Yes-Mitglieder beantworten Fragen:

[JJG]

In the first of a new weekly feature, members of YES will be answering your questions on Facebook. First up is current singer Jon 'Juano' Davison. Put your questions to Jon in the comments below. The top twenty questions & answers will be published on Monday.

Die Yes-Mitglieder werden also in der nächsten Zeit Fragen beantworten.
Den Anfang macht Jon Davison, er wird 20 Fragen beantworten.
Hier kann man seine Fragen stellen:
http://www.facebook.com/yestheband

[Topographic]

In the first of a new weekly feature, members of YES will be answering your questions on Facebook. First up is current singer Jon 'Juano' Davison. Put your questions to Jon in the comments below. The top twenty questions & answers will be published on Monday.

Die Yes-Mitglieder werden also in der nächsten Zeit Fragen beantworten.
Den Anfang macht Jon Davison, er wird 20 Fragen beantworten.
Hier kann man seine Fragen stellen:
http://www.facebook.com/yestheband

So langsam entdecken YES die Social Media. Vielleicht kannst du über die Forums-FB-Seite ein paar Fragen stellen?

[JJG]

In the first of a new weekly feature, members of YES will be answering your questions on Facebook. First up is current singer Jon 'Juano' Davison. Put your questions to Jon in the comments below. The top twenty questions & answers will be published on Monday.

Die Yes-Mitglieder werden also in der nächsten Zeit Fragen beantworten.
Den Anfang macht Jon Davison, er wird 20 Fragen beantworten.
Hier kann man seine Fragen stellen:
http://www.facebook.com/yestheband

So langsam entdecken YES die Social Media. Vielleicht kannst du über die Forums-FB-Seite ein paar Fragen stellen?

Hab ich schon:

How many songs have you (co-) composed for a new Yes album? Are you going to sing "just", or also play instruments?

[JJG]

Every week a member of YES takes your top twenty questions from Facebook and Twitter.
This week, it’s the turn of new vocalist, Jon Davison.

FACEBOOK

Jesse Evans
Jon, welcome to the band. I’ve seen you twice now and I think you’re doing an awesome job. Thanks for keeping the legacy alive! My question: What was your reaction when you were first contacted by Yes to be the new singer? And a follow up, if I may: Who called you? Management or a band member? Thanks!
You’re certainly welcome, Jesse. It’s an honor to help forward the band.
My initial reaction to the news was one of practical concern. Despite the excitement of it all, I needed to keep a clear head and focus on straightening out all the practical details of this life changing event, not only for my own sake, but obviously for my family’s well being as well.
It was YES’ manager Paul Silveira who was the first to contact me with the news.

Scott C Leavell
First off – you are filling some very large shoes with a fantastic talent and class. You were definitely MVP of the night when I saw the band recently. Cheers! My question is: since it seems obvious that you were a fan before you ever joined Yes, could you talk a bit about your fandom of these great players as a young man, and how did it feel when you realized you were going to join the band?
Thanks for the kind words, Scott. As a shy and confused teenager, the music of YES as well as Roger Dean’s album cover artwork offered a portal to an alternate and grander frame of mind and heart, beyond the superficialities of teenage social existence. I was an aspiring bassist at the time and marveled at how other worldly and primal Chris’ bass lines are. I had the same feelings toward the unique styles of each member of the classic line-up. It really seemed that YES and their music were from another planet!
In most respects, joining the band felt like coming home. Beyond that, I can’t really express much with words.

Peter Clark
Are you intimidated at all by filling such “big shoes”?
They are indeed big shoes to fill, but a small child can feel the familiar warmth and love slipping on his father’s shoes even if he’s not yet ready to fill them. Jon Anderson’s love and creativity are embedded in his words and melodies to guide and inspire me. I like to think of it that way.

Mariano Bu
Which was the first Yes song that made you feel “this is really working” during rehearsals?
I clearly remember feeling like things were really happening in rehearsal when Steve beamed a loving smile on me and expressed some deep words of encouragement after we had just finished playing And You And I for the first time.

Paul Raybould
Jon, What were your earliest memories of YES? What turned you on to them?
Hearing Owner Of A Lonely Heart on the radio for the first time exposed my eager, virgin ears to the world of YES. But that sugarcoated introduction soon wore off as I then dove head first into Fragile, Close To The Edge and Tales From Topographic Oceans. That’s when the full implications of what I was opening up to became startling apparent. Since that time, I’ve never stopped learning from their music.

Lukas Falkman
Jon, what is your favorite Yes song of all time? Hoping to see you guys in Stockholm soon, the current setlist is great!
I tend to not have favorites of things, but I’ll venture to say, the YES song yet to be written.
Hopefully we’ll see you in Stockholm sometime soon!

G. Hollis Humberson
What is your favorite song to sing and which song was the most difficult to learn.Greetings to you, Hollis
For this tour, I’d say that Turn Of The Century was the most challenging to learn. I equally enjoy performing all the songs.

Craig O’Brien
Which Yes song, which you haven’t yet sung with the band, would you most like to sing?
I’d love to sing The Gates Of Delirium!

Matt Pavin
Having seen you each of the last two tours, it was remarkable this time (3/8 in California) how comfortable and confident you’ve become in the role as Yes’ lead singer. I, like many others, feel the loss of Jon Anderson, but your performance was simply spectacular: not a note nor a nuance missed. Had my eyes been closed, I would have sworn it was like the old days. My question is this: with so much excellent material to draw from over the years, how essential is it for most of each show to recycle the same ‘standards’ we hear almost every tour? (Not that we mind, but one of the nicer aspects of the current tour was hearing some stuff – Siberian Khatru, Turn of the Century, Parallels, etc. – not heard in many years. There is some great Keys material as well as other Rabin-era and post-Rabin gems that would be fun to have mixed in. It would even be fun to hear updated versions of one or two songs from the first two albums, such as Survivor.)
A sincere thank you for your inspiring compliments.It’s about finding and maintaining a balance – keeping faithful to expectations while also throwing in plenty of surprises. It’s harder than it sounds as you can’t please everyone. Such is life. Survival is a beautiful piece of music and I’d love to have a chance to sing it!

Rick Alhadeff
Hi Jon – My wife and I had the pleasure of meeting you in Honolulu. You answered our question then which was “would you be able to handle the position of lead singer of this band?” Not only did you convince us that you can but we feel that with you singing, YES can go further than it ever has. It’s not just your singing but whether it’s your personality, spirituality, some intangible quality, whatever you want to call it, you’re a perfect fit. We hope to be able to see you and YES again before too long.
Aloha Mahalo, Rick and wife! Your kindness inspires me! Hope to see you in paradise real soon.

Rose Delattre
The band someday will come again to brazil? I only have to say that Yes is one of the best bands I see. I´m Rose, 22 years old from Brazil
Oi querida Rose, Tudo bem?
Yes are playing 6 shows in Brazil this May – tickets are on sale now, details are here at yesworld.com

Joseph Palmer
Jon, I saw your performance in San Jose – It was superb, and I was thrilled that on the early material you were very true to the original recordings (one might almost use the word reverent). Is that something you’d thought through, or are those songs just burned into your ROM that way? (I know they are for me!)
A sincere thank you for the encouraging words. Staying true to the original works was a definite conscious choice from the start and has remained a vitally important guideline. I’m glad it shows :^)

Dale Tousignant
It was a real honor meeting you Jon. Thank you for the privilege of showing off my Beautiful new instrument. What did you think of the Harpejji?
A far-out device indeed! Best of luck with it, Dale.

Fernando Bolaños
Where does the nickname “Juano” come from?
My best childhood buddy, Taylor Hawkins from the Foo Fighters gave me my nickname. He still calls me Juano to this day.

Kevin Towne
Does the whole band travel together on the tourbus? If so how do you pass the time together?
During last summer’s tour, we mostly traveled by tour bus and flew occasionally. On this tour however, we are mostly flying with a few short drives by van in between.
While en route, we mostly keep to ourselves to respect each other’s space.

David Simmons
Jon, welcome to the family! Having toured myself I am wondering how you maintain your spiritual and fitness/wellness life while living on buses plains and cruise liners…?
Good question, David. As you know, it’s a constant battle to maintain balance on the road. The main thing is to snatch any time you can to take care of yourself (exercise, meditation etc…) even if it’s for 10 or 15 minutes. If you learn to make the most of your time, you’ll discover there are spaces available for such things.

Akio Tsuchitani
I’m looking forward to the new YES album with you in the band. Are you writing new songs for that?
Yes, I am contributing ideas. I too am looking forward to it. We are planning for a new album to be released sometime next year.

Glen Paulsen
Hello Jon, first I’d like to say that I think you’ve done a wonderful job with Glass Hammer, and I’m sure you will do the same for Yes. Do you see yourself being a full member in Glass Hammer in the future, or are you going to concentrate exclusively on Yes? And how do you look upon that?
At this point in time, I’m trying to balance equally my involvement with both bands. I can’t predict what challenges may arise in the future to obstruct my intention, but I will do my best to embrace my commitments.

TWITTER #askyes

Jim Martz ‏@Martzsy
Mr. Davidson …Love your voice ..Did you listen to YES as a teen?
YES!

Mark Thorne ‏@MarkDavidT
Jon which is your favorite song to perform on this tour?
I equally enjoy performing all of the songs. Thanks!

Robert Johnson ‏@rjohnson5811
Any chance there will be a live album from the Spring 2013 tour?
No, but possibly from another tour later this year.

Read more at http://yesworld.com/2013/04/ask-yes-fri ... qdW3Kfv.99

[JJG]

Alexandria Robbins
Hey Geoff! How did you get your start as a musician/keyboardist? Is this what you always envisioned doing with your life or did you dream of doing something else? You are an incredible musician and I can’t imagine the music world without you.
Hi there. I started piano lessons when I was 6 years old, then took up classical organ a few years later (my dad was a church organist). I don’t think there was much else I wanted to do other than a career in music. I had a stint as a landscape gardener in the gap year between senior school and music college, but I wasn’t too good at that – I didn’t know my patios from my pools! Hopefully I made the right choice. PS I’m not planning on retiring for the foreseeable future you’ll be pleased to hear ☺

Blair Barbero
I would like to know who Geoff’s musical influences were in his early years. And…Thank you for decades of awesome inspiration!
I was primarily influenced by English church music when I sung in choirs as a boy. Other European composers – Handel’s Chorales, Bach’s organ works, and Haydn along with the likes of William Byrd and Thomas Tallis were all part of my staple diet. When I got introduced to rock music, I was heavily influenced by the wave of British keyboard-based ‘underground’ bands of the late 60s such as Procol Harum, Caravan, The Nice, and even – Yes! Then when I went to Leeds Music College, I really got into avant-garde Jazz and big band arranging. After I had graduated I moved to London and got into a lot of dance and disco music doing session work in that particular field. I think it’s fair to say my influences have been quite diverse over the years.

