Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Seventies were just an interesting time for us because we were building the brand of the name but also varying the style of the music on each of the albums we did. Very creative time of us.
Yes's whole career was never really planned in any sort of way. It's always sad when a member leaves, but it's exciting when someone new comes in, and that regenerates the freshness of the band.
The way Yes works is when we have a new member come in, as in Jon Davison, it's appropriate that we see what differences we can get out of a new contributing member in order to keep Yes interesting.
There's always the joy of the performance and fine-tuning new interpretations. Over the years, we've all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that wasn't there in the first place.
'Close To The Edge,' we actually had played it from beginning to end before we recorded it in the studio. So we knew how long it was, and we knew it would fit on the album fine, so we didn't do any editing.
I think it was 'Tales of Topographic Oceans' on 8-track that was the funniest thing because it would fade out in the middle of a song and fade back in again, and when the tracks change, it was quite amusing.
I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles' 'Every Little Thing,' but I don't know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don't think we ever did it actually in the show.
Back in the day, the album was king in many ways. And, of course, we were very tied in with the birth of FM/college radio in the States, and what we were doing suited the format of those young radio stations.
It's always a little more difficult after taking a few years off, which we did from 2004 through 2008. It's more difficult to get the machine in gear again, but when you become used to it, then it becomes easier.
Not many people know this, but when Yes first started doing club dates back in 1968, '69, we did a few tracks from 'The Magic Garden' album in our set. We just loved the harmonies that the 5th Dimension had as well.
The other guys and myself have agreed that Billy Sherwood will do an excellent job of covering my parts, and the show as a whole will deliver the same Yes experience that our fans have come to expect over the years.
In a way, that's always been Yes' history to a large extent! Quite a few occasions when we've had a new band member or change in members, then we've done a new album with new chops and refreshed the musical approach.
Everyone enjoys downtime at home, I'm sure, for various reasons, but I find the whole system of being out there and doing shows for people - the more of it you do, in fact the more energizing it is, for me individually.
I like the Foo Fighters a lot - apart from them being friends of mine as well. They're definitely a fantastic live act to see: so much energy and possibly even bigger in Europe than they are in the U.S., and that's great.
Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things.
Over the years, there have been challenges about who can use our name. It's quite simple: A majority of people left in the band at a certain time own the name. It's not like I'm the guy who has the name under my own contract.
I've always been a great believer that you have to keep producing new things in order to keep life interesting - not only for ourselves, but for the audience as well. That's really always been our principle and way of working.
It depends on various things like if the promoters want to have a break so they can sell more T-shirts and booze, then they ask if we can do an interval. I personally prefer not to do that. Once you get onstage, I like to stay there.
Because of all the various people who've come in and out and brought along ideas, I've been on a learning curve throughout all these years. Of course, everyone that's been involved has influenced me as well. And I'm grateful for that.
It's been a long time since we've been out there playing new material, and we have really enjoyed that. Of course we still enjoy playing the Yes standards as well, but it's great to have a bit of a challenge and pull off new material.
'Onward' was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down.
Being called a 'music legend' is a very funny thing. It's nice to know that my work has been appreciated and that people have given me that status. On a personal level, however, I can't think about it too much. It means a lot... but then it doesn't.
Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson have rejoined and gone off again and rejoined, but I've been there the whole time, and even though Alan White is the 'new' drummer, he has been there since 1972, so he also deserves the credit for being around for 20 years.
With how huge Yes was, especially in the '70s and '80s, as a touring band and actually playing at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia to 130,000 people, which is the biggest-paying show ever in rock history, you would think we'd done enough for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people.
I think partly the problem with Yes - and I've had this discussion with people from the Hall of Fame in the past - is that it's going to be difficult to decide how many of the members of Yes you're gonna put in it and how many you're not because of the extensive membership of the band through the years.
I think the first three Rickenbacker basses were imported around 1964. Pete Quaife, the bassist for The Kinks, bought one. Then John Entwistle from The Who bought one. As for the third one, I asked the manager of the store if I could get an employee discount. He said I could, and so I picked up that one.
The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.