send you a video of this band.” I said, “Go for it.” They were performing “Heart of the Sunrise.” I went, “Wow. These guys are so damn good!” Not only are they good, they sound just like the record. Quite amazing.
What happened after that? In the back of my mind, I always thought, “Wouldn’t it be good if some record company puts out all the epic Yes pieces in one release? That would be cool for fans of Yes, and people that aren’t quite aware of what Yes did in the Seventies.”
After a month or so, I decided to call up the bass player, Richie Castellano, and have a chat with him. We had a very nice conversation. I said, “Would you be interested in going out and performing the Yes epics and classics?” I thought that covered everything. He was very excited. That’s how we started.
I’m sure he was stunned to hear from you. Yeah. That was the great thing. You can sense an energy from somebody over the phone. I was thinking about playing “Close to the Edge,” “Awaken,” “Gates of Delirium,” and things like that. He was overjoyed. It was probably a couple months later that we got in touch again. Working with his agent, I said, “Let’s go out and have fun for three weeks, do about a dozen shows, and see how it feels.” That’s the whole concept. I want to see how it feels to perform those songs from 50 years ago.
Are you just playing Yes songs from the Seventies? Mainly. I think that’s the key to the project. Of course, there were many pieces of music in the Eighties and Nineties, especially. There’s one called “Mind Drive” from 1997, which we’re going to do. People wonder if we’re going to do “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” I don’t know. Laughs. I’d rather do “Roundabout” and “Perpetual Change” and songs I remember helping to create. The important thing is to perform them as though they were written this year. They are still… I wouldn’t say different, but still very fresh in the musical sense.
Are they going to sound identical to how they sound on the records? You guys always played them a bit differently live. They’re obviously going to sound live since we’re playing live. We’ve gone through all the songs and I’m sort of mesmerized by how good they are. I think when you’re onstage, you tend to work the theater or the club that you’re playing in sound-wise. It’s never going to be like putting on the record. It’s a performance of the recordings done very, very well. That’s all I know.
Have you worked out any songs that will surprise fans other than “Mind Drive?” Well, I did write a song for Yes about 20 years ago that we never recorded, “Counties and Countries.” I sent it to Richie and he did a beautiful rendition of it. He’s an excellent producer in addition to being a bass player. It sounded really good. When we do a rehearsal, we’ll decide whether or not we want to throw that new song in.
You’re just booked in 12 East Coast venues so far. If the tour goes well, will you do more shows?Yeah. The idea was, “Let’s give it a whirl. Let’s see how the fans react to it and how we do.” From then on it’ll be, “Let’s go to Europe. Let’s tour the world.”
Your last tour was with the Paul Green Rock Academy. Those were obviously very young musicians without a ton of experience. This is almost the opposite. Yeah. I’m going out with the teenagers in Europe this summer. They’re brilliant to work with because they are very grateful to do a show like that. The same goes for the Band Geeks. I feel very grateful that they actually play so good. They seem to be thankful about doing this show.
I’m at a place in my career where I’m feeling like I’m in a very creative mode all the time. I’m finishing four projects for the coming five years. You’re going to have a lot of music coming out over the next five years.
I have this feeling that, in my mind, in my thoughts, I’m still in Yes, even though I got very ill and they had to carry on. That’s what bands do. Then I just turned around and started doing solo shows, which I loved very much. I toured with the world with my wife doing a show of just me and my guitar. It was amazing.
What were you going through medically after the 2004 tour that prevented you from touring for a while? It was just asthma. I had asthmatic attacks. I went through a really tough time. My wife saved my life, actually. You recover from that and can’t think about doing what you used to do, so you just need to take it easy for a few months. I was in a hospital for a couple of months. I got better and better. Then I put together a solo show with a guitar.
Yes didn’t tour for four years. I’m sure the guys got frustrated at having to wait.I didn’t ask them to do anything. They just decided they wanted to get on the road. As you know, they hired a Canadian singer, a really nice guy. People just need to get on with life, no matter what.
How did you feel about them bringing someone else on? In some ways, I thought, “Forget it. I’m just going to go on the road myself and tell stories and play small clubs.” In a way, it was a breakthrough for me. I was emotionally still able to enjoy performing the songs that I wrote for the band. You have to let go of things and just get on with life.
