------------------------------------------------------- JANUARY 16, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel Two More Years of YES By Nick Tate First, fashion maven Sarah Jessica Parker turned up wearing a Yes T-shirt on HBO's Sex and the City. Then Latin pop star Shakira poured herself into a skin-tight Yes tank top for a Pepsi commercial. And last month, Enrique Iglesias wore Yes gear on The Tonight Show. Yes, suddenly, is in fashion -- or at least enjoying logo chic. No one is more surprised than the British prog-rock band's elfin-voiced vocalist, Jon Anderson. "Oh yeah, we planned it all from the beginning," says Anderson, 59, talking by telephone from his California home. "Actually, at first we thought we'd only be together for three months, and that would be it. Then, it was three years. But then, of course, things started to happen." Anderson, despite 13 solo albums, has just launched his first solo tour since founding Yes in 1969 with bassist Chris Squire. "The Big If" project coming to West Palm Beach's Carefree Theatre on Sunday finds Anderson audience-testing an unfinished hourlong song cycle and also playing Yes favorites. Using a guitar-synthesizer hybrid, he creates the illusion of ensemble to accompany his choirboy-ish voice and space-shot lyrics. "The Big If" is a respite from Yes, which he says remains "two-thirds of my musical identity." Anderson, Squire, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Alan White plan to regroup for a U.S. tour this summer to promote 35th-anniversary goods including an Ultimate Yes retrospective, a Yesspeak DVD and a live boxed set. Q. So what's the big idea behind "The Big If"? A. If I could fly. If I only had enough money. If I was 6-foot-2. If I could play quarterback for the 'Niners. And so on and so on. There's always the big if. Q. Why a solo tour in the middle of the anniversary hoopla? A. I've thought about it for years, that I'd love to do a one-man show. And if it could put things together properly -- the big if -- I could actually stand on my own, play the [synthesizer] guitar and sing along with my work ... I'm at that time in my career that I'm thinking about the next 10 years. Q. What's in this show? A. It's hard to say at the moment. Half of the songs are still being written ... Originally, I was just going to go out and do an hour of new music. And then I thought maybe that's not the best way to make everybody happy. Q. Is a new Yes album likely? A. Well, it depends a lot on what we get offered. I would love to do something adventurous, like write a musical with the band or a film score or an opera. Something really different. I've also been working on the idea of creating a video game. I want to be in video games because it's the future of our world, in more ways than one ... But I'm not really excited to make a record because I made one last year and it never really got into the marketplace. It was a beautiful album with Yes called Magnification and it never got to be heard by too many people. And I don't really want to go through that whole experience again. Q. Is the new music you're writing in the epic vein of Close to the Edge? A. That's where I'm going. `The Big If' is a one-hour piece ... I'd like to perform it [entirely] maybe in a year's time, when people get used to what it is and when I get used to what it is. Q. Would pop radio ever embrace something like that? A. I can't work on that assumption. So I don't work on that assumption. I work on the assumption that the Internet is available and that ... by the middle of next year I'll be able to spend a couple of weeks a year doing my show on maybe Microsoft's broadband. We've already talked about it. And people can download excerpts from it for a certain amount. Q. What are you listening to these days? A. I think the new Outkast is one of the great albums of the last 10 years. The last one that I really loved was called 1 Giant Leap. And I listen to Sibelius every day. And a little bit of Riverdance. And my wife plays '70s music all the time. Q. How long do you think Yes will continue to make music? A. I give it another couple years. Q. Does Yes have plans beyond the summer tour? A. I think we should do something like The Wall or Tommy or Sgt. Pepper or something so outlandish that it just brings everybody together ... And then we can say we've done it. But we've got to go there. And that's a big place to go. It's like climbing a mountain again. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com