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NOVEMBER 10, 2002
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Source: Prog4You.com
http://www.prog4you.com/Band_Interviews/Steve_Howe.htm
Interview with Steve Howe
By George Roldan and Rick Woodward
P4Y: Hello. Steve Howe
STEVE: Speaking.
P4Y: Mr. Howe, how are you? My name is George Roldan and I'm from Prog4you.com.
STEVE: Okay.
P4Y: And I also have with me on the line Rick Woodward, one of my associates.
RICK: Hi Steve.
STEVE: Hi.
RICK: It's a pleasure, sir. I'm a big Yes fan from way back, but I'm sure
that you've heard that a few times before?
STEVE: Yes.
P4Y: We were sent by Chipster Entertainment to do an interview with you.
STEVE: That's right.
P4Y: How are you today?
STEVE: Okay.
P4Y: It's early morning there, I take it?
STEVE: Yeah. It's half past 10.
P4Y: It's a little past 1:30 here on the east coast. We're talking to you
here out of Philadelphia.
STEVE: Right.
P4Y: Well, if you know anything about our website, we're a fledgling
website called Prog4you.com and we deal specifically with progressive rock.
STEVE: Good.
P4Y: And that's why we're here today.
STEVE: Yeah.
P4Y: We want to ask you some questions about the brand new album that you
have out with InsideOut Records, Skyline.
STEVE: Right.
P4Y: And that's basically what we want to talk about today. Steve,
considering your first song Skyline, where did you take that magnificent
rainbow shot for the cover of Skyline?
STEVE: In Vancouver on top of the Armory Studio. We were working with
colleagues on the record and I was shooting pictures just by chance one
day and then a storm came and that was one of about seven or eight pictures
that I took that day of that particular weird skyline with a double
rainbow; very dark.
P4Y: Were you looking for this or did this happen to come by chance? I
mean this is not something that you set yourself up to do.
STEVE: Well, photography is something that I build into my time, you know.
If I got a camera ready, you know, I might get some good shots, so very
often I do have a camera. But I mean it's not something that I can always
do. I love taking pictures. It started with just taking my family
pictures and then eventually I started taking countryside and obscure
pictures.
P4Y: It turned out to be quite nice, actually. And on your latest
creation, Skyline, I notice that you have a keyboardist by the name of
Paul Sutin.
STEVE: Paul Sutin.
P4Y: Right. How did you meet him and how did you decide to have him play on your album?
STEVE: Well, we've been collaborating for a few years. We first met when
he was doing a record in the late 80's, and it was called Seraphin, (1988)
and I did a bit of a guesting on that. And then we collaborated in the
90's on an album called Voyagers, (1995) which was a real joint record
between both of us. And, you know, we were getting on quite well, so we
started to work on some more tracks about three years ago, and I just -- I
just sensed that this was the kind of mood that I wanted. You can't always
predict what mood you are going to get, if you know what you get when you
work with certain people. But it's a great indication, you know. I went
along with the idea that Paul was the right guy for this record. And he's
on eight of the tracks and I do four myself, so he's a free-wheeling sort
of collaborator/writer, does his mini keyboards and percussion stuff, and
just a good friend as well. So it just means that when I go to Geneva, and
WorldCom Music is a great environment and it's a very helpful situation to
have somewhere to cope sometimes, when either of you have exhausted your
possibilities in one place.
P4Y: And what qualities did you like to make sure went into one of your
Steve Howe compositions on this album?
STEVE: Well, I mean the quality I was looking for is a relaxed melodic,
and not heavy in the rhythm sense, a very light sort of flavoring of
rhythm, more than the old ship building air drums and things. I just went
and I tried to make a moodier sort of laid back record that I could.
P4Y: Yes. It's one of those for me, it would be a Sunday morning or
Sunday afternoon sit down, have some tea and listen to this music. It's
quite comforting, actually.
RICK: Steve, how did the titles for the tracks on Skyline come about?
Does the idea come to you as you are playing?
