----------------------------------------------------- August 2, 2000 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Mars Music http://www.marsmusic.com/community/guitarists/spotlight/stevehowe/spotlight_stevehowe1.jhtml The Man with the Guitar Mind By Brian Vance When Yes came to the Mars Music Amphitheatre at the height of their Masterworks tour, they paused just long enough for their lead guitarist Steve Howe to give us this exclusive interview. Friendly yet outspoken, Steve Howe, a three-decade veteran of this historic rock band, reflects on his beginnings, his influences, and the group that has made him a guitar legend. marsmusic.com (mm): Yes has seen many incarnations. How does the band maintain its focus in terms of musical direction? Steve Howe (SH): It's been like an evolution with a lot of pitfalls and gray areas, but we know there was something about the 70s--the freedom we had and the opportunity we had. That's something to be valued. It's not something we can exactly return to, but it is something that we can imagine that we might be able to return to. Just getting more of that 70s viewpoint of utter "music rules!" Not commercialism. Not corporate structures. But music. mm: How did the whole Masterworks theme come about? SH: I dreamt it up because I felt the group had done tours and never said exactly what it was actually going to do. Predictably if it's an album tour, you're promoting an album--and we knew we weren't promoting an album. And I had the idea to play all 20-minute pieces... That's how it got going, out of sheer determination that Yes had to get back on the rails. And it's going in a great direction. mm: How are those 20-minute pieces different to prepare for live? SH: They are a lot more difficult and challenging--and a lot better. You get what you put in, and that's the same with most things. mm: Is some of this thematic and longer format approach going to continue on the next record? SH: That's what we hope. We hope that by doing this, we learn to understand our music a bit better and understand really that we need bigness to find the dynamics. We've got to have lots of dynamics. For example, Close to the Edge had the organ that was recorded in a church and that did something massive for the whole idea. It took us from the studio to a church to record the organ, then back to the studio again. Really, our adventurism is the main thing that allows us to do that. mm: What was it that influenced you to first pick up the guitar? SH: Mostly, the guitar generation and guitar popularity. Rock and roll was quite sufficient, really, but, fortunately, I had more than that. In my parents record collection there were Les Paul records and there was Tennessee Ernie Ford who had Speedy West and Jimmy Byant playing guitar. So, even when I was 10 I was listening to all of this and thinking "boy, this is great." mm: Is that where the country influence in your playing came from? SH: I reckon it started there, but of course a few years after starting guitar when I was twelve in 1959, I heard Chet Atkins and that was it. I heard who I consider the most well-rounded and most individual guitar player. Great style, great technique, but the inspiration he passed on to me was that if you want to do something, try it. If you want to step over here, try it. He gave me the idea that one guitarist could play any kind of guitar style. I never had that idea until I heard Chet. Also, jazz guitarists and classical guitarists. mm: Any particular ones? SH: It started with John Williams and Julian Bream, but then I realized Segovia. All three of them are brilliant. And Paco Pena and Pepe Romero play beautifully now. With jazz, as with rock, my roots were formulated by those guitarists of the post Charlie Christian era. mm: Considering you had all of the different backgrounds and influences, how did you decide that rock music was going to be direction you would go? SH: There was never any option. It was the mainstream. In a way, rock guitar was an undeveloped style, but I could see that it was going to drive things because that's how you played in a band and played on stage. You played pop or rock or blues. When blues got such a stronghold at the end of the 60s, that's when I really rejected blues and decided I wasn't going to play another cliched blues phrase. To find my own thing, I felt I had to lose the blues connection. Hendrix played it. Clapton played it. I loved it, but didn't find that was my voice. Nothing much had happened after psychedelia, and I felt progressive music was really the next window. Defining "progressive" was like saying this is a continuation of psychedelia. I thought it was soft rock, this kind of acidy sort of feeling, and Yes was making music that was softer than other people's. We liked that. We thought it was daring. mm: When you replaced Peter Banks on The Yes Album, there was a dramatic difference in Yes' sound. Can you describe what your creative input was at that time? SH: The first part was not about new music, but could I play Time and a Word. I didn't like that at the time. It wasn't that it was unacceptable, but it was a struggle, and I was never sure that I did it justice, because later on I realized that it was a remarkable record. The chemistry and much of the Yes styling was formulated before I joined, but I was able to add to it and expand it. Peter did a great job, and I like his work on that album a lot. It was a very exciting period and one where I was able to add "Steve Howe" into Peter's parts. mm: Do you remember what your first guitar was? Any monumental stories there? SH: The first guitar I got was an f-hole acoustic, which I'm kind of glad I did. It kept me in line with the 175 [prepared him for the Gibson ES-175 he currently plays--ed.]