Paul Michael Moon Rogers
When I heard, through our mutual friend Jon Dee, that you were going to be performing Awaken last year I was initially shocked that this lineup could be THAT brazen. “Is _nothing_ sacred” was the thought that went through my mind. I mean that’s a Jon Anderson signature piece. When I heard that you’d performed it excellently and I saw some YouTube videos that backed the glowing reviews up I realised that this lineup could do anything. Now you’re doing CTTE *and* Awaken. What’s next? ‘The Remembering’ and ‘The Gates of Delirium’? Or… ‘That that is’ (one can only hope). My question… Are you enjoying performing Yes epics?
It takes some time get to grips with a piece such as ‘Awaken’. Like many of Yes’s longer epics, it is made up of a number of scene changes and development of motifs which recur during the piece in different guises. I think we do a pretty decent version of this particular song, and it is an uplifting but challenging piece to pull off. I think if I put my mind to it, I would hopefully be able to play many of the other pieces from their vast catalogue – but ‘Gates’? We’ll see. That’s a tough one! Either way, it’s enjoyable to analyse the songs, play this great music and hear what intense detail and ideas went into the original recordings.

Scott Bluebond
How do you figure out the right balance between trying to match up the original keyboard parts and putting your own stamp on a song? Take Close to the Edge as an example.
Whilst being as faithful as possible to the originaI core parts and signature moments, particularly in precision, feel and sound, I do try to put my own slant on a couple of the tunes – mainly in the solo sections. Sure, it’s possible to learn everything note for note, but I’m not sure that’s totally inspiring for me, as it becomes a kind of ‘keyboard karaoke’. I also add a quite a few other bits here and there, pads, pianos etc. to add a bit more harmonic support to the band. The guys are fairly flexible and receptive into me playing myself rather than being a carbon copy of someone else. That’s pretty cool.

Billy Wilson
Which are the most challenging Yes keyboard parts to perform every night?
Once you’ve worked out the equation of some of the trickier passages, it gets easier the more shows we do. Some of Rick Wakeman’s runs can be very involved, like some of those complicated spidery piano finger exercises. The Tony Kaye parts are technically easier – more solid piano or Hammond parts type stuff. But there are sections in most of the songs that require one to be on guard, because a loss of concentration can end in disaster! One thing about Yes music is, you’ve got to be on your toes.

John Connor
Hey Geoff! What Yes piece would you most like to play in future concerts and/or what piece do you most enjoy with the band now?
I’d like to look at Relayer as an album to aspire to commanding, as Patrick Moraz’s style adds another great keyboardist’s versatility to Yes’s music. That would be a monumental challenge. But it would also be fun to perform the entire Drama album, which obviously I am a little more familiar with! ‘And You And I’ is one of my favourite Yes songs, so I always look forward to performing that one every night.

Scott C Leavell
Geoff, I first became aware of your talents with the Drama LP, and you continue to inspire me today. I’ve seen you play with both Yes and Asia – two wonderful, yet stylistically different bands. My question would be related to your method of composition: when working on a piece of new music is there a conscious thought to appeal to as many people as possible (“mainstream”), or to come up with new, inventive, challenging ways to express yourself? Or a little of both? Thanks again for all you do!
It’s important for me to keep writing new music as it’s an integral part of what I do. Obviously, you want people to like what you do, but that’s not really the driving motivation, or ever has been. I think if a musical idea appeals to you, then you kind of hope other people will get off on it when they hear it too. We all want to be liked and respected for our musical output of course, but it’s not something that gets in the way of inspiration. Generally speaking I let my heart lead me in the writing process. There’s no formula really, and commercial success is not something you can predict. Who knows when the creative Muse will appear?

Joel Simches
Hey Geoff!! Big fan and really happy you’re back in Yes. My question: How do you prepare for a tour and how does your preparations for a Yes tour differ from an Asia tour, apart from learning the Yes tunes? Be Seeing You.
Hi Joel, thanks for the up! Playing Yes songs on this (3 album) tour is quite different for me this time out as no Drama or Fly From Here inclusions; because now I’m playing all of the parts and compositions that I was not at all involved in on those 3 original albums. That said, it’s been very interesting seeing how Tony & Rick contributed in the Yes keys department, both differing styles but equally influential in Yes’s history. With Asia, it’s a big difference, as I am entirely playing my own parts. So the 2 bands right now are at quite opposite ends of the scale for me, but I do really enjoy both aspects. Making sure I’ve got all the right sounds programmed up is a major factor for the tours with either band though.

Julie Rupp Oakes
I forgot to ask you when I met you last week, but I noticed you have 2 laptops during the show and was curious what software you are using? It looked like MainStage, but couldn’t see for sure.
Yes that’s right. I’m using to 2 MacBook Pro laptops both with Mainstage. The upper keyboard (Impulse) center, and lower right Studiologic are the controllers. I use these exclusively for the retro-simulations and complex orchestral patches. For instance, I use a number of some 3rd party plugins such as: IK Sampletank, Omnisphere, G-Media, M-tron etc. Both computers are loaded with these plugins. It is very helpful in recreating the retro analogue keys sounds from the early Yes stuff such as mellotrons, organs, electric pianos, church organs, Minimoogs etc.

Paul Raybould
Geoff, Really enjoy watching you play. You always seem to have such a blast on stage. What was your first keyboard and which piece of kit, out of your 10 or so keyboards you use now, is your favorite? BTW, miss you on twitter.
Hey Paul. Yeah, I generally have fun on stage – once you get past the ‘nervy’ bit at the beginning of a show and get settled in, you get carried along on the wave of excitement and audience participation. My first proper keyboard was a Hammond J122 on my 16th birthday. I later had it split and used it on the Drama & Asia tours in the 80s. If I had a favourite, it’s probably the V-Synth, but I like all of them really, as they provide collectively a huge range of sound palates necessary for the job in hand.

Tom Matlosz
What are you comments on the Studiologic Sledge keyboard? What songs are you using it on?
The Sledge is a great addition to my rig. I’ve replaced the Gaia I used for the last few years to perform a number of the older signature lead synth parts (such as ‘And You And I’ ‘CTTE’ etc.) . The beauty of the Sledge is it has a full size keyboard, and very intuitively positioned knobs for quick editing. It has a big fat analogue polyphonic sound too. There’s really not much this synth can’t do. Big fan, and it’s not stupidly expensive either. (The lighting guy’s not too keen on the bright orange though!!!)

Paul Maguire
What do you think of the new Korg Krome?
I’ll be honest here – I’ve actually never heard of it. Have been to the NAMM show last few years, but generally spend my time either with the Roland people or some of the high-end audio departments. So no, haven’t been introduced to this particular keyboard. I saw Jordan Rudess perform ‘Tarkus’ on a Korg (excellently by the way) at the last NAMM, so I’m guessing perhaps it was one of these.

Chris Cook
Hey Geoff, what do you think of the release of Mellotron again, but this time digital, the 4000D?
I’m sure that they have managed to recreate all the eccentricities of the original instrument and more no doubt. It was an amazing device, and became the mainstay of much progressive music, particularly in England where it was featured in so many recordings. It required a whole different technique of playing just from the physical keyboard standpoint. I’m sure they will have changed this on the new digital model, as well as modifying the 7 or 8 second sustain limitation for the obligatory tape re-wind.

Christopher Holzmann Accornero
Hi Geoff. How did you you arrive at the monotonic lead sound for the keyboard parts on “White Car?” Can we please have something similar on the next Yes album?
I used exclusively a Fairlight CMI, and recorded the whole of White Car in one afternoon during the Drama sessions. It was more of an experiment to see what the new sampler could do, to be honest. So I tried to simulate an orchestra using these samples, but it was very early days of digital sampling. The bandwidth was very narrow, but that’s what gave it all that characteristic ‘crunch factor’. We then added the vocoder and Trevor’s vocal to the mix. I’m hoping to be able to contribute another vignette along these lines to the next Yes album. I think that might be an interesting route to go – more along the lines of say, the Fragile album.

Christopher Schipp
Hey Geoff. Huge fan of the Drama album (easily in my top 5 favorite Yes albums) and was ecstatic to hear you were rejoining the band. My question is outside of further touring (and maybe another studio album and a live album) with Yes and a new album from Asia, any other projects in the works? Projects involving your old mate Trevor Horn (Buggles/Producers) or Chris Braide? Oh and some of us are still hoping for a Drama tour live album Thank you.
Obviously a Drama fan then?! You know, when I listen to that album now, I still think it holds up and sounds good. How we managed to come up with a piece such as ‘Machine Messiah’ still baffles me. It has all the hallmarks of Yes music with its numerous complex riffs and time changes – so yes, I’m proud of my contribution to that album. Outside of what I’m doing at the moment (with Yes & Asia), doesn’t leave me a great deal of opportunity for other collaborations. But I love working and making music all the time, so I’m sure there will be things cropping up along the way. Drama live? We’ve talked about it!

Christopher Lee
The current Three Album Tour is a wonderful idea. If there were to be another Three Album Tour, what albums would you like to play? (i.e. Drama, Relayer, Fragile, 90125, Yes)
When it was first suggested, it seemed like a fairly daunting prospect, but now that we’re into it, it’s turned out to be very rewarding both for band and audience alike. So following on from the last question, Drama would be fun to do. Other than that, I’d personally really enjoy including 90125. ‘Changes’ is a great piece – I’ve played it before with Alan’s band White. I’ve also performed ‘Owner’ with Yes & ‘Cinema’ with Trevor, so I guess I’ve got a bit of heads-up here!

Conner Hammett
For me, Drama is one of the best albums Yes ever did. Hearing the band play Tempus Fugit with 4/5ths of the original Drama lineup in 2011 was a great experience. Are there any plans to bring back any other tracks from that album? I’d love to hear “Does It Really Happen” or “Into the Lens” in concert!
OK, Drama seems to be a real popular choice around here. I must say I think I’ve signed more copies of this album at the meet and greets this time out than any other item. We all look so young on the inner sleeve – ah those were the days! I remember we often used to open with ‘Does It Really Happen’ on the original Drama tour. It’s a great piece, and sure, I’d like to play that one again. ‘Into the lens’, another epic with great syncopated rhythmic sections. I guess I’ll have to dust off the old vocoder if we’re going to do this entire album in the future!

