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AUGUST 2, 2004
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Source: JamBase
http://www.jambase.com/headsup.asp/?storyID=5381
Jon Anderson: Yes to Everything, Amen!
By Dennis Cook
That voice. It punches through the stratosphere, down along a sunbeam, and
straight into your heart. Jon Anderson has been the lead singer of Yes, one
of the most long-lived and successful rock acts in history, for more than
three decades (give or take a few respites when the drama got too thick).
Perhaps more than any other element in this progressive rock flagship, it
is Anderson's vocals that instantly identify what you're hearing as Yes
Music, a complex, giddy, positive amalgamation of rock's fire and classical
music's grace. English folk, American pop, and plugged-in jazz also rear
their heads on album oriented FM-radio staples like "I've Seen All Good
People," "Owner of a Lonely Heart," and "Long Distance Runaround." Anderson
is also the band's lyricist and his stanzas are full of light and cries for
peace, wondrous journeys and whales, cosmic travelers and seafarers happily
adrift. He remains one of the few people in rock that continues to espouse
the same cool values that came out of the '60s social movements around the
globe. His voice, a strange otherworldly thing, high and pure, never comes
across as anything other than achingly sincere. He believes in the power of
music to change the world for the better. He believed that in 1968 when he
met bassist Chris Squire and formed a fresh idea for what a rock band might
be and he believes it today with a force that's frankly pretty infectious.
Talking to Jon, I started to feel that all the gunfire in the distance
might actually one day be a thing of the past. It is not a thought that I'm
able to capture very often and it speaks to the power emanating from this
distinctive spirit.
Having reformed what many regard as the classic lineup in 1995, Yes has
been busy revisiting their catalog through a comprehensive reissue series
at Rhino Records and in the surprisingly candid DVD documentary Yesspeak
where the entire lot of them open up about the band. The recently released
anthology The Ultimate Yes-35th Anniversary Collection finds them exploring
acoustic arrangements for the first time. Jazzy takes on the delightful
juggernaut "Roundabout" and early gem "South Side Of The Sky" show a vital
band, anxious to play with their catalog and present it from new angles.
Yes has always been an exciting live act and once again North America gets
a chance to visit with the band for three hours or so in each city they
bless. Their newest compositions are, if anything, more shiny, more
uplifting than in the past. Their mission is clearly to bring some hope and
good times wherever they play. It might even be a bit too happy for some
but for others this is the most personal, significant music in their lives.
Yes inspires that kind of passion, a commitment to their music to match the
band's own.
Jon Anderson sat down to speak with JamBase before the show gets rolling
this month. He touches on each of his bandmates, the evils of
pharmaceutical companies, the role the fans play in keeping Yes going, and
much more. His mind lights on ideas like a precocious hummingbird. He's
possessed of a rainbow logic that makes for a very lively ride. Please
extinguish all flammables, check your seatbelt, and prepare for takeoff...
Dennis Cook: It's nice to see you guys still around after 35 years.
Jon Anderson: Alive and kicking!
DC: I've seen the phrase Yes Music in things written by the band members in
the past couple of years. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on what Yes
Music actually is.
JA: It is a style of music, it is a style within itself based on structure,
musical ideas, and forms but not limited by time. There are no boundaries
to how the music is developed. And the lyrical content has always been very
positive. It's a combination of those things. I think it's a style unto its
own that grew out of those formative years of the early '70s. It doesn't
get followed by many other bands but you can hear our influence in a few
bands. When we started we were influenced by The Beatles, The (Rolling)
Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the like, then we sort of moved into creating our
own musical territory. Bands listen and glean ideas from other bands.
DC: I like the idea of borrowing things to get your first steps going.
JA: There are very few bands that will attempt the more intricate Yes
pieces but there are bands that do. It's interesting to find a band in
Japan that sounds just like Yes and a band in Germany that do just Yes
covers. I know when I started I would have been happy to sound like the
Beatles or Joe Tex or whoever. You want to sound like most bands, you want
to sound like their records and that's how you learn your chops.
DC: Something I'd read in the Allmusic.com bio for Yes stuck out for me.
