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JULY 1998
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Source: Guitar Magazine
http://www.guitarmag.com/issues/gs9807/howe.html
Yes Returns! The Twin Titans Of Yes: Steve Howe & Chris Squire Get Ready For The New Millennium
By Lisa Sharken
One big piece of news for prog-rock fans this past year has been the
reunion of Yes or, more importantly, hearing that guitarist Steve Howe and
bassist Chris Squire are finally working together again after a 16-year
vacation. The result of this renewed association has been the group's
latest pair of recordings, Open Your Eyes (also featuring guitarist Billy
Sherwood) and the stellar Keys To Ascension 2. Let's check in with this
legendary duo and see what's happening as they near the 30th anniversary of their partnership.
Steve Howe
What's changed and what's remained the same in the gear you've used throughout your 30-year career with Yes?
The first amp I bought was an Antoria. It was a 10-watt amp, it was blue
and had one speaker. That lasted me a few years. Around 1964, I bought a
Fender Tremolux, then I moved to Vox for a little while, and I was using an
AC-15 around '66. In '67 I got a horrible Vox 100-watt transistor amp and
it broke down night after night and I regretted selling my 50-watt valve.
So I went back to the Tremolux for a bit, and then in late '67 I was using
bits of Marshall and Fender gear. When Yes formed I went using Dual
Showmans, virtually through the '70s. I usually used one Dual Showman with
an extension cabinet and another amp, a Fender Quad Reverb. It was like a
double-Twin. It had four 12s in it and I used that one for steel guitars,
sitar guitars and other things, but mainly the Dual Showman for the
guitars. In 1967 I moved to Twins on the round stage and I did the same
thing in Asia-I was using Twins sometimes vertically on top of each other
or sometimes there were extension cabinets. For GTR, I used the same Fender
Twins, and my setup is exactly the same today-I'm still using Fender Twins.
I've always seen Fenders as pretty practical and reliable amps. But
sometimes you need to go out and get a new set of them. Of course the '60s
amps are absolutely great, but for the type of playing I do, the length of
the show, and multiples of guitars that I play, I need an amp that can work
with anything, even a bass. That's basically what I do with amps, in short.
I also have a huge amp collection that really doesn't get used much. The
only amps I use from it are for recording. Sometimes I use my Gibson
Explorer, which I've actually had since 1964. I think it's about 16 watts
and I used that on all my studio sessions. The other amps I like are some
Marshalls, Gretsch, Fender tweed Princetons, and a few semi-vintage amps.
The guitars are an easy story. I suppose there are probably about 25 main
guitars that I've used for the most part, but I've always used a Gibson
ES-175 and a Martin 00-18. In the second half of the '60s I tried to
incorporate a few more guitars like a Levin 12-string a Vox bass. In the
'70s I started collecting and went out and bought all the jazz guitars I'd
always wanted, like a Super 400, a Switchmaster, three or four L-5s, a
Byrdland, and a whole range of ES models, like ES Artists, and '65
12-strings. But the guitars that I mainly use are what I've got here today.
There are three Gibsons: a stereo ES-345, an ES-175, and a model called The
Les Paul, which came out in 1977. I've got three Fenders: a '55 Tele, a
mid-'80s Stratocaster, and a late '50s steel guitar called a Dual
Professional. I also have five acoustic guitars: two Martins, an 00-18 from
1953 and a maple 12-string from the '80s; a Kohono handmade Japanese guitar
that's a Spanish-style nylon-string; a Portuguese 12-string that looks a
bit like a lute; and then my main guitar is a Scharpach-a Dutch handmade
guitar, a model called an SKD. It's a beautiful guitar that's similar in
visual design to a Maccaferri guitar that Django Reinhardt played. Other
instruments I currently have out on the road now are a Martin mandolin, a
Radiotone ukelele-guitar, 6- and 12-string Steinbergers, a Gretsch 6120,
and other guitars that I might tamper with somewhere in the set.
All of the acoustics I use have a system by Applied Acoustics, which
Scharpach guitars designed. I use several small monitors by Sound Projects
for acoustic guitar and also for guitar effects, because my rack has
acoustic guitar gear, too. Then it goes through stuff like a Lexicon
JamMan, Vortex, Korg A3, Roland GP-8, Roland SDE-2000, just a few gadgets
for sounds and noises, particularly like a Leslie guitar tone. My
pedalboard has three volume pedals, one for the effects, and one each for
the two amps that are kind of wired in stereo. On one side of that I have a
multi-effects pedal that Korg used to make in the '70s, I think it's called
a "Multi," that I find great. It's got effects like wah-wah, doubler, and
phaser. Then on the other side I have a couple of boxes, things that go
"raunch" when you press them. I still like the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
for certain traditional Yes sounds that I created with that effect. I'm
also using a Danelectro box, the Daddy-O overdrive. On stage I also use an
old Electro-Harmonix mono Guitar Synthesizer and that makes a lot of good
noise. But my main effect is my volume pedal, the way I play my guitar is
with my feet. It's kind of second nature.
What kinds of picks and strings do you use for creating different tones and textures?