James Starchuk
Geoff, I loved your work on Drama and to this day is one of my favourite YES albums you are also the first YES keyboardist I saw perform live in Toronto (Maple Leaf Gardens 1980), that Hammond sound and the effective way you used it throughout the album is indescribable, makes me feel so good. Which parts of ‘Tempus Fugit” were your idea?… and the very end few chords sounds synthetic “yes yes yes yes yes….” how was that effect achieved?…. Loved your work with Asia also, especially the debut album!
Thanks James. Tempus was a real group effort, and if my memory serves me well, it was my idea to put in the organ flourishes in between the block chop chords around the intro and re-intro. Also, I contributed the vocoder sections during the song. Regarding the last “Yes’s” at the end, this was achieved when I sampled the big ‘Yes’ vocal chord from earlier in the song. I’d just got the Fairlight CMI keyboard, and so I was able to play this sample pitch changing playing the notes (Lydian mode) down the keyboard. That’s how the effect was created.

Eric Wise
Geoff: I am so thankful that you have been able to carry on at the keyboard helm for Yes, especially on this current tour; you have been in my prayers. My first Yes concert was the Drama Tour, so I was really glad to hear that you had taken over, at the keys in 2011 (and I loved what you did on Fly From Here). When I saw Awaken on the set list for last summer’s tour I thought it was very much an ambitious choice, but you proved up to the task (your organ sound was sick!). Seeing your posts on yesfans.com was really special also. What Yes song would you most like to perform (that you haven’t done with the band previously) and why? I for one would love to see the band take a crack at The Remembering. I believe that Jon D would rip the vocals on the song and I think you would really shine on all the keyboard interlude opportunities there. I would hope that if that was considered too ambitious (probably more so for the audience), that at some point we might get to hear Yes play, The Gates of Delirium again. God bless you.
Eric…Well erm yes, ‘Awaken’ took some serious scrutiny from me I tell you, particularly the middle pipes and harp section. I created a very complex patch for live, using a variety of organ samples and effects to simulate the different manuals and stops of the church organ that Rick used on the original recording. It really is an astonishing piece of music all round, and I understand why it has become the ‘Holy Grail’ of a lot of Yesfans. I think you’re right; ‘The Remembering’ would be an interesting choice to add to a set some point. But there are also so many other hidden gems on the albums that have been historically been overlooked by the touring band over the years. Talk, Big Generator, Union, The Ladder, & Keys to Ascension also have some killer tracks. How about ‘Mind Drive’ as a suggestion? ☺

Thomas Morton
Hello Geoff! Just wondering if you would consider bringing your blog back? Really enjoyed your stories of being on tour with Asia and Yes.
I know I raised a few eyebrows a couple of years back when I ran my tour blog after I’d first rejoined the band. I was getting quite a bit of stick from some of the fans for my outspoken comments. But hey, it was all in good spirits and I’ll be sure to give it some consideration next time out. The majority of folks like yourself took it for what it was, I guess – an amusing and entertaining view of life on the road. I’ll give it a go. I’ll be back on Twitter again shortly with my 140-character ramblings on politics, music, sport or anything else that crosses my mind. Follow me there at: @asiageoff.

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Read more at http://www.yesworld.com/2013/04/ask-yes ... YbLpYMi.99

[JJG]

Brad J. Nye
I’ve read that you started playing music on piano at an early age, what made you switch to drums?
I switched to drums when I was around twelve years old. I started playing the piano at six years old. My uncle was a drummer and he noticed that I was playing the keyboard very percussively, so he got me a set of drums, and within three months I was playing drums in a band onstage. That first band, whose name I can’t remember, became the Downbeats.

Nancy Johnson
You are such an influence for so many drummers, and have been for a long time. Who was you influence, or influences when you were a kid?
My first influences really were when I first got a set of drums, I listened to Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, but also on the other side, rock and roll was just starting and I listened to Ringo Starr and The Beach Boys, and then when I was a teenager, I basically started listening to more fusion, jazz-type drummers like Lenny White, Alphonse Mouzon, Jack DeJohnette, and drummers of that nature. As a result, my style has jazz influences and rock and roll influences. I like to combine the two musical genres as well as some classical influences.

Joseph Heissler
Alan, do you have classical training? How did you get into all those time signature changes?
My classical training was on the piano from six years old. I had a teacher, Mrs. Thompson was her name, and she was one of those old-school piano teachers, and I used to practice for a half-hour to an hour a day, and then twice a week I went to Mrs. Thompson and I would get all my classical pieces right, and do reading. She had a ruler, and if I played a wrong note she used to hit me on the knuckles. I kept on taking piano lessons until the age of fifteen, and I got up to Piano Grade 8, which is almost teaching grade. So, as a result of that, and through my teen years listening to fusion and other influences like that, I developed my own way of writing music through the piano. Also getting into time changes by listening to bands like Frank Zappa, all of those things made an impression on me, and as a result, time signatures that are of an odd meter were always of great interest to me, so I incorporated it into my technique as it developed.

Rob Quider
I’ve seen many of your comments about working with John Lennon, but not many of working with George Harrison. What was that like and did you get a sense of George’s spirituality working with him?
I did get a sense of George’s spirituality. It was wonderful working with both John and George, they were just incredible human beings. George was a lot quieter, and a bit more studious about what was happening and what was going down on the record. John would just say to me “Alan, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it, it’s great.” But with George, we analyzed things a bit more. I spent three weeks making All Things Must Pass and it was mostly the same group of people every day. It was an amazing experience working with George in studio and I did get a sense of his spirituality, especially playing on songs like ‘Hare Krishna’.

Jeff Runyan
How did it feel transitioning from playing with John Lennon to jumping into the start of the Close to the Edge tour?
Well there was a vast difference in styles, but I was prepared for it by the fact that I had my own band in England, and we were writing original music that had lots of good time changes. We were interested in that style of music, so as a result, when going from, say, ‘Instant Karma’ or ‘Imagine’ to ‘Close to the Edge’, it was not a difficult transition for me because I could understand the whole reasoning behind it. I think it gave me a good background for solid rock and roll drumming, but it helped to also develop a more prog-rockish kind of style like ‘Close to the Edge’.

Martin Delaney
What was your feeling, having only just joined the band, then being thrust into the making of ‘Topographic Oceans’? Were you at all concerned that you had gotten in over your head? P.S. Your performance and sound on that album is some of the greatest ever.
Well, thank you very much, Martin. When we made Topographic Oceans, we spent almost six months rehearsing the whole album, because we were making what was considered a concept album, we went into the music in great depths on a daily basis. I was establishing relationships with both Chris Squire and Steve Howe and it naturally developed into a style that’s been with the band ever since. Topographic was a big adventure in those kinds of areas. I must admit that everybody thought that we were crazy to release an album with only four songs on a double album, and actually go out and play it live. By the way, the encore on that tour was ‘Close to the Edge’, so the encore was twenty minutes long. That will give you an idea you how long we were on stage [laughs].

Kurt Neidlinger
Besides percussion, can you discuss your “other” musical abilities, Piano, vocals etc.? I’ve read somewhere that some of the tracks on Topographic Oceans and Tormato were you playing more than the drums.
I think Topographic was mostly percussion for me. It’s in more recent albums in the 90′s where I did some tracks playing piano. Because of my piano background, I’d play vibraphone and tuned percussion on some of the songs. On Tormato, I did play some piano or keyboards on one track, but that’s a long time ago. I think that was my first adventure in electronic drums because I spent an awful lot of money developing what was considered one of the first electronic drum triggering systems, which, if you looked at it today, would look like an old steam engine. The song was ‘Arriving UFO’ – that’s that noise you hear [bump bump bump bump, bump bump bump bump] – that’s all drums. On “Future Times” I used to play on a military kind of snare. It was a big one. The crowd noise on that one, I think, is a soccer crowd that somebody recorded and we added to the track. We liked to experiment with unique sounds.

Rob Mitchell
Do you have your own favorite Yes songs? My fav for your playing would be Gates of Delirium I also love the great solo drum part in Sound Chaser.
I get this question a lot. I always find it difficult to answer because every album with YES has been in a different era of band’s career and I have my favorites and not-so-much songs from each era. I think in general, I enjoy all of the music. Seeing as you’ve pulled out ‘Gates of Delirium’, ‘Gates of Delirium’ is actually one of the harder songs to play on stage that Yes performs. It’s a very exciting piece of music, when we play it right. Once we’ve done it a few times on stage it really takes off and becomes it’s own element, especially the drum battle scene between the drums and the keyboards at the end of the song – it’s quite something to see on stage. In the studio, Jon Anderson and I built a rack of percussion instruments entirely out of car parts and springs and we would play all of these different noises in different parts of the song. Some of them we used, some of them, not. In the keyboard-drum battle in that song, we were in the studio and I pushed the whole thing over one day while Patrick Moraz was playing a very strange chord. You can actually hear it on the record. The whole thing goes crazy when I knocked our percussion creation over and it made a huge clattering noise. It’s called dynamic recording [laughs].

Michael March
How was making Relayer different from other projects you have done in the past. Your work on this album in particular was amazing.
Relayer was made in Chris Squire’s studio in his house in Virginia Water in Surrey, England. Everyone would travel down to the studio every day. We’d start around lunchtime and work ‘til dinner. It was more kind of a home-recorded type experience, but it was a beautiful studio and very professional. We all went to Chris’ house and we all had a lot of fun. Every morning, Jon and I would stop at a junk yard – I wish someone had a video of that – Jon crawling under cars and banging pieces of metal and springs to get particular sounds.

Tom Stratton
I was so happy to have seen you and Bill play together on the Union tour. What was your approach for two drummers on this music and how did you and Bill divide the drum parts?
I get on very well with Bill and we spent the first week of rehearsals talking to each other a lot figuring out who was going to play what. There were obviously landmark songs in the set like ‘Heart of the Sunrise’, which is very much a Bill Bruford style song, and I said “well, you have to play this song on stage”. So there were a few songs where Bill played drums, but I played the main drum kit for most of the set and Bill put the icing on the cake with his electronic drums. We were both happy with the way we gelled playing together and we had fun. I think it made for a good show.