It ends with the line "Yes is doing something serious with rock music."
That was that writer's idea of what the whole of Yes has been about. Do you
think that's an accurate statement? Did you want to do something serious
right from the start?
JA: Yeah. Serious might be the wrong word. Inventive or revolutionary
might be better. We wanted to do something different because the Beatles
did it, you know? They were very pop and then they met Bob Dylan and it
became very cosmic. They met gurus and it became spiritual, "All You Need
Is Love" and things like that. I wanted, personally, to go along that path
of inventiveness and adventure in music. I didn't want to be a pop star,
and I thought I was too old anyway. I wanted to be a musician surrounded by
musicians that care. If that's serious then so be it. It wasn't like we
said we're gonna be above everybody. It was more a willingness to
investigate the potential of being in a rock 'n' roll band and basically
stretch the imagination.
DC: You're primarily known as a vocalist and lyricist but you also play a
wide array of instruments. What does playing an instrument bring out in you
that's different from singing?
JA: I started out as the singer in the band and your formative years have
you lugging the equipment around and setting up the drums and driving
everyone around because you're just the singer and they're musicians (he
gives the last word a nice comic gravitas). As soon as I could learn to
play a guitar, which quite honestly took a hell of a long time--I was 24
when I first started playing--I realized that I could write songs. So I
started writing songs for Yes and then I learned piano and I'm still
learning. It's an ever-expanding thing. I'm in music school and learning
every day. I'm working on ideas every day and it gives me a reason to
continue. I think one of the great moments of my life was when I could
write musician on my passport (laughter). I wasn't just the singer in a band.
DC: That's a neat moment.
JA: I could play anything. I don't know that I can play great but I can
pick up an instrument and play and I just love that fact. I'm self-taught
so I have no restrictions.
DC: Yes is still a very active touring band and I wondered if you ever
thought you'd still be out on the road this much when you reformed the
older lineup a few years ago? It just seems like there's a renewed energy
towards getting your music out in the world these days.
JA: Not really. Basically, you're surviving, your life is a question of
survival and you maintain a standard of music over the years and you keep
going. I've left the band a couple of times when it wasn't really fun for
me and did other things that were very happy, very fun for me. But getting
back in the early nineties with Steve (Howe) and Rick (Wakeman) was a
challenge. Can we get the band into the 21st Century and how do we do that?
Well, you gotta tour, you gotta play for people and let them know that
you're good. It's like we're a band of brothers on tour and it's not always
easy but we survive because we have our music and we have a great fan base
that loves what we do. They know what we're going through, they've lived
through lives what it's taken to be who we are. Like the classic guy who
came up to me wearing a t-shirt that said "I've Grown Old Listening To Your
Music" (big laughter). It was classic. I'm 60 this year and I feel like an
elder and I don't feel anything wrong in that. I've got a lot of experience
and lot of dreams to fulfill. Touring is part of that. We just got back
from a trip and wherever we go there's a bunch of people--three or four
thousand people, sometimes six or seven thousand people--just come and
they're so into this band and a lot of them are young people who are so
into the band.
DC: You just finished a big arena tour where one of the key elements was
that Yes was playing a number of songs live and acoustic that you hadn't
played for a long time. What made you come back and revisit them?
JA: We started doing an acoustic idea that we'd talked about for a couple
of years and never got around to. We realized an acoustic set, playing
songs we hadn't played for a long long time, gave them a new lease on life.
It's like revisiting a song and playing it a bit different and in some ways
I think that's gonna take us through the next few years of recording. We
want to revisit some older material as well as new material. We want to
embrace the history of the band as well as the future.
DC: That's nice. It does seem like the band in general seems to be more at
peace with its past these days.
JA: Sometimes.
DC: (Laughs) I think some of that comes through in the Rhino reissues and
the Yesspeak documentary. You guys are talking about it in a way I've never
heard Yes talk about its history before.
JA: We know how we are, who we are, what we are, and we've matured. We
still have our moments believe me but life is like that. I don't know any
group that hasn't had problems all the way through their career. Even Elvis
was in a mess.
