Offleash

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 12:34 AM

Yerbuti - I was at that St Paul show, and do remember Montrose opening...

Yerbouti

Ooooops, it must have been St Paul on 8/15/76. ... getting old.

Yerbouti

I swear I saw Yes in Minneapolis in July 1976. Montrose was the openning act. This show doesn´t appear in the list...

Anon

Important note:
The track listed on this tour as 'On Wings of Gold' is in actual fact 'Winter' (from Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons') - acoustic guitar solo by Steve Howe. Thanks.

Steven Shinder

This is from the latest Notes From The Edge Interview from Issue #308. It's an interview with Roger Dean on September 3 2008.

"MOT: In some ways it echoed the Crab Nebula set of 1976. I think if I had to choose one Yes tour that I thought was the most visually-stunning, it would have to be that tour. It was really one of the most inventive stage sets of that era, with its intense palate and the depth.

RD: I agree. I would agree with you in every way on that; it’s the one I thought was the most dramatic. It’s certainly the most weird and it takes you absolutely into another world--most stunning. I didn’t have anything to do with that, though (laughs). That was my brother. He did it entirely himself.

MOT: Well, it’s a good thing to strive for (laughs).

RD: Yeah! Yeah, I mean..

MOT: I wish we could bring that back, because like you say just mention the depth and just the palate of colors --it was just stunning. I wish there was a good visual document of that tour; I really do.

RD: Can you believe how much we do too? There’s no real record of that.

MOT: Which is a real shame. It was probably Yes’s ultimate tour, they continued to draw the numbers for a little while after that, but that’s where they played JFK stadium and did all these gigantic arena shows, so that gigantic set lent itself to that.

RD: They did film it, by the way.

MOT: Was it officially filmed?

RD: Oh yeah, I think there were six cameramen and a director, and they filmed maybe a dozen concerts.

MOT: Oh really?

RD: Yeah.

MOT: What happened to that footage?

RD: Well, you know it’s the…from the Yes world, it’s the big mystery. Where is and what happened to that footage? I mean, there’s a lot of it, that’s probably, I don’t know, a 100 hours of film somewhere.

MOT: Yeah.

RD: Somewhere someone has it, and I believe it was 35mm too, not 16, so it’s…somewhere there’s some good quality film of that tour.

MOT: It’ll show up in somebody’s garage or warehouse some day…

RD: Well, that would be good. What would be not good is to find out that it was scrapped.

MOT: Yeah, or to never find it again."

John Sullivan

Not to be one of those anal-retentive fans or anything, Kerry, but the video you have is actually from the previous tour, and is not in fact The War of the Worlds set. In fact the QPR concert stage set is a variation on the Topographic Oceans set. That said, it is an invaluable document, as it is the only known footage of what was easily the band's most visually compelling era of concerts. That is definitely a nice collection of video boots you have, by the way. Someone needs to reissue QPR on DVD and maybe clean up the audio somehow.

Kerry Bam Bam Dixon

Yes, I've got a film the War of the Worlds stage on video, in Queens Park Rangers Arena in July of I believe 75, nearly 2 hours show, and starts at dusk so it really shows the effects of the huge stage outfits, even Alan has a Moog!... The full show has Patrick Moraz & is a awesome show with TV quality filming. Klips I've collected include: late 60's Olympia France, The Beat Club 69-72, Your is No Disgrace 70; Belgium TV 4 vids for Time & a Word; various Yessongs venues/Roundabout versions live; Making of Going for the One (studio); Slilent Wings of Freedom single 79 @ the Phili Spectrum 79; 90125-Edmonton Can. 84; ABWH in Japan/Korea; Yes in House of Blues; Union 1hour 91 doc & full show;& I've got a bunch of singles & rare ones...Yes, the Greatest Prog Psycedlica band of all time!

Paul Goodwin

I've debated many times to relate this since I have no way of verifying any of it, but in '86 I was friendly with a guy that worked in a music store in Calgary, I was living there at the time. He seemed to have vast knowledge of all things Yes, and what he told me, to the best of my memory, was this:

Brian Lane hired a Canadian company to film 2 shows on the 76 tour. Not the whole tour, just 2 shows. Lane was cheap, the company was merely 2 brothers who aspired to be filmmakers. Prior to the filming, the brothers attended one of the shows & did some preliminary testing. They told Lane that the lighting was inadequate for film & there were 2 choices--add substantially more lights or use a faster film, but being 16MM instead of 35, faster film would produce a grainy image that would look poor onscreen & recommended more lights. Lane agreed to add more for the shows to be filmed. When the brothers arrived to film the shows, Lane had added maybe 12 pars to the sides of the stage, still nowhere near what was needed. The footage for *one* show was shot. When Lane saw the developed film, either some or all of it, he freaked, it was far too dark & little could be seen onscreen. Lane cancelled the project & fired the filmmakers. The filmmakers wanted paying for the work they'd done so far, Lane refused so the brothers refused to hand over the footage, Lane threatened legal action if the footage was used in any way, the brothers faded from the picture at this time, still in possession of the film but never being paid a penny for any of it.

So the film, if it still exists, this "holy grail" of Yesdom, is apparently too dark to be of any use to anyone. The audio for the recorded show was not recorded by the filmmakers but by others, so the film, if it exists, is silent & would need the corresponding audio for that show. Could modern technology brighten it up to the point where it would look good? Probably. But the guys who filmed it were the ones that got shafted, not the band, if what I was told is in fact true, and to be honest, I don't doubt that it is, this guy was the Loeslin/Potts of the 80's to me, he knew *everything* about Yes.

