Yes in the Press

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FEBRUARY 1979
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Source: Contemporary Keyboard Magazine

Rick Wakeman: On the Road and Beyond with Yes

By Dominic Milano

Whether Rick Wakeman needed to Yes to receive recognition for his keyboard playing or whether Yes needed Wakeman to become known as a band is a question some people might wonder about. There are those who think that "Fragile" was the first Yes album when it was really their fourth. But it was the first Yes album that multi-keyboardist Rick Wakeman played on, and it was also the first Yes album to give birth to a hit single in the United States, the well-known "Roundabout." Without question, the union of vocalist Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Steve Howe, and percussionist Bill Bruford, i.e. Yes, with Rick Wakeman was beneficial to all concerned. The keyboards Wakeman brought into the band provided a firm foundation for them to build their orchestral sound upon.

Prior to joining forces with Yes, Wakeman had been a very successful sessions player, recording with David Bowie, Cat Stevens, and many others. He had studied at London's Royal Academy of Music with the ambition of being a concert pianist prior to playing sessions, which he turned to as a way to support himself. While playing in a pub, Rick met guitarist David Cousins of the Strawbs. Rick was asked to join, and played with the Strawbs for fifteen months and appeared on two other albums, "A Collection of Antiques and Curios" and "From the Witchwood." Rick left the Strawbs and joined Yes in 1971, shortly before "Fragile" was released.

Less than a year after that, "Close to the Edge" came out. Some hard-core Yes fans would argue that this LP is unquestionably the best album the band has put asked to date. It featured only three cuts, all of them very Progressive for their time. The Yes sound developed on "Fragile" and "Close to the Edge" was imitated by many a band.

In 1973, Wakeman's first solo recording came out. It was a keyboard treatment of Wakeman's impressions of the characters of "The Six Wives of Henry VIII." The album was placed on "Time Magazine's" 1973 list of best recordings of the year. It was also at about this time that Wakeman started edging out Keith Emerson in polls such as the Playboy pop music poll.

Rick's second solo album, a musical production incorporating a live for orchestra to retell Jules Verne's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth," was recorded on January 18, 1974. It was the beginning of the Wakeman tradition of mingling rock bands with full orchestras, choirs, and assorted spectacle-creating units like troupes of ice skaters. But even as "Journey" was being recorded, trouble was brewing between Wakeman and Yes. "Yessongs," the three-record set of the 1973 Yes tour recorded live, had already been released and Yes had completed recording the controversial "Tales from Topographic Oceans." Drummer Bill Bruford had left the band and had been replaced by Alan White. Wakeman told CK in the March/April '76 issue's cover story that he didn't enjoy the direction of the music on the double-record-long concept album, and the left Yes after completing the European tour in 1974. In fact, it was Rick's 25th birthday (May 18, 1974) when he left Yes to follow up on his blossoming solo career.

The albums produced during his two years spent away from Yes included "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," "No Earthly Connection," the sound track to the Ken Russell film (starring Roger Daltry, Fiona Lewis, and Ringo Starr), "Lisztomania," and the sound track to the 1976 Winter Olympics film "White Rock." Wakeman's latest work, "Criminal Record," one top honors in CK's 1978 Readers' Poll as best new keyboard album.

In 1976, Wakeman found himself in a Swiss studio helping out on the recording of a new Yes album after Patrick Moraz, Wakeman's replacement in Yes, had left to pursue his own solo career. What was supposed to have been just a session turned into a permanent thing after Rick heard the new direction Yes was heading in. in his words, "We had taken different paths to get to the same end." Two Yes albums have been released since that rejoining: "Going for the One" and "Tormato." Both albums show a slight shift in the Yes sound. There is a loosening in the feel of the music. The rock and roll influences in the band have been let out of the bag, and the orchestral feeling has changed some what. For better or worse, it may be due in part to the way the keyboards are being treated now. They seem to be mixed farther in the background and there is less timbral variation than before. Wakeman has also been limiting himself to using fewer keyboards on albums, with the main focus being on the church organ, Polymoog, and Birotron.