STEVE: Well, not usually. Titles are like lyrics; they are a bit of work
you do later on, and some of the titles -- I don't think any of titles were
originally there, and they weren't really. Pretty much all of those
titles were cleaned up as we went along. And Paul would give me a
completely free hand on the things we collaborated on, and I would see fit
to, you know, complete the cycle by being as industrious as I can and doing
all of those things that are like the loose ends on an album, and if it's
your album, you do those yourself. That's a lot of fun; a lot of
pleasure. I get a lot of pleasure doing titles. I don't really know why,
but I like the idea, I like the idea that I can design or foresee or aid
track setting quality by giving it a title that sort of sums it up.
Meridian Strings, I think, was one of the first tracks, you know, I
remember titling on this album. Some of the other ones, just sometimes
they do just literally come about gradually, particularly something like
Small Acts of Human Kindness. I'd been around a few other titles, but other
than lack of general direction, until I took those words to that tune and
then I had a look back. So it's just really a wonderful moment when you --
like Secret Arrow. Paul kind of went, ahh yeah, that's cool, you know.
They just come; they are little gifts from up above; you think that really
fits, just getting the feeling that it fits. Simplification was a send up
of Magnification, but I was having a bit of a fun with the complexity of
Magnification as a record for Yes to make was pretty enormous and it took a
few -- everything took a bit of a bashing doing that record. So I thought,
you know, Simplification is just one guitar primarily until the steel
guitars join in later at the end. Basically, it's about as simple as you
can get.
P4Y: Steve, you also played bass on Skyline. Did you have to work on
that, or did you pick it up easily since every guitarist thinks he can also
be a bass player?
STEVE: Yeah, well, I've been dabbling with my bass parts since 1975
really. When I did Beginnings some bass players said to me, you are a bit
guitaristic, meaning, that you think like a guitarist on a bass. Sometimes
I found it very cohesive making it makes a cohesive front when you have
whole bank of guitars. And I always played bass, so this was by no means
my first excursion into it. But having said that, some of the bass parts
were originally on a keyboard that Paul had started to invent. So I had a
really good starting off point with things like Avenue De Bel Air and
Camera Obscura. There was already a bass part in existence that I wanted
to make human, take away from mini par and the mid sound as well, which I
didn't like at all. So I wanted a bass guitar. You can't do much better
than have a real instrument playing guitar. So I took it apart and colored
it just a little. Like, for instance, on Avenue De Bel Air, I made it a
little more racey, moved it around an octave sometimes, just slightly
reinvented it. But other tracks like Acts of Human Kindness are not so
really busy in the bass, you know. They are more simple.
P4Y: Do you feel that your music can be utilized to reach people and give
them a more positive perspective?
STEVE: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, one hopes your music has some value and
does something for somebody. I guess with the kind of audiences that we
had as a collective entity we've had a sort of branch effect where members
like John and I have gone off and done our own records. It's kind of
cornered part of that market, a part of that direction. And yeah, of
course, you know, if we can bring a little pleasure and show a little
expansion. Because, I think, you know, Yes records come and go and they
have their own meter. And my own sort of creativity, as far as doing solo
albums, has kind of upped the ante since the 90's, and I don't feel obliged
to do one every year. But if I can every one to two years I will try and
get my energy around that and believe that I'm not just a member of Yes.
I'm a guitarist who has a certain destiny of collaborating with other
people outside of Yes and also ability to play on my own, which I featured
on Natural Timbre. And my solo shows where I walk out on the stage on my
own and do a whole lot of stuff mixing from, you know, acoustic, country
picking to semi-classical guitar and also electric; I stick a bit of rock
'n roll in there too if I can.
P4Y: Expanding on that a bit, Steve, do you feel that you are able to
expand your boundaries and improvisational work on your solo works more
than, say, with Yes, Asia or GTR?