I spoke to the first guy that replaced you a couple of months ago. He said that singing your vocal parts was really hard for him. It ultimately just blew out his voice. Those are tough sings to sing every night. Yep. Laughs. Well, I’m an alto tenor. Some of the recordings in the late Seventies and Eighties, I sing as though I’m in helium.
He pointed to the climax of “Heart of the Sunrise” where you go “Sharp…Distance!” It just killed him trying to recreate what you did there. It’s true. It’s not easy up there. But I’m doing it now. It seems to be going pretty good.
Did you have any sort of chance to make peace with Chris Squire before he died? He came and visited me when he passed away. I was in Maui with my wife Jane on holiday. I had this beautiful dream. There were a lot of people around in my dream. To my left, I could see this one lady standing there with robes. She looked like an angel, and she probably was. She pointed up the ski and there was Chris smiling with tears coming down his eyes and face.
I woke up from the dream and told my wife. I said, “I just saw Chris. He was heading towards the light of Heaven.” She said, “He loved you.” I said, “Yeah. We were brothers.” It was an incredible moment.
A couple of months later, I was doing a show in Phoenix. I met Chris’ widow, Scotland, and I told her the story. She said to me, “He kept saying before he passed away that he wanted to go to Maui.” There you go.
But you didn’t actually speak with him before he died? Didn’t need to. He had his life to live, and I had my life. I actually had a great dream about Alan White last night. It was a lovely dream. He was with all the guys in the band … Not just one or two, but everybody who has been in the band. They were up there doing some gig or something. The next minute, he was right next to me. We hugged since he was the best man at my wedding about 25 years ago.
You got a chance to play with Alan and Steve at the Hall of Fame in 2017. What was that experience like for you? It was great, but I was hyperventilating a lot. I just loved the idea of getting up onstage and performing a couple of songs. When you’re just doing a couple of songs, that’s one thing. When you’re hanging around and getting ready to go up, you’ve got your fingers crossed it’s going sound OK. When we got up onstage to say “thank you,” I was totally out of control. I just kept saying, “Everyone is so beautiful!” Then Rick, perfect, gets up and starts telling dirty jokes. That was perfect for me. It made me relax.
I could see you enjoying Rick’s speech, which I really think is one of the best Hall of Fame speeches ever, if not the very best, and Steve not really enjoying it so much. Oh yeah. Exactly. Laughs.
ARW, or Yes Featuring ARW, was a really great group. It ended very suddenly, though. What happened? I think there were difficult times for everybody. We didn’t know what to do next. I was up for some more recording, new music. But everybody has a life. Sometimes you can’t pull everybody together at the same time. That’s basically it. It just wasn’t right for everybody.
Did you guys make any new music? We did some recordings at Trevor Rabin’s place. It just didn’t work out. Things are like that sometimes.
Are you still on good terms with Trevor and Rick? Sure. I sang happy birthday to Trevor last week.
Might you tour with Rick as a duo again some day? That was fun. That was so damn funny. You never know in life. You never really know. As I mentioned earlier, I have so many things I’m working on, especially the last couple years, just things coming together that I want to get clarified and produced, just get out there and perform and finish some recordings. I’m actually working a musical that I wrote 40 years ago.
What’s that? I met this guy called Marc Chagall on his 90th birthday. He was a painter, very, very famous guy. I didn’t know how famous he was when I met him. I met him at his birthday party down in the south of France. Bill Wyman brought me. He was such a sweet guy. Then I discovered the incredible art of this man, and the stained glass he’d created around the world. He was so well-known around the art world, so I decided to write a musical about him.
He said to me, “Jon, if you’re going to write a musical, it’ll take a long time.” I thought, “I’ll get it done next year.” Of course, 40 years later, we’re in the brink of getting it produced. It’s about his life.
What’s the status of it? We actually did a short performance of the project in San Francisco just a month ago. We’re testing the idea of it visually, musically. It was an abbreviated version, but it’s given us a lot of impetus to get on with it and possibly get it into production this year or next year. After waiting 40 years, it doesn’t matter.
