BredYes
01-24-2002, 08:19 AM
Hello,
As promised, this is the translation (Dutch to English) of an interview with Jon and Alan in the popular music magazine Aloha (the Netherlands), December 2001. This is part 1. If you like it I 'll translate part 2 also (with a happy ending). I'm sorry for the mistakes in the translation.
BredYes
Yes-terday and today
Yes travels around the world with a classic orchestra. That was done before by colleagues, but Yes has a long story behind it, with a happy ending. Together with singer Jon Anderson and drummer Alan White, Aloha reconstructs the path to the newest CD Magnification and the tour.
Prologue
For 16 years the band had enchant the world with long beautiful extended fairy tale songs. And then on a dark day in 1983, there happened something terrible: Yes scored a hit single.
That was never the intention of Jon Anderson, but he could not control it. In 1980 Yes officially ended and bass player Chris Squire and drummer Alan White started a new project: Cinema, together with former keyboard player Tony Kaye and guitarist Trevor Rabin. The lack of a good lead singer made Jon Anderson join the others in 1983. Cinema became Yes, Owner of a lonely heart became a hit single and the album 90125 became a million seller.
Jon Anderson was happy that 'his' band had a right to exist again, however he preferred to return to the old Yes style: no hits but nice long songs with a musical content. The others preferred the new musical direction. With Dollar signs in their eyes, they recorded a new album and Anderson looked upon this with sorrow: "I was singer in the band but I had no voice in what was happening", he said today. "Trevor and Chris wanted another 90125. I did not see that. You can't go twice on the same holiday, I said every time. I was not successful: they wanted a hit."
In the meantime, Anderson dreamed of his own project: Yes with a classical orchestra. It would take 14 long years before he realized his dream.
Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
In 1988, the successor of 90125, Big Generator was not successful and this had a negative impact on the atmosphere in the band. Anderson took a decision: he wanted to continue his own musical direction and he knew exactly what he needed: his old band mates of the successful early seventies: guitarist Steve Howe, drummer Bill Bruford and keyboard player Rick Wakeman.
Anderson: "I have been good friends with them and I knew that if we would work together, we would understand each other. And they knew very well my intention when I started Yes. I went to Paris and worked out my ideas. After this, the others heard the new material and they liked it immediately. Very soon, we worked together again. Everyone liked it to work together after 15 years. I had the control on the production and used their talents for the creation of the music I had in my mind. I was not the undisputed leader, I was happy that I had influence on what happened with the music and how this happened. It was my project. Totally different in compression with Yes: there were 3 captains on 1 ship".
Anderson: We did not involve Chris Squire, no. There was a bad period in our relation, which lasted for around 5 years. In my opinion he had a strange lifestyle and he thought the same about mine. That was one of the reasons that it was not hard for me to leave Yes. I did not miss him during the album and during the tour- he is the most musical bass player I know, but he was always a bit loud/noisy on stage. Now we had Tony Levin, and he is also a phenomenal musician and Bill and Tony played together perfectly."
For tactical reasons the name Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe was very well chosen. The music was like the old times again, every Yes fan knew to find the album in the stores and they did not have problems with the other Yes. Until the tour started…..
Anderson: "I never claimed the name Yes as our group name, because Yes still existed. But I wanted to use the name indirectly. When the management told us to call the tour 'An evening with Yes Music', it sounded to me as a good compromise. Beside new numbers we played old ones. How could I know this resulted in so much trouble!
Legal cases, harassments between managements and record companies. All nonsense. It had nothing to do with the musiscians. Of course, I don't exclude that Chris got a nasty surprise when he heard about the name. But I did not see the problem. The band called Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe- it seems like a lawyers office, very appropriate. And what did we play? Beatles music? Stones music? No Yes music!"
White: "The musicians took not much notice about the legal tug-of-war and it did not harm the relations between the band members on both sides. Not that I spoke them often, because Yes and ABWH were separated cases. But the musicians were not worried about this.
Yes West & Yes East
The official Yes lived in California (Yes West), while ABWH had Britain as their home base (Yes East).
Anderson: "The names were strange. I never used them"
White: "Yes West did not do much in those days. Trevor was busy with a solo album and we did not care much what Jon was doing. Yes was never disband; we were only doing different things. Only Chris and I were writing sometimes".
After the ABWH-tour both bands worked on a new album. Anderson preferred ABWH but also this club had problems with the acceptance of his revolutionary ideas.