DC: Does it ever feel like you're caught up in a soap opera with all the
lineup shifts over the years and such?
JA: Totally.
DC: It's one of those things you need a pie chart on the wall to figure out
all the permutations...
JA: Someone actually made one! It's called the Yes Family Tree. But the
music keeps it together. We still play songs we wrote ten years ago, 20
years ago, 30 years ago, there's still the same impetus for these people to
play and you can never ever be overly satisfied with a performance. You can
say that was a great performance, I hope we do that tomorrow night (laughter).
DC: Is there any material you struggle to continue performing? And also the
other side of that, is there any material that you've discovered you're
more excited about than you've been in a long time?
JA: This last tour we did a piece of music we wrote in 1995 called "Mind
Drive" and it was such a great experiment laid out on stage. I was just
singing it this morning in my shower. I feel really good about that song
and will keep on playing it. But then you attempt a piece from something
like Tales From Topographic Oceans, and they're giant steps musically and
if you get 'em right it's an amazing experience. We wonder, "Can we play
it, how can we play it with depth and quality?" We can't just ramble
through a piece of music that took us a couple months to create. If you
create a piece of music and then you don't get a chance to perform it on
stage it's really a shame. You spend hours creating it and just because it
wasn't a hit record because it just happens to be 15 minutes long doesn't
mean it's a bad piece of music or wasn't worth the trip.
DC: The idea that something has to be a hit to be worthwhile is a sort of
sad part of our culture in the West.
JA: Like management will say that wasn't a great album because it didn't
make it on radio but you can still take it on tour and make it better and
better because it was given musical birth in the studio. You can't knock it
until you've tried every which way to make it work. When you're in creation
you should not judge it by what other people say. Only judge it by what you
feel in your heart. Sometimes we let a piece of music go by but because we
did "Mind Drive" on this last tour I think the rest of the guys are
realizing we should look back to Topographic because there are some
beautiful songs in there. We'll maybe do an acoustic version of that piece,
not the whole piece but some of it. It gets everybody's musical juices
flowing. You start thinking, "Why not?" Who's to say why we shouldn't play
a piece of music? Yes Music doesn't live in the natural order of things.
DC: There's something removed from the regular order of radio play and
trying to exactly duplicate that sound in concert. Often bands are
recreationists now.
JA: We never set out to become an "album band." We just set out to be a
good band. It's only that fate gave us that chance and we stood by it and
decided to work harder to create two ways, two roads. You become
successful, you become a celebrity, you become a superstar or whatever. Or
you become successful and you dig in and you create and you become a career
person. I don't go out to celebrity things. I like the idea of it but it's
not my game.
DC: It's fine that it's out there but you don't necessarily feel like you
need to participate.
JA: I don't need to. Maybe one day I'll go to one of those things and it'll
be fun, but I don't go. People go every year to be there, to be part of it.
That's their celebration. My celebration is being home and being quiet and
then going on the road and checking it out. Going out there and standing on
stage and saying, "This is who we are. This is what we do and you better
believe it." I believe it.
DC: It's clear you do. There's a sense that comes through, on the most
recent work actually, that this is what you were put on Earth to do.
JA: Yeah. We did an album called Magnification and the record company went
bankrupt. The music is still good but unfortunately a couple of the guys in
the band had a tough time with that album. For one reason or another they
don't want to do songs from that album on stage. I do. I just did a show
with the Cleveland Youth Orchestra and I did song from that album that will
only get played as long as I'll sing it because the band won't play it.
It's just the way things go, a quirk of nature. I am always impressed with
the music we create. And that's not like saying it's the best or the
shiniest. It's just part of the musical world. Who's to say that yours is
better than mine or whatever? It's always a question of learning that music
is a beautiful, beautiful part of life and it shouldn't be overly judged or
caved into emotionally. It's a part of life. It's there, you hear it. In
fact, you can hear it but you don't have to hear it. I can walk to the
disco, boom boom boom, a rave thing and I dig it but I'm not going to go
into the bloody room! You know what I'm saying?
DC: I do, I do (laughs).
JA: I'm not going to do my head in. What for? I like it. I love X-Games
music. Those wild bands (breaks into a grungy, high energy scat).
