----------------------------------------------------- OCTOBER 10, 1999 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Kuno http://kuno.senserdesign.com/shnews.php?id=5 Jon Anderson of YES  By Sven Kardelke  What do you think makes The Ladder as special as it is for the band?  Jon: Just that we have worked together making the album after a long world tour. We stayed together, rehearsed and recorded together. It's the first time we have done this in many, many years.  So why did you choose Vancouver to record the album?  Jon: We were touring in Vancouver and we met Bruce Fairbairn who was a very talented producer. He showed us his studio, and we all fell in love with it. We really liked Bruce, so it seemed we had to go somewhere together -- either New York, Paris, Florida or Vancouver. The studio in Vancouver is very good for the group.  The production was overshadowed by the death of Bruce Fairbairn. Did that put a negative spell on the new album?  Jon: No. Bruce really loved YES and would see the band every time we toured in Vancouver. He was very, very much into the future of the group. So when he passed away, it was in the middle of the mixing. We already completed the music. His spirit is still with us in many different ways. We dedicated the album to him. He was very, very good for the group.  In which way did he influence the sound and the working circumstances?  Jon: He was just a very good teacher making us realise that YES music is more important than anything else. "Make a great YES album," he said. "Don't try to make an album that the record company wants. Make a great album and you will please so many people around the world." And we do have thousands and thousands of fans all over the world. All you want to do is to make as many people as possible happy with your music.  What's the difference working with YES nowadays compared to Fragile times?  Jon: Not very much. It's the same as we are still the same people. Now we have more musicianship, maybe more patience and more maturity -- which is very logical, you know?  As it seems, there are quite a few self-quotes on this record. ´Nine Voices´ has got the feeling of a Nineties´ version of ´Your Move´, on ´Can I´ you even sing "We have heaven." That's all very much deliberate, isn't it?  Jon: It's the end of a cycle. It's the end of great thirty years of the group. It was important to remember the classic times of the group. People would say, "Why don't you do Close To The Edge again? Why don't you do 90125 again?" People are always looking for us to do something again, but you can never go on the same holidays. You can never go back to the same meal. It's always going to be different. You always try to progress musically. We just reflected a little bit about the Fragile and Close To The Edge times.  Personally, I think the new album is very mixed. It starts with the most brilliant ´Homeworld´ that offers everything YES has always stood for. On the other hand, AOR songs like ´Lighting Strikes´ or ´Face To Face´ certainly want to be played on radio. Is The Ladder a compromise album to satisfy both the 70s fans and the pop fans from the Eighties?  Jon: No. We did twenty pieces of music, and Bruce would pick out what he wanted for the album. He would say, "This is great for the album. Keep it entertaining!" YES decided that Bruce is the producer and we believed in what he thought. So we decided that these songs would all work together. It's a very entertaining project.  ´Homeworld´ was written for a computer game. How did that connection evolve in the first place?  Jon: I wanted to do the whole album as a video game. I was writing the video game idea. Sometimes it takes two years to make a video game. So I realised that my idea was a little bit short-sighted. A company from Seattle was just finishing a game called ´Homeworld`. The guy, who created, it lived in Vancouver. So it was synchronism. I met the guy -- Alex. Right away I believed in the game. I think the game is very topical, very modern. There are beautiful, beautiful graphics. So it just seemed a logical development to do a piece of music for that game. At least I got one piece of music into the game. Video games are just the beginning of the future of self-entertainment. Self-organising your own movies. In ten years you will be creating your own realities, creating your own games, your own visions, your own films. Time will be changing very fast.  So are you into computing yourself? Do you have a computer at home and play games then?  Jon: Not really. I remember playing "Pong"... (long pause) ... you don't remember "Pong"?  No, I am just 23...  Jon: So "Pong" was before you were born. The first video game. I just feel interested in modern technology. Billy Sherwood plays games every day. Dungeons and dragons... He has the best collection of games I have ever seen.  Talking about the previous album, Steve Howe recently told me that Open Your Eyes was a complete disaster, because the whole thinking behind it was commercial. How do you value that release? Would you regard it as a draw-back as well?  Jon: No, I think there were some very good songs on the album. The album definitely was produced like a record company production. It failed to reach musical development, because it was already written by Chris and Billy. All the music, the songs and lyrics were written by Chris and Billy. So it was a Chris and Billy rendition of a YES album. I wasn't very happy to sing it. Steve had a difficult time with it, because he wasn't allowed to be more expressive. But the management was very interested in getting the band on the road. Some of the songs are really beautiful, very good, but a little bit over-produced. In the history of the group it's sometimes not so bad to do the wrong thing. Before that we did Keys To Ascension which I think is a great project, but didn't get any promotion, because the record companies are so small. But that doesn't mean that the music isn't good. Open Your Eyes was a very difficult period. We wanted to go away and create an album like The Ladder, but we were told by the management, "Please do this album, get on the road, re-invent the band!" It was a new management company, so you listen to them in the hope that they know what they are doing.  So Open Your Eyes was an album more for the wallet but from the heart...  Jon: Yeah. It was written by two people, whereas The Ladder is written by six people. Fragile, Close To The Edge -- all written by six people. Always performed and developed by six people. Me and Steve wrote the lyrics and the songs, but we gave everybody the chance to develop their music within that framework. I think that happened also on Big Generator, where the music was mainly by Trevor (Rabin) and Chris. You don't hear much of Tony Kaye. I am just singing what Trevor and Chris wanted me to sing. I didn't enjoy working on that project. I wasn't able to put my energy into the Big Generator ideas. (Producer) Trevor Horn was very, very .... [Interview ends abruptly in mid-sentence.] Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com