STEVE: Well, I mean yes, opportunities to do improvisation are very
important to me and, you know, they are very exciting, but of course I can
create more on my own, and certainly within Skyline, it was a vehicle for
improvisation. All of my music is to some extent. And this one was to a
slightly larger extent and that pleases me because I feel that as a player
that that's a very important part of my work. It's not just all of my
writing is improvisation in itself, but rather more formularized and
structured than, say, when you have a structure. Then you say well, I don't
know what I'm going to do here, but I'll think of something, and you don't
actually think of something, you just play something, and then you keep
playing until you like what you hear.
P4Y: Right. That was my next question. How did the songs from this new
album take form then?
STEVE: Well, in two different ways, really. The ones that are, are if I
got a finished album or a promo album. But on the finished album,
obviously, you've got to see the writing. You can see how much Paul's
involvement is in certain tracks and other ones just written by me. The
ones written by me, I construct those and do them in the same way that I've
written all of my music. There is not really a formula to write my music.
It's really at different times I get more organized about writing music.
And now with mini discs, there is a lot of enablement to really get
organized; to get ideas, put maybe 120 ideas on one mini disc, and actually
write about them in a book. So you know exactly whether it's a fast rift,
up tempo, rock, jazzy, smooth. You give them little titles. In that way
you start a catalog of sort of material. But when I write with Paul, I tend
to go over to Geneva and we'll sit around and we'll see if he's got a tape
he wants to play me or whether we've got a structure already that's up and
running that he doesn't know what to do with or he'd like me to take on.
So sometimes the collaborations with Paul are slightly different, where
he'll initiate them much like I do on my stuff. But then he'll want me to
make decisions on it and come up, furthering of the idea, so in a way he
writes half of the idea but the rest of it is sort of unknown territory.
So I invent that territory and I take the tune on. That means as a writer
I'm not always writing from the ground up, which I like doing, but it does
balance my writing, working with somebody. A lot of writers do this. All
of the people have their own ideas and then we collaborate; that's how
Steve Hackett and I write, will write, on the GTR album. Surely, we wrote
it together, but a lot of it was putting ideas together that we already had
and it's that union of agreement, of seeing the same pictures and same
potential and saying, if you put that chord with this idea, what do you
think? And the other guys go, yeah. It's those moments that you realize
that's how much fun writing is. Further down the line things can get harder
and trickier and ideas can come and go, but the initial stages, it's very
beautiful that you've really got this collaboration actually happening in
front of your eyes.
P4Y: Being a self taught guitarist, I've always been amazed that you
mastered so many different styles of playing. Did you start out by
imitating other guitarists' work or basically doing your own thing from the
beginning? And, did you teach yourself also to read music?
STEVE: Well, I mean my learning curve was that, yeah, I mimic other
guitarists. But attempting to take something from other guitarists was a
reasonably natural thing for me to do. I thought that's all I can do. And
I listened to people and friends and I discussed whether we could really do
two things at once or whether it was a recording. Much like you see in Les
Paul coming along with dazzling recordings. We didn't know whether that
was the same kind of animal. But he certainly wasn't. And the revelations
about different guitarists was a constant flow in my life between friends I
knew and my own research. I was determined to find obscure guitarists and
finding out about guitarists I'd heard of but hadn't yet heard, getting
record collections. Yeah, I was in awe with other guitarists, but the first
thing I wanted to do was learn something to play. The first guy, I guess,
was people like Hank Marvin from the Shadows who was reasonably easy to
take his ideas. They were straightforward ideas, pure ideas, you know.
There weren't too many surprises in there. But then again, it was a new
challenge for me to do that. But after that, I started on more adventurous
music, and I wanted to play, be able to play music in different styles.
And this helped me formulate what I guess is my own story; that is a cross
breed of all of styles. In the 70's when I started searching out different
instruments, looking for different sounds, it all brought me back to
realize that I had the sound that I wanted. I was getting the sort of
personality, some personality, into my path, and it was really just a
question of taking influences. And when I say that, it doesn't mean to say
that these are some of the issues that I'm influenced by. It's kind of a
slightly hazardous area because you could be saying, I'm so influenced by
this person and I actually play like this. And I'll see what one is doing
with an influence, saying that I would like to be influenced, I hope to
take on something. So in a way, it's a lot about what colors you show and
how much you can be an interpreter. I think being a writer is slightly
like being an interpreter; you have some ideas, you know, emotionally.