CK spoke to Rick just after the final dates of Yes's American tour in San Francisco and just after the release of the "Tormato" LP. Our talks covered Rick's new attitude toward using mounds of instruments, his involvement with the development of the Birotron, his equipment, and recording techniques.

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Question: What equipment did you use on Yes's "Tormato" tour?

Answer: This time around, the object was to cut down a bit. We've been noticing that for the last two or three years every band around has been taking more and more junk with them. It's getting to the point where there will be so much equipment on stage that you won't be able to see the band. So now we've gone full circle. Instead of seeing how much we can put on stage, were seeing how little we can put on stage. That meant finding instruments that could do to jobs instead of one. So first of all, I hid all of the amplification under the stage. I used Moody Synamps. Then I only took the Hammond C-3, the Polymoog, the Sequential Circuits Prophet, two Birotrons, two Minimoogs, a Yamaha CP-30 electronic piano, an RMI Keyboard Computer, and a grand piano. That was it, besides the obvious little gadgets like some Sequential Circuits sequencers and things. The object was to cut down and make the show a little more visible to the audience. If they can't see anything because there's three tons of junk on stage, they can't enjoy it. The Keyboard Computer took away the need to carry the Mander Pipe Organ this time. The new Keyboard Computer [the KC-II] is really very clever. It's far more advanced than the first one. The Prophet has taken away the need to have a lot of stuff on stage too. I can't begin to tell you how many instruments that replaces. The Yamaha CP-30 lets you do without a Rhodes, a Wurlitzer, the RMI Rocksichord, the Hohner Clavinet, and the Hohner Pianet. The only problem comes up when you
want to do something like play Clavinet and Rhodes at the same time, but then you just turn to the Prophet. Between the Prophet and the Yamaha you can almost do a whole show. But actually, when you start thinking about it, you can't. I need what I've got out there.

Question: What kinds of things are using the Polymoog for?

Answer: It's an interesting instrument. On the last tour and on the "Going for the One" album I used in mainly as a filler -- a brightener. I used it as a coloring instrument, but for the "Tormato" album and also for my own album, "Criminal Record," I used it more for soloing and filling. I think the first thing you tend to do when you by the Polymoog is to look at it as a polyphonic instrument, and go flat out and play as many notes at once as you can on it. That's a mistake.

Question: You get a lot of distortion that way.

Answer: Right. And it's totally wrong. You can play lots of notes at once, so you do. But it's like if you have someone come out with a backwards car. You get it and drive it backwards for three weeks, but then you realize that you can still drive it forwards! You know what I mean? I've had lots of fun with it. Moog has come out with a new Polymoog that has a bunch of presets on it for the person who can't afford the big one with all the junk on it. I tried it out in New York. It's very good.

Question: Have you got one of the new Polymoogs, one of the ones that has been updated [units above serial number 3000 have updates on them to make the more roadworthy]?

Answer: That's hard to answer. But I have to say yes and no. At the beginning of the tour I borrowed one of their updated ones. They took mine in and had it updated. I got that one back about halfway through the tour. Then it started acting up a bit, but I don't think it was the instrument's fault. They really are good machines.

Question: The updated Polymoog moogs have slight differences in them, like the strings have a faster attack. The like those differences?

Answer: Yeah, the strings do have a considerably faster attack. What I preferred most on the newer ones was the keyboard balancing between the presets. Each instrument has small niggly things that annoy you a bit, but they seem to have worked those out. It please been no end, because the Polymoog is the instrument I use the most.

Question: What about the Prophet?

