------------------------------------------------------- APRIL 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Classic Rock Revisited http://www.classicrockrevisited.com/Interviews04/ChrisSquire04.htm Interview: Chris Squire of Yes By Ryan Sparks It was 35 years ago in 1969 that Yes released their self titled debut album setting forth in motion something more powerful than they could have ever imagined. They have been at the very forefront of the so called Prog Rock movement from the very beginning and have always found ways to come up with compelling and challenging music that goes against the grain and defies current trends. Throughout all of this they have dealt with many changes along the way, many of them personnel. It’s easy to lose count of the number of musicians who have passed through the ranks, just try to name the bands many keyboardists for example, but one man has remained constant, bassist Chris Squire, the musical timekeeper of the band he is the only one who has survived every incarnation of the group. Chris’s style of playing the bass as a lead instrument set the bar quite high for his contemporaries and easily made his unique sound identifiable on such FM classics as “Roundabout”, “Yours is No Disgrace”, I’ve Seen All Good People” and” Starship Trooper” to name but a few. When Jon Anderson left the band along with keyboardist Rick Wakeman in the late 70’s Chris refused to throw in the towel and replaced him with ex-Buggles vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes (later of Asia fame), After only one album with this lineup he actually disbanded Yes for a few years before starting a new project in 1983 with guitarist/ vocalist Trevor Rabin, along with Yes members Alan White and Tony Kaye called Cinema, which eventually lured Jon back into the fold and the band rose from the ashes and was reborn. With Rabin being a major catalyst in helping Yes redefine their sound for the 80’s the band was about to reach heights they had never seen before. 90125 released in 1983 was the biggest selling album by the band and yielded such radio friendly hits as “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”, “Changes” and “Leave It”. This version of the band would stay together until the late 80’s at which time most of the original members re-united for the Union album and tour in 1991, a spectacle that saw eight members past and present onstage at once, something unheard of at the time, but like I said Yes are pioneers at this kind of stuff. Since then members have come and gone, sometimes more than once. The core members of Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Alan White, Steve Howe and Squire are getting ready to embark on a 35th Anniversary Tour starting in April. - Ryan Sparks April 2004 _______________________________________________ CRR: This is Yes’ 35th Anniversary and I know the band is doing a tour this year, are you sometimes surprised that you’ve made it this far? Chris: Sometimes yes (laughing), it’s amazing that we’ve been able to put up with each other for 35 years (laughing). Most marriages don’t last that long these days. CRR: It’s been a bit of a dysfunctional marriage a times, it’s certainly had its fair share of drama hasn’t it? Chris: Oh absolutely! (laughing), there’s been plenty of drama; we’ve managed to escape any real bad stuff, so here we are going out on tour again. CRR: From what I know Roger Dean has created a nice elaborate stage setup to celebrate the occasion. Chris: That is true yes. I haven’t actually seen it yet but I’ve seen pictures and it looks great. CRR: Will this tour be in the round? Chris: No we talked about maybe having it in the round but it doesn’t look like we’re going to do it that way this time. CRR: Is there a chance of filming this tour for a possible DVD release? Chris: I’m sure at some point we will yes, I’m not sure where but we’ll let the tour go for awhile and get some legs before doing that. CRR: Is the plan to start in North America? Chris: Yeah we’re starting on the west coast and working our way across the country making our way to the east coast, then the tour moves over to Europe in the summer. We’re not doing that many shows on the first leg, there will be more shows added for the fall in the States. On the first leg I think we’re only doing like 20 dates. CRR: The band has released a new 3 CD set called The Ultimate Yes 35TH Anniversary Collection that has some new versions of older songs done acoustically, when did you record them? Chris: We just did about a weeks worth of recordings after we finished our touring cycle last year. We were in L.A. and we were doing a special show for the radio, we spent the week before recording some