-------------------------------------------------------
SEPTEMBER 27, 1980
-------------------------------------------------------
Source: Melody Maker
Confessions of an Astral Traveller
By Allan Jones
In his first interview since leaving Yes, Jon Anderson talks to Allan Jones
The Riviera's sunshine attracts them every year. Come June, they lock up
the house in Holland Park and move south with the children for a couple of
months on the Cote d'Azur. "It's a mass exodus," Jon Anderson said. "We
look like one of the tribes of Israel...."
This year, Jon thought they might've stayed in London. But it started,
well, you know, to rain. Didn't look like it was ever going to stop. South
they came again -- first to St Paul, in the hills overlooking Nice, then to
St Jean-Cap Ferrat, where they found a villa overlooking the harbour.
While they were waiting to move into the villa, Jon and his wife Jenny
moved the family into the Grand Hotel. Ankling across the lobby one
evening, Jon recognised Elvis Costello, decided to go over and introduce
himself.
"He was very... very Elvis Costello, I suppose," Jon would tell his
friends, and they'd all laugh. "He just jumped up looking very suspicious,
you know. We didn't have much to talk about, really. I just wanted to say
hello... But he was down here on his hols, I was just down here on my hols,
I didn't really want to start talking shop, you know. Anyway, I imagine he
hated Yes and was probably embarrassed.
"I can't understand why he's so reluctant to talk to people. He must be
very wary of everyone. The more successful you get, the more guarded you
become about what you say. You've got to be very discreet, people quote
everything.... I remember saying something quite off-the-cuff once, didn't
really think about it. Next thing, of course, it's been printed in an
article. It was terrible. I didn't cry about it, but I didn't sleep for
three nights, just thinking about it, worrying about what I'd said...."
Ah: sometimes our lives dance to a very cruel tune.
"Eventually, you learn to live with it," Jon Anderson said, wearily
resigned. "You begin to understand that bands go through three distinct
phases. When you start, you know, you're unknown and people think you're
hip. Then you become successful, that's the second phase. Then there's the
third phase."
And what's that all about?
"Oh," Jon Anderson said. "That's when all the persecution starts and you
sit down and wonder just what it is you've done that's so wrong."
The afternoon I turned up at the villa in St Jean, Jon and Jenny were out.
Jenny's younger brother, Garry, was there with some friends. They were
listening to a tape of Jon's solo album, "Song Of Seven".
Garry liked the new album more than anything Jon had done for years,
certainly preferred it to the recent Yes album which he thought merely
re-cycled a lot of old Yes ideas with no particular flair.
"They've just stood still. Jon's moved into the Eighties," Garry announced
confidently. "Don't you think so?" he asked.
I told him I thought the album was a step in the right direction. At least
it didn't sound like you had to dress up to listen to it, unlike all the
laboured epics Anderson has contrived with Yes.
I'd been listening to the new album on the morning flight from Paris.
Despite some inevitable affinities with Yes, "Song Of Seven" had sounded
surprisingly refreshing. I welcomed it for that. The day before, I'd spent
over 12 hours wrestling with the entire collection of Yes' recorded works.
I finally had to send out for a stretcher.
The further Anderson had strayed from the kind of cosmic contemplations
that had characterised his contributions to Yes, the more I liked his
album. I didn't think I'd ever learn to live with its more sentimental
moments, and the mystic inclinations of the title track with its chirping
kid's chorus had me looking for the exit. But "Don't Forget", with its New
Orleans' horns and its lovely scat-vocal coda was winning. And "Heart of
the Matter", a Tamla-derived roustabout with a thrusting Jack Bruce bass
line, robust saxophone and swaggering vocals was a minor revelation.
There seemed hope for Jon Anderson yet.
If he could only learn to dance . . .
Anderson finally turned up at the villa looking as neatly groomed as a
model in a mail order catalogue.
Charming, utterly courteous, perhaps a little nervous, Anderson settled
quickly into conversation.
What had been the general reaction to the new Yes album? Had there been any
reports from their American tour? He hoped they'd done well, emphasised
that he still felt a great affection for the group and its achievements.