. Although I saw folk and Spanish guitars, I dreaded them and didn't want to play them. I wanted the f-holes. After a couple of years, I got a Burns jazz guitar with two pickups. At that time I also bought an amp from a friend called a Guyotone, and then bought his Gyotone guitar, as well. Then I bought a Gibson Melody Maker from Peter Frampton. I loved that guitar. I had the frets filed down too much on the Guyotone and it didn't play anymore, so I said to my mom and dad, 'now is the time to get a great top-class guitar.' By that time they had seen me play on stage and thought I was pretty good , so they bought me the 175. They actually paid the deposit, and I paid all of the installments myself from my gigs. mm: The ES-175 was obviously a fateful encounter, what attracted you to it? SH: I didn't see any other guitar. That was the guitar I wanted. I loved all of the Gibsons, but when I saw the 175 I loved the inlays, the f-holes, and the beautiful, sharp cutaway with great access. I think mainly it was that I saw Wes (Montgomery), Joe Pass, even Kenny Burell with one. So, it was my destiny because it was a jazz guitar. What I didn't realize was that my life in music was not going to be about jazz. That was the transition period when I could have gone with the Les Paul and joined a flock of people, but the utter beauty of the 175 is what brought me around. No one was playing archtop, hollowbody guitars in a rock band. People laughed at me and thought I was really snooty. To me, it was an object of art, it wasn't just a guitar. mm: You are also known for using many exotic stringed instruments. Do you still use them? Do you have them on this tour? SH: I don't need much on this tour. At the moment, I am recording a pure acoustic album. In there I'm doing solos and duets and I love to use what I call "guitar family" instruments. They've got to have some cross-section of dobros, mandolins, banjos, kotos. Between those instruments I like to make little colorful themes with the mandolin and certain expressions with a dobro with slide and the banjo has always been there as a kind of tool. The koto has come in handy a few times and will be on this album. mm: When was the Tele introduced? SH: That came in with Relayer. I went mad on Fenders. Of course on tour, I used loads of guitars. What I kept doing was searching for something I already had (ES-175), which is one of life's great lessons. Very often, we spend forever looking, and we've already got it. I was looking for "that" sound. In one way, it's very restrictive. You know the guitar. You've been there a million times and it's kind of too familiar. And that's why I kind of put it out to pasture a bit and went on to another guitar, then came back to the 175. I did that all the way through the 70s and 80s and kept saying I think this one is the best; so when I come back to it, I really enjoy it--as opposed to I'm playing my old guitar again and I'm sick of playing it. mm: Is there one particular ES-175 that you cherish? SH: There's only one (the '64). I have bought others, but this one is a sensational one. It's perfection. It's never been re-fretted. I can't explain it, but I don't want anything to ever change on it. I also have three-pickup, one-off that is quite nice, but it's nowhere near the feel of my '64. Gibson made me a beautiful one that was stolen, and somebody one day is going to get a kick up the backside if I find them playing it. It was a blonde, 3-humbuckers with an original Switchmaster switch. It was the predecessor to one I've got now. The guy [who stole it] was arrested in Detroit. He sold if for $200. In my guitar book (The Steve Howe Guitar Collection), I do a page on it. mm: Do you have a practice regime? SH: If I find that I'm really out of shape, then I'll practice racing through major and minor scales chromatically. At least it helps my mind out on the guitar, in case I've had a week off or something. But usually, I play so much that I don't have to practice a great deal. On the tour, I play 2 or 2 ½ hours a night, and if I do sound check I can have a bit of fun--play some other tunes and keep in touch with my solo repertoire, which I've really got get back into synch for my solo tour. mm: The Ladder was Bruce Fairbairn's last project. I'm sure his passing was a dramatic event for you guys. What was his impact on the band? SH: We learned quite a lot from him. I was very pleased that about a week before the sadness happened, was one of the few dinners I had with him and he said, 'you know, out of all of the bands I've produced, you guys--all of you--are the most difficult, but [the most] wonderful I've ever worked with. You've all got big talent and Yes has been special to work with, not like other rock bands.' We taxed him and drove him mad, because, after all, it was harder for him to keep control of all of these people who have such brain power and a voice to express. He had to shout sometimes and had to get serious and threaten to throw people out if we couldn't keep it together. Musicians are either unreasonable or they don't use reason; so the producer comes in and brings reason. We couldn't have made a record like that [The Ladder] without him. We wouldn't have made those choices or been that sure or clear. He freshened up the sound. mm: At Mars, we are big on education and inspiring people to play music. What words of wisdom can you give aspiring musicians? SH: I learned what I know through wanting to become a guitarist, but it did take a resilience that not everybody has. If you are going to go your own way, the best two pieces of advice I can offer is don't believe people for a long time while your learning because people will put you off and say that's not good. You'll be sensitive about your work and that's a dangerous time when you can really get put off. The other thing I would like to say is that when I meet a guitarist who's singing and writing songs, doing everything himself, producing his records, I do say, 'just do one thing first, play the guitar in a band and understand what that is. Then, when you've learned tricks from the singer, and learned from the bass player, you can get really smart and start writing. But when you come to me with all of your music prepared and I can tell that a drummer didn't do the drum track...' you know? By the time I did my first solo album in 1975 [Beginnings], I had a taste of success and all I thought about was guitar, guitar. Thinking about chord shapes in my mind all the time. Even when I wasn't playing, I was thinking about guitar. I had developed a guitar mind at that point, which I haven't confessed to do that often (laughs). At that point, I was playing pretty good and getting somewhere in the world. I decided then that guitar would be about my life and not my life. I suppose if I was to offer more advice, remember that you are only as good as your life is. If your life is a mess, then your music can't be much better. So you need to be a good human being. You need to have some idea about yourself that you're going to hold on to. You don't have to destroy yourself to be a good musician. Hopefully, we [Yes] know that more than ever before. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com