Dennis Gerron
What were the pros and cons of the “Union” tour playing with two drummers, two guitarists, and two keyboardists, and is there a chance of ever repeating something like that? I for one loved the energy present in those shows.
[laughs] Yeah, except there are more people now that have been in the band since then, so we’d have to have two busses to transport everyone… and a very large stage! If we ever get invited into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there’d be so many people on stage, it could be kind of a nightmare. There’s some talk so there may be a possibility in the future, but I really am not sure. On a sadder note, Peter Banks just died, so he will be absent and missed, but we have other guitarists that have played in the band, both Trevor Rabin and Billy Sherwood. I wouldn’t mind at all if it happened again. It would be quite an exciting thing to do. We’re rolling right now and we’re all enjoying the current line-up and what we’re doing. The biggest difficulty in putting that group together was deciding who was going to play what solo on which song, but after a while it became obvious what solos should be done by which individuals. Remember that Trevor and Steve were both on that tour, and Trevor had been playing those songs for a long time, and obviously Steve had too, so they had to work that stuff out. As did Bill and myself. And Rick had to do the same thing with Tony Kaye. On the plus side, we had just one singer and one bass player so that made things a lot simpler.

David Bedno
Ramshackled was such a different album than anything you’ve been part of – what prompted the wise variety in musical styles, and do you think you might be part of such a project again?
I guess I was heavily influenced by a lot of different kinds of music, and I had my own band then, ‘Griffin’, so we put together with an eight piece band to record the album. We had a horn section, and everyone was interested in lots of different kinds of music like Frank Zappa – extreme kinds of music as well as classical music, similar to the music Yes were listening to at the time. Jon Anderson was also writing a lot of music similar to the music we were composing. So the influence came from a lot of areas and as a result, the songs we were writing had many changes in style, within the songs, and from number to number. The fact that I’m a Gemini, I have different sides and might do things differently at one time or another, so I guess it was that extreme change where one day you’re this person, and the next you’re another person, playing reggae [laughs]. We made an album with ‘White’, which had similarly focused areas and a variety of musical styles when we constructed that album. We’ve started writing and working on a new album but it’s taking time due to my commitment to YES. The band is so active that it’s been hard to find time it’s to fit it all in.

Will Gill
What songs did you find most challenging to re-learn on the current 2013 tour?
Actually, at rehearsals it all kind of fell into place pretty quickly, We haven’t played ‘Close to the Edge’ in quite a few years, so that’s a song that if you don’t play it exactly right, it doesn’t sound great, and we were opening the show with it, so it had to be a very dynamic number. After a few days, it got to where it was really coming along. When playing “Close to the Edge” it takes a while to get into the right nature. You have to concentrate and methodically go through all the pieces. There was only one song that we’ve never played live and that was “A Venture”, which is not an extremely demanding number to play – it’s really just a bass drum. Funnily enough, it became kind of a quirky part of the set and I have really been enjoying playing it.

Eric Wise
I always have loved the White-Fish portion of the shows I’ve seen, over the years. I hope to see that return to your set before too long. What song do you and Chris have the most difficulty staying in synch for? It blows my mind at times how effortlessly you guys play the most difficult passages of music. The last tour was phenomenal! Thanks for all the Yesmemories! You guys are so awesome!
Not many, actually because we’ve both played the majority of these songs for over forty years, so if we don’t know ‘em by now, we never will [laughs]. After playing with the same bass player for the last – its forty-one years now – you tend to know what he’s going to play and when he’s going to play it, and I think it’s vice versa, so there aren’t many songs that we don’t know what each other are doing. There are certain things like ‘And You And I’ that’s got some time changes and percussive changes in the anthem parts of the song where I have to watch his feet play the bass pedals and we both have to be right on together, or it doesn’t work at all. A certain amount of that goes on between the two of us. It’s just a quick look, and after you’ve done it – the tour we were on, we just played twenty-seven shows, so sometimes we didn’t even look, we just knew where it was gonna be.

Chester F Blaszko
What do you enjoy more now – composing your musical part of a piece or performing an existing piece live?
Composing is always interesting. I like the creative process in the studio. It’s always challenging to come up with new ideas and a new adventure in the rhythm section when composing songs with YES. We’re always searching for something new. But when you’re actually performing for people on stage, there’s nothing like playing in front of a live audience and seeing so many people with smiles on their faces, having a good time.

John Pepe
What determines the timbre of your kit/cymbals, and do they change with live performances?
It depends how you play them. With my ride cymbal, I use a 22 inch K and a 20 inch K, depending. And the reason I do that is because it’s more of a rock and roll kind of cymbal, and on a stage performance, if you use something that’s got too much of a ring to it, they then tend to mix them down because the sound of the cymbals get in the way of the vocals. So there’s a fine line in how heavy you play them and where they’re put. So you have to think carefully about how hard you’re playing the cymbals and things of that nature.

Gary Cronkhite ‏@corndike
I’ve scrutinized many photos of your Ludwig kits. What size bass drum do you prefer?
I’ve always used a twenty-two inch bass drum because my beliefs are that it’s not really the size of the bass drum, so much. I occasionally have played a twenty-four inch; but with a twenty-two, if you record it right and tune it right, you can get all of the sounds you want out of it. I have a Jazette kit at home, it’s just got a twenty inch bass drum, but I can make that sound good, too. It’s how you tune it, and what beater you use, and things of that nature.

Penny Reynolds
Hi (Greetings from the North East of England!): I have always wondered if you had to adapt your pedal technique after you broke your ankle (rollerskating!) some years ago..?
[laughs] I broke it roller-skating with Richard Branson one night in Paris. It was two in the morning, and we were roller-skating in a nightclub. In fact, I didn’t have to adapt because after I broke my ankle there was no technique. I couldn’t play for almost 3 months. It was right in the middle of an album we were making in Paris when it happened, which abruptly put an end to the album we were making at the time. I guess I was out of action for about six weeks, because it wasn’t really a broken ankle, it was just a crack in the bone in my right ankle.

Arj Bartholomeusz
Hi Alan. I have read many comments online from fans/critics regarding your drum sounds on different albums. I absolutely love your drums on Big Generator, Drama and Open Your Eyes. Do you have any personal faves (simply re: drum production) and are there any that you feel could have been done much better? Thanks for your signature style, I can always pick an Alan fill!
Drama was recorded really, really well. It was a great experience. Steve, Chris and I started writing together, creating song material in a studio in London. Meanwhile next door, The Buggles were recording. By chance they were big fans of YES, and they kept popping their heads in the studio where we were working. Then all of a sudden their equipment was in there, and it became a new version of YES. Songs like ‘Machine Messiah’ and ‘Tempus Fugit’ are all really great to play, and there was a lot of focus on creating particular sounds on those albums. We’d spend an awfully long time making the drum sound just right. Back in those days, we might spend an entire day just getting a drum sound for a particular track, so attention to detail was in force on all three of those albums.

Steve Arsenault
Alan, do you still own the set of North toms that you used on tour years ago? You are the reason I own a set to this day. Thank you for being an inspiration to me, and so many others!
Yeah, I still have them. They haven’t been used in a while, so they’re more like decorative pieces in my studio now. I also have the bass drum but I haven’t been able to locate the snare drum. I’d love to try and find one to complete the set! It was a very interesting kit, but I never used the kit as whole kit on stage, I only ever used the toms with my regular drums.

Matthew Thompson
What have you done with all the drum kits you’ve gone through in your career? Is there some warehouse full of drums, collecting dust?
[laughs] There’s actually one quick answer to that: Yes there is! …and we won’t talk about my monthly storage bill! I have four storage units and I would guess in all I have about twenty-two kits between Seattle and Los Angeles, and a few scattered drums in England. People keep offering to buy them, but I keep them for nostalgia’s sake. I look at them and it brings back memories of where and when – the experience of making certain albums and touring. I’ve had a good partnership with Ludwig drums for over 40 years so I’ve acquired quite a collection during that time. I still have the silver sparkle Ludwig kit that I used on ‘Imagine’ and the white kit that I used on ‘90125’ is here in Bellevue at Donn Bennett’s Drum Studio on permanent loan.

[JJG]

Armando Jorquera Mariani
What was your favorite kind of music to listen to as a child and what music do you like to listen to now when you are not working?
I didn’t listen to music until I was about ten, and then it was pop music, dance band music, and guitar music soon after. Now I listen to the broadest possible choice of music from country to classical to jazz to rock.

Steve Yett
How Alan joined the band is famously documented with Jon and Chris (jokingly?) threatening to throw him out of a window. And Rick joining by Chris calling him at 3:00 AM and Rick showing up at rehearsal,and driving you home after, simply asking what time he was going to pick you up the next day. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a detailed story about the circumstances of how you joined the band. Could you please share this story with us?
Well I don’t know that the previous stories are true, and what I remember is that I got a call from Chris saying that he and Jon Anderson had seen me playing in different groups, and would I come and play with them. I went to a place called Barnes, where the their manager at the time lived, and he had a basement, and I walked in, and we played, and we liked each other, and we started work on The Yes Album. After we’d done some rehearsing, we went out and played some of Time and a Word and then we played a few new Yes songs. That’s all there was to it – it wasn’t all that intriguing or unusual.

Chet Baker
You and the lads were in your 20′s when The Yes Album was recorded. It was groundbreaking not only for the band, but also for rock music. At that point, did you feel you were part of something special, something bigger than yourself? Did you have any inkliing that life as you knew it would never be the same?
We were ambitious and the guys were great. Of course we thought we had a chance, otherwise if you think you haven’t got a chance, you wouldn’t bother doing it. So, in a way, we thought we had a chance. Obviously we didn’t know what would actually happen. We didn’t have a crystal ball, and there were risks involved—maybe we wouldn’t break through, but The Yes Album helped us break through.

Don Corn
Is it true that you are so connected to your guitar that when you fly that you buy and extra seat for the guitsr so you dont lose it during your travels?
[Laughs] There is some truth in this, but not recently. Airlines have become more and more annoying and keep changing the rules of whether you can or can’t bring guitars on board. In the 70s, we used to fly Trans-Atlantic and I’d buy a seat for it. And then Concorde came along, and I don’t really think I was stupid enough to buy a seat for it, but I certainly took it on Concorde. But then things were nice because they would say “oh, a guitar—no problem.” And now it’s “Guitar? Oh, where is that gonna go?” So basically they’ve broken the musician’s rule that a musician has the right to carry his personal instrument on the plane, and they keep breaking that rule. So consequently I don’t fly with guitars anymore because it’s just too much of a pain in the neck. But it’s true, I did used to buy seats and they used to call it Mr. Gibson, I think. That’s where that name came from.

