kaye back for rabin?

[vtchatman]

what circumstances brought kaye back after all those years for rabins productions and the union release?

[Faceintheplace]

The Yeswest period with Tony Kaye coming back was born ot of the fact that Chris and Alan assumed Yes were over and it was time to do something new. The result was Cinema. Since the emphasis was going to be on short and tight songs, the keyboard parts were not going to be as complex as say Close to the Edge or Relayer. Then Chris had a chance meeting with Tony Kaye at a party and Chris invited him to work on the project.

Trevor Rabin was a hot rock prodigy at the time and Chris Squire got a hold of one of his demo tapes and older solo albums and thought he would be great for Cinema. Trevor was looking for a good rythm section to work with so it was an ideal situation. However, Trevor was also skilled on Keyboards and Tony hadn't really outgrown his stance he took when he first left Yes. He still really only liked playing Hammond and not dealing with complex keyboard technology or playing multilayered parts. The rest of the band really wanted a new sound so Trevor wound up playing some of the keyboard parts on the Cinema sessions. So there were some problems with egotism and Tony left Cinema.

In the mean time Jon Anderson had been brought on board and Eddie Jobson started filling in at rehersals. The rehersals went well and in fact it looked pretty sure that a new line up of Yes was going to come out of Cinema with the new additions of Trevor and Eddie. But Eddie was pretty short lived. Things came to a head during the filming of the Owner of a Lonely Heart video. Eddie made a lot of demands including a guarntee of a certain amount of screen time and his own dressing room. (The rest of the band shared one on the shoot.) Yes had had enough of Eddie's pri-madonna behaviour and decided it would be easier to simply reconcile with Tony.

As a result, Yes West was really a two keyboard band. Tony played hammond (Hearts on 90125 has a few brief hammond solos, Final Eyes on Big Generator, Miracle of Life on Union, The Calling and Real Love on Talk) and basic block chords on keyboards with Trevor and occasionaly Jon, Alan and producer Trevor Horn fleshing it out with more complex soloing over top, but it was mostly Trevor.

On stage during the 80s, only Tony would be appearing to play keyboards but backing tapes and a keyboard tech under the stage were re-creating the work of Trevor and the other Yes guys to make it sound like the albums. By the 90s, Trevor and Jon also played Keyboards on stage.

Tony's departure from Yes in 1994 was a messy one. He had gotten involved with a member of Chris Squire's family and was also wanting a bigger share of royalties. There was also some unhappiness over how little Tony was being used druing sessions and Tony wanting more royalties on his past work. So it became a "You can't fire me, I quit situation" just like the first time Tony left in 1971.

[vtchatman]

makes sense as rick was not interested and they definately were not looking to get moraz back and have never since, but seems kaye was used more for just a show piece for live concerts and in actuality it looks like rabin could have done it all himself pretty much but how silly that would have looked in concert.

[Faceintheplace]

Exactly, and its too bad he wasn't doing more but I do like Tony's Hammond contributions to the Yes West stuff. I don't think Hearts would have been the same without that roaring wailing organ sound.