The current version of Yes is pretty much Steve Howe and new people, even if Geoff Downes was briefly the keyboardist in 1980. Do you see this as an authentic version of Yes? It’s Steve’s idea of Yes, I suppose. It’s hard to pinpoint. I’ve listened to a couple of songs, of course, and they’re OK. But I’m still into the voyage of musical Yes. I’m totally into the original idea of it. We were very fortunate to meet with Trevor Rabin and have a hit record with “Owner of a Lonely Heart”. That propelled the band for another 10 years. The energy of the Seventies, musically around the world… It was quite an unbelievable time. Yes was a part of it. I still want to perpetuate it, I suppose.
You’re playing Yes music on tour with new musicians. Steve is playing Yes music on tour with new people. Can’t one argue that what you’re doing is just as authentically Yes as what he’s doing? Yeah. I’ve never seen his show though, so I can’t tell you. Laughs.
I spoke to Steve a couple years ago. He said that any reunion was “completely unthinkable.” Big laugh.
Why do you think he’s being so absolutist? I’m a pessimist… I’m a pessimistic optimist. You never know in this life. And that was just him at that moment in time. I sang with him on my last album, 1,000 Hands. At the very end, I had worked on a piece of music “Now and Again” I started with Chris and Alan about 28 years earlier. I sent it to Steve and said, “Would you play some lovely guitar at the end?” And he did. All I could think of when I heard was to sing with it, and I did.
And every night he goes onstage with a singer that sounds just like you. How do you feel about that? There’s a phrase for that: Imitation is the most sincere most form of flattery. Laughs.
To me and so many fans, the two of you are the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of prog rock. You should be onstage together. Well, it’s not going to happen as far as I know. I’ve mentioned a couple of times over the years that I’m very open to giving it a whirl. In these days, though, you never know what’s going to happen.
They play about 50 shows a year. They even did nearly 90 a few years back. Do you think that would be too much traveling for you at this point in your life? I don’t think so. I feel very healthy and happy. Me and my wife love touring. We’re going to be on the road this summer with the Academy of Rock all over Europe. Now we’re doing this wonderful experience with the Band Geeks. I just love their name. It’s so cool.
Your singing voice has really held up. A lot of singers much younger than you have totally blown out their voices. I never got into the screaming singer, the wild, punk, rock & roll singing that some people did. That can ruin your voice right away. And I sing every day. I’m going to go into my studio in an hour and do some singing. I write new songs all the time. I never stop creating. It’s a blessing to be able to do this.
Are you working on a second chapter of your solo album 1,000 Hands? Yes. We’re working on it. I reckon that it’s going to be ready next year. I’ve been writing some songs. I even wrote an album in Chinese. Singing in Chinese is not easy.
You’re so positive and optimistic. A lot of people would be really bitter and angry if the band they started and fronted for decades was carrying on without them. I come from the North of England. I had my first band in 1963. That’s when the Beatles came out. I saw them before they were famous. I just keep going because life is a wonderful experience, if you want.
Do you see yourself touring and playing Yes songs in your eighties? Oh yeah. Of course.
Retirement is never a thought? Never. There’s no point.
This is random, but I was just listening to that 1972 Knoxville, Tennessee Yes show you guys put out a few years back. It’s remarkable. It feels like the absolute peak of the band. Thank you. We were very excited at that time. We just had Fragile do well. We had this idea of doing a longform piece of music. “OK, we’ve got 20 minutes on each side of the album. Why not do one 20-minute work?” That’s what we did with Close to the Edge.
Crazy it’s been 50 years. I performed it with the Academy of Rock last year. We’re going to do it again this year in Europe. And doing it with teenagers is just unbelievable, the feeling.
I’ll let you go, but I’m optimistic that you and Steve are going to find a way to patch things up at some point and play together again. It just makes too much sense. You never know. You really never know, honestly.
It is with enormous regret that, due to unforeseen circumstances beyond the band’s control, YES have taken the decision to postpone their 2023 Relayer European and UK tour.
YES and their management have explored every possible avenue to arrange insurance cover for the tour in the event of COVID-related exemption or Act of War exclusion. The insurance industry has withdrawn all such insurances which made touring possible pre-COVID and before the Ukraine conflict.