His new manager, Jannis Zographos, a thin-faced Greek who also manages
Vangelis, listened intently to this opening exchange, puffed anxiously on
his pipe. Anderson began to relax; he was certainly more humorous, less
intense than I'd expected. He started talking about some songs that he'd
written on the last Yes tour with Rick Wakeman. He seemed to relish the
fact that they'd been considered too off the wall for Yes: one had been
about a dentist, another had been a reworking of Randy Newman's "Rider in
the Rain", written from the viewpoint of the horse.
I could scarcely believe this kind of banter, began to warm to him.
His voice is soft and husky, coloured by a distinct Lancashire accent. He
recalled his earliest involvements with rock'n'roll, playing in local
groups in the northwest; remembered the days when Yes humped all their own
equipment, played dodgy gigs in seedy clubs for ten quid a night, travelled
the country in clapped-out Transits, survived only on enthusiasm and
motorway fry-ups.
"People forget that we actually went through all that," he said. "We were
just like every other group starting out. No money, cheap digs, sleeping in
the van. It was no easier for us than anyone else. Just because we made a
bit of money later on, we became targets for all those people who wanted to
slag off everyone who'd become successful. But we worked for it. Nobody
gave us our success, we earned it.... There was no reason for us to feel
ashamed."
He didn't sound at all pompous, but he was still capable of sounding wildly
precious and not a little wet; what my mother would call half- soaked, I
think.
At one point, we'd been discussing Michael Herr's Dispatches. Anderson went
on to explain how he'd always be caught up in the atmosphere of a really
good book.
"I remember when Yes were touring America," he said. "After the gigs, I'd
just want to get back to the hotel room and get really stuck into some
Tolkein, put on something by Sibelius in the background and really get into it"
Never much of a Hobbit man myself, I just stared at my toe-caps, wondered
when someone would offer me another drink; suggested we might as well start
the interview.
Christmas was on the horizon: Yes were in Paris where they intended to
record their new album. The band hadn't met for two months, but as far as
Jon Anderson could see everyone was in good spirits, eager to start work on
the record.
As he usually did, Anderson had arrived for the sessions bursting with
ideas for the album, specific concepts and directions already planned out.
He wasn't altogether surprised when the group admitted a certain reluctance
to pursue these new ideas. Two or three years ago, he'd tried to steer them
toward electronic music and they'd rejected the notion forcefully. It was
only to be expected that there'd be some friction; the group had always
taken some pride in its ability to thrash out conflicting ideas, its talent
for synthesising individual ideas.
This time out, however, a deeper rift was emerging.
"Very quickly, the mood changed from enthusiasm to frustration and then
complete confusion," Anderson recalled, the memory of the ensuing acrimony
still pinching. "It became apparent that things weren't coming together. It
was a very difficult period for everyone. We knew we weren't cutting it,
and when you're not doing it, when it's not happening, you tend to clutch
at straws. Try this, try that, try anything. But nothing would hang
together, whatever we tried. It just didn't seem that it would ever work
itself out. When these things didn't seem to be happening, an obvious
feeling of doubt and uncertainty spread through the group."
Reluctant to evoke the mood of those abortive sessions in any detail,
Anderson quietly confesses his disappointment that the group rejected his
ideas, even though they were unable to define an alternative direction for
themselves.
"It's only natural that I should have been disappointed. These were ideas
I'd been working on to present to the band. I thought they'd provide the
next step in the group's musical direction. I hoped the other members of
the band would enjoy working on my ideas. Evidently, they didn't."
And you felt affronted?
"No. Disappointed. You see, I thought I'd done a good job to that time...
yeah, a good job in leading the group, if you like. Gently coaxing them
through various changes. Whichever way it's taken, I thought my role in the
band was to motivate the group. Through songs that I'd written or through
songs we'd written together. I was always open to ideas wherever they came
from. I thought we should have been able to resolve any problems within the
group, by talking them out, discussing them.
"But it was becoming more evident that we didn't fit together as a group as
we had done before. We didn't seem to be working towards the same end. All
the ingredients that make up the kind of group that's going along happily,
making music that's interesting each member of the band -- these things
were missing.