Robert Dapp
Hi Steve, I recently read that you are self-taught and do not read music. I was blown away by that, for I assumed, being the stellar musician that you are, that you must have been classically trained. How did you do it? Did you learn the scales first? Did you learn any music theory, or did it all come from trial and error? I just want to thank you for the many years of inspiration. You were the one who inspired me to pick up the guitar in the mid 70′s and I am still playing to this day!
Thanks. I didn’t want to do it any other way. Music was a revolt against school and schooling, and education, and aggression and people ramming things down my throat. So I thought music gave me a great sense of freedom. So I do everything by ear. I listen to tunes and work them out by ear. The only thing I did learn were chord charts—how to read those—you’d have to be pretty stupid not to be able to read a chord chart, but like you said, I didn’t read notation, tablature, or any other form of music. It just seemed I wasn’t really into looking at a piece of paper and playing my guitar, so that’s how I did it—I did it by ear, I did it because I love music, and I did it because I learned technique without sitting there playing scales all day—that was too boring—so I played tunes and now I improvise instead of rehearsing. I don’t really practice per se, but I do enjoy playing.

John McMillan
Hey Steve, what does music look like in your head?…since you don’t read music, how do you remember sounds? Is it like a road map?
I don’t really know the answer to that. It’s a memory capacity I’ve built up gradually by learning how to play Duane Eddy, The Ventures, The Shadows kind of 7/4 twangy tunes, and then I learned more about chord inversions, and then I was in bands playing tunes. I can remember how to play “Maybelline” by The Syndicats, or “My White Bicycle” by Tomorrow, I can remember how to play—really any music that I’ve been a part of, I can remember parts of it, or most of it, or all of it. It’s just a memory capacity—I told myself I wanted to learn this stuff, so I learned it. Notation just blinded me, it was like school again—I loathed it—and I haven’t done so badly. There are many other fine guitarists and other fine musicians who never found it necessary to read music so it’s one of those fallacies.

Duncan Weller
When you are interviewed, you are very calm, collected, intelligent, organized, thoughtful and seem overall like a conservative and relaxed sort of guy. When you play, the music takes on all sorts of soaring emotions, with great variety. Musically it’s an amazing talent, but what happens in your head when you play? What feelings go through your mind? Do you get lost in your emotions and feeling or can it sometimes become (and I don’t mean to sound insulting) mechanical because you play the same songs repeatedly?
Absolutely none of the above; none at all. This is a question that usually don’t answer because I don’t know either and I don’t want to know, and I would say everything you’ve just said is wrong. I play because I enjoy it, and yeah, I have memories but I don’t think about the memories when I’m playing. There’s this whole thing about emotion—it’s not a way I recognize. I’ve been playing for over 50 years and so you see playing somewhere else, it’s about connecting not all those known things, it’s about connecting with something completely unknown. And thank goodness, because if it was any of the above, I would have given up years ago. It’s not about thinking about the meaning of the song while you’re playing it, it’s about another concept—broader and wider—I don’t understand it; you don’t understand it, and nobody understands it. And thank God, because it’s a mystery.

Ray Mckenney
Hey Steve, thanks for some of the greatest, most inspirational music on the face of this world! My finger work has gotten better with extensive practice and exercise but, I would certainly take any advice you would give on making what I see in my head, get delivered a bit faster and more accurately to the fret board. Any advice on how I might improve my technique and, maybe someday be able to play all the parts of say, Turn of the Century or South Side of the Sky?!
Don’t do it the way that you’re doing it. Stop trying so hard and get into the spirit of the thing because the spirit of the thing is a combination of technique—yeah, you’ve got to have technique—but it’s also a conversation you’re going to have with other musicians, and with your audience, so it isn’t something that you can sort of say this or that or the other. To make that leap, you’ve got to stop thinking and start playing. I don’t know how else to put it. Fortunately, because I’m self-taught, that’s exactly what I’ve always done, is just get on with it, and stop thinking about it, because I don’t think it helps. But then again, I can’t be in your mind, and you can’t be in my mind, because these are personal experiences. So maybe everybody experiences music a little bit differently, but certainly, it’s not mechanical—maybe the physicality of it might be mechanical, but that’s only a tiny bit of why we play music.

Rob Stewart
I have been playing guitar for almost 30 years, and I still can’t play Johnny B Goode. What is the secret to playing Chuck Berry riffs?
Look at a video, look at his finger positioning. Get your guitar in tune with his records, maybe his records aren’t perfectly in tune. Take it from where it comes. Try Down the Road Apiece, that’s a pretty interesting tune, and he’s got some pretty interesting guitar work—he didn’t write it, but everything he wrote is exactly the same. They’re more or less the same: Johnny B. Goode, Carol, they’re virtually the same two string chords.

Kevin Michael Anderson
Mr. Howe, I’m a monstrous fan of your guitar technique. I’ve bought most of the available sheet music for your guitar parts, but I’m afraid that most of your guitar parts from Yes go unpublished…Will you ever partner up with someone to publish some transcriptions? My regards…Kevin.
Two things; there is a transcription out, I think it’s called Guitar Pieces or it was originally called ‘Eight Guitar Pieces’ and then it might have been expanded to more and I know that there are people around who send more charts of more transcriptions, and it might come together, but because I don’t read music–I do appreciate other people playing my music, so I’d love them to do that—but when you’ve only so much time to put into getting some of my music into music on a stave. I do care about it, and it would be nice, and I will endeavor to get a bigger portfolio of pieces that are more recent and things, like my album Motif.

There are also transcriptions and individual tracks for the YES albums ‘Fragile’ and ‘The Yes Album’ available on Jammit here. You can listen, play along, slow down, and read the transcriptions, all at the same time.

Paul A. Schroeter
Once and for all how is the Portuguese 12 string you use in Wonderous Stories and Your Move tuned? How do you prevent feedback when playing your hollow body ES 175. I would probably write better questions but I am at this very minute getting ready to leave and drive up to Detroit to see the band tonight.
From the high strings, the top two strings are both A-flat above top E, and then the second set of strings-courses, they’re called, the second course is two strings tuned at E, the same as a guitar. The third course is B, exactly the same as a guitar. The next course is E, it’s a mixture—one of the strings is E like the top of the guitar, and the other one is E but the second fret at the fourth string of a guitar. The same thing happens with B below it- we’re going down now, so the fifth course, the top string of those is B- the same as the second string of a guitar, and the second of those is B, an octave below that. Then on the bottom course is unison, and that means that they’re both the same as holding E on the fourth string on a regular guitar. So it’s an E chord with an A-flat at the top.

I think I was lucky in getting good 175s that tended not to feedback as much as things like L5s and Super 100s because jazz guitars definitely do feedback. And also, the other ingredient is you mustn’t have too much bass or middle on your amp, otherwise that will encourage the bass to feedback. Obviously don’t stand in front of it in a way that produces the feedback. The fourth reason that I thought of is that I use a volume pedal, so if it does feedback, I can control that. I always use a volume pedal—that came from hearing steel guitar players. And the volume pedal means I’m always under control; I can turn the guitar off, tune it, and have it quieter when I want it when the singer is singing. Also, I can voice my notes, so they’re not like Perpetual Change—it starts with voiced chords as opposed to just chink-chink-chink. So there’s a couple of ideas; get lucky with a guitar, tune your amp so that it’s not got too much bass end, and use a volume pedal.

Robb Hindle ‏@RC_Hindle
Steve, do you use much in the way of effects pedals, and if so, which?
That’s an enormous question, yeah for the first twenty, thirty, maybe forty years I used a lot of pedals, I always had to have the latest–which wasn’t always the greatest–sometimes the older ones are better. Now I just use Line 6 programming, in other words the HD-500, is a programmable pedal board, it does everything you could imagine. I don’t use separate pedals anymore, everything I use is in that HD-500, which is, as I say, a small pedal board that does everything. You have to learn how to program it and you store sixteen banks of four sounds, and I’m in heaven.

Michael Ulliman
Hey Steve! Have you ever gone through writers block? How do you get past it? Are there times when you don’t want to pick up a guitar? I’d love your advice as I’m going through a moment where I feel my playing has gotten stale and when I pick up a guitar I end up playing the same ‘ol style and licks.
The first time I ever thought of writer’s block is when you just mentioned it, so it’s a bit like a problem you can create yourself. I don’t get it, but there again I don’t expect myself to be writing music every day and every hour of my life, I’ve got other things. I’ve got a life to lead. I’ve got performances to do and records to make. Somewhere in there I find time to write music, which is fine. Lyrics can make you stumble a lot because they’re very, very difficult to write. Again, you need an idea to set the wheels in motion. Without an idea, you haven’t got any lyrics. Every player gets to little plateaus where you don’t progress, and what you’re waiting for is you want to progress, so if you’re not patient enough then you’re not going to progress. If you are patient enough, then you will progress. Don’t play the same pieces. Improvise or just play some nice chords or see what fun you can have with chords that you don’t normally put together or things you don’t normally do on the guitar. The guitar is a fascinating instrument which you can plug in about fifty different ways, so if you’re not using many of those ways, you’re going to get bored. So damp the strings, bend the strings, put the guitar behind your head and set it alight, I don’t know, but just don’t think of it as a limited instrument or of something you can’t progress on, because we do progress and its endlessly unlimited.

Laura Belfiore
What is your favorite Yes song to play? Which one is the most challenging for you to play?
I don’t really know what that is, most likely things we haven’t played would be more challenging like Sound Chaser would be very challenging—exciting, but challenging. There are arrangements to hold together with other people that are difficult. I don’t, strictly speaking, have a favorite Yes song, but yeah, if I had to, I like To Be Over—that’s another great unplayed Yes song that one day might get played again, but I don’t fancifully keep looking for favorites, there’s too much great music. What’s your favorite Bach piece would be the most impossible-just one person, one composer wrote more music than anybody’s got time to listen to.

Thomas Carnacchio
With the new tour and having to relearn songs that you never played live what was the hardest part about playing and learning these old songs?
Well, nothing was really hard, we’re very lucky to be musicians to be able to do something we like. Doesn’t mean that in the sense it’s hard like you mean. Getting your memory completely up on a particular tune, getting fingering right is all over the place. Turn of the Century is quite a challenge, so I could just have said that, but it’s not the only thing that’s difficult. Holding music together is difficult but you’ve got to do that with other people. There’s a connection you need to make which is taken for granted in some ways. It helps you to play the music. Obviously if you don’t play the music you’re learning, then there’s no point in learning it because you’ll forget it. The way my memory works is that I play it, and then I remember it. If I didn’t play it, I’d forget it as soon as I’d worked out what it was. So it’s really as simple as A-B-C.