Anderson: "All the time I wanted to do something classical. An acoustic album with an orchestra. I did not want to copy the previous album. It would be refreshing but the others did not want it".
The four continue to work on material for their new album Dialogue, but it did not went well.
Yes West had also problems: they missed the angelic vocals of Anderson.
Anderson: "One evening I was called by Chris. He mumbled: (with low voice): 'What are you doing Jon?'. I said I was busy with songs for ABWH. He said he made some songs, which would be perfect to me. I said: What are we doing? Let's make an album together! He talked with Trevor and management and record companies talked and wonderfully well everybody agreed: Yes! We 're gonna do this!
(explanation of Union)
Anderson: "We lost the control on that album. Nobody could agree with each other. We had nicknames for that album: Union, Rick Wakeman, Chris & Onion- I don't remember why.
The fact is that it was a production and not an album. Two producers and two people from the record company took it over. They were afraid to loose big amount of money they had invest in it. I found it too complicated. Then I decided to write with Vangelis. I lost my interest in that album already.
Because Union was not the album the band members had expected, the expectations on the tour were not positive. However: it exceeds one's expectations.
Anderson: "That was the best tour! The only good thing of the Union period, was when we were standing on stage together".
White: " Nobody had problems with someone in the band: Just one big band on one stage.
Even Chris got along well with everyone. We rehearsed for three weeks in LA, and that was pretty tough in the beginning. Such a complicated music with eight people on stage. But after a while it worked"
Anderson: "In the first week everybody has to know each other again, but I never heard an indelicate word. It was a kind of group therapy. And the music was above everything: everybody wanted to play better than the other and because of this it was a musically edifying spectacle".
White: "Before we started I talked with Bill Bruford about who should play what. We should play all the songs together. However a song as Heart of the sunrise is a typical Bill song. We put that in the beginning of the set list so he could use the big drum set and I could do the percussion. After three songs we changed: I played the drum set and he did the electronic drums: like cream on the cake".
Anderson: "On the large songs we played together. At Owner of a lonely heart Rick and Steve left the stage. They did some solo pieces and this maintained the balance. It worked. We worked towards one big final, with Eastern European influences and space music in the middle and than… At the end I thought I was singing to God."
As promised, this is the translation (Dutch to English) of an interview with Jon and Alan in the popular music magazine Aloha (the Netherlands), December 2001. This is part 1. If you like it I 'll translate part 2 also (with a happy ending). I'm sorry for the mistakes in the translation.
BredYes
Yes-terday and today
Yes travels around the world with a classic orchestra. That was done before by colleagues, but Yes has a long story behind it, with a happy ending. Together with singer Jon Anderson and drummer Alan White, Aloha reconstructs the path to the newest CD Magnification and the tour.
Prologue
For 16 years the band had enchant the world with long beautiful extended fairy tale songs. And then on a dark day in 1983, there happened something terrible: Yes scored a hit single.
That was never the intention of Jon Anderson, but he could not control it. In 1980 Yes officially ended and bass player Chris Squire and drummer Alan White started a new project: Cinema, together with former keyboard player Tony Kaye and guitarist Trevor Rabin. The lack of a good lead singer made Jon Anderson join the others in 1983. Cinema became Yes, Owner of a lonely heart became a hit single and the album 90125 became a million seller.
Jon Anderson was happy that 'his' band had a right to exist again, however he preferred to return to the old Yes style: no hits but nice long songs with a musical content. The others preferred the new musical direction. With Dollar signs in their eyes, they recorded a new album and Anderson looked upon this with sorrow: "I was singer in the band but I had no voice in what was happening", he said today. "Trevor and Chris wanted another 90125. I did not see that. You can't go twice on the same holiday, I said every time. I was not successful: they wanted a hit."
In the meantime, Anderson dreamed of his own project: Yes with a classical orchestra. It would take 14 long years before he realized his dream.
Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
In 1988, the successor of 90125, Big Generator was not successful and this had a negative impact on the atmosphere in the band. Anderson took a decision: he wanted to continue his own musical direction and he knew exactly what he needed: his old band mates of the successful early seventies: guitarist Steve Howe, drummer Bill Bruford and keyboard player Rick Wakeman.