Answer: I think the Prophet is the best thing to come out in the last... I was going to say the last 10 years, but then most of the stuff has come out in that time. But it's definitely a revolution. The Prophet is a gold mine. I think it's a superb instrument. For the amateur or pro who wants a machine that's not super expensive but doesn't want to buy a piece of junk, and who wants something that he or she can be proud of, then the Prophet's the machine. It's just absolutely superb, and I'm not saying that as an advertisement for Sequential Circuits, because I don't endorse them. I wouldn't mind it though; they're that good at what they do.

Question: What kinds of things have you done with the Prophet?

Answer: The first thing I did was to go through all their presets as they put them on and decide which ones I liked. Then I took one of my Prophets -- I have two of them -- and wiped off all the presets. Then, without looking at the sound charts that Sequential Circuits gives you, I tried to duplicate their presets on the blank machine. That way I got to know the instrument. It's the quickest way to learn an instrument. Then I reset the presets however I wanted them. I only kept about five of the original ones.

Question: Do you remember which ones you kept?

Answer: They're mostly modulation sweep control things like numbers 25 and 35. I kept their harmonium type sounds, 31, because it was really a winner. I also kept the harpsichord sound, 16, but I moved it up an octave. Of those I kept, I didn't really alter them drastically. It was mostly little bits to suit what I was playing. Even that wasn't all that necessary, because you can go into edit mode and alter the preset. But when I get hold of a new instrument I like to play with it and play with it and play with it for a long time, so that when I'm on stage with it I know it inside and out.

Question: Have you modified it at all?

Answer: Nothing at all. The only thing I think they should do is increase the output. The output is too quiet, and you really have to boost it to get the volume you need. Apart from that, there's nothing you can say. I haven't had much of a chance to think about modifications. I'd like to see them build a double-manual one.

Question: Do you miss having a touch-sensitive keyboard on it?

Answer: No, because I don't really like touch-sensitive electric keyboards. It's always seemed phony to me. That's because of the fact that I'm a piano player. With the piano, the touch-sensitivity is a little more obvious. With electronic instruments you can alter the note after you've played it. I find it very confusing to do that with my fingers. I don't like it, I feel like it's cheating. But here's the strange thing: I'll do it with my feet. I feel like I've got more control if I do the effects with my feet.

Question: Are you using any effects devices on the Prophet?

Answer: No, all I've got on the Prophet is a Roland Space Echo. We do a full repeat echo very lightly and we fade that into the echo send of the Synamp. So it's just a very slight effect but it gives you quite an unusual timbre.

Question: Are you using a volume pedal on the Prophet?

Answer: We use Systech volume pedals.

Question: Systech went out of business, didn't they?

Answer: Yes, they did. I think it's a shame, because they've made me some great things in the past. I like their pedals a lot. They built me the flangers and phasers that are in my Hammond and my RMI. The last time I saw Gregg Hoffman [former president of Systech, who now works for Soundcraft], I bought out all of his inventory.

Question: Are you using any type of mixer now?

Answer: No, we just use two Moog Synamps. The nice thing about the Synamp is the separate parametric equalizers on each channel. I think the parametric is an absolute boon to keyboard players. If you've got a problem keyboard they're great for making it sound good. They're great for the piano. I used to use the Soundcraftsmen equalizer, and I still like a lot, but this tour there wasn't a need for them.

Question: Do you have any other effects machines running in the setup?

Answer: We have about four Roland Space Echoes going. We also have two Sequential Circuits Model 800 sequencers and a Moog sample-and-hold that I use with the Minimoogs. I still love the old Minimoogs. They're magic. I've got a strange affinity for them. I don't think I've ever gone on the stage without at least a pair of them. It would be like having something missing from my life. Getting back to the effects, most of the phasing and flanging units are built into the instruments. Rather than having tons of boxes and pedals and switches laying around we put everything inside the instruments. Other than cutting down on leads, it lets you know just where a problem is. It makes things easier for the road crew. Everything went very well on this tour, though. San Francisco is the only place we had bad troubles. Right at the beginning of the set everything was fine, but then everything went haywire after about five minutes. I had to do the whole set on the top of manual of the Hammond. I didn't know what was going on. There was this nice burning smell and everything. It was a nightmare. What had happened was one of the AC junction boxes went haywire and sent all of my equipment surges of 220 volts for about 10 minutes. That, of course, burned everything out instantly and utterly. We were up all night getting everything fixed for the show the next day. The damage was very sad. But to the amazing thing was that most of the damage was done to the effects. For example, the Polymoog withstood those surges. Once it cools down it was fine. The same for the Prophet. The piano mixer blew up, but the two I would have thought would have been hurt the most, the Polymoog of the Prophet, were fine. That says something for the way they make keyboards today. At least you know they make them to a good standard. They're not making them to be chucked away.