DC: There's something very appealing about that kind of aggression.
JA: I love it!
DC: It sounds like you're able to appreciate a wide range of things without
feeling you need to be a part of them. (Pause) I want to talk a bit about
your solo work but it differs from Yes. From your own perspective, what
drives you to do projects with Bela Fleck or Mike Oldfield or some of the
others you've collaborated with?
JA: It's anything I'm asked to do. If people ask me I'll do it. I wanted to
tour with Bela Fleck but I could never get managers to sort it out so I got
in touch with Bela and he said, "Do you want to sing on this song?" and I
said yes. Same with Mike Oldfield and I've done a couple albums with
Vangelis (Chariots of Fire composer and electronic music pioneer). It's
like cross-pollination. If I can find somebody to work with I will. I was
down in South France and I was working on a project I've been doing for 25
years now about the life and times of Chagall and the guy I was working
with turned out to be a crazy wack alcoholic. So, I'm stranded there with
my wife in the south of France and I went to a bar where I met a keyboard
player from Cameroon and he was so good. The following day I wrote six
songs with him, went to Paris and we made an album. Because I was guided
toward doing it, this album, The More You Know, is kind of a funky album.
DC: Do you feel a drive to keep working at all times?
JA: Yes. I was talking to a guy an hour ago about a project I've had in my
head all summer and he's going to come over next week and help me. I'm
getting into trance music for some reason. Cosmic trancing. Not rave but
trance.
DC: Well, the word "trance" has a much different meaning than "rave."
There's a lot you can read into both of those words but trance has
something of the shaman in it.
JA: That's where I'm heading for the next year probably. I can hear and I
just don't know how to play it but I know what it is and I feel it and I
can actually see it at times. There's an audience ready for that kind of
music and it's going to be very exotic and it's going to be transforming
and transcendental.
DC: And you're already used to performing pieces that are ten, 20 minutes
in length. So you already understand the nature of the elongated composition.
JA: I heard about this great music from India that lasts seven days. I love
that, that it would last so long. And I start thinking, that's what I
should do! I can do that! I've got a thousand songs. I just got in a trunk
full of songs I've written over the years and there must be a thousand
songs there. And I start wondering what am I gonna do?
DC: It sounds kind of exciting.
JA: And frightening. But every time I play them I like them. I was
listening to a tape yesterday and every song was nice and I thought, "How
can I do this? I know what I'll do! I'll make an album that lasts a week!"
(laughs)
DC: Do you feel pressure from those songs to bring them into the world, to
birth them?
JA: Oh yeah. I think it happened a month ago, my wife and I were on tour
and we had a stopover on this island called Sardinia. There in the hot sun,
on the balcony, and I was wondering what am I doing (with all this music).
And this thought came to me: I better start. I better get on with it.
DC: I wanted to touch on a few things happening with Yes these days. I was
told there's a new Roger Dean (longtime Yes album cover artist and
collaborator) stage set in the works for the summer tour.
JA: It's looking beautiful, really classic Roger Dean, really very special.
The audience come and oooh...
DC: ...even before there's musicians.
JA: Yeah yeah.
DC: I've always had a soft spot for his eye on the world, the sense that
ANYTHING can be organic in his work. How did you start working with Dean?
JA: Well, we were looking for more components that would colorize the band
so we could start creating theater on stage. And I saw an album cover, I
think it was Osibisa, a London based African style band and he'd done an
incredible album cover and we just got in touch with him.
DC: And you've been able to maintain that relationship over a long period
of time, which is actually very rare with visual artists and rock bands. It
seems like that marriage doesn't last a lot of the time.
JA: We just sort of loved it for three or four albums, took a break and
then another couple albums and then a break and then he's back again. He
really works with the music. He colorizes it.
DC: One of the clichs that seems to have stuck with Yes is that you're a
drug band. What role have drugs played in making this music?
JA: When Paul McCartney said he'd taken LSD I had to try it. And that's the
way life is. You try stuff because you dream to be something you are not.