"At that time, I didn't think it would end with me, or anyone leaving. I
thought we could have worked something out. I was prepared to follow any
direction, if it worked, to keep the group together. But nobody could come
up with that direction... I knew I could find other ways of expressing my
own ideas. I didn't think I was in a dead-end with Yes, you know. I'd done
an album the year before with Vangelis ('Short Stories'), and that had been
very encouraging.
"Just the way we did it was exciting. It was done in a week, it was very
enjoyable, very spontaneous. With Yes, it had never been like that. We'd
have to have meetings to discuss what we were going to do, construct
formulas so we all knew where we going before we even started. I'd been
thinking for some time that it would be great to work more spontaneously as
a group. I'd talked about this a lot to them, suggested more open and more
expressive music. It just didn't get through.
"I felt there was a need just to get on with it, play some music. Sometimes
the music suffers when you look at it too closely, constantly analyse it. I
thought it might be time to do something on a slightly smaller scale."
Christmas arrived: Yes left Paris where they'd been trying to record their
new album. Anderson says that no decision about their future had been
taken, but there remains the suspicion that the rest of the group had
already made up their minds that if Yes was to continue, it would have to
continue without ol' Jonjo.
The group met again in February. Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White
put down the rhythm tracks for the music that would subsequently emerge on
"Drama". The lyrics Anderson wrote for these new tracks was, however,
judged unsuitable. Exit Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.
"I'd never really wanted to become a solo singer," Jon Anderson said. "But suddenly, I had no choice...."
So was he pushed or did he jump?
"There was some gentle persuasion," he said softly. "But I don't think that
going into that kind of detail is relevant. It just happened. I'm not
trying to hide anything. They didn't ring me up and say, 'Jon, you're
fired.' And I didn't ring them up and say, 'Hey, I'm leaving.' Things
weren't happening between us.
"I felt we'd reached a point where we weren't communicating properly. I
thought we should take a break, get back together later. They disagreed and
I was no longer a member of Yes. They obviously didn't think they needed a
break. I thought it would give them a chance to get in touch with a lot of
other musicians, find some new ideas, new music, fresh inspiration. Really,
I thought that was the only way for the band to stay together. Like you
said earlier, some groups get into a set routine and before they know it,
the routine kills them. The group's momentum slows down, they go into a
decline, mentally, physically and musically. And that's it. Over.
"If they can recognise the symptoms and say, 'Hey, wait a minute, what are
we doing to ourselves? Let's step out of this for a while, before it's too
late. We can always come back to it later...' Some groups have done it.
The Who did it. The Stones have done it. That's why they're still together."
Throughout this conversation, Anderson has attempted to remain
self-effacing; anxious to let you know that his former colleagues had their
reasons for the course they followed, and they obviously thought they were
doing the right thing. He won't argue with that. He retains the greatest
respect for them, wishes them well.
You begin to suspect, however, that there's a much harder, more ruthless
side to the man. If that were more apparent, perhaps the reason for his
departure from Yes and the band's apparent rebellion would be more explicable.
Bill Bruford, who quit the band after "Close To The Earth" (sic), once
described Anderson in these pages as a tyrant. I asked him [Jon] whether he
thought his need to dominate Yes might have precipitated the eventual split
"Oh, I see," he replied, smiling. "Self-analysis half-hour."
He considered the implications of the question.
"I think I might occasionally have lacked tact," he said finally.
"Sometimes to get things done, you have to step in and say, right -- that's
enough. There has to be a final line somewhere, and someone has to draw
it. Sometimes, perhaps, I should have been more persuasive.... I remember
reading about Puccini a long time ago. And he never got on with anyone. But
that's counteracted by the pleasure people have derived from his music
throughout this century, and will continue to derive from it for the rest
of time immortal. If you want to achieve something, and you've got a strong
will, and you're determined to see something through, some people are going
to get hurt or upset if they stand in your way.
"Bill Bruford saw me as a tyrant, so have some other people. There are
times when I'd have to agree with that description, I think had I been more
tactful on occasions, the work I was doing might have been better. Instead,
maybe I caused resentment and the music suffered. I will admit that there
was a time when I was difficult. It's something that I felt I wasn't a
musician. I think a lot of singers'll tell you the same thing.