About two years after I started playing, I met someone who turned me onto
these picks that were just called "Specials." You could only buy them in a
shop in London. I got hooked to these and went through the '70s losing
them. Then I would go into a great panic because I'd have to have more
made. When I started to use multiple guitars, I found that these plectrums
didn't work on some of the guitars very well because they're kind of thick
and heavy. It gave me quite a distinctive sound, not one that I don't still
get today, but I don't use them anymore. Later, I decided that these picks
were history because I was playing acoustic 12-strings and they really
didn't work with them. So I changed to a Fender pick that's heart-shaped,
medium thickness, and Fender doesn't make that anymore. They were kind
enough to give me a whole load, as was a guy named Jeff Zudek from New
York. I don't think I'll ever run out of them now. I've sometimes used real
tortoise shell, too. But I've since discovered that using a thin pick gives
me a nice, bright, clear sound and that's what my old picks never really
did. I was always looking for more treble on the guitars, when in fact it
was entirely the way I was making them sound in the first place. I
experiment with different plectrums when I go into the studio. I use very
light plectrums on some acoustics, but if I'm playing a bass I might get a
Special out or something as firm. When I really get picky in the studio I
might use one of those three-sided giant Gibson "helicopters," where one
side is just beautifully thin. I collect picks and there are all sorts of
them. I'm inexhaustible and always interested in trying different
materials. I actually quite like ukulele plectrums, these really silly
things that look like doorstops. They make a great sound on the ukelele. I
learned from Martin Taylor to play on the side of the plectrum with a very
light plectrum and it makes a much warmer sound.
For strings, I've come back to what I used in the early days. For electric
guitars I really do favor Gibson steel strings, and I use different gauges
for different things. On the acoustics I like Martin Bronze light gauge. I
have endorsed LaBella strings and they supplied me with all the Steinberger
strings, autoharp, lute, and everything, so I rate LaBella for their
incredible selection. D'Aquisto has also been very generous and supplied me
with strings. On an archtop acoustic I often like to use flatwound strings.
Gauge has also become very important, like on the ES-345 I only use a set
that goes from .011-.052, but the third is a wound .019.
Steve's live rack: A small Boss mixer, Lexicon LXP-1, Korg DTR-1 tuner,
Roland SDE-3000 delay, Lexicon Vortex, Tech 21 PSA-1 preamp, Korg A3
processor, Roland GP-8 processor, Lexicon Jam Man
Which guitars, amps and effects did you use on Open Your Eyes?
I used that same full selection, basically what I'm using live and a Martin
mandolin, a Radiotone ukulele-guitar, the Steinberger 6- and 12-strings, a
Gretsch 6120, the Kohono, a Danelectro Coral electric sitar-guitar, and a
few other bits and pieces. Open Your Eyes is a hard album to describe
because in a way I'm not up to my usual full-textured approach, where what
you hear is me. What you hear on the first half of the album is Billy
Sherwood having done a lot of the back-up texturing work. The second half
is the kind of guitar work I was doing, predominantly using an ES-175 on
many tracks including "Fortune Seller." "Open Your Eyes" is a more Fender
and Danelectro track. On "New State Of Mind" I'm heard occasionally playing
a steel guitar. On "From The Balcony" I play with Jon [Anderson] in a duet
form using my Scharpach. On "No Way We Can Lose" I played a Gibson
banjo-guitar occasionally. These 15 or so guitars are essential to most of
the recording I've done. If I were in London I could use anything from my
entire collection, but when we recorded in Los Angeles I had to pick the
guitars that would be the most versatile, and the ones that I'd think would
work best. This project was more of a "join-in-and-complete" sort of
project, so that's what I did-I joined in and completed it.
There aren't many effects on the record, but more driven amps. I had a
Gretsch amp there, but there was an Ampeg built into the studio that I
liked and I used the Korg A3 for most of my effects and got all the
high-tech sounds from my own A3 cards. For certain things I just used a
small amp and turned it up full-volume. Since I had 16 guitars available I
wasn't really too limited, only by the amount of space left on the tape.
There was a lot of information already on there to work with. Halfway
through the album I think my work is more balanced and it sounds more like
I expected it to, but the first half is in a way less familiar, less of
what I thought it would sound like. That often happens with a record. Billy
and I shared the roles together, which is only fair, except that he did
more texturing and I did more soloing. Hopefully my style and his are discernible.
In your opinion, which are the highlight tracks on Open Your Eyes?
I like all the second half of the album, not that I don't like the first
half, but it isn't quite as I thought it was going to be. I think my
favorite track at the moment is the duet that Jon and I did, "From The
Balcony," just because it's the most personal statement on the record. It's
not intricate or noisy, but I suppose that's the kind of music I'm closer
to in Yes, the music without flashing lights, without anything other than
the musical imagination. A group is a misleading title. A group is an
ever-changing, evolving, rebalancing thing and that's always happening.
Therefore, Open Your Eyes is a new record in the sense that it is quite new
for Yes to sound like it does on that record. From "Wonderlove" on, I'm a
happy guy; I'm sold. There's more familiarity, more of a balance of what
the group really did sound like when we were carving this record. The
earlier tracks have more of other peoples' view, which isn't as easy to
live with, but you win some and you lose some.
Which Yes track from the entire 30-year catalog is your favorite?
At the moment, I'm answering that question with "To Be Over." Yes hasn't
played this since 1975. "To Be Over" is a triumphant blitz of sound and
there are lots of things I like about it. When Jon starts with "We go
sailing down the river," that was very special to me. Then that "After all"
middle eight, that was one of my bits. Yes has never been that powerful
ever again. That ending combines simplicity with technicality, which is something Yes got very good at.
Howe's pedalboard includes three volume pedals (one for effects and one for
each amp), wah-wah, Danelectro Daddy-O overdrive, vintage Electro-Harmonix
Big Muff and Micro Synthesizer pedals.
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