They are your own ideas but they might be quite influenced again by other
people you enjoy.
P4Y: You've always seemed to prefer hollow body electric guitars. Any
particular reason for the preference?
STEVE: I guess, not only did I start on those kind of guitars, which also
gave me a bit of a headstart in that direction, there is a puritanical side
to me where I do like not exclusively, I play Steinbergers and other
guitars, but I do have certain preference for the greatness of great ideas.
It's like if you look at car design, you know, you look at great makes, you
can see a consistent greatness about their designs and maybe they lead. I
guess in guitars it's the same. The design, the way of guitar is crafted
and the fact that I still play the guitar I bought brand new in 1964, which
was 38 years ago, means that you sometimes can buy something that lasts.
In today's society that's quite significant because there is an awful lot
of things that don't last so well and wear so well. And I'm pleased that
I found those guitars. The sound, yeah, there is something obviously within
the sound that I like, and also the scale of having a guitar that the neck
isn't close to your body. I play Steinberger and other guitars, but
primarily, you are right, I play full-body.
P4Y: I just wanted to touch base back on the album again. What is your
favorite track off this new album?
STEVE: This album, oddly enough, does feature a great deal of hollow-body
guitar, my 175(Gibsons ES-175D) because, primarily, that's the voice that I
like for my improvisational stuff. On this album that guitar does get
quite an airing, I'm pleased to say. What's your question again?
P4Y: You have twelve tracks on this album, what was your favorite track
off the album?
STEVE: I have a thing about Avenue De Bel Air. It's an intriguing track.
I think for me it was a track where I had done an early guitar, listened to
it and considered it had good ideas on it, but I didn't like the overall
performance. I did this with Camera Obscura as well. I listened to some
earlier work and took some ideas from it and reorganized and played them
again and then put in my improvisation based on improvisation, as opposed
to just based on a melody. So the melodies are using that tune, as my key
melodies were actually improvised originally. I like that ingredient. But
there again, I'm playing them again in a more structured way so they come
again, they repeat sometimes, and they are obviously not improvised at that
time because otherwise they wouldn't be structured in the way that they
are. But that will enable me to jump off and do improvisation yet again on
top of that knowledge. So the more you know about a track, the more
understanding you have of its structure. It is implications of the bass
movements, the length of it, the balance of it, the color that you've had
to bring to it; it gets really important. So, you know, usually I say
Meridian Strings. It's the first track that starts the real journey. In
other words, it's more like Acts of Human Kindness, in my mind sort of an
overture of the album. It sort of clicks. It's about the album more than
it's like the album; it presents the album. And therefore, it's a
premature, it's warning of some of the basic messages, certainly about
kindness, and about, you know, small acts of human kindness can be a very
powerful thing. And it's a great tool. I guess music is a bit like that.
And that's really it; I was compiling my ideas. So Meridian Strings is
usually the track that I say; I pick Meridian because I feel that opens the
track out, opens the album out. It's kind of -- this is really what the
album is about, this sort of music, whereas, partly melodic and partly
improvisational.
P4Y: It's a beautiful track.
STEVE: It's a long word, improvisation; I shouldn't use that too often.
P4Y: And as you age gracefully, how much can you improve? Do you feel that
you are getting stronger as far as your guitar playing, or do you feel that
you've reached your pinnacle as far as your art form is concerned?
STEVE: Unfortunately not. Don't ask me two questions; quite often I'll
forget one of them.
P4Y: Sorry.