"As soon as you grapple with the techniques of music and you start hearing
things musically, it's very frustrating because you can't play them
yourself. So you try to portray them to someone and if they're not quick
enough picking up the idea, you say, 'Look -- you're the guy who's supposed
to be able to play this instrument. How come you can't play what I'm asking
you to play?' And they say, 'Jon -- you don't understand, that idea's too
unorthodox . . .' And I'd say, 'Then be unorthodox. Or is it too difficult
for you, would you prefer something easier to play?'
"I can imagine now how that would twist someone up. I was suppose I was
lucky to work with musicians like Yes. It was never difficult, usually, to
persuade them to attempt something different. On certain occasions, it
would turn into a bit of a boxing match. But generally, it was a glorious
exchange of ideas, except for those occasions when we'd have to battle to
find some common ground. But once we got there, it was always worth it.
"Sometimes, it was bloody hard work. But in the end it was always worth it."
We'd been talking for more than two hours; Anderson seemed relieved when
his wife appeared and suggested we go out for dinner. Jannis joined us and
we drove down the coast to Villefranche.
Anderson seemed to unwind a little more over the meal, started to recount
the previous night's adventures in the casino in Monte Carlo; everyone had
got riotously drunk, he said. Jenny had won on the roulette table. It
seemed wonderfully reassuring that he didn't spend all his time with his
nose in Tolkein with Sibelius on the turntable in the background.
We got back to the villa around midnight. I turned on the Sanyo, we started
talking about the early days of Yes, the affinity between them and groups
like the Nice, then ELP, the Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Genesis. They were
still to be respected, he said.
"The Nice were one of our favourite bands," he said, pouring the brandy.
"We toured with them, we were often in contact with them. Same with Genesis
and Jethro Tull. We listened to their records, ran into them now and again.
There was a time when I was hoping we might all get together, do a show,
you know.... This was just a dream of the times...."
"They were very idealistic times," I said, knocking back the brandy. "Do you miss them?"
"I think the idealism's still there, you know," he replied. "It's just
unfashionable to support it, to even talk about flower power. But that was
a great era. Actually, I wrote a song about it last year...."
He composed himself, began to recite the lyric.
"'The children of the flower time have spread their wings and begun to fly
/ Those summer days are near, we breath again....' That's the opening of
the first verse. It's a reflection of those times, and maybe we're going to
go into those times again. A lot of people still have all their original
beliefs inside them, just waiting to flower again."
"Don't you feel embarrassed when you start talking like that?" I asked. The
brandy had obviously gone straight to my head.
"No," Anderson replied, admirably succinct.
"This is 1980," I reminded him.
"And it's a great time," he insisted. "A very exciting time. Things are
moving so fast, but everything has its place. Order is there all the time.
It just doesn't look like it to most people, which is why they're cynical
and hostile to ideas like that. You know, I thought it was great when Elvis
Costello did that song, 'What's So Funny About Peace, Love And
Understanding?' What is so funny about it? Nothing. That's why I stand
with it and by it and for it."
I asked him if there was any small chance of another brandy.
Anderson will maintain that Yes never lost any of their early idealism when
they emerged in the Seventies as one of the new supergroups. I just
wondered how he'd reacted to being a personal target for the hostility and
vitriol his critics aimed at Yes, especially during the heated outbursts of '77.
"More than anything," he replied carefully, "it strengthened my convictions
about a lot of things. Possibly, there were times when I thought, 'Leave me
alone, please. I can do without all this.' But I just kept on, anyway, and
hoped it would all work itself out. And that's what happened basically. I
remember when the only question people asked was, 'What do you think of
punk?' And it wasn't easy to answer flippantly or quickly. You couldn't
brush it off. It was happening and a lot of the music, I thought, was good
and exciting, and I don't mean to sound patronising when I say that.
"Of course, they hated us. I always thought we were putting on a good show,
no matter where we played. As it happened, we were playing in large halls.
We were playing to large amounts of people and we were getting attacked for it."
Did you resent the criticism, feel above it?
"I don't think resentment came into it. There was just a bit of confusion.