You dream to grow, you dream to expand your horizons, you dream to become a
supernova, anything other than what you are. That's what drugs will do. All
the way through the '70s I was smoking marijuana, so was everybody in the
band. It was part of our daily routine, it was part of our experience, it
was part of our loosening up. Drugs have been done for thousands of years.
It's a part of life. Like anything, if you drink too much water you drown.
DC: I think there's a real tendency, especially in the United States, to
dismiss the drive to take drugs, to seek intoxication or to expand beyond
where we are...
JA: ...it's alright to get boozed up though isn't it? (Adds Anderson with
spot-on sarcasm).
DC: That's culturally sanctioned here.
JA: Well, that's wrong.
DC: I agree.
JA: You can't have one and not the other. The Ying and the Yang of life,
you've got to experience everything from hallucinogenic drugs to everything
else. If you say you can't have that then, of course, you go and touch it.
It's normal to want that experience. (They tell you) "I'm sorry you can't
go over there where it's sunshiney," but you sneak over there. You don't
want to stand in the rain all the time.
DC: It's far less dangerous and far less nefarious than it's painted.
JA: Well, you know and I know and the world knows that the drug companies
are controlling the world at the moment. The amount of money spent on
keeping everybody drugged is staggering. These big pharmaceutical companies
are 20 billion dollar a year companies that are controlling the minds and
hearts of everything.
DC: What I find sad about is that the primary drug of choice is sedation.
JA: Oh yeah!
DC: They consciously try to make people more docile.
JA: The biggest drug of the world is fear and that's being implanted into
our consciousnesses constantly. Thankfully not many people are listening.
But it's there and not many people are aware that they can be free from all
these power struggles that are trying to dominate the human experience and
drag it under. At the same time, it's a small part of things and there's a
great world out there so I don't dwell on it too much.
DC: I think it's destructive if you overanalyze it and only look at the
dark edge.
JA: This week I'm really interested in the Democratic National Convention.
I've never really been interested in the vote, shall we say, but this time
for some reason... I just hate, honestly, that young kids get caught up in
war, in the destruction by armies and bombs. No matter what it's for, it's
children that are getting battered, emotionally and physically. Whatever
happened to peace, love, and understanding?
DC: There's a strong sense at this moment that politics in the United
States really will tilt the world one way or the other.
JA: I agree. That's a very good statement. It feels as though if things
change this year the world will become a better place. Because it looks
like we're going down a road of self-destruction (right now).
DC: It's the same pathway that every other empire has ever walked. And we
have a choice that other empires didn't have. We can choose not to go there.
JA: Well, I might be wrong, but I think a change is coming. People like
Michael Moore are helping. Michael Moore's Columbine movie is freaky. And
he's always been on the edge. In fact, he's a big Yes fan (huge laugh from
interviewer). I just know that a guy like that putting out Fahrenheit 911
when he did was such a stroke of genius.
DC: Regardless of whatever stance you walk in with, that movie, at the very
least, will give you things to consider for quite a long time afterwards.
JA: Exactly. It makes you seriously think about who's up to what. I have
got a great feeling that life will get better AND has got better over the
years. In fact, if you think about it, with respect, I still hate that
soldiers are getting killed every day but it's very small compared to
Vietnam, compared to a lot of things that have happened in Northern Ireland
and Peru. It's not as bad but it's still bad. It's not nice.
DC: You want it not to be happening at all.
JA: Peace will come. Just this morning, I wondered if I could get up and
sing, "All we are saying is give peace a chance" with some big words of
peace to the left and right of the stage. I know it sounds corny but it
would be kind of cool if I got up on stage and sang that with the band. It
would be kinda corny but funky.
DC: It's a simple but very powerful statement.
JA: I want to get up there and tell everyone to just have fun with it.
Maybe I'll do it!
DC: I've heard that at times you have written some of your lyrics based on
your own paintings, on what your paintings have brought up in you. Is that
true?
JA: I used to paint the lyrics that I wrote and I threw them away years
ago. I got sick and tired of them. I would think about a song and then
paint it. In fact, this next album project, the seven-day musical event, I
think I might paint it as well (laughs). DVD is really where we're going,
visual music, visual art, visual everything.