STEVE: So I'll answer this one. I think that your mind goes through
different test pads. In the 70's, obviously with the success Yes was
having and feeling of being on top of it, you keep going forward. And there
are times in the next 20 years, in the 80's and 90's, when I look back at
the 70's and thought, no, I was actually playing better than I liked that
performance. And I saw some improvising from Yes tours as an early
disgrace in 1972. And I thought I don't know, I don't think I play like
that any more, which I did. But gradually, I've turned that around to my
advantage where, not because I want to say this, but because it helps
answer the question, but a lot of times now people are saying to me they
really haven't seen me playing better. There is some heat turned. They
are really still surprised that I'm still pushing the envelope, going
forward, and that endorses me to what I believe too, and that is that there
was a lull, there was a performance lull or a guitaristic lull while I was
gaining strength in my writing and collaborating and production, sometimes
helping other musicians do stuff. But then I think coming back onto the
stage I -- what I would like to say here is that it's stage performance
that really keeps you pushing forward because I just don't want to be
redundant on stage. I don't want anybody to think this isn't the best
they've seen me perform. So I'm always on that leading edge of trying to
do better. But you don't do better but just trying; you do better by
allowing yourself to be better, by projecting and working. But also not
just demanding that you are, but somehow looking and hoping that you'll be
seeding yourself into the right kind of potentials that will allow you to
be better. And then, I guess, in the studio, it's about the people you are
around. Then that the danger is if you have any negativity in the studio,
then it's pretty hard to expound on going forward. But as often happens on
my own solo albums, I get so much freedom that I can find I can fulfill a
goal in me. Not easily, but it's quite achievable. But within the group,
you've got to try and keep everybody happy all of the time really, which
isn't always that easy. So I guess part of my exploration or a lot of my
exploration happens on stage.
P4Y: Steve, a Yes question. Yes has gone through so many transformations
over the years, and yet you've been there almost from the beginning. What
was it like for you working with so many different forms of the band?
STEVE: Well, you know, I guess that's the opportunist in me. I saw them
as opportunity. And Patrick Moraz was the first one I had. Tony Kaye and
Rick Wakeman, that was the first crossroads. And then the most difficult
one that ever has been in the band was losing Bill Bruford because I really
didn't want Bill to go. I saw no reason on earth why he should leave.
P4Y: None of us see wanted to see Bill go either.
STEVE: He did want to go and he did want to further his musical venture,
which is one of the things that I did appreciate about his desire. But
having said that, that was tough. Now with Patrick, and there was Geoff
Downes and Trevor Horn and then there was the Igor Khoroshev and the Billy
Sherwood, I would say at times it's tested my patience at times, not so
much as in 70's because there was almost like a driving force going on in
the band in the late 90's when we were flexing with Billy and Igor. I
guess I was extremely restless. I was wondering if I should stay in Yes,
whether Yes really gives me very much to do with so many other people sort
of clambering for input into the band. And suddenly it got rather
exclusive; you know or even get a song across or an idea, incomplete,
something that had a total theory. So it got hard. I would say that was a
very restless period. Fortunately, right now after Magnification, which
wasn't an easy record in any sense or form, but now Rick is back, I feel a
different quality in the band totally. It's really, I mean --
P4Y: Like an old glove Steve?
STEVE: Well, not quite as as calm as that, but Rick only comes back to
the band, and we only had him back because this was the right time to do
it. We weren't going to do it. Before he wasn't working. It wasn't
looking like his sense of commitment was different. Now we've got Rick very
committed. Although there is the old glove syndrome, I would say that's
it's a bit like a new glove that fits really well because Rick's musicality
and my guitar work fit together like a glove. We're using that expression
too often, but enjoyably so because I really do need Rick in this band. I
wasn't enjoying it without him as much as I am now. And I guess that shows,
it shows in my face more than I can believe sometimes when I see the DVD
from The House of Blues. I see this really miserable pissed of looking
guitarist. In a way, although I didn't think that I looked like that, I
couldn't help but hide that. In a way that group wasn't all that I wanted
Yes to be and the difficulties within it were the work of making a very
creative entity. But now with Rick back, I feel that things are worth going
on with. Things are worth putting up with sometimes, and things are worth
achieving that Rick and I could achieve together, which is to be a greater
force, you know, in a directional sense, a great power to this group. And I
don't want to be used by Jon and Chris. I'm not here to be used by
anybody. I'm here to collaborate and expound and make things better and
take on some real musical challenges, not anything less than that. Anything
less than that, and I don't want to.