You know: 'Why are they knocking us?' I thought we were just musicians
putting on a good show. We were a supergroup, yeah, but we were still
working hard. We were still learning, looking for new ideas, new ways of presentation...."
Yes, I reminded him, were always criticised for being very cold and aloof.
"Well," he said evenly, "we weren't exactly the epitome of a sweaty,
let's-rock-and-roll group. As a group of musicians, we had a certain talent
for moving into a slightly classical mood. And because of that, we became
very well liked by certain people and extremely disliked by a lot of other
people. But we didn't do anything we ever ashamed of. If we'd followed
'Fragile' with an identical sounding record, then we'd have no defence. You
could have said that we'd become lazy or indulgent. But we didn't -- we
went off on another tangent, got involved in large scale pieces of music.
They were all very valid too.... Because we became so successful, we wanted
to give something back to the audience. We wanted always to make sure that
the next piece of music was even grander and bigger and more impressive
than the last one. Success, I think dictated the direction we followed. It
gave us the opportunity to grow, to expand."
Didn't he think that Yes' music became increasingly self-regarding and
self-conscious, preoccupied with perfection?
"Yeah -- but only in the sense that we were trying damned hard to create
the best music we could. Sometimes we might have been too clinical. But to
me that was always lost when we were on stage. I think in some ways we were
a better group onstage than we ever were in the studio."
So you might agree that the records sound stifled, lack passion, sound as
if they've had the life squeezed out of them?
"I found that when we were playing on stage, there were some incredible
nights. There was something special happening between us. Then I knew we
weren't wasting our time, as some people had suggested. Obviously a few
mistakes were made. We were treading dangerous ground, the music was taking
us into delicate areas. The pieces were getting longer and more complicated
and more ambitious. And it was painful, agonising to work out."
So why did you bother?
"Why do people climb mountains?" Anderson asked, exasperated. "Because
they're there. And doing those albums like 'Topographic', they took us into
other areas. Got us thinking more about presentation. We got really
involved about that time in the visual thing. Admittedly, we did run into
it like a bull in a china shop... first it was just slides, then a dome
over the drumkit that lit up. Then sculptures and shapes on stage.
"At times," he said with a sincerity you could feel across the room, "it was magical...."
Wasn't it also irrelevant, I argued. Didn't it suggest a lack of confidence
in the potential of the music to hold an audience's attention?
"No. No. They worked hand-in-hand. Everything was worked out. It might've
been slapdash and amateurish, but we were doing our best. Even if we were
trying to give more than we'd got. Because we were successful we were
trying to give the public something bigger and better. A huge show."
"At the same time, you had Rod Stewart and the Faces, playing football on
stage and having a great time. But they had their kind of audience, and we
had ours. I enjoyed reading about Rod Stewart and the Faces, and I'd have
loved to be like that. But you can only do what comes naturally to you.
That kind of thing never came naturally to us. What were we supposed to do?
Play cricket on stage?
"A lot of people said, 'Why don't you stick to being a rock'n'roll group,
and Jon can gyrate around in satin trousers, waving a mike stand.' It just
wouldn't have been us. There were already people doing all that far better
than we could have done it. We moved in certain directions. It didn't do us
any harm. Okay, maybe we didn't flower the way everybody wanted us to and
maybe we didn't come to terms with a lot of things, but doing those albums
was exciting, it was exhilarating. A lot of fun, too."
This seemed damn unlikely; and I said so.
"The fun just probably doesn't communicate itself to you." Anderson argued.
"But I had a lot of letters from people telling me they'd been delighted by
the music we produced. And I used to be delighted by the reaction of people
who listened to a piece of Yes music and found out that it helped them
maybe understand a few things.... It was music that you have to move
towards, get into it and feel it. To understand it. Some people just want
music like a McDonalds hamburger. Instant. Cheap . . . I'm sorry, we
couldn't do it like that. There are lots of people who can: they just knock
it out and stick it out."
I hoped he wasn't thinking of Rockpile.
"I still stand by that music," he continued. "And there were people besides
the group who actually liked it, too. And I thought we'd eventually win
over the rest. I really thought that."