Question: The old Polymoogs were susceptible to static electricity problems.

Answer: That's right. And RF as well. I've run into a lot of instruments that love to pick up radio. It can be very funny at times, but it's annoying. It's funny when you're picking up a radio station very clearly. You can just sit back at the end of the sound check and press the volume pedal down and listen to the radio. But if you get a bad station, it can be miserable. The only time annoys is when it gets into the oscillators and starts playing games. Then you've got no such thing as tuning anymore. I used to really worry about all these things on stage. If one little thing went wrong I used to get very upset. Now, I don't care anymore. If one little thing goes wrong, I've still got tons of other stuff that I can make do with. It might make life a little more difficult, but you might end up doing something better. So I don't worry anymore. The only time I get ruffled is when everything goes, like it did in San Francisco. But when something goes so wrong that you can't play anything, I just sit on the stage and play cards with the roadies [laughs].

Question: What else have you down to your Hammond?

Answer: To the old Hammond? I bought that one, which is quite an old one, and brought it over to America. We used to rent a Hammond over here for every gig. And they used to charge about $200 a night to rent the Hammond, and back then we were only getting twice that for the gig. So by the time is spent $200 for the Hammond and then rented the piano, the band didn't get anything! So I bought this old Hammond for $600, to get back to England and had it looked at. It needed some work. Gregg Hoffman looked at it when we flow back to America, and he took it to some guy who really boosted it up. They split the signal so it could be fed both direct into the PA and into a Leslie at the same time. You could do independent phasing and flanging on either channel. They also put in a tuning device, which is useful for when you find a place where the cycles are strange. It's got voltage transformers on it too. It's both the dirtiest and the cleanest Hammond I've ever heard. Hammonds are like cars. You can have two Chevettes on the road and each one will be different, even though they come off the same assembly line. I've got two Hammonds. One I keep in England. That's a good went too.

Question: So you're using a Leslie now too. When we last talked, you didn't like Leslies.

Answer: I'm using the combination, yeah. I don't like Leslies very much, but I'm a stubborn old sort. I've never like Leslies because they've always taken away the basic sound of the Hammond. But for certain things, the Leslie is important. But until last year, I hadn't found the right combination. Now, with the Leslie-and-organ-fed-direct combination, I like it. I give the road crew a free hand and they surprise me a lot; 99 times out of 100 what they do is tremendous. The Leslie was one of those. I've never heard a Leslie sound good at low volume, so they went away with little smiles on their faces and came back with a Leslie that sound good at low volume. However, it sounded lousy at high volume, so they had to go back and try again. But half the time I don't know what they do. Whenever they do, they do it well. But it's like a racing driver and his crew. He knows what he wants, he tells them, and they translated into their own language. You don't ask the racing driver the ins and outs of the mechanics. I think it's much the same with musicians. They work together with their roadies. I've been working with Toby Errington for about seven years, and Jake has been with me for about five years on and off. They know pretty much what I want. They know have to do it, and they don't bore me stiff with the technical details. I couldn't tell you a capacitor from a contraceptive except that the result would be different when you plugged them in. I don't really want to know the technical details. All I care about is that when I turned a knob, I get a sound. And I want to know just what that sound is going to be. I want to know that it's the sound that's supposed to be coming out, too. When I pulled a drawbar out on the Hammond, I want to know what's going to happen, but I don't want to know why. That's the destruction of the musician. I think that knowing all that can destroy a musician to a certain extent.

