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AUGUST 8, 2002
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Source: Seattle Weekly
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0232/music-mills.shtml
Yes: Prog rock's long reigning kings get rediscovered.
Affirmative Action
With the release of a new box set, a whole generation of indie and alt
rockers comes out of the closet to profess their love for Yes.
By Fred Mills
It's been ages since Johnny Rotten famously scrawled "I Hate" over a Pink
Floyd T-shirt logo, clearly drawing a line in the sand. Quaint though it
may seem now, the punks-vs.-dinosaurs credo meant that a lot of progressive
rock bands from the pre-'77 era took it on the chin from punters and
critics alike.
Perhaps most unfashionable of all was Yes. The band didn't do themselves
any favors by festooning their gatefold record sleeves with fantastical
Roger Dean artwork and apparently commissioning Spinal Tap's stage and
costume designers for their tours. Complex, neoclassical tunes that made up
entire album sides? Please. Gimpy psychobabble song titles like "The
Revealing Science of God" or "Universal Garden"? Fuhgeddaboutit--gimme a
"God Save the Queen," a "White Riot," or an "Orgasm Addict"! Sci-fi/New
Agey album names like Tales From Topographic Oceans and Keys to Ascension?
Conceptual bollocks to that, mate! And apocryphal or not, the yarn about
Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman having a direct hand in getting the Sex
Pistols booted from A&M Records attained deeply symbolic status among those
who needed to nurture a loathing for all things prog.
Still, Yes has had its, dare we say it, kick-ass moments; yours truly, who
saw 'em many times during their '70s salad years, can testify to that. And
the band, for all its labyrinthine lineup changes over the years
(even--gleep!--the Buggles were Yesmen for a spell), was always made up of
genuinely gifted musicians. As time--and the occasional boxed set--heals
all wounds, the new Elektra/Rhino collection In a Word: Yes (1969-- )
offers an opportunity for reassessment.
The impressive anthology traces chronologically the band's
three-decade-plus history across five discs of hits, album classics, and a
handful of unreleased tracks. The 96-page booklet features lengthy essays
from Yes biographer Chris Welch and prog rock expert Bill Martin, plus an
appreciation penned by film director Cameron Crowe, who reveals the origins
of a key scene in Almost Famous to be a backstage interview encounter he
had with Yes when he was a cub reporter for Rolling Stone. (Also worth
noting: Just out is Symphonic Live, a concert DVD filmed on the 2001
Magnification tour, and Beyond and Before: The Formative Years of Yes, a
book jointly authored by original Yes guitarist Peter Banks and rock
historian Billy James.)
All that aside, we're mindful of the fact that some of you simply won't buy
some pinhead critic's revisionist ranting (but feel free to ask me anytime
about running into members of Yes in a shopping mall, circa 1974, while I
was dosed to my topographic gills with LSD). A golden opportunity beckoned
when Yes announced its In a Word tour--featuring what to many fans
represents the primo Yes lineup of Wakeman, vocalist Jon Anderson,
guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, and drummer Alan White--would
open July 17 at Seattle's Paramount Theatre. See, we'd heard that America's
so-called "hip/indie/underground" rock community contains its share of
closeted Yesfreaks. And one of them, it has been rumored, walks among us,
in this very burg!
So being professional journalists, we outed local legend Kurt Bloch
(Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows), gave him tickets to the concert, and
asked for a report.
"Oh, it was great!" exclaims Bloch, adding with undisguised enthusiasm that
he was also lucky enough to catch a warm-up gig that Yes did at EMP's Sky
Church a couple of nights prior. "The audience was mostly the age group 40-
through 55-year-old men. Not a lot of women there! Some 30s-ish rocker
guys--although I can't imagine a bunch of 30-year-olds who grew up on MTV,
Billy Idol, Duran Duran, saying, 'Yes is in town. We gotta go!'"
Maybe, maybe not. A little more probing of Bloch and it comes out that his
close friend, singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding, is such a Yesbuff
("He's sick for them--calls me while he's on tour to tell me what Yes
albums he's found") that he bought Bloch a $100 ticket so the two could
attend Yes' Magnification symphonic show last year in New York. The Yes box
itself features glowing testimonials from the likes of Primus' Les
Claypool, Phish's Jon Fishman, Tool's Danny Carey, and Pearl Jam's Stone
Gossard. Indie-pop chanteuses Beth Orton and Mary Timony are both rumored
to be fans, and the latter's solo albums display obvious prog leanings. And
going back a bit, there's an old Replacements story that has Bob Stinson
trying to steer kid brother Tommy away from juvenile delinquency and into
music by buying him an amp and teaching him to play "Roundabout."
