Open Your Eyes - Originally a Chris Squire solo album?

[Micah68]

I'm not certain we have a full enough picture of events to say that with confidence. Sherwood has been detailed in his description of what happened, but obviously has his perspective. It appears the band were trying to get Rabin involved and dump Howe in this period, which doesn't strike me as being very welcoming towards Howe!

Henry

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Agreed Henry


I just wonder where our Dutch friend gets his info from

[downbyariver]

I like OYE in the context of a Conspiracy album. It's just not a Yes album. Nowhere near.

It's an O.K. record, not great, but stands up alongside the the other Conspiracy stuff.

For a fanbase expecting a 'Classic Yes' recording, getting Yeswest type material was always going to be very disappointing, especially when it wasn't even up to Yeswest standards...

Howe said that the album was impossible for Yes to play live as it's not Yes---as so much of it was not him or some other members songs---let's face it--the album was a disaster as far as the Yes catalogue goes---no Howe no Yes.

Sorry guys, you may not like the album, but it's Yes. It says Yes on the cover, Yes toured in support of it (Granted, they mainly just played "From the Balcony" in concert), etc..

Something doesn't have to include Steve Howe's input to be Yes. For example, the following albums don't include any input or playing from Steve Howe: Yes, Time and a Word, 90125, Big Generator, and Talk. If he even plucked a single cord on the recording of the album, even if he didn't write a single note, he'd have been more a part of Open Your Eyes than any of those other albums where either Peter Banks or Trevor Rabin was the guitarist and Steve Howe wasn't in the band. Even Steve Howe doesn't get to dictate what is and isn't Yes.

And, by the way, I rather liked the album. I don't think it's up there with most of their 70s and 80s material where the band was at it's absolute peak (70s being the progressive/classic rock peak, 80s being the pop/80s rock peak), but it's right on par with their other 90s output (Union, The Ladder), and enjoyable to listen to from time to time.

I applaud Billy Sherwood for doing the heavy lifting to get this album out to the public and keeping Yes alive. He also had a lot to do with Keys to Ascension, from what I've read- doing a ton of work in post-production to make sure it was of high quality. The sense I get is that there was a very good chance that without Billy Sherwood, the band would have either folded up shop, or become purely a nostalgia band that produced no new material. He kept Yes alive. Whether you like his music or not (I like it, personally), he deserves a lot of credit for keeping Yes going from anyone who enjoyed any of the music they've made from 1996-2012.

[Mr. Holland]

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I was just looking at the end product and various reports that Steve said he had no input

Not a complaint just stating a few quotes

Sorry for being unclear, I did not mean you were complaining not by any means, I was talking about Steve Howe complaining afterwards. He sure didn't mind the tour named after the album and the subsequent paycheck that came with it.....

[Mr. Holland]

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Agreed Henry


I just wonder where our Dutch friend gets his info from

As said, from Billy Sherwood himself, who has been very open about that period of time in certain interviews.

[YesNY]

I'm not certain why this thread has re-appeared now, but anyway... The answer to the original question is actually "no". The project Wakeman is referring to in that quote is what was eventually released as Conspiracy, at that stage to have been released as by The Chris Squire Experiment and to be called Chemistry, but basically the same album.

While OYE was rumoured at the time to be effectively a Conspiracy album, that seems to have been an exaggeration. Two Conspiracy tracks ("Open Your Eyes", "Man in the Moon") were cannibalised from Chemistry, but Sherwood has said that most of the album was put together with the intention of being a Yes album with Squire/White/Anderson involved.

It now appears that the album was largely written by Sherwood. "Man in the Moon" was mainly Squire. "From the Balcony" was a Howe piece with Anderson adding vocals. "Somehow..... Someday", as described upthread, is Anderson re-working "Boundaries" for the second time. I don't know about the report that "Love Shine" was leftover from KtA2. Everything else -- "New State of Mind", "Open Your Eyes", "Universal Garden", "No Way We Can Lose", "Fortune Seller", "Wonderlove", "The Solution" -- appears to be mainly written by Sherwood. I don't think any other Yes album has been so dominated by one composer (except possibly Time and a Word).

Henry

Thanks, Henry, for the info.

Just curious how The Ladder faired in regard to member contributions of material. Much less Billy dominated?