Question: Getting too hung up on the technical details.

Answer: Right. It makes them forget what they're there for. It's like if Fats Waller were to have taken the time to tell you what happened when he hit each note on that big Wurlitzer cinema organ, he'd have never played one piece all the way through. It's obvious that it's good to know something about the technical stuff, but when you get too involved in it it doesn't help the musicianship much.

Question: What about drawbar settings on the Hammond? What do you use?

Answer: I've got two basics that I always work from: All the white drawbars are pulled full out and so is the 16' one and the percussion is set to the second harmonic with soft decay. That's the one setting that I've used for years. It's the one that I use whenever I first sit down at a Hammond. It's very easy to work off of. I never keep the same setting from the beginning of a piece to the end of a piece. The other preset the non-percussion one, is just the reverse. All the drawbars are pulled out full. Then I push various ones in, working backwards. I do that in the opening to "Heart of the Sunrise" [on "Fragile"]. That starts with all the drawbars out, and in between the runs I play an augmented fourth on the lower manual of the Hammond. The Hammond is also heavily phased and echoed, and you move the 8', 4', and 2' drawbars in alternately. The 16' stays out all the time. I think you have to keep playing with the drawbars constantly or it gets stale. It's like playing a Polymoog and just using one preset all night. It'd get boring and unimaginative.

Question: What about the solo in "Roundabout"?

Answer: That was done anyway similar to "Heart of the Sunrise." All the black and brown drawbars were full out and all the white ones were on about six. There was a phaser on, and the flange or was on too. The flanger was just slightly bubbling -- said on the verge of getting the non-tonal type of sounds. The phasing had a really heavy sweep to it. The Leslie was being turned on and off constantly. That was it. The thing about a Hammond is that you can really build on it. You just have to be careful not to throw in the kitchen sink too early. It's still a nice instrument. It's nice to see it coming back and being used a bit more. With all the development of electronics of these past few years, it got lost. When I was on the road, I noticed some keyboard setups that didn't have Hammonds, and I thought he was sad.

Question: Do you know how your Leslie is miked?

Answer: It was boxed in under the stage. So it didn't have to play at high volume. I wanted a decent dirty sound and I wanted it at low volume. But they boxed it in part way. It was partly open because it has to breathe. The sound has to go somewhere. But they lined the boxed with foam and used very directional mikes.

Question: Do you know what kind of mikes they were?

Answer: To be honest, I don't. I'm terribly ignorant about all that. They started off using Neumann U-87s, which worked none too special. Then they changed is something else, but what, I don't know. Our understanding is that the louder you have things on stage the more problems you have getting the separation between everything. So this tour we all cut down to next to no volume. All my stuff was shot straight at me from under the stage so no one was bothered by. Steve [Howe] had a couple of small Fender Twin Reverbs and Chris [Squire] had a couple of 4x12 cabinets under the stage. Playing at low volume gives the PA much more of a chance. Most people use Leslies flat out, obviously to get the sound. But when you start miking that and you've got to find a place to mike it at that works well, then the complications start. If you can work on the Leslie and get a decent sound, or work on the organ and Leslie together and get a decent sound at low volume, than half your problems are solved.

Question: A lot of people would probably like to know about your Birotrons.

