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APRIL 22, 2004
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Source: Chicago Daily Herald
http://www.dailyherald.com/timeout/music.asp
Roundabout: Celebrate 35 years of "Prog Rock"
Interview with Jon Anderson
By Mark Guarino
No phrase in rock terminology is more polarizing than "prog rock."
Progressive rock originated in the early '70s with British bands - like
King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer - who
expanded on the psychedelic period of the mid-'60s with highly ambitious
album concepts, orchestral strings, album-side suites, wildly extravagant
arena stage productions and ethereal lyrics about mysticism, mythology and
outer space. It mainly appealed to rock intellectuals who could pore over
the dense lyrics and pick apart the 20-minute song cycles. Rock fans who
liked things said and done in three minutes with minimal chords had to wait
out prog rock's ride until 1977 when the Sex Pistols arrived, making
concept rock ultimately unfashionable.
Yes was one of the most successful of the genre's golden era, conquering
the U.S. early in its career and, 35 years later, still able to return and
fill arenas (they play the Allstate Arena May 4). With a three-disc box set
and DVD retrospective to sell, Yes has regrouped for this anniversary tour.
Although the band's history is marked by its ceaseless personnel shifts (at
one point in the late '80s, two competing versions of Yes were on the
road), the current line-up represents players from its halcyon days:
guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Rick Wakeman, drummer Alan Light, bassist
Chris Squire and vocalist Jon Anderson.
Although members of Yes took the band just as seriously as their peers,
their music had a very defined pop side. The dense harmonies, virtuoso
musicianship and gorgeous melodies of their earliest output like "Close to
the Edge," "Fragile" and "The Yes Album" remain timeless. You can hear
their influence in the Flaming Lips, the Mars Volta, Radiohead, Grandaddy
and other recent bands working to combine pop ingenuity with headphone
odysseys.
I talked with Anderson, 59, the day after the band's opening night of its
current tour. He told me that despite their widespread touring over the
decades, the best Yes show took place at the Chicago Amphitheater in 1972.
"It must have been the Fourth of July," he said. "Fireworks, cherry bombs
were going on all bloody night. It was the most frightening night of my
life. The audience was wild - they were the event. I'll never forget that."
What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Q: When Yes first formed, you opened for Cream. What were you reacting
against that made you not as interested in American blues as most of your
British peers?
A: I think I felt I couldn't sing (about) sex, drugs, rock and roll because
I wasn't into that. I was into that in my first band but with Yes, it was
like a bunch of musicians with different capacities and we were given free
rein to evolve and develop. At the same time you had Led Zeppelin, Genesis,
King Crimson. I remember I saw King Crimson and I couldn't speak for a
couple of days because I knew we were bad. They were brilliant and we were
terrible. So we had to rehearse and rehearse more. We knew it was an uphill
battle to survive. To get success is an unexpected happening and then you
start to really believe in your music and progress from it from then on. I
stopped listening to the radio and started to listen to electronic music
and symphonic music and world music. I was really looking for a different
approach to what music really is. It's a life form, it is a part of our
world, and small boxes of pop music are pretty relevant to the world but
they aren't the most important things.
Q: Yes and other prog rock bands were given time to evolve and experiment
because the executives had no idea what rock was about and where it was
heading because it was still so new. Whereas now, labels wouldn't have the
patience.
A: It worked for a couple years. But as with anything, you give anything
free rein, a little chaos comes in (laughs). That's only normal. That
happens in any sort of art. If you look at modern art like Jackson Pollock
and various artists from around that period. They were quite amazing, but
it spawned 1,000 terrible things. But that's what happens. When Yes was
recording, three or four of the albums in the '70s are classics. Some of
them aren't. But you say, hey, you've got to have some rough edges here and
there to make the diamond really good. So over a period of time we've made
some mistakes but hey, that's life.
Q: Yes was also one of the first bands to make the switch from theatres to
arenas. That had never been done before. What was that like?
A: You had to get a bigger P.A., make the stage like a theater backdrop. We
invented all these things. Like Pink Floyd and one or two other bands, we
understood the potential putting on "the show" rather than staggering
onstage in jeans and just cranking it out. Which a lot of bands can do, but
Yes was never like that. We like to dress up and put on a show.
Q: What were the early challenges posed from learning how to make music in
venues that were built for sports?
A: I think the size of the P.A. We were all learning when we went along.
When we first started using laser beams, The Who started using them. They
were dangerous things and we didn't know and we didn't care. It looked
great. (laughs)
Q: When punk arrived in the late '70s in retaliation against the prog rock
bands, at any point did you take the changing of the guards personally?