Sergio De Acha
Steve, almost all of the questions posed to you in this forum you have answered already at one time or another. The fans would really like you to answer the question about the handling of Jon’s departure. Enough time has passed and I’m sure your thoughts have settled quite a bit on this topic. What would need to happen for you and Jon to collaborate again?
The current members of Yes respect and regard and appreciate the enormous contributions that our past members have made, not the least of all Bill Bruford, Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Patrick Moraz, and the late Peter Banks, Billy and Trevor and so many people and they’ve all been contributing to the past. And what you have now is the Yes that is functioning because of multiple reasons: we want to, we’re able to, we have the energy, and we love the music.

Darin Meseure
Steve, we are thankful for your commitment to Yes and the current tour. Over the course if years, apart from Yes, you’ve created wonderful solo material. Is there any chance of a retrospective Steve Howe tour in the future? Thank you for this chance to pose questions guys!
The DVD called Steve Howe’s Remedy LIVE is a bit of a take on that idea. It’s available and kind of mellow and very much an arranged musical concept; it’s not so free an improvising, it’s more about structures that I wrote, and I’m pleased that I did it. It features my sons Dylan and Virgil. Virgil’s on keyboards and Dylan’s on drums, and a couple other guys helped us out. There are things in the pipeline that I’m not going to disclose. Any of my solos shows, which I am doing in the UK in June, is, in a way, is a retrospective because I play solo guitar music from my career.

Chris Kraatz
The Grand Scheme of Things contains many nuggets of environmental wisdom and insight (especially “Blinded by Science”). Do you think of yourself as an environmentally conscientious person? And if so, could you please elaborate and share some of your thoughts on issues or topics that you find to be important in this regard? Thanks!
Well, kind of yes and no. On the album, I have voiced my opinions about the environment. Joni Mitchell, in the sixties, said “stop spraying those apples”. And when I became vegetarian, I realized that I was also fighting pharmaceutical interference pesticide interference, and factory farming, and all the things that I don’t like about the world in the way that we consume foods and substances, some of which are not good for us at all. The biggest one of those is sugar, because we’re all brought up to like sugar and it’s really quite poisonous. So I could rant on for ages but I’m not really here to do that, I’m here to do that through my music. I’m not going to get a soapbox and go to Hyde Park corner and start yelling at everybody through a megaphone. That would be tedious. Yeah, I’ve got opinions, everybody’s got opinions; doesn’t mean that I’m going to stick them out there in front of my music and let them interfere. At the appropriate time and the appropriate place, I’m quite able and free to voice my opinion, and I think what I’ve said gives you a general idea. I’m not going to say, as a rant or as some sort of “you must do this people, based on what I say”. I don’t really like that approach. I think people need to find their own way to their own spot and then they’ll like it. I don’t think I want anybody to tell me what to do, but they do, and I don’t like that.

Neil Brewitt ‏@redpola
What’s it like to have kids who are amazing musicians?
That’s a real joy! It’s an endless joy. It’s great to see and play with them. It’s great that their careers have similar paths to mine, and of course we wish them a lot of luck, more luck than they’re having. We’d like them to get opportunities; we’d like Dylan to be playing with Sting, and we could go on with “we’d like this and this idea” but basically their career is their own path, and we’ve been supportive. And they’ve encouraged me by doing what they do; the encouragement is not one way. It’s not just me looking at them and thinking “wow”, which it is. I look at them and they inspire me as much as, maybe even more so, than I’ve helped inspire them. When they were young, we just played music, we didn’t talk about it, we didn’t say “you can’t play that because you don’t know what it is”. We just got an instrument of their choice and we played together and that’s given us a very good rooting for them.

Matthew Silver
Hi Steve, no questions I can think of right now. Just a huge THANK YOU for continuing to share your gifts and talents with the world, and giving the world timeless, beautiful & powerful music. You have been and always will be my favorite guitarist. A heartfelt thank you from a life-long fan of yours and of Yes.
Thank you very much. That’s very nice, it’s a lovely sentiment, and I am flattered. It’s not going to go to my head and we’re going to keep trying to do the same thing so I hope you like the next phase of my solo work, my trio work and the Yes work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[JJG]

Nigel Kenny
How did you get the flanged bass sound on the intro to ‘Survival‘? Until the archive video appeared recently on YouTube, I thought it was Peter Banks’ lead (playing some of the lower strings high up the fret board)! I think this was one of the first times in rock history when the high strings on a bass were used on an intro riff! Ever the pioneer! : )
I honestly can’t remember exactly what effect I was using, but I think it was a Cry Baby Wah-Wah pedal, so it was more of a wah effect than a flange effect.

Miguel Falcão
Dear Chris. You mentioned on interviews about ‘Roundabout‘ bass line being doubled by yourself playing a guitar. It seems to me that you might have applied the same technique previously on ‘All Good People‘. Can you confirm this? Thank you.
No, the bass guitar on ‘All Good People’ was not doubled, as far as I can remember; I think that’s purely just a bass guitar. But you are indeed correct that ‘Roundabout’ was me doubling the bass line with a big Gibson electric guitar that belonged to Steve Howe.

Eric Mansfield
Chris, I noticed on songs like ‘Siberian Khatru‘ you are alternating between 8 & 7 beats. What are you guys doing on ‘Awaken‘ after the vocal intro when you start playing your triple neck bass? I can’t seem to figure out the time signature.
The Awaken first section is, in fact, in 11/4, and it should work out if you count to 11.

Gordon Johnston
This question goes way back in time: Bill Bruford the original drummer had a very unique style in that he often departed from holding the foundational beat for many songs. Although this provided a rich texture to many of the early Yes songs, did this put special pressure on you to hold the beat line in your own head in order to keep a song together as the bass player (who normally has the secondarily role of holding the foundational beat line)? Was Bill’s unusual style something that you encouraged or tolerated or were frustrated by as a bass player?
I used to enjoy playing with Bill Bruford a lot, and the combination of his style and my style was very important in the formulation of YES’ early music. I had no pressure dealing with the way Bill played; I used to enjoy his playing a lot, and we really just got on with it together and didn’t think too much about it. We just followed our own instincts and worked it out together.

Carl Hupp
Was it very difficult for you and did you have to alter the way you play to make the transition from Bill Bruford to Alan White as they are completely different drummers in every way possible?
It’s true, it was a very strange change when Alan White replaced Bill Bruford in YES, but I think the point was that we were looking for a different kind of drumming, even though it was not immediately easy for Alan to translate his style into playing music that Bill Bruford had originally written and played on with YES. So yes, it was a large change, but for me, of course, it was very rewarding because for me I didn’t feel I’d changed anything about the way that I played, but it was definitely a challenge to adapt to playing with Alan, who, as you can say, is more of a rock drummer, and Bill Bruford is more of a jazz drummer.

Tim Webb
Hi Chris- thank you for all the music and inspiration! Here’s an odd question that goes back in time a bit… In 1973 you, Alan, and Tony Kaye, along with several other well-known British musicians, played on jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris’ album ‘E.H. in the U.K.‘ I have always wondered what the story was behind this album. Do you remember anything from the sessions or anything about how that project came together? Thanks!
YES were recording ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans‘ at the time in Morgan Studios in Willesden, which is a suburb of North West London. The producer of the Eddie Harris album, knowing this, booked another studio in Morgan Studios so it was relatively easy for Alan and myself to go over and play on this Eddie Harris album. It was done very quickly, from what I can remember, and it’s true, there were some great players on that session, one of them being Steve Winwood, who was very quietly sitting in a corner playing a Rhodes piano. And yes, I think you’re right that Tony Kaye was also involved. Of course, by that time, Rick Wakeman had replaced Tony in YES. As I said, it was a very quickly done thing, and the producer anchored as a conductor more or less, in the middle of the room, I remember, pointing at various people when he wanted to feature them on the tracks. So it was very high up there on the jamming scale. But it did turn out fine and everyone seemed to like it.

Tony Romano
Cheers Chris, you were the first bass player I ever heard that used the bass guitar as a ‘lead’ instrument, (for example, as is evident on the opening of ‘Sound Chaser‘). Was this a conscious choice decided by you or was this simply a natural progression of your playing style? And also, did you enjoy playing with and do you still stay in touch Patrick Moraz? I thought ‘Relayer‘ was one of the best Yes albums ever. Thank you Chris.
Patrick Moraz, who you mentioned, we all saw recently at our recent show in Tampa, Florida. It was definitely fun playing with him for the period of time he was in YES, and he also plays on my solo album from 1975, Fish Out of Water on a couple of the tracks, and does some fantastic Hammond organ playing. As far as ‘Sound Chaser’ is concerned, every member of YES was always trying to better themselves as a musician and performer, and if there was a chance to go for some clever play, we all used to take those chances. Thank you for your compliment.

Javier Moreno
Tell me about ‘Fish Out of Water‘. What made you jump into a solo album?
I didn’t jump into a solo album; it was agreed at that particular time that each member of YES was going to do a solo album, which is indeed what happened. And that included Patrick Moraz, who was in the band at the time. So Jon Anderson recorded Olias of Sunhillow, Steve Howe had an album called Beginnings, Patrick Moraz had an album called ‘The Story Of I‘, Alan White had an album called ‘Ramshackled‘, and my contribution was Fish out of Water. We recorded them all in the same period of time, and they were released pretty much in the same time period as well. So that was the YES plan, and that’s what we did.

Julie Rupp Oakes
Hello Chris! I have a question about songwriting (especially pertaining to Fish Out of Water, but Yes songs as well). You’re such a melodic bass player. Is your music ever written around your basslines…or do you come up with chord progressions first and then add bass? And if you come up w/ chord progressions first, do you play them on keys or guitar while you are creating a song?
Usually I work with keyboards in my songwriting initially, but I’ve also come up with ideas using an acoustic guitar and also I have come up with bass guitar riffs which have been the root of an idea and songs have developed from that. So there is no one way that I work, but if I recall, most of the songwriting on Fish Out of Water was keyboard-based initially, then I recorded the bass lines after the keyboard demo was put down.