Answer: It's my fault that the Birotron didn't come out, because it was finished about a year and a half ago. What happened was that when the instruments were done, we had a studio test, which I was pleased with, and we made a few alterations. Then we went out on the road for the "Going for the One" tour. We found a few little things wrong. They did very well overall, but they didn't have enough output, they were bit too dirty-sounding, and we found a few mechanical and electrical things that only show up when you're on the road. Nothing serious, though. So then we had them fixed and refined. But when we started the European tour, we found that all the refinements didn't fit the good old European market. I don't mean the market for selling, I mean the electrical needs. The power requirements were too precise. Don't ask me the full details, because you'd be asking a dumbo, you know? But that was the basic problem. We had the choice of either making models for England that ran on 240 volts, ones for Switzerland that ran on 220, one' for Brazil the ran on 120, and ones for America that ran on 110, or we were going to have to make one that would have transformers in it for all those places. The last thing I wanted was an instrument that was rushed out. I don't mind having the teething problems to deal with myself, but I don't think it's fair to have other musicians paying for instruments and then having to deal with teething problems. We also want to keep the price down so there are still some decisions to be made. There are about 30 to 35 working models in existence now, but none of them are really finished models. I'm not going to let anything out that I'm not totally happy with. We had four different machines on the road with us this time out. Not one of them had everything we wanted on it. There were little bits and pieces of each one that we want on the final machine. We've now finished the final one. We got to the major problems solved. The one major problem was getting all the tape heads aligned right. Then we did some tests that hopefully no normal band will ever have to deal with. We did things like drop them out of airplanes at 20 feet to see if the casing stood up and if the engineering stood up. With luck, touch wood, we should be shipping in reasonable quantities by Christmas [1978]. Another thing we wanted to make sure we had was an after-sales force. The people who could deal with problems and service after the machine has been sold. We are going to do all this and still keep the instrument under $2000. Well under. It could be more like $1500 it depends on the quality we can turn out. Were operating on a really low profit margin. I would have liked to have seen the machine out a long time ago, but it wasn't just right before.

Question: What kind of tape sounds were you using on this tour?

Answer: We've had very few sounds with us this time around. There were about 20 different sounds altogether. I had male choir, female choir, single violin, string quartet, mixed violins, single cello, mixed cellos, flutes, jazz flute -- that has the breathing included. One thing that's always missing from electronic imitations of flutes is the breathing. And things like that. We've almost solved the problem of getting plucked sounds from strings, which would be really nice to offer people. I may wind up with a full orchestra tape. That doesn't mean everybody playing every note, but having the instruments playing in the registers that they're designed for. We haven't made the decision as to what to put in the basic tape rack when you by the instrument. It will have three to four sounds at least, but we can make anything anybody wants, and I imagine that the cost would be about $100 for rack. I think the basic rack will have flutes, violins, a mixture of strings, trombones, and trumpets, which sounds really weird but is a nice full sound, and then a mixed choir.

Question: How big is the keyboard on the Birotron?

Answer: Three octaves.

Question: It uses electronic keying and eight-track tapes that run in loops, doesn't it?

Answer: Yeah. The tapes run continuously, so you get instantaneous touch control. You can have as much attack and decay as you want. It also has a tuning switch. You can go up or down an octave, which I wouldn't advise really because you lose stability when you run it to its after range. But going up or down a fifth is great. You can play as fast as you like and get clarity, which is a tremendous advantage. That lets you do choral runs that are impossible to get with a real human voice. The notes last as long as you hold them down. The machines will come with two identical sets of tapes so when one wears out, which will happen in about 100 hours of use, you send that worn-out set back and to use of the second set. Then we replace the other set for the cost of the tape, which is very minimal. So there is never any need to have people without tapes. We've tried to make sure that people don't run into the same problems that I've run into with other manufacturers. Things that have annoyed me like no after-sales service, no spare parts, and so on. We've even gone a bit too far on that, but I think it'll be worth it in the long run. I doubt if we will ever make her money back, but that's not the object of the exercise. We just wanted to do an instrument that no one else was doing right. There's no way we can never compete with the synthesizer manufacturers. I don't even know how they compete with themselves.

Question: You've been using live choirs on Yes albums lately. Have you written the arrangements so you can reproduce what the choirs to on the Birotron to live?

