----------------------------------------------------- OCTOBER 25, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: South Bend Tribune (Indiana) http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/ (abbreviated link text) 'Yes songs': Band continues to perform 'close to the edge' By Andrew S. Hughes Here are two names you don't often hear in an interview with a rock star: Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Unless, that is, the rock star is singer Jon Anderson and the subject is people who influenced Yes during the British art rock band's formative years. Anderson says both of those avant garde classical composers were part of the mix of classical, jazz and rock music that became the basis for Yes' and progressive rock's sound. "It was as though there was a freedom of musical thinking," he says of the 1960s. "We were part of that evolution that was already happening. We learned from Buffalo Springfield and, obviously, the Beatles. ... A lot of jazz was being played in the early '60s. A lot of electronic music was being played in the '60s." A lot of blues-based music was being also played, and the extended jams of acid rock bands made it permissible for musicians such as Yes, King Crimson, Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and Emerson, Lake and Palmer to write rock songs that aspired to classical music's symphonic structure and breadth of expression. Yes released its eponymous debut in 1969, the same year King Crimson released "In the Court of the Crimson King," which most critics and fans point to as progressive rock's first album. It wasn't until guitar player Steve Howe joined for 1971's "The Yes Album" and keyboard player Rick Wakeman joined for 1972's "Fragile," however, that Yes' sound reached its maturity. Those albums, and 1972's "Close to the Edge," 1973's live "Yessongs" and 1974's "Tales From Topographic Oceans," featured dynamic, intricate compositions marked by frequent changes in time signatures, shifts in tempos and virtuoso instrumental playing. "I'd say most of it comes out of improvisation, but everything is structured," Anderson says of Yes' music. "Structure is part of the band's heritage, knowing where we're going and what it's going to be like." He says that structure extends to the instrumentalists' solos on stage. When someone deviates from his usual part, Anderson says, it's "more chance than anything." "It's not easy music to perform," he says. "You can't just go onstage and say, 'We'll do "And You and I." ' No, it's got to be performed. ... It ha(s) to be rehearsed, rehearsed and rehearsed again." Yes faltered, however, in 1974 when it released the four-song, double album "Tales from Topographic Oceans." Critics had already begun to dismiss the band and its art rock peers as pretentious, but with "Tales," even its fan base was divided. The band's problems were compounded when it began a tour in support of "Tales" before the album was available in stores. Steve Howe still dazzles audiences as the guitar player for Yes. "Can you imagine what it was like when Stravinsky conducted 'The Rite of Spring' for the first time?" Anderson says of what it felt like for Yes to premiere the music from "Tales." "It must have been chaotic. ... Fifty years later, you say Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' and 'Petrushka' are these beautiful pieces of music, but when they were performed for an audience that wasn't expecting them, they must have been in shock." Anderson says he remains proud of the album and that the band plays selections from it now and then. "People who come to see the band want to hear it," he says of how time has changed perceptions of the album among Yes fans. "It was a beautiful mountain, and we had to climb it, but at the time, it split the Yes fans in half." Eventually, the band's lineup also split, undergoing several more changes and even breaking up for a short period in the early 1980s. In 1983, the band returned with the pop-oriented "90125" and scored hit singles with "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Leave It." In recent years, Yes has been uncommonly active for a classic rock act and has released several studio and live albums, including "Magnification" in 2001. This fall, the band released "Symphonic Yes," a DVD recorded in concert with an orchestra. These days, Anderson lives in central California in a place he says is "a quiet, lazy part of the world, a one-horse kind of town, away from the hustle and bustle of city life." In some ways, that describes the world he has created in many of his lyrics, which are often thrilling, impressionistic poems. His next solo album, Anderson says, will consist of long musical pieces with lyrics based on his observations of and relationship with the natural world. "I think the lyrics I've been writing have been close to the first albums but more refined," he says. "I think that more than anything, I come from the hippie world of peace, love and forgiveness. I think that I've been trying to figure out a lot of things. I've been trying to figure out what God is. ... I'm working more in the spiritual sense of being." Anderson says he has between 100 and 200 unfinished songs at hand. Some of them, he'll keep for solo albums, and others will go to Yes, which currently includes Anderson, Howe, Wakeman and bass player Chris Squire and drummer Alan White. Squire co-founded the band with Anderson. "When Yes get together, we just throw ideas out," Anderson says. "What will come out is who we are. It might be 'Fragile' again. It might be four big musical pieces." Anderson says it's a collaborative but also individual process. "We will discuss the shape of the music, the song and so on, but won't really tell each other what to play," he says. "Rather, we let everybody find their place. You have a theme and the repetition of the theme, and that's part of Yes music: It has its logic behind the seeming chaos." Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com