James Gateman
During the 1976 tour (with the “Crab Nebula” stage), I was at a Cobo Arena concert in Detroit which was being filmed. What happened to that concert film and will it ever be released? Thanks!
I’m very upset to tell you that the film from the Cobo Hall, which I believe there were three or four nights of material seem to have evaporated. Although over the years I have tried on many occasions to locate that footage, so far I’ve never had any luck. So if you hear anything about it, please let me know.

Craig S. Thom
Since the current lineup is four-fifths of the one that recorded ‘Drama‘, would you consider playing some of those songs on the next U.S. tour?
We had been playing songs from Drama at the beginning of last year 2012—on our Australian and Far East tour that we did last spring, so we were playing ‘Machine Messiah‘ and ‘Tempus Fugit’; two songs from the Drama album. So it’s very possible that we could pull those out again at some point.

Michael March
Chris during the ABWH era why didn’t you join with that lineup? In my mind that was my and many other fans dream lineup. I assume there were problems with the band, but I always looked at your position as being the one to fix things. You in my opinion are the backbone of YES. If you could shed some light for all the Yes fans we would appreciate it. On a happier note, Fish out of Water was the best solo album of all.
Thank you for the Fish Out of Water compliment. There’s a very simple answer to the ABWH question—no one ever asked me to join. [laughs] So I was never in a position to help them in any way until eventually that band and the YES West band, as it was known, which was Alan White, Trevor Rabin, Tony Kaye and myself, came together and worked on the ‘Union‘ album together. And at that point, as you know, we went around the world playing as an eight-piece band and that was an exciting time for YES because it was almost like a mini YES orchestra. The recording from that tour can be purchased and it well worth listening to.

Kurt Neidlinger
Are you still using the same Taurus bass pedals? Were they ever modified? Does your wife complain about rattling the windows when you play them at home?
[laughs] I don’t play them at home, so no problems there. The original bass pedals that I started off with were actually made by a company called Dewtron, which was an Italian company, and I believe they were made in the sixties. And then later on, Moog came out with the Taurus pedals and I also acquired a set of those, and I used to combine the sounds from both pedals through a special switching box I had made. However, in time, once I settled on a sound I really liked, which was a combination of both units, I ended up sampling the desired sound, and to this day, I trigger the sampled sound when YES play live shows.

Frank List
Hi Chris! Nashville loves ya, man. My question: Has the circuitry in your Rick bass ever been modified or replaced, or is it all original?
I’ve always been very precious about not changing the components although I believe I’ve had to change some of the volume pots over the years, but I believe the rest of the circuitry is original. It’s almost as though it was never a perfect sound in the first place and it gives that guitar it’s personal character.

Bob Wahl
You are the greatest inspiration and influence on my bass playing. What modifications, if any, where made to your Rickenbacker that makes it different from most others. I have a Rick too but yours has such a clear raw and sometimes growling sound.
Apart from the circuitry, which I just explained, it has not been changed from the beginning. I think the guitar always had a slightly different sound electronically from other standard type 3 models, but also, of course, during the years of me decorating the body of the guitar and then having it then stripped down and cleaned up, which happened a couple of times, the guitar repairer who used to refurbish it for me, over a period of time, did some wood planing and stripped the guitar of some of its weight, I’m sure. So it may be possible that because it’s slightly lighter body than the standard type 3 models, that may also contribute to the difference in tone.

Mehmet Karaman
Do you still use the bi-amping technique with Rickenbacker? If yes, do you use guitar amplifier or bass amplifier for the high frequency sounds?
Yes, my stereo circuitry that I’ve used since the since the seventies, has always been purely so I’ve been able to route effects through different pickups. After the effects have been routed—sometimes on the bass pickup, sometimes on the treble pickup, and sometimes for both—the signal is then recombined and is then fed into my two amplification systems—my 100 watt Marshall bass amp, which in actual fact has more high end than most Marshall lead amps, and a standard Ampeg SVT Pro Series amplifier, which I also use.

Paul Gorrell
Chris Do you plan on doing any more ‘Conspiracy‘ albums with Billy Sherwood? The last ones are great. ‘Violet Purple Rose‘!
‘Violet Purple Rose‘ was an exciting song because it also featured Steve Stevens on guitar—famous for his work with Billy Idol, and also Michael Bland, Prince’s drummer, and it’s also one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve played live. Thanks for that compliment. There is a possibility down the road, I could do another Conspiracy album with Billy but presently I’m very tied up with my work with YES, and possibly another album with Steve Hackett, which could also come down the pipe in the next couple of years.

Michael Manasco
Dear Chris,
I have listened to your collaboration with Steve Hackett (‘A Life Within A Day‘) and enjoyed it immensely. How did this project come about, and will there be another “Squackett” project to look forward to?
Both Steve Hackett and I are hoping that we’ll be able to find the time to collaborate on some more Squackett material. The original album came about because I was living in London at the time and I had put together this Christmas album [Chris Squire’s Swiss Choir] that I’d wanted to do for many years of obscure British and European Christmas carols, which I had wanted to do with a choir and with a prog rock—guitar, bass, drums and keyboards—setting. Steve was gracious enough to play the guitar for me, and I owed him big-time for that, so after that project was complete, I said I’d be happy to give him any help with any material that he had been working on. So I started playing on some stuff for him, and the more that carried on, the more we realized at a certain point we were actually making an album together. So we decided to form the Squackett project and we were both very happy with the way it ended up. One of the biggest plusses that album had was that there was no added pressure to get it done from a record company or any other outside factions, so we basically took our time and did it in a very relaxed fashion.

Nicholas Pingo Sjöholm
What’s in the future? Will you guys ever rejoin with Jon Anderson again?
I’ve always said it’s never out of the question that there’s a possibility we could put together something that would involve Jon, and I think Jon would be open to that, as well. At the moment, of course, we’re very busy with our new singer, Jon Davison, and doing a lot of touring work this year and we’re looking at making a new YES album with Jon Davison as the singer towards the end of this year. Going into 2014, there are other possibilities that might open up, but we haven’t detailed them yet.

Robert Dapp
Hi Chris, I have been a big fan of yours since the mid 1970′s. There have been a lot of rumblings in the fan base’s about a possible new album in 2014. I would love to hear a new album with Jon Davison onboard. Could you let us know about the possibility of a new album? Also, does your amplifier go to 10, or is it one louder?
[laughs] My amplifier can go to twelve, if you want it to, [laughs] but usually it’s about five and a half. Thank you for your excitement about a new YES album with Jon Davison. I’m excited to be working on that also, especially as Jon is, as we all know, not only a good front man-singer, but also he a writer as well, so the combination of bringing some of his ideas into the YES camp are something we’re all looking forward to.

Staus Michael
Are there plans for “Fish Out Of Water ” Part 2?
There’s never really been a plan to do that. I don’t think I would ever want to try it and do a followup to that particular album as it stands very much in its own right. However, I can tell you that there is a 5.1 mix of Fish Out of Water which is in the completion stages at the moment and should be available at some point this year.

[JJG]

Ask YES – Friday 3rd May 2013 – Jon Davison



Lennon Ashton
Hi Jon! I have been a huge fan of your singing and I would like to know who your greatest influence was to become a singer. Was there a certain band and/or singer that truly influenced you! Yes was a true inspiration of mine to start a band! Thanks for sharing your talent with the world!
I’ve always been moved most by singers who possess the gift of conveying great emotion through their singing – singers like Bono, Bjork, Jeff Buckley, and Peter Gabriel, around the time he did ‘So’. Obviously Jon Anderson and the other members of YES have had a great impact on me. Keep it up with Youth Be Told. You’re making beautiful music and are going to do great things with your talent!

Rob Reilly
Hi Jon, Thank you very much for your excellent performances with Yes. I would really like for Yes, with you, to make a new album and release it. I feel that you have the heart and soul needed to create yet another fantastic Yes album. My question: what has been the most challenging for you since taking on the role of the lead singer/musician in Yes?” Sincerely, a true “Yesaholic”…that’s me! cheers
Thanks for the kind words, Rob. You are indeed FANtastic! The greatest challenge I’ve met with is keeping my voice in good form, which consists of several aspects. While off the road I continue to sing nearly every day to keep my voice conditioned. I exercise moderation when it comes to what I eat – most of the time avoiding sweets and dairy products. Beyond the obvious health benefits of physical exercise, it’s important for me because it helps give more stamina when moving about on stage for two plus hours. Last but not least, I regularly meditate to try and keep balanced on all levels.

Steve Phelan
I’ve been a Yes fan since 1971. I seen you guys in KC this past March and loved the show! Do you play any instruments other than Guitar? What do you do to get ready for each show?
I also play bass. In fact, for the near thirty years that I’ve been a musician, I’ve probably spent the greatest amount of time on the bass.
I always do my vocal warm-ups before hitting the stage. Also, a COLD shower really gears me up!

Marco Sanchez
Now that your lead vocalist for Yes, how do you project the sound and style of the next Yes album? Will it be more laid back or aggressive sounding? And will you be playing an instrument on the follow up album?
I hope that we’ll find a nice balance between mellow and semi aggressive/aggressive. The YES albums of the 70′s achieved this equilibrium so perfectly. Since I compose a lot on the acoustic guitar, I imagine my playing to some degree will make its way to the record.

Ricky Lewis
I saw you twice so far on this tour you are an amazing singer, as well as the other band members brag about your writing ability. have you written anything new or from the past that you showed the guys that can possibly be used on a new album? i give you all the credit in the world, you are a brilliant musician/singer and are the new sound of yes and it’s better than ever. are you writing alot on this tour in your rare spare time?
First off, a sincere thank you for all your kind words. I’m writing a lot during the interim of life on the road. So far, there’s been an enthusiastic response to my ideas from the rest of the guys. We’ll have to wait and see what eventually conspires. I only believe that I’m in this position to serve and help forward the band. This means putting what’s best for YES before any personal ambitions.

Jean-Paul Jean II
Yes’ best live singer yet! Beautiful voice, so inspiring! Anyway, Chris Squire mentioned in his interview last week that he’s excited to bring you in to the new album as a composer to try for some new sounds and directions…What kind of new approaches might you bring to the new album? Perhaps Yes will incorporate some “symphonic-progressive rock” trends like the Glass Hammer albums you recorded?
Thank you for your kindness! As I mentioned above in the form of another answer, I’d love to find that balance between heart and edge. Because composing for me is not so much a cerebral thing as it is inspirational, it’s hard to convey much more with words. I only hope to bring something that is truly original and heartfelt, reflective of my spirit, yet which honors and upholds the true spirit and magical essence of YES.