[Mr. Holland]

Btw. Steve is a bit of a twister and turner, because apparantly he 'disliked' that period so much that in 2007 he called Sherwood to investigate whether he would be interested in producing a Yes album with HSW on it. Sherwood told him he wasn't interested.

[downbyariver]

Btw. Steve is a bit of a twister and turner, because apparantly he 'disliked' that period so much that in 2007 he called Sherwood to investigate whether he would be interested in producing a Yes album with HSW on it. Sherwood told him he wasn't interested.

Sherwood said no to producing a Yes album? Anyone know why?

[bondegezou]

Just curious how The Ladder faired in regard to member contributions of material. Much less Billy dominated?

Much more of a group album: the most details I've seen are in this interview Sherwood did with the wonderful Aymeric Leroy: http://www.bondegezou.co.uk/iv/bsinterview.htm#p3

Henry

[Mr. Holland]

Sherwood said no to producing a Yes album? Anyone know why?

Largely because at the time it seemed (all though Anderson did eventually come back to the band in 2008 for what was supposed to be the CTTE and Back tour) Jon Anderson would not be involved and Billy said he felt it wouldn't have been Yes without Anderson.

[Mr. Holland]

I'm not certain why this thread has re-appeared now, but anyway... The answer to the original question is actually "no". The project Wakeman is referring to in that quote is what was eventually released as Conspiracy, at that stage to have been released as by The Chris Squire Experiment and to be called Chemistry, but basically the same album.

While OYE was rumoured at the time to be effectively a Conspiracy album, that seems to have been an exaggeration. Two Conspiracy tracks ("Open Your Eyes", "Man in the Moon") were cannibalised from Chemistry, but Sherwood has said that most of the album was put together with the intention of being a Yes album with Squire/White/Anderson involved.

It now appears that the album was largely written by Sherwood. "Man in the Moon" was mainly Squire. "From the Balcony" was a Howe piece with Anderson adding vocals. "Somehow..... Someday", as described upthread, is Anderson re-working "Boundaries" for the second time. I don't know about the report that "Love Shine" was leftover from KtA2. Everything else -- "New State of Mind", "Open Your Eyes", "Universal Garden", "No Way We Can Lose", "Fortune Seller", "Wonderlove", "The Solution" -- appears to be mainly written by Sherwood. I don't think any other Yes album has been so dominated by one composer (except possibly Time and a Word).

Henry

Much more of a group album: the most details I've seen are in this interview Sherwood did with the wonderful Aymeric Leroy: http://www.bondegezou.co.uk/iv/bsinterview.htm#p3

Henry

Another interesting quote from that interview, about the OYE situation:

"Keys to Ascension 1 stuff was done and Rick gone, I said to Chris, ‘I’m interested in helping to keep this going if you are.’ And we started writing songs for Open Your Eyes. The intention was to keep Yes going, and that’s what we’ve done. "

Kudo's to Billy and Chris for keeping the flame alive around that period! It seems that if it would have been up to Jon and Steve at the time, Yes would have ceased to be. One can critisize OYE and Billy as much as one wants, but he showed his love and care for this band, where others seemed to be just lacking that.....

[patrickQ]

I love the album but then again I am the only one it seems.

I think you're one of two (and we're both in the same (nutmeg) state (of mind?)) OYE lovers. Amazing how different OYE was from KtA2, released almost simultaneously. Neither a great Yes album, but imho by far the two best post-Rabin albums until Fly From Here.

pq

[Sharp on Attack]

Re-reading this interview, I'd be very surprised if Billy doesn't become somehow involved in ARW if it happens.

[josuev80]

Btw. Steve is a bit of a twister and turner, because apparantly he 'disliked' that period so much that in 2007 he called Sherwood to investigate whether he would be interested in producing a Yes album with HSW on it. Sherwood told him he wasn't interested.

Probably because Howe dissed the album.

[somissound]

Probably because Howe dissed the album.

I do think there were quite a bit of sour grapes around the time of OYE and The Ladder....

[bondegezou]

Amazing how different OYE was from KtA2, released almost simultaneously.