DC: You think that's the new frontier for bands?
JA: There'll always be music in the background, music to listen to on
headphones, but we're not far away from Ray Ban virtual reality. And as
soon as those Ray Bans come in I'm gonna get a pair!
DC: I wanted to ask you about your band mates. Let's start with Chris
Squire (bass). What's it like to play music with someone for 35 years?
JA: He's a remarkable bass player, an inventive songwriter and really a
very, very inventive bass player, very, very wonderful on that level. As
far as him as a person, as he says, I'm Obi Wan Kenobi and he's Darth
Vader. That's the way life is. He likes to party! (Anderson gives the last
word a slurry punch).
DC: And you not so much?
JA: I party in a different way.
DC: I think probably the person I missed most through the '80s and early
'90s was Steve Howe (guitar). And this is not a dig at Trevor Rabin at all,
but I think some of the soul of Yes resides in Steve.
JA: Steve is a very musical brother. He's very cohesive in his ideas and
he's quick to learn and quick to jump on ideas, quick to come up with chord
structures. And he's a great songwriter. A lot of the songs we wrote
together were a little bit of his song and a little bit of my song, that's
how it works. We don't as much these days because we're kinda far apart on
different levels. But on stage, it's a remarkable experience every show to
hear what he plays. He's very very inventive and spontaneous. I hear all
the nuances of what he's playing. Besides that, he's a bit of a crazy guy
but so am I.
DC: What's it like to be playing with Rick Wakeman (keyboards) again regularly?
JA: He loves talking. He tells jokes constantly. Jibber jabber jibber
jabber jibber jabber. And he's like that on the keyboard. He's talking on
the keyboard. His music is conversation pieces on keyboard. He's a
conversationalist especially on the piano, where he's very, very hot.
DC: And finally Alan White (drums).
JA: He's my best man. He's my brother. He's my gentleman. He's my friend.
He's a great, great person and a remarkable performer. He plays like he's
doing the Tour de France every night. And he played on (John Lennon's)
Imagine album so what do I know?
DC: He's a wonderful musician and I think in many ways he gets less of the
spotlight than anyone else in Yes.
JA: He also writes great songs. We wrote "Deeper Than Any Ocean" from our
last album. We always write two or three songs every album but he doesn't
push his position. He's the anchor to the band. He's a true gentleman.
DC: Maybe that's the role of drummers in some larger sense.
JA: They have to hold down the fort.
DC: What do you think the most unfair thing is that's ever been said about Yes?
JA: (long pause) The old line is you're very, very lucky to have success
and to hold onto it over the years, very, very lucky. And a lot of it has
to do with not letting anybody get to you. Just getting on with your
business, standing firm, saying this is who we are and this is what we do
and we're very thankful to be in this place. People who have thrown sticks
and stones will never hurt us. There's times where you don't want to hear
something but everybody's got a right to their opinion. We have young
people coming to our shows and old fans coming to our shows and we can see
it in their eyes that they love what we do and that in itself is refreshing.
DC: I just have one last question for you, Jon. If someone had come to your
younger self in the late '60s and told you that you'd still be touring the
world at the beginning of the 21st century would you have believed them?
JA: I would have said you've gotta be kidding (laughs). You've just gotta
be kidding.
DC: Even in the middle of it now it's gotta be hard to imagine.
JA: Well, I had a visitation from, you would call them angels or beings, in
1977 at Caesar's Palace (in Las Vegas) and they told me I'd be singing in
the year 2004. And I believed them and it was a beautiful moment in my
life. It meant something and I've been holding onto it.
DC: Yes begin their North American tour in celebration of their 35th
Anniversary on August 17 in Quebec City and will run until September 19 in
Universal City, CA. The band Dream Theater will be joining them as the
opening act on many of the dates. Full details are available at
www.yesworld.com
On behalf of JamBase, I want to thank Jon for this open hearted, lively
conversation. He is a sweet spirit in a world with far too few of them. And
man alive can the guy sing! Here's hoping that the angels tell him he's got
another few decades to whittle away at that trunk full of songs.
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