Answer: Not to deliberately so, no. But they do work out that way. I haven't written anything deliberately so I could produce them with the keyboard. But keyboard players do tend to write for other instruments and the human voice the same way that they play. I tend to group choir parts in the same style I would play in.

Question: Do you work out an arrangement on piano before you write it down for other instruments?

Answer: No, this is weird. I normally have the basic themes that I want to use. Then I hear in my head what instrument I want them on, so I write out my score paper. I don't touch the piano again after I've worked out the themes. Then I go in and fill out the accompaniment. Normally, I get inspired by all this to do other little things. I do this against that, and so on. And I don't change anything until after I've heard it.

Question: What about multiple keyboard parts?

Answer: Multiple keyboard parts. This is a strange one too. I normally have a good idea of what's going to go where. Budget have to arrange them according to sound. You have to make sure nothing clashes. The parts are easy to do, its finding the sound that's the difficult one. The hardest album to do that on was "Criminal Record." I was putting down the third or fourth layer and not been quite happy with the sound, so I spent considerable time finding sounds that I wanted to use. There was an awful lot of replacement that had to keep going on until I was happy. I've never worked that way before. There were some combinations that theoretically shouldn't have worked, but did. Things like church organ and Polymoog. Really strange combinations. But I was happy with them. I'd like to do another album in a similar vein. I'd like to do an orchestral and keyboard album. Combine them both. I liked doing "Criminal Record," but it didn't sell well over here. It did in Europe though. But sales don't worry me. I'd rather have been album out that I'm pleased with than one that's tongue-in-cheek and sells one million copies. I've gone past the gimmick stage. I like to let the keyboards speak for themselves.

Question: How do you feel about having won the award for Best Keyboard Album of the Year in CK's "Readers' Poll"?

Answer: I was really knocked out when I found out! It gave me more confidence in what I was doing. I thought it was a good keyboard album, but it didn't sell well, so I thought I was doing something wrong. But when something like winning a poll with an album happens, you can't be doing things all that wrong. I think the people who voted for it must be the only ones who bought it!

Question: How has Yes been working out its material?

Answer: On "Tormato," I wrote about four of the nine tracks. Mostly with Jon [Anderson]. But there were some publishing disagreements and a few problems. Never believe credits on any album. They're all political. This album had most things straightened out. Everybody's in control of their own part, but on the other hand, no one was afraid to say, "Well, Jon, I think you should sing this part." Or "Steve, that's a bad guitar part." Tempers got frayed sometimes, but that's normal. It always gets worked out in the end. I think Yes agrees on the music it should play, but mixes are another story. One man's mix is another man's poison. I would like to see a real high-quality production man come in and work on a couple of Yes tracks. Somebody like [Beatles producer] George Martin.

Question: The mixes seem to have gotten muddy since [engineering and co-producer] Eddy Offord stopped working with the band.

Answer: Yeah. I think it's getting better with "Tormato," but things are still a bit mushy. Unless you get someone to make a decision, that's what happens. No band ever likes making decisions. I'm very pleased with the last two albums we've done, although there's room for improvement on them all. I'm glad of that. If there wasn't, there'd be no place to go. I think we all have to improve our method of recording. There is no doubt about it. We take too long and we don't make full use of our time. I don't think Yes is ready for it, but on my next album, I want to get together with a producer who will interpret the music. If it works well, I might suggest it to the band. I'll be the guinea pig. I don't mind. If it doesn't work, I'll go back to working away I normally do.

Question: On "Tormato," you play very few keyboards. Was that a part of your effort to cut back?

Answer: I wanted to make related tracks. I wanted to try and have some relation between the keyboards on all the tracks so that the album flowed a bit more. Looking back, I think I was 60 percent right and 40 percent wrong. There are certain things that I think I would have liked to have done differently.

Question: Do you do any of the changes you hear now live?