Further, in our investigations we turned up another notable Yesfan,
thirtysomething Steven Drozd, multi-instrumentalist for the Flaming Lips.
"You came to the right guy!" says Drozd excitedly, when we ring him up in
St. Louis where the Lips are about to start a tour. "I had older brothers
in the '70s, and they listened to all that stuff. I grew up on The Yes
Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge. Then in high school, I went the 'college
rock' route, Psychedelic Furs, R.E.M., then into indie rock like Sonic
Youth, Pixies. . . . Being part of the hip, underground world of the early
'90s, the last thing you could ever admit to listening to was Yes. But I
was on tour around the summer of '94, and in this thrift store I saw
Fragile on cassette. So I secretly started listening to Yes on my Walkman.
I played 'Heart of the Sunrise' for Wayne [Coyne of the Lips] and he loved
that, so we all started listening to Yes and other prog stuff like King
Crimson [and] Emerson, Lake & Palmer."
Drozd, who has a photo of--we are not making this up--Rick Wakeman affixed
to his keyboard and has been known to sound check on piano licks from Yes'
"South Side of the Sky," recalls being on the road and hanging out with
Jeff Buckley. Buckley was, you guessed it, a massive Yes fan. "I put on
Fragile, and Jeff just freaked out: 'God, man, nobody listens to this stuff
anymore--I love this album!'"
Drozd also proudly announces that he and a drummer friend are toying with
the idea of doing a Yes tribute band, saying, "We're thinking of calling it
Yeah and [doing] the classic Roger Dean-style logo, but instead of 'Yes,'
it'll be 'Yeah.' He's 29 and I'm 33, so we're just young fans,
comparatively. But we're certainly enthusiastic about the records!"
Back to Kurt Bloch, who drops his own bombshell: He actually has played in
a Yes tribute band. As it turns out, Yes drummer Alan White lives in
Redmond, and about a year and a half ago, the trapsman was persuaded to
take part in a one-off Yes covers gig featuring himself, Bloch, ex-Posies
bassist Joe Skyward, a keyboardist, an additional guitarist, and Skyward's
16-year-old daughter (on vocals).
Recalls Bloch, "We did 'Yours Is No Disgrace,' 'Heart of the Sunrise,'
'Starship Trooper,' 'South Side of the Sky'--which Alan said, 'Oh, we can't
do that one! Yes couldn't even play that one live!' It's super hard to do.
Although they are doing it now on the current tour. [laughing] Maybe we had
a small effect on that, getting him to play it once, and him maybe bringing
it up to the others."
So what's the key to Yes' enduring appeal? And did Johnny Rotten really
mean it, maaan?
"When punk rock came out, everybody was, 'Yeah, fuck that shit, man!
Fucking Yes!' But that was 25 years ago, and so many people now don't even
know you weren't supposed to like, say, the Damned and King Crimson at the
same time," says Bloch. "Now, people hear Pink Floyd and go, 'Wow, that's
great!' Then you play the Clash: 'Wow!' Now, it's a totally nonissue. . . .
Yes was the quintessential prog band, but they really had something. It was
[never] a case of there not being any spontaneity. Talking to Alan White,
the interesting thing that I learned is that there are times in all those
complex pieces that the people can play whatever they want. I don't think
Steve Howe plays the same way every night--and I know that Alan doesn't
play the same way every night.
"And they're one of those bands that's kind of defined by their
material--no other band can really play those songs. Their band and their
material are synonymous, really. Whereas a lot of bands that have a lot
more 'regular' songs, well . . . with Yes, it's almost like it is classical
music, but Yes is the only orchestra capable of playing it."
As Cameron Crowe writes in the Yes box, "Wherever you go, wherever you find
a record collection of essentials, go to the end and work backward just a
bit. You'll find them there. Years later, they're still together, no longer
just a band, but the owners of a genre all their own. Yesmusic."
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