Listening again to the Yes albums, I'd been struck particularly by the
sheer vacuity of the lyrics; their pretence, their vain stabs at
profundity. They always seemed to try too hard for some mystical
connotations. At best they were hopelessly vague and muddled; at worse fey and pretentious.
"I think those are valid points of issue," Anderson said, refusing to be
ruffled from his complacency. "But I remember some people got the point. I
remember when we released 'Relayer', someone sent me an article from New
Zealand. This guy had reviewed 'Gates of Delirium', and it was great
because he'd recognised everything in the music that I wanted people to
hear in it. He'd seen it exactly the way I saw it.
Which was what? "Gates of Delirium" had struck me as being utterly incomprehensible.
"It was about war," Anderson explained patiently, as if I was some kind of especially obtuse child.
I knew that much; it was just that the language he used obscured whatever
point he was trying to make.
"When I wrote it," he continued, maybe wishing he was already in bed, "we
were getting into the last throes of the Vietnam war. And in a way it was a
statement about that. It said that war is, like, this kind of thing that
happens that everybody gets sucked into . . . 'you're slaying our people,
we'll slay yours . . . and we will burn the children's laughter.' And the
theme of war, that was the driving force and there was a lot of hot metal
flying about. And the music got very crazy, it's like a void and out of
this void rises this form which controls war, and it's like a demonic form.
The devil, if you like. And this form has been watching the war, glad that
it's happening... and the music crashed at the end and out of that rises a
very gentle stream of sound and goes into a very delicate kind of lyric.
It's the kind of lyric people might cringe at, but I thought some people might see what I mean
"It starts off -- 'Soon, oh soon the light/Pass within and soothe this
endless night . . .' Like, at the end of a long tunnel, there will be light
and things will become clearer at the end. Everything will return to
peaceful ways. It's an optimistic view, but you have to go through this
violent tangle to get there."
The sentiments seemed admirable; but it seemed overwhelmingly long-winded.
Couldn't he have written a three minute song that conveyed the same message.
"No," he said, inevitably. "A great deal of it was said through the music, through the images the music conveyed."
Could I see that?
I couldn't: as I told him, "Gates of Delirium" had struck me as a damned
unpleasant noise; when I'd listened to it the day before, I felt like someone was tying a knot in my brain.
I suppose we maybe should've talked a little more about his new album; but
I rather thought we might end up arguing over that, too.
He agreed, though, that it was more informal that anything he'd done with
Yes over the last decade, hoped, therefore, that the audience he'd been
denied because of Yes' image would at least approach the record without
prejudice. They'd given Peter Gabriel a chance, he said, after he left Genesis.
He didn't want to alienate his own audience, he was quick to point out. He
just wanted to play to as wide a public as possible, break down a few
barriers, open a few doors between the different factions that make up the
audience for modern rock'n'roll.
He would be intrigued, he said, to discover the reaction of Yes fans to
something as straightforward and rocking as "Heart Of The Matter" (do Yes
fans like Graham Parker? They might after this).
Jannis had told me earlier that Atlantic nearly popped a button when they
heard "Heart Of The Matter". Thought it too extreme a leap away from the
safe pastures of Yes. Anderson told them it was going on the album anyway.
Applaud him for that.
Those fans could hardly feel short-changed, though. "Song of Seven"
bristles with enough hymns to life's mysterious forces to keep them all
happy; the title track alone with have them poring over the hidden
significance of Anderson's typically abstract lyric. I'll be down the pub,
actually, but there you go.
And Anderson will probably be on the road somewhere.
Five years ago, he says, he tried to persuade Yes to return to the clubs
and smaller theatres; maybe throw in a couple of nights at the Marquee.
They wouldn't listen. Now, he's determined to keep everything in
perspective; after all, he's only got himself to argue with.
So, when he goes out, he'll play places like the Colston Hall, the Free
Trade Halls, the town halls. Nowhere you couldn't see the Clash or the Specials.
He will, however, allow himself the luxury of playing the Albert Hall when he comes to London.
"It's just something I've always wanted to do," he said. "And, basically,
from now on, I only want to do what I want to do."
Close Window
YesInThePress.com
For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com
|
|