Answer: No. We didn't do much of that album live this time around. You know the cheering in the drum solo in "Release Release"? All that is totally and utterly phony. I believe it was from an English football match. We put it in because the drum and guitar parts sounded a bit dry, so we added the crowd. I like it actually. It's quite a good vibe [laughs]. I think it was the best Yes album that's been done in a while, but it's a little mixed up. It does show great deal of what we can still do, which I think it's important.

Question: Did you really recorded the pipe organ on "Going For The One" over a phone line?

Answer: That's right. Down a telephone line. That's true. We did it that way because that's the way things are done in Switzerland. On being together, they make the United States in England look like they're darkest Africa. Their telephone lines are the highest fidelity you can imagine. They said, "What do you need a mobile for? All you do is rent a phone line for a day." So we rented a phone line. I put on the cans [headphones]; the guys put on their cans; and 1,2, 3,4, away we went. It was great. The pipe organ was recorded direct into the studio. I listened back to it over the cans, drove back to the studio, cut little overdub, and that was it. Finished! They were so together it was unbelievable. They did the choir like that is well. It's amazing, but it's normal to them. They do everything like that over there. The Swiss are clever. We could learn a lot from them. An awful lot. They take all the things the Americans, the Japanese, and the English have done with technology and they use them properly.

Question: You've used a lot of different electric pianos in the past. Can you relate your feelings about them?

Answer: The Rhodes is a nice machine. It has a nice sound, but I have to say I've always found it cumbersome. I still use them, but the they're not my favorite electric piano. It's hard to keep the keyboard even. Wurlitzers are nice because you can take them up to your hotel room and play them, because of their built-in speakers. I'm not knocked out by their sound. The same with the RMI Rocksichord. I don't like the sound that much. It's a bit whiney for my liking, although I love the KC-II. The little Yamaha CP-30 is the electric piano I love most. Not the little electric grand, the electric piano. I think it's the best one I've come across. I love it. Good touch, good sound, well built. The Clavinet's the great old die-hard, but I think it's going to have problems now that the Yamaha CP-30 and the Prophet can do what it can electronically plus a lot more it can't. And also the Polymoog can do it. My vote definitely goes to Yamaha for the electric piano. But it doesn't do there for synthesizers. I've had bad luck with the Yamaha synths.

Question: So you've played the Yamaha stuff.

Answer: I have indeed. I had a CS-80 polyphonic synth in the studio for a couple of weeks in London, but I had nothing but problems with it. I think that was it's a model number. It was the big one, not the giant one, not the one that can go to the moon, but one of the smaller ones. I had lots of problems with the tuning. They had to keep replacing the cards on it. And it would play on his own for no particular reason. What annoyed me even more was that I couldn't bypass the problems. As I say, maybe I was unlucky. I may try them again someday. At the time it was hard to find someone to service them in England who could get the job done in less than two weeks. And when you're in the studio, two weeks is a long time.

Question: What about miking the acoustic piano live?

Answer: I've bought a Yamaha 7 ft. grand and I use two Helpinstill pickups inside. They're linked to a parametric equalizer box which was made for me by Steve Dove, one of the electronics wizards that works for the band. We run one of the pickups into a flanger or that was built by Steve too -- at least I think he built it. We have one of the pickups straight and one with the effects on it. That gives you a very full sound. With the parametrics, it sounds like a loud acoustic piano on stage instead of something that sort of sounds like a piano but the harmonics are wrong. We got rid of the harshness. That made it nice because you could play the piano like a piano instead of like something that was some unidentified sound source.

Question: Have you ever modified your Minimoogs?

Answer: Yeah. I've had lots done to them. I've had all new cards put in for the oscillators and all the patching on the back is different so I can use the Sequential Circuits things. I've got read-out lights that tell me if there's a fault and where the fault is. I'm also having another set of oscillators added, which is something Moog just started doing. I really love the Minimoogs. They're like my children, but I have to go take a shower and have my breakfast now, otherwise I shall get shot.

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