There have always been calculated risk assessments to consider when touring and YES has unfailingly paid a premium to cover against terrorism in addition to conventional cancellation risks. With a view to supporting venues and crew, YES toured the UK in 2022 but the band simply cannot undertake such a large-scale tour with so many risks being uninsured.
Insurance cover was promised for events in 2023 but this has now been withdrawn until 2024, with confirmations of normality in ’24 following representations to the insurance industry to reassess its attitudes to COVID and Act of War insurance. Bands at some levels can mitigate against these risks but YES’ touring model creates unjustifiable levels of risk.
YES’ 2023 Eventim Apollo (London) show is not happening and tickets are now being re-funded. The remainder of the tour dates are being rescheduled to 2024 with new dates to be announced shortly – all tickets will remain valid.
YES wish to express their sincere regrets to their faithful fans and ask for their understanding. The band has now received the necessary assurances for 2024 and are committed to returning to the stage then.
JAZZ PERCUSSIONIST AND COMPOSER EXTRAORDINAIRE BILL BRUFORD put his sticks down more than a decade ago, but the drumming legend recently has been spending quite a bit of time making sure his legacy is preserved for future music-loving generations. One of the most impressive collections of Bill’s music to be reissued is that of his modern jazz collective Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, a comprehensive and rewarding box set that has sold “like hotcakes” to his faithful followers.
Red Hot Rock Magazine decided together with Bill that the following interview would concentrate on Earthworks Complete and his time spent recording and performing together with the various wonderful musicians that passed through the ranks of his groundbreaking outfit. Bill’s days with Yes and King Crimson and his various other projects will be covered in a later conversation. Needless to say, it was an absolute privilege and honor to speak with a man widely acknowledged as one of the most outstanding purveyors of his craft.
RED HOT ROCK MAGAZINE: Hello. You must be Mr. Bruford.
BILL BRUFORD: Ha ha. Hi, Ritchie. How are you doing today?
RHRM: Very good, thank you. It is an absolute honor to speak to you. I have been listening to your music for many years. But before we jump into your music, I need to ask how we should address each other. Do we use titles and I call you Dr. Bruford or do I call you Bill and you call me Ritchie? Because I am also a drummer, or a lapsed drummer we should say, with a doctorate and a license to practice law.
BB: My name is Bill.
RHRM: Perfect. I have promised that we would stick principally to Earthworks in this conversation and reserve discussion of your other work for later talks. But if I may, I would like to relate a few observations about your work as a drummer, musician and composer and your body of work overall without getting into any specifics before we dive into the wonderful Earthworks catalog and fantastic box set that has recently been released.
BB: Ha ha ha. OK.
RHRM: Within the microcosm of Earthworks but also looking at your career as a whole, the evolution and sweep of your body of work is amazing, how the music never stayed in one place, how you continuously pushed yourself forward, onward and upward. Taking a look at Earthworks from the first album to the last, it became an almost completely different project.
BB: Yes. It changed a lot, didn’t it, over time. It rather depends on your self-conception of what you think you are doing in music, how you go about your daily work. I mean, I like the word “progressive” because I thought that’s what musicians were doing. I thought that’s what you paid me to do, to look around the corner and try to imagine possible futures for the drum kits and for what drummers might do and how they could do it tomorrow. So I was always more interested, I think, in what was coming up than what had been. I’m not a traditionalist in that sense. I don’t swear to a certain kind of jazz that has to be done a certain kind of way, otherwise the jazz police come and knock on your door. So I’m not a traditionalist in that sense. I’m more interested in innovation, I think. And I don’t really care whether the innovation happens in jazz or in rock, so long as something’s happening in the music that I haven’t really heard before.
RHRM: Even listening to the earlier part of your career, I always thought, being a drummer myself, that whatever style of music you were a part of, you were always playing jazz. To my ears, at least.
BB: Ha ha ha. Well, it’s possible. Yeah. I had a kind of light touch for a rock guy. And I’m one of these people that wanted to play Yes’ “Close To The Edge” differently every night. That was never going to work, really. And I can understand that other musicians find it extremely irritating.
RHRM: Ha ha. Especially within the context of a band like Yes, which I absolutely love, but there wasn’t much improvisation going on in a live setting during the band’s early days. The band mostly stuck to the structure of the compositions.
