Q: Just a few days after you were fired from Neat Change, on the 5th of August 1968, you were playing the debut of Yes at The Marquee, which was the band's second gig. What can you remember from that particular evening?
A: I don't remember. I think there was a feeling when we did that gig that there was a general feeling of 'Well, we got through that, O.K.'. As typical with that band, probably we would immediately come back the next day and started rehearsing and we would have probably argued about what it was bad about it. The kind of intensity of those early rehearsals, which continued through most of my time with the band, was... nobody really had anything nice to say to each other, we would always concentrate on what was wrong, you know: 'Why did you play that?', 'That was too loud!', 'Why did you do this?', you know, this kind of thing. Mostly negative criticism. Which actually worked with us. I mean, Bill (Bruford) was always the biggest complainer. He though it was going to be a pop band and Bill was thrilled for the fact that the three of us (Chris, Jon and I) were singing three part harmonies pretty well. And Bill was thrilled by it, he was 'Wow!, you sound like The Beach Boys, we're gonna be famous'. There was also the attitude that if we'd spend any time learning backing vocals then the other guys in the band get very bored very quickly, and they'd say: 'Come on, come on, come on, this is boring! Can't you do this some other time?', so there was this kind of pushing and pulling. - Peter Banks

Colin Rusch

Tuesday, June 27, 2017 11:42 AM

I can’t help you with the 1972-74 tour dates but have a, probably trivial, addition to the set-list of the band’s first gig at the Marquee in 1968.

They played a very, very fast version of For your Love (the Yardbirds tune) and to this day I am hoping that someone at some stage might have recorded it. It was fabulous.