A: Probably for about 10 minutes I got pissed off. And then I realized the
bands that professed they were not doing it for the money ... as soon as
they got money they'd get better equipment, they'd get a bigger car. That's
what people do ... Out of that time there were some great (artists) like
Elvis Costello, Ian Drury and all this kind of music, like retro music. And
we keep getting retro music every seven years. Like retro cars, it becomes
a norm. But as for the punk thing, I always thought that James Cagney was a
punk and I was a punk when I was 20. But the record companies just disowned
bands like Yes. But we had friends in this world. The fans kept us going
through those crazy years, through the disco times when the Bee Gees went
number one a thousand times. That's all we heard. All of our music was
forgotten except for the fans. We were lucky when we came back in the '80s
with a very well-produced record produced by Trevor Horn which was (1983's)
"90125." In a way, we were like the rabbit that popped out of the hat.
That's what Yes was all about. We were flying by the seat of our pants our
entire career.
Q: Do you even like the label "prog rock?"
A: In the beginning, yeah. We called it "avant garde," a progression of
music. You know (Frank) Zappa was progressive. And there was Vanilla Fudge,
even the Byrds ... Buffalo Springfield - they weren't pop to me, they were
a progressive band. And ("progressive") was a good word for about two or
three years and then you were boxed. You were "prog rock" and "classic rock."
Q: The prog rock bands became known for their extreme seriousness and
indulgent stage productions. Was there ever a point where you felt Yes had
gone far over the top and needed to pull back?
A: We started doing the stage in the round, which was a very, very unique
operation. The stage that we created in '77 was used by Barry Manilow,
Frank Sinatra and dozens of people. We had gotten to a certain point where
we realized we had done our theater stuff. We actually had a three-headed
dragon flying around the stage. It seemed like it was flying around the
stage - there were a lot of drugs that year I believe. It was a great show,
great tour. I've seen photographs and it is an amazing stage design that
was all (long-time Yes cover artist) Roger Dean. (But) it cost us a
fortune! We weren't into money at that the time. We were into the big show.
Of course you get excessive but give somebody an empty checkbook and
they'll go crazy. But we learned. That's why we went in the round and
redesigned our look.
Q: Then in the '80s, Yes moved farther away from their prog rock sound and,
with the "90125" record, became a rock band with slimmer, trimmer radio
hits. How did that happen?
A: It's very simple. The week that we were number one we were getting ready
to tour. And I went and saw a movie and it was called "Spinal Tap." And I
went there with (filmmaker) Steven Soderbergh. We had hired him to film the
band straight out of school. And we went to see "Spinal Tap" and from that
moment on for the rest of the '80s I (realized) I was in "Spinal Tap."
(laughs) You're number one, you're famous, people are saying how great you
are but you're thinking "oh please," you know?
Q: You were sick of taking yourself so seriously.
A: I thought the whole thing was an amazing illusion that didn't make
sense. But I enjoyed the ride. I didn't take anything seriously for about
six years.
Q: Yes is notorious for its constant personnel changes. It's now at a point
that when you talk about the band's history, you have to talk about its
different eras that constituted its different line-ups. Why couldn't the
band keep the same line-up over the years?
A: We didn't all come from a town. If you've come from a town, you're stuck
together like Super Glue. You have to stay together no matter what. You all
come from Newcastle, you all come from Liverpool. Whereas with Yes, we all
came from different points of England. We have no deep-rooted family or
blood-related energy, I suppose. So when somebody just didn't want to
rehearse, get the guy out. If he doesn't want to rehearse, he doesn't
realize how lucky we are to get money to be able to rehearse. So get
another guitar player. Then all the sudden the keyboard player is too busy
chasing the girls instead of rehearsing. So get another keyboard player.
(Founding drummer) Bill Bruford left the band to join King Crimson. That
was like punching me in the face. That was too much for me. And we turned
around and there was Alan Light. It wasn't like we said, "We better stay
together because the fans will hate it if we don't stay together," panic
panic. No, we changed with nature of things.
Q: You probably have one of the most distinctive voices in rock history.
How were you able to maintain it for almost 40 years?
A: More than anything, I don't over sing. I never was a screamer. I was
always more of an alto tenor ... I don't smoke, I don't drink. I'm 60 this
year and I think I'm singing better than ever and I'm wondering why?
(laughs) I'm just happy to be able to sing more than anything.
Q: The current line-up certainly collects the best players who all take
turns improvising. Is that because you consider psychedelic music still a
form of transcendence?
A: I think it's a constant part of what we do. The connections between the
audience getting high physically or spiritually into that place where ...
you can hear a pin drop. You have thousands of people listening as though
all of us, the band and the audience, are trying to obtain an element of
higher consciousness. And it is a natural thing ... We do it on different
levels like watching a movie, watching theater, watching sports. I'm so on
a different level when I'm watching these people running around on a field.
The energy is fantastic. I think it's a national thing to be spiritually aware.
A: Live, it's being created in a microcosm.
Q: Yeah. The fact is, when we travel around the world we see that 95
percent of the world is a wonderful happy place. That's an incredible
percentage. There's 5 percent that's a lot of bad (expletive) but far
outweighed by the power of love.
Yes 35th anniversary tour
Where: Allstate Arena, 6920 N.
Mannheim Road, Rosemont
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday May 4
Tickets: $45/$59.50 (312) 559-1212
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