Paul Michael Moon Rogers
I must say thank you for the great preparation, effort, energy, composure and obvious love that you put into your work as the lead singer of Yes. It is clearly obvious from the faces of Steve, Chris, Alan and Geoff over this past year that they too feel this is a very special lineup that is begining to make a very special mark in the history of this band. A strong new album and world tour in 2014 can only further cement this. In the meantime, have a great South American trip.
So wonderful to feel the love coming from your words. They help and inspire me more than you realize.

Bill Fisher
One of the things that always made Yes music so interesting is the phrasing of the lyrics and how the singing plays against the instruments and the rhythms in certain pieces… are there any songs that you found difficult to “get the feel” right early on?
I found the syncopated phrasing of Awaken particularly challenging. There’s some of that going on in CTTE as well that initially took time to gel with.

Matthew Silver
Hi Jon, I have seen you with Yes twice now – in San Jose in August, and in SF in March, and I will see you in July in Saratoga. I am so moved by your voice and your presence. As you’re a writer, what processes do you use when writing lyrics? From where do you draw inspiration? Thank you so much Jon for being part of the continuing Yes story. You have a Yes soul, if I may say so.
Thank you sincerely, Matthew. Blessings to you and your loved ones. Like most lyricists, I tend to draw from whatever I’m going through at the time. Above all else, I aspire toward spiritual concepts. They are what inspire my life most.

Daniel Krohn
Would yes ever do a Bond theme?
Also I love this lineup – when are you guys going to get in the studio?
Also I heard you got into yes through the 80′s lineup is there any 80′s yes music you want to do?
Would Ian Fleming have ever imagined such a thing? If you sing the Bond theme over The Fish it kind of works… or not.
The plan so far is that come Fall, we will lock ourselves away in the studio.
Of the Yes 80′s music, I think it would be really fun to perform Changes, It Can Happen, and/or Shoot High Aim Low.

Dave Harding
Are the band going to do any uk dates this year?
No. Look for us next year, though. We’ll definitely be there!

Tim Lutterbie
GREAT WORK JON. KEEP IT UP! From everyone at http://www.yesfans.com
Thanks TIM and everyone at YESFANS! You guys are the BEST!

[JJG]

Steve Howe (17.05.2013):

Jack Trylesinski
Steve, what did you feel yesterday in Lima with Your fans singing all of your songs? Did you expect such reception? How do you feel was the crowd yesterday?

We were pleased with reaction that the fans had, and certainly singing along with us is a nice thing that they do, and we made a very nice start in South America at the show, so thanks very much.


JD Mack
At the very end of the fade out of A Venture from The Yes Album one can hear the start of a blistering electric guitar solo just before the song ends. How much longer was A Venture originally, and is there any chance of the full version being released one day?

Good question! I don’t remember how much longer it went on. The guitar break did start to happen but I can’t remember if it was really good high-quality. One day we might be able to look at the end of that, but I guess you must have turned it up quite loud to be able to hear that start of the guitar break. But it’s a nice balance, and we faded it at a good place.


Lee Edward McIlmoyle
It’s almost ridiculous to ask this, but is there a musical instrument you’d still like to master?

Yeah, there is. It’s funny, but I’d really like to play the flute, but it may not happen; it may be too distracting to try and play a new instrument; it’s a totally different world, you know: breath control, the way you use the buttons on the flute, but concert flute is a lovely sound. I’m a big fan of Jean-Pierre Rampal, he’s French and I think he may have died a while ago, but he recorded all of Bach’s flute sonatas, which is one of my favorite pieces of music. So I’ve always loved the flute; it’s a very close instrument to the voice, but technically and breath control-wise … I’ve tried twice, but I haven’t yet succeeded.


Liz Lewis Joseph
Do you still practice each day in spite of the fact that you are an uber-poly-virtuoso??? (I made up that awkward term, obviously!!!)

I never usually practice every day in the general context of the word, but I like to improvise. Certainly after a tour, I do like three or four days off when I don’t play. But then I realize that I need to keep in trim and keep up to speed, and my hands seem to like if I just keep playing and actually don’t stop for weeks, because it’s not very good for me to stop playing. So I like to get back to the guitar with a short break if I’ve got some time off, then I play the guitar several times a week, and I might be working on music for several days within that week by playing or constructing or writing, so I’m usually around the guitar quite consistently. But I’ve never done the long, arduous scales; they’d be good for me, but it’s better for me to improvise.


Michael Morshuk
Your unique plectrum you use – can you talk about and show it? Anything out there like it?

Back from the 60s to about the late 80s, I was using very unique plectrums, but then I started to run out of them, and couldn’t find anybody who could make them; they were made of plexi-plastic stuff. Ronson Lighters used another form of plastic in advertising in chemists or drugstores for Ronson Lighter Fuel, and that plastic is like pinky-red and I used to have plectrums made out of that. But in the last twenty years I’ve simplified things, and I’ve been using a plectrum either light, or if I can get hold of them, the Fender medium-hard plectrum—medium in the sense that it’s medium thick. There are different sizes of them; I don’t use the small one. And now recently, a company has been making some for me, which are more or less the same. They’re kind of heart-shaped, more regular kind of plectrums. The thing about plectrums – if you want a bright sound, then don’t use a thick, heavy plectrum. If you want a warm sound, then use something thicker than the regular plastic pick.

Art Neuro
Hi Steve, I noticed your live show ES175 sports a middle pickup. What prompted the modification, and how often do you get to that middle pickup? On which songs can we hear that middle pickup?

That guitar is the Gibson ES-175D Steve Howe. it’s actually the Number One model, the first one they ever made of the production line. I later had it modified with the middle pickup because it simulates a guitar I have called the ES-5 Switchmaster that I used more or less throughout Fragile. So if we do Fragile, I will definitely use that guitar. The time when the texture of that three pickup combination is really noticeable is on the song Long Distance Runaround. It’s also on Roundabout, South Side of the Sky, I think it’s on Five Percent For Nothing, but it’s not on Heart of the Sunrise. But going back to the guitar I modified, I modified it so it could copy the ES-5 Switchmaster sound, mainly for Long Distance Runaround. But that is a stand-by guitar now, because I now use a 1963 ES-175D that has a slimmer neck. It’s slightly lighter, and obviously it’s an early 60s guitar, so it has a nice characteristic sound.


Yvan Poukhovski-Sheremetyev
Hi, Steve! Apart from being the most innovative all-around guitar player I have heard, you have, in my opinion, incomparable solo-writing abilities. The guitar solo is as much a staple of rock music as anything else, but yours seem to raise a middle finger to all the rules and conventions. My favourite one of yours is the outro to Ritual. I am wondering how that part was written. Who came up with the dark, dreamy chords? How did you approach the composition of the solo?

Interesting question, because the end solo in Ritual was a structure that the group together sat around and dreamed up this kind of moving chord sequence that never really got back to anywhere. Eventually it ends; everything has to [laughs] — but this chord sequence goes round and round; it’s really quite hard to remember. What I originally did, was play a quite jazzy sort of improvisation across it, and much to my surprise and slight horror at the time — this was obviously 1973 — I got a bit of a thumbs-down from a couple of the band members, who said to me “hang on…” And I said, “That’s how I saw it…” I think Jon Anderson said to me “Since it’s the end of Topographic Oceans, why don’t you pick the different themes from the album and play them?” And I said “yeah, that makes sense, let me do that.” So that’s what I constructed. The whole solo made up of themes used in the previous sides of Topographic Oceans, and I just kind of wander from one to another; stating them. Basically, that’s how it came out – a rejected jazzy improvisation turned into a more concise, more thematic approach. So now I split my solos when I am choosing to do a guitar solo, whether or not it needs to be thematic, whether or not it needs to draw from the music that already exists, or whether I can just go off on my own.



Paul Hopper
I consider Relayer to be one of the greatest Yes albums, not only for the level of playing and writing, but also for the quality of the recording. It stands up to almost anything done currently with digital technology, IMO. How did the band achieve such an amazing sound?

Well it is surprising that that record sounds good, because we went about it quite an experimental way. Chris lived in a place called Virginia Water, I think it had a basement or garage that he’d started to convert into a studio, and Eddie Offord had mobile equipment. We’d been rehearsing and thinking about making Relayer and we came up with the idea of putting Eddie’s gear in Chris’ house and going down there. So it was really risky; sonically it could have been horrendous, but in fact, Eddie was great and we got the sounds we wanted. It was a little bit of a makeshift but we got in there and we started recording. What we did in those days – the way the mix was done — was that there might be one member missing, but most members would be with Eddie at the desk, he would be at the center. He would be in control, but we’d all push our faders as we liked [laughs] and we’d argue about it and Eddie would say “Chris, if you put the bass up, Steve’s going to put the guitar up, you know…” and he’d kind of steer us through. It was a fascinating process — something we did on YesSongs and all the albums we made, really up until I left the group after Drama. Drama was done pretty much the same way, although due to unforeseen circumstances Trevor Horn and I got a bit ‘left holding the baby’ to mix it. But Relayer was a brilliant album, we did songs that we haven’t played for years; Gates of Delirium, of course, came back as the big challenge — the big Masterwork, really.


Tom Burke
You played a guitar solo on Queen’s song, Innuendo. How did that come to fruition, and was it fun to do a session with them?

Well, of course it was fun to do a session for them. It was joy! How it happened was that I was working with Paul Sutin at his studio in a place called Gland in Switzerland, near Geneva, and just for fun I’d gone to Montreux for lunch, which was a long drive, over an hour and a half drive, but I like Montreux, I like to go back there sometimes. I was just sitting there in a restaurant, and one of the crew walked by spotted me and he invited me back to the studio where we’d recorded Going For the One, so I said “yeah, I’d love to come if the guys are there.” So, after lunch I go in, and they played me the album, and the last track they played me was Innuendo. So when it ended, I said “Fantastic album! Really great! Loved it!” And they said “yeah, but we’d like you to play on that last one”. And I said “you don’t need me; Brian’s done a great job; you’ve got lovely things on there.” And they said “no, we want you to play this bit here…” So I said “what do you want me to do” and they said “just for something… just improvise …”. I think one of the ideas, I think Brian and I agreed that Paco de Lucia at that time was playing some great flamenco guitar, and basically Brian said “I don’t really get going like that on the Spanish guitar, can you do something?” So that’s what I did, I kind of raved around, improvised a bit. I really enjoyed it. I went out to dinner with Queen after that; had some nice conversations with Freddie and everybody was just sweet as pie. And that’s how it was; it was lovely.