acoustic versions of well known Yes songs like “Roundabout”, “South Side of The Sky” being another. We did a couple of new things to add a bit more interest for the listener. CRR: You’ve been busy on another project as well, the second Conspiracy record with Billy Sherwood, How did that project originally come about? Chris: Billy was in Yes for Open Your Eyes and The Ladder, he had also been on the Talk tour as a support musician, we have been writing together since the beginning of the 90’s pretty much. When Yes moved on to do the Magnification album with the Orchestra we decided to scale the band down to just the four of us, Billy went on to do some production and stuff but we kept on writing and it turned into the Conspiracy project. In fact I’m on my way to the studio right now; we’re putting the finishing touches on a DVD which documents the whole Conspiracy project. CRR: I’ve got a copy of The Unknown, it’s quite good, the sound reminds me a lot of the 90125 era of Yes. Chris: Really? You’re the second person whose mentioned that today so you must be right (laughs). CRR: I think there’s more of a pop or song element to it; I find Billy’s style is much like Trevor Rabin’s. Chris: I think Billy like’s Trevor’s approach and I think some of it must have rubbed off when they were working together. Conspiracy varies from album to album, the first one is not like the second and when or if we do a third one, which we’re planning to, that will probably be a different style as well. Even within the album there are some tracks which are poppy but there are others which lean towards the progressive style approach. We do tend to mix it up. CRR: The new Rhino re-masters of the Yes back catalogue are amazing, what do you think of them? Chris: I think they’ve been doing a great job as well. CRR: Is there anything left in the vaults after this is done? Chris: Not much (laughing). Anything that hasn’t come out has either been misfiled or lost. Unfortunately that applies to quite a few of the masters. Close to The Edge we don’t have, it seems to have disappeared. On a personal note the masters for my solo CD Fish Out Of Water seem to have disappeared as well. I was looking forward to doing a 5.1 audio mix of that. Somewhere along the way with Atlantic moving their offices things have gone by the wayside. CRR: That seems to have happened to quite a few artists over the years, bands having trouble locating master tapes etc. Chris: Yeah maybe they’re in some disgruntled ex-employees bedroom or something (laughing). CRR: Looking back when you guys were just starting out, is it true that The Yes Album was really a make it or break it album for the band? Chris: Pretty much yeah. It was the third album we were doing for Atlantic and we hadn’t really made any impression on the American market with our first two albums. I don’t think they really promoted them though to be honest, so by the time it came to the third album it was either going to be something that was going to fly and they were going to get behind or not. Fortunately the former applied. CRR: “Roundabout” really launched you guys into the stratosphere didn’t it? Chris: Yeah it did. CRR: This then allowed you guys to really make some pretty adventurous albums even for the 70’s. Chris: Yeah exactly. Once we’d done Fragile and Close to The Edge we got more adventurous with Tales From Topographic Oceans, we did all kinds of different pallets I guess. CRR: When I spoke to Steve (Howe) last year he mentioned that back then there was a sort of feeling that you were just pissing in the wind and you could do whatever you wanted. Did it feel that way to you as well? Chris: Not really no (laughing). You’re only as big as your last hit. It’s a bit of a strange thing for him to say I think, but I guess that’s his opinion. I know I always worked hard on making sure we came out with the best possible product and of course we were working with four other people, you have to balance that as well. CRR: I think what he was trying to say was that it was more of an adventurous time in terms of what you could get away with. Chris: Oh well that’s right sure I understand that. CRR: I mean when you’re putting only one song on a side of a record, that’s pretty adventurous even for the 70’s. Chris: It was yeah. We pulled it off for Close To The Edge, not so much with Tales From Topographic Oceans. Close To The Edge was definitely a very good benchmark to achieve. CRR: After that album Rick (Wakeman) had decided he’d had enough. Chris: Yeah, we were dealing with that as well, during the recording he wasn’t particularly happy, but hey that’s being in a band what can you do? CRR: I guess it’s been a little difficult keeping the band