Anderson: "I have been good friends with them and I knew that if we would work together, we would understand each other. And they knew very well my intention when I started Yes. I went to Paris and worked out my ideas. After this, the others heard the new material and they liked it immediately. Very soon, we worked together again. Everyone liked it to work together after 15 years. I had the control on the production and used their talents for the creation of the music I had in my mind. I was not the undisputed leader, I was happy that I had influence on what happened with the music and how this happened. It was my project. Totally different in compression with Yes: there were 3 captains on 1 ship".
Anderson: We did not involve Chris Squire, no. There was a bad period in our relation, which lasted for around 5 years. In my opinion he had a strange lifestyle and he thought the same about mine. That was one of the reasons that it was not hard for me to leave Yes. I did not miss him during the album and during the tour- he is the most musical bass player I know, but he was always a bit loud/noisy on stage. Now we had Tony Levin, and he is also a phenomenal musician and Bill and Tony played together perfectly."
For tactical reasons the name Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe was very well chosen. The music was like the old times again, every Yes fan knew to find the album in the stores and they did not have problems with the other Yes. Until the tour started…..
Anderson: "I never claimed the name Yes as our group name, because Yes still existed. But I wanted to use the name indirectly. When the management told us to call the tour 'An evening with Yes Music', it sounded to me as a good compromise. Beside new numbers we played old ones. How could I know this resulted in so much trouble!
Legal cases, harassments between managements and record companies. All nonsense. It had nothing to do with the musiscians. Of course, I don't exclude that Chris got a nasty surprise when he heard about the name. But I did not see the problem. The band called Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe- it seems like a lawyers office, very appropriate. And what did we play? Beatles music? Stones music? No Yes music!"
White: "The musicians took not much notice about the legal tug-of-war and it did not harm the relations between the band members on both sides. Not that I spoke them often, because Yes and ABWH were separated cases. But the musicians were not worried about this.
Yes West & Yes East
The official Yes lived in California (Yes West), while ABWH had Britain as their home base (Yes East).
Anderson: "The names were strange. I never used them"
White: "Yes West did not do much in those days. Trevor was busy with a solo album and we did not care much what Jon was doing. Yes was never disband; we were only doing different things. Only Chris and I were writing sometimes".
After the ABWH-tour both bands worked on a new album. Anderson preferred ABWH but also this club had problems with the acceptance of his revolutionary ideas.
Anderson: "All the time I wanted to do something classical. An acoustic album with an orchestra. I did not want to copy the previous album. It would be refreshing but the others did not want it".
The four continue to work on material for their new album Dialogue, but it did not went well.
Yes West had also problems: they missed the angelic vocals of Anderson.
Anderson: "One evening I was called by Chris. He mumbled: (with low voice): 'What are you doing Jon?'. I said I was busy with songs for ABWH. He said he made some songs, which would be perfect to me. I said: What are we doing? Let's make an album together! He talked with Trevor and management and record companies talked and wonderfully well everybody agreed: Yes! We 're gonna do this!
(explanation of Union)
Anderson: "We lost the control on that album. Nobody could agree with each other. We had nicknames for that album: Union, Rick Wakeman, Chris & Onion- I don't remember why.
The fact is that it was a production and not an album. Two producers and two people from the record company took it over. They were afraid to loose big amount of money they had invest in it. I found it too complicated. Then I decided to write with Vangelis. I lost my interest in that album already.
Because Union was not the album the band members had expected, the expectations on the tour were not positive. However: it exceeds one's expectations.
Anderson: "That was the best tour! The only good thing of the Union period, was when we were standing on stage together".
White: " Nobody had problems with someone in the band: Just one big band on one stage.
Even Chris got along well with everyone. We rehearsed for three weeks in LA, and that was pretty tough in the beginning. Such a complicated music with eight people on stage. But after a while it worked"
Anderson: "In the first week everybody has to know each other again, but I never heard an indelicate word. It was a kind of group therapy. And the music was above everything: everybody wanted to play better than the other and because of this it was a musically edifying spectacle".
White: "Before we started I talked with Bill Bruford about who should play what. We should play all the songs together. However a song as Heart of the sunrise is a typical Bill song. We put that in the beginning of the set list so he could use the big drum set and I could do the percussion. After three songs we changed: I played the drum set and he did the electronic drums: like cream on the cake".
Anderson: "On the large songs we played together. At Owner of a lonely heart Rick and Steve left the stage. They did some solo pieces and this maintained the balance. It worked. We worked towards one big final, with Eastern European influences and space music in the middle and than… At the end I thought I was singing to God."