BB: Absolutely. Absolutely.
RHRM: That’s very interesting. I can imagine your wanting to break out of that, especially with your type of drumming. Your playing even on the older studio albums is not remotely similar to any other drummer. You have a completely unique style.
BB: Ha ha. Well, I didn’t try to find a different style, I think. I just tried to find a different way of playing the notes and playing them in a different order. In fact, there’s a funny thing, I think, or an interesting thing, where a lot of people say, oh, they recognize my snare drum sound. Which is great. But of course, irrespective of the fact for a minute that I played many different snare drums and everybody seems to recognize “the sound”, I think what they mean, actually, is they are intrigued by the placement of the notes. They recognize that the note is not played in the usual part of the measure. And they say, “Oh, that’s Bruford. I recognize his style.” What they mean is they recognize the placement of the note in the measure as something weird.
RHRM: It’s the placement of the note, but it’s also the snare, bass drum and hi-hat. The combination of the three when you were playing rock music was entirely different than any other drummer.
BB: Yeah. I suppose so. I suppose so. That’s true.
RHRM: To me, the true sign of real talent, what has always been important about a musician to me and that which I value as a listener regardless of the genre of music or what instrument the musician has chosen to play, is the creation and development of a distinct sound, the carving out of an original style, making a statement that has not been made before. With guitarists such as BB King, Carlos Santana and Ritchie Blackmore, one can hear who is playing the instrument with one note. The sound of your drumming has always been so distinct and immediately identifiable. You have always been one of my favorite drummers not only because of your technical prowess, but because right out of the box, going back to your early albums with Yes, your playing has always been so stylish, inventive and original. And you have carried that through into whatever style of music you have played.
BB: What you are saying is interesting. I think what you are talking about here is authorship. What’s so attractive about the slightly older records and perhaps less attractive about modern records, although it’s a different kind of authorship, is that you knew who was doing what on the record. So when you heard BB King play, you kind of imagined him standing there. You could see his face. And when he played two or three notes, you knew it was BB King and you loved it and you felt warm and tingly all inside. And if it was Cream with Eric (Clapton) and Ginger (Baker) and Jack (Bruce), you felt you knew all three. And you could identify who was doing what in the music. And it made you feel good. It’s harder, I think, these days in the electronic media of dance music and so forth to locate authorship. Other than it might be given the name of some overarching guy, you don’t really know what that guy did other than produce this entire piece of music. So in the old world and in my world, the world in which I grew up, authorship was key. Being able to have an identifiable style was key. Absolutely. Interesting, isn’t it?
RHRM: But being able to take that, to jump into several different genres of music and to retain that authorship, to retain that sound, whatever it is that you are doing, and for people always to be able to recognize that it is the same musician, that, to me, is the sign of a true musician and an artist.
BB: Well, you’re very kind. I think so. That’s what I was aiming for. Sure. I’m not unaware of that. And it’s lovely to have a traceable sonic train so that you can be identified and people say, “Oh, that must be Bill.” That’s nice. I like that. Even though you don’t really know what it was, quite. It might be jazz, it might be rock, might be some other funny combination, but I’m still in there somewhere.
RHRM: It always amazes me – many musicians and artists have this in common and it seems to have been a constant throughout your career according to your autobiography (Bill Bruford: The Autobiography) – when a person of such talent and accomplishment battles the inner demon of insecurity. At the same time, you have the confidence in your astounding abilities that has allowed you to place yourself in a position with other musical prodigies where you needed to think quickly, on your feet, and to perform while on the seat of your pants, so to speak. You are a living, breathing contradiction.
BB: Yeah. You think so, huh?
RHRM: Ha ha ha!
BB: Yes. I think a musician can externally portray confidence, skill and ease while internally he is hearing something different. He is hearing a whole series of missed opportunities going past in the music. Oh, I wouldn’t have done it that way. Look out, you idiot. You blew that. Here comes another bad thing you phrased poorly. Why don’t you do something over there? The guitar player needs some help. Etcetera, etcetera. It’s quite possible, and I think in the psychology of musicians in general, and part of this is in my book, that musicians’ interior and exterior sides do not always coalesce. You can have quite different sides, the external happy performer and the internal tormented soul.
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