P4Y: What is the future state of affairs for Yes and for, actually, the
rest for the band? Are we looking forward to brand new material with the
lineup?
STEVE: Yeah, eventually. We're not exactly just going to rush around
doing that. We want to build up the strength of the writing and the sense
of collaboration that we've got together. So certainly that's on our
agenda. We're going to be doing that. This time next year in October or
December we should be recording. That may seem surprising, and that's a
long time away, and Europe hasn't seen this band yet in this lineup. And
we haven't been to Australia for 30 years, and Japan, for a few. So we're
continuing in a live mode for a bit longer. And we did Japan and Australia
at the end of February and beginning of March. And we actually do Europe
in June and July. And after that our work will be done, obviously, as far
as showing the areas that we work in, that this band is back and is
healthy. Then is the time most probably to go and make a record. It has to
be discussed yet, and there are certain parameters, geography and timing
and style. I think style is a key word for Yes. Style is Yes. Yes has
style, had style, needs style, and must keep style, otherwise, you know, it
needs a certain style of music and I think we'll look for that.
P4Y: In the interim can we hopefully look forward to another Steve Howe
solo album?
STEVE: Between now and then?
P4Y: Yes.
STEVE: Let me look. I have plans, you know, but having just got Skyline
off and running, I feel that what I'm hopefully showing my audience is that
my desire to make a cohesive record in a particular style is increasing.
When I go to another style, like I did with Natural Timbres, is acoustic,
this one is electric, laid back, very moody. I'm certainly not going to do
anything very predictable. After that I'm going to want to make a record
that's powerful and maybe, you know, has some strong elements of rock in
it, because, you know, that's one of my leading edges, that's one of the
leading things that I like about Yes. I want Yes to be moody and
understated as well, and I don't always want to make --I hope we don't look
like Status Quo, something about being on stage, as if we are that sort of
a band. But I think the style of Yes and the quality would mean that the
record from us and the style of writing would have to fit in the story.
There is a very big story on Yes. You know, it's been on a lot of curves
and deviations and sometimes it's played as radio music and that didn't do
the band any long-term good, although in the short term, everybody thought
it was great that we had a hit record. But in the long-term, sometimes
those things, you can never change the path. After that it's very hard to
get back on your original brief and do music that's progressive,
un-commercial, sometimes purposely un-commercial. I just realized really
how Gentle Giant fit into this story. And they are one of the most
innovative groups England ever had. More innovative then Yes, actually.
King Crimson may have set the ball rolling quite a lot, but truly Gentle
Giant is a phenomenal band, phenomenal writing and also phenomenal social
awareness in that band, very much like a sort of Mothers of Invention
meets Ian Jury. And I've got a lot of respect for the band, the people who
put this kind of music on the table like Yes did with Close to the Edge,
Topographic and said, we're going to stand by this, you know. I stood by
Close to the Edge while people were smacking it rotten. I was going, no,
sorry I actually like this record, piss off. And I'm glad I did that. I'm
glad that I stuck by it as much as I can I think Asia was a bit more
semi-proggy but much more poppy rock band, but I keep my head above the water.
P4Y: So you are very happy with InsideOut Records then?
STEVE: Yeah. I'm very excited. The enthusiasm when we met up in Holland
some time back, and I met Tom and the whole thing started to roll between
them being very aware of the atmosphere that was needed or expected or
required or wanted to be on my records. And as soon as they heard some of
Skyline, they wanted to be part of it, and it's a continuing relationship,
hopefully, much like Rick coming back and continuing a relationship for
Yes. I would like to see InsideOut be a stable for me as well.
P4Y: Speaking of unpredictable, any particular reason why you chose Bob
Dylan for a tribute album?