together at times. Chris: It hasn’t been easy (laughing). CRR: Shortly after your 10th Anniversary tour, Jon (Anderson) left the band as did Rick for the second time, what happened there, was it a case of burn out and that they wanted to move on to other things or was it due to tensions in the band? Chris: I think it was due to the fact that both Jon and Rick were both very involved in their solo careers and they wanted to go outside the band and experiment, which is not a bad thing, that’s just what was going on at the time. CRR: Drama was the first album without Jon, was it a difficult decision to carry on? Chris: Not really, we were fortunate enough to meet Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes at that point. We just happened to meet them at the time that we lost our singer and keyboardist, although people thought I was a little crazy to suggest using members of the Buggles (laughs), as it turned out I think we went on to make a fantastic record with them. CRR: Drama was still a real solid album considering what you’d been through. Chris: Yeah we managed to pull that one off. CRR: What was it like on that tour, seeing Trevor singing all of Jon’s parts? Chris: Sometimes it was a little shaky, sometimes he really surprised us. He pulled out some really good performances. It wasn’t the case all of the time, but for the most part it was. CRR: Did it mean that you had to do a bit more vocally onstage, more than you would have had to in the past? Chris: A little bit yeah but I didn’t mind that. There was a lot of harmony stuff on the newer stuff anyways so it worked out ok. CRR: After Yes broke up you worked with Alan (White) and Jimmy Page in a project called XYZ, nothing ever came of that, how far did you actually get? Chris: Jimmy wanted to get back into playing after the death of John Bonham, we lived close to each other, we’d get together and work on material and do a bit of recording. At some point Robert Plant was supposed to come and join us but I think it was all a bit too early for him after Bonham’s death to get involved, so after awhile we realized that nothing was going to come out of it so we just sort of let it lie and Al and I got on with our new project with Trevor Rabin which was called Cinema, which as you know Jon came back into the picture and we became Yes again. CRR: It’s kind of ironic that although Trevor didn’t have much success as a vocalist for Yes, he was behind the board producing the most successful album in the band’s history 90125. Chris: Yeah we kinda had luck on our side I guess. CRR: Eddie Jobson (ex Roxy Music, U.K.) was in the band briefly at that point wasn’t he? Chris: Yeah there was very brief period where we were looking at working with Eddie, the ironic thing that happened was that the only thing he did do with us was that he appeared in the “Owner Of a Lonely Heart” video (laughs), he was in the video but we never played with him ever (laughs). CRR: Did you have to pay him for that (laughs)? Chris: I don’t know, probably (laughs). CRR: That has to be the shortest stint anyone has done in Yes. Chris: Yeah people forget about the Eddie Jobson membership (laughs). CRR: It got a little confusing there in the late 80’s with Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe and Yes both going at the same time didn’t it? Chris: Yeah it did. CRR: Which eventually led to the Union project, I remember Bill Bruford saying somewhere that he didn’t have a lot to do onstage on that tour, I guess you were lucky that you were the only bassist onstage? Chris: Yes I can assure you I was very lucky, it would have been a nightmare with two bassists on stage I can tell you that (laughs). CRR: What are your feelings looking back on that tour? Chris: I’ve heard some recordings from that tour that sound quite good actually, it definitely sounded more like an electric Yes orchestra than the normal five piece band that we were used to having, we had extra percussion and keyboard layers and two guitar players, it made for quite a big sound. Live bootlegs that I’ve heard from that tour have really impressed me. CRR: When you go into the studio to make new music with the guys, is it harder working and dealing with the others or are you at a point where it’s easier to make music with them? Chris: A little of both actually, we’ll see how it goes when we actually get around to doing it again next time, how it’s going to work. When we did the last album Magnification, I enjoyed it and I think the others did as well, let’s keep our fingers crossed so that when it comes time to record again we’ll be able to pull the good out of it and not worry about the drawbacks. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com