------------------------------------------------------- FEBRUARY 24, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Manchester Online http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/entertainment/music/ (abbreviated link text) Steve, the Ultimate YES Man By Paul Taylor It is one of those questions guitar-lovers like to ask: which one of your guitars would you rescue from a burning building? And Steve Howe has no doubt about the answer. It would be the big, sunburst Gibson ES175D jazz guitar which he badgered his parents to buy him exactly 40 years ago - the same guitar which was his signature instrument in the days when Yes's fiendishly complicated music minted the concept of progressive rock. "I will never stop playing this guitar," says the Yes man, now aged 56. "This thing became my identity. It became the thing I clung to. I don't let other people play it, only a few fine guitarists, like Martin Taylor." It was with Taylor, Britain's finest jazz guitarist, that Howe recorded the Masterpiece Guitars album two years ago, playing instruments from the priceless 750-strong collection of American millionaire Scott Chinery. Howe, too, has amassed the odd room-full of guitars in the past. "It peaked in the seventies with 175 guitars, which was much too extravagant," says genial Howe. "I got irritable with it and started to give a guitar away here and there, trade a couple for one better or just sell a few pieces. I have got it down to 90 pieces now, of which 40 guitars are greatly useable." No shortage of choices, then, when the Yes man heads out on the road with his musical side project Remedy, featuring his sons Dylan, 34, on drums, and 28-year-old Virgil on keyboards. Howe also has two daughters - 21-year-old Georgia is at Bristol University and 17-year-old Stephanie coming up to A-levels - and divides his time between homes in London and Devon. Remedy's album Elements - complete with Yes-like Roger Dean artwork - spans everything from prog-like pomp to country guitar-picking by way of jazz and blues. It is a melange which recalls Howe's eclectic musical awakening as the youngest of four children in Holloway, London, in the late fifties. He heard jazz and classical played by elder siblings, while his parents loved the novel guitar music of Les Paul and Mary Ford. Cocking an ear to the likes of The Shadows and then The Beatles led Howe on what he felt was a natural progression to the almost orchestral rock which was created after he joined Yes in 1970. Odyssey "There have been moments when you want to tear your hair out," says Howe of the 35-year odyssey in which Yes almost single-handedly kept prog rock alive. "In the seventies, we were clinging together, but as soon as somebody fell out with the method, the thinking or psychology of Yes, then we had to replace them." Howe spent much of the eighties playing with Asia and GTR, but then came back into the Yes fold - all part of a series of personnel changes as epic and dizzying as music such as Tales From Topographic Oceans. At one point, what most of us would recognise as Yes was forced to tour under the name Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe because the very name Yes was the subject of a legal dispute. In 1991, the various former members came together in a mega-Yes, which Howe now recalls as "insane". The unhappiness, from Howe's point of view, carried on through much of the nineties, until keyboard player Rick Wakeman properly returned to the fold two years ago. "That period of Yes after Keys To Ascension (1996 album) was a very difficult period because we had people playing Rick's parts but they were not Rick. We tried a willy-nilly approach to Yes membership, where you could have somebody quite unknown come in and yet be a fully-fledged member. There was a lot of imbalance. "I wanted Rick back because I like the way he plays. If it's not Rick, it's not Yes. We got the line-up right two years ago when Rick came back. We did our tour and showed that Rick was not just popping back for a leg, he was coming back for life, hopefully." And is Yes for life? "I think so," Howe laughs. "I like it. I am proud of what Yes have done. I am very critical of the bits I don't like and I am very open about that, but I don't think that diminishes my love and respect for what we did when we were kind of not even aware of what we were doing. "It is something like groups like The Darkness and The Coral are going through now - that marvellous period when they are creating something themselves and they don't really know what it is yet. But in 10 years' time they will know what it is and will have to be very clever if they want to keep going." Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com