This is what I don't understand about Sherwood's narrative of the period, where he talks about keeping the band going. Given they had only just finished the KtA2 studio material, which was yet to even be released, why was the answer to rush into recording a new album and one so contentious that Steve Howe was nearly lost in the process? The more obvious next step for the band would have been to release KtA2, hire a keyboardist and tour (and given how little of OYE was played on tour, that's more or less what they eventually did).

Henry

[downbyariver]

This is what I don't understand about Sherwood's narrative of the period, where he talks about keeping the band going. Given they had only just finished the KtA2 studio material, which was yet to even be released, why was the answer to rush into recording a new album and one so contentious that Steve Howe was nearly lost in the process? The more obvious next step for the band would have been to release KtA2, hire a keyboardist and tour (and given how little of OYE was played on tour, that's more or less what they eventually did).

I think the band had switched record companies, and that had a lot to do with it. They were going on tour and wanted to be promoting their album with their current record company (Open Your Eyes) and not an album their previous record company had released suddenly because they could (Keys to Ascension 2- which I am not even sure they knew would actually be seeing the light of day after their departure from their old record label). It's possible that they may not have been receiving much of a monetary cut from sales of Keys to Ascension 2, or were already paid for the material in a lump sum. They also may have been contractually obligated to produce a new record for their new label (Which also may have been giving the band a larger cut of sales revenues) sometime within a set period of time (Let's say a year) and knew that if they wanted to promote it with a tour to increase sales and awareness of it, it would have to be one particular tour that they'd have to get the album out by, possibly because there wouldn't be another for a while.

The proceeding paragraph is a mixture of stuff I vaguely remember reading from vague (possibly unreliable) Internet sources with my own mostly baseless speculation. :) So take it with a grain of salt. :) It's an answer to your question, but it may not be an entirely accurate answer.

[Mr. Holland]

This is what I don't understand about Sherwood's narrative of the period, where he talks about keeping the band going. Given they had only just finished the KtA2 studio material, which was yet to even be released, why was the answer to rush into recording a new album and one so contentious that Steve Howe was nearly lost in the process? The more obvious next step for the band would have been to release KtA2, hire a keyboardist and tour (and given how little of OYE was played on tour, that's more or less what they eventually did).

Henry

Well Henry, as I understand it, when Wakeman was out the tour was all ready booked. The record company pushed for another album quickly, because on tour it would not be the KTA line-up, so they wanted to 'hang up' the tour on another album that did feature the touring line-up..

[bondegezou]

^ At the time, the rumour was that a new label/management wanted product quickly, but Sherwood's denied that. So that leaves the question, why the rush?

Henry

[Mr. Holland]

^ At the time, the rumour was that a new label/management wanted product quickly, but Sherwood's denied that. So that leaves the question, why the rush?

Henry

Well, one can only guess and my guess is that with a new line-up they didn't want to go out promoting a product from another line-up. Another thing that comes to mind is that Billy has said that most certainly his goal with the song 'open your eyes' was to generate more radio airplay for Yes once more, to get them a bigger audience again. Could very well be that the whole album was created with this idea behind it. More radio airplay = more known with a mainstream audience = more ticketsales on tour, and as said with a tour all ready booked, that could very well have been a goal in itself.

[Frumious B]

Well, one can only guess and my guess is that with a new line-up they didn't want to go out promoting a product from another line-up. Another thing that comes to mind is that Billy has said that most certainly his goal with the song 'open your eyes' was to generate more radio airplay for Yes once more, to get them a bigger audience again. Could very well be that the whole album was created with this idea behind it. More radio airplay = more known with a mainstream audience = more ticketsales on tour, and as said with a tour all ready booked, that could very well have been a goal in itself.

Problem is that for Sherwood and the other Yes guys too their idea of "mainstream" and "commercial" seems to come to a complete and total stop in the late 80s and really hasn't budged. In the post alternative/grunge environs of 1997 it seems to me that a more visceral, jagged, raw approach, moreso than even KTA2 which still has a bit too much "Guitar Center" gloss, with vintage production values would have actually been far more "modern" and "mainstream" than anything on Open Your Eyes which is only a hit if you can throw it in the TARDIS and release it in 1988. I think that "eightiesness", in that Survivor/Def Leppard/Starship corporate rock sense, still plagues them in their various endeavors to this day, though ditching the wall of anonymous synth cheese in favor of real orchestration helped quite a bit on Magnification.