STEVE: I guess I felt that he was he was about my biggest influence as far
as the guy who's done so many albums. And in a way, at the time it seemed
his music was a little obscure. And I could pick from a big repertoire and
not pick all of the hits that he had, although I did Just Like a Woman. Bar
that, most of the other songs were not as well-known as Like A Rolling
Stone. So the reason I did that was, I think, to avoid the mish-mash of
doing songs that have been covered lots of times. And who has ever covered
I Can Believe You? No one has every covered that. I enjoyed covering
Going, Going, Gone, you know, and the songs like that which were so deep in
me, partly the lyrical strength. I'll tell you why I did Bob Dylan. It
just so happened that he was the writer who had collectively written more
about the difficulties with love, you know, the way love is so great and
yet love is also an entanglement that you sometimes can't control or
can't keep it the way you want. So most of the songs, every one of them,
but nearly all of the songs are actually about that twist in love. The
album was going to be called Signals Crossed at one time, which is a line
from one of his records, we got our signals crossed. And in a way that, to
an English person, means actually they got mixed up. I think over here in
America it can be interpreted slightly different; people think of railroad
tracks. But, you know, having our signals crossed means that we don't know
what the other person is thinking. So it was a great vehicle for a subtle
yet compelling lyrical continuity in those songs about love is great but
loves also kind of difficult and I need to learn about love and I need to
understand it. I mean Bob certainly wasn't a small-fry to consider. The
wealth of his songs was so enormous and there was another short list that I
had of another album, but I think it taught me a lot, doing Bob, it taught
me that you always take on a bit more than you think when you are not just
doing your own music, you are not just like planting your own songs. There
were times when I kind of wondered if Bob was going to hate this record
because it wasn't recorded in necessarily in the spirit of the way he did
things, which is kind of thrown together emotional, alive, maybe a little
bit crazy, mixed upside of it, because everything is working together. And
I produced the record. And when I came to play lead guitar I was very
cautious not to be sort of flashy. I wanted to be full of emotion but not
at all speedy and flashy, and all of that kind of stuff, which all of those
lessons were good for me. So I really enjoyed doing that Paul Chase record.
P4Y: I have this dilemma. I've known Rick here for the longest time, and
he's had this question that's been bothering him for years, and I hope this
is not something that's as out of the norm, but I'm going to let him ask
you this question.
RICK: Steve, I named my Siberian Husky, a beautiful dog Khatru, but I
can't find the definition of the word for khatru. I had gone back stage at
the Tower Theater in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, but John and you
did not come out, and this might be my last opportunity to try and find
some sort of meaning for the word Khatru. Any inside information into what
John might have had in mind?
STEVE: I think if you look in Sanskrit, I think that word is used; I think
it might be used there. What it means I don't really know. I'm not even
sure John did when he did this song. We've been asked it loads of times
and there isn't a real answer, it means ice cream with eggs. I don't know
really what it means. I think it's a far more subconscious meaning. I
think it is Sanskrit and therefore it needs some translation.
P4Y: I thought it might refer to, like, a sonnet or song or a poem or
something along those lines?
STEVE: I would love to be that simplistic, but I don't know.
RICK: Thanks.
P4Y: Word-of-mouth suggests that this latest album will possibly be your
best-selling album and I have enjoyed it. And it's somewhat ambient in
some places, but I personally enjoyed it. It's a very comforting album to
listen to, and it gets me in a nice mood. And I really do appreciate you
taking time out of your busy schedule to conduct this interview with us.
STEVE: Nice talking to you.
P4Y: Is there anything that you would like to say to your fans out there
in conclusion?
STEVE: I don't deal well with that question. It always puts me on the
spot too much.
P4Y: That's fine.
STEVE: This is good timing because, in fact, my bags are about to leave
for San Francisco, so I'm off on the road again.
P4Y: It's been a pleasure, Steve. Thank you very much.
STEVE: Thanks.
P4Y: Likewise, Steve. It's been a pleasure to interview such a
distinguished instrumentalist like yourself.
STEVE: Thank you very much.
P4Y: Thank you.
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