Gmelin

The "no album" tour in '76 had the "Crab Nebula" stage. This had a fiberglass shell over the drum kit, out of which rose three sets of lucite vertebra, ending in huge fiberglass "heads" with most of the stage lighting housed on the undersides, and aircraft landing lights in the "noses." The few photographs published make this set look beyond spectacular.

Bill

[About the 'Crab Nebula' stage] It was just formed fiberglass. When I was in college I ran into someone who said he was a roadie on the 76 tour, and that his strongest memory is that the "damn things made him itch for weeks...."

Notes From The Edge

ALAN WHITE INTERVIEW by Mike Tiano
Copyright © 1993 Notes From The Edge #65/Jeff Hunnicutt and Mike Tiano.
All rights reserved.
(Used with permission)
MOT: The 1976 tour that followed the release of your individual solo albums I thought was probably the most visually exciting. You had the Crab Nebula, [also known as] the War of the Worlds stage setup which was just spectacular. Do you know if that was ever filmed?

AW: No, I've never, ever seen anybody film that.

Yesman Lee

Circus Magazine:
November 25, 1976

Their summer tour a huge success (reaching more than 1.2 million people), Yes celebrated by going into the studio in Montreux, Switzerland to lay down tracks for the first new Yes group album in nearly two years.

Beyond this new LP (untitled as we went to press), there's been talk of a new live Yes album. There's good reason for the talk: during the three-month long summer tour, the group was accompanied by a crew that both recorded and filmed a number of the shows. In fact, there is conjecture that they may be thinking about putting out a full-length feature film (not simply a tour movie). In any case, while in the Montreux studio, the group will be mixing the summer recordings.

Yesman Lee

CIRCUS Magazine #139
September 13, 1976

Yestour '76 - Laser Show Intrigues Audiences

by Peter Crescenti

"This is fantastic fun this tour," assures Yes bassist Chris Squire, "it really is. This is the eleventh tour, and we seem to really know how to make touring work, as a personal pleasure as well as a business thing. That's very conducive to making music. Personally, I feel it's been really good vibes this tour all around.

"If you've seen the last tour, and you see this one, even though two or three of the songs are the same, the whole thing is completely different in its presentation and projection," Squire continued.

That, of course, is what Yes fans have come to expect from the band over the years. This year though, in this Bicentennial blitzkrieg of rock & roll bands on the American public, bands are all scrambling for some new, and if possible, unique, attraction in their show, something that will distinguish their concerts from the scores of others, and build a momentum that spells sell-outs down the line.

The buzz is definitely on about the Yes tour though, and when it's all over for them at the end of August, the group will have played to over one million fans and fanatics (people who attend at least two or more shows) over a three-month period.

"If you're gonna play to a vast audience," Squire explains, "you've got to be able to turn the people on in that kind of size hall. Lasers are just so terrifically powerful, in the way that they don't die. They're as impressive in a large place as they are in a small place. The laser beam is no different from a light bulb really. It's what you do with it.

"We also have two backdrops, one is this 3-D, and then another one behind that, and things go on in between the two backdrops, like special lighting effects. I've never seen the show myself. This is only what people tell me!"

This year, the Yes set has experienced an almost total reshuffling of their music material, as the band decided to revive some of their older works, drop out other things, and also include a variety of material from the five musicians' respective solo albums. Since the beginning of the tour though, the set has again been somewhat rearranged, because with the lengthy encores the band has been forced to do, their sets have been running much too long to suit them.

"We've modified the show, and we're modifying it all the time," explains Squire. "We're still doing a bit of picking and choosing, rather than having one show that we know we're gonna play every night for the next two months. We're varying it a bit to keep us interested as well."

It was finally decided that most of the solo tunes would be the ones dropped from the set, even though at the beginning of the tour, the set was arranged so that each member would perform one of their songs with the band.

"We were, but actually we're not doing it at the moment because basically the set was running a very long time, and we weren't sure that it was making up the best kind of show doing it that way, because obviously, a lot of people don't know all the music from the solo albums anyway. So we spent the first couple of weeks really trying different things out, but in the end we kind of let the solo things slip, because in a way I think people were more into just hearing the Yes songs, and that's fair enough really, I can dig that."

Still included in the show are tracks from both _Tales From Topographic Oceans_ and _Relayer_ and the group has reintroduced old songs from their earlier _The Yes Album_ and _Fragile_ albums.

"What we've done on this tour is to recycle some old songs that we haven't done for a long time, which were favorite songs that we'd dropped. We've cut other songs out, like 'Close To The Edge,' and everything is presented in a totally different way.

"We've brought back 'Heart Of The Sunrise,' which is a song we haven't played for two or three years, and Patrick Moraz never knew, and we play 'I've Seen All Good People,' that kind of early rocking-type thing."

"The day touring stopped adding a new feeling is the day I wouldn't continue, personally, but it seems to every time we come out on the road. There seems to be something even more exciting about it than the last time. I think we're still on our slow, upward curve," Squire conjectured.

Rob

Back in 76 Yes had an awesome laser show for the second round of the relayer tour. The Relayer potions were spectacular!

Unknown

When I first saw the band in 1976, the show was being filmed, ostensibly for another filmed concert release. That was the most incredible performance ever, with the Roger Dean snakeheads and lasers.

Yesman Lee

Seconds Magazine
Jon Anderson Interview

SECONDS: Yes was known for classic stage productions. Which of those are you most fond of and which do you wince at?

ANDERSON: There was one for Relayer where we had a three-headed monster on stage. It was amazing.