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OCTOBER 2004
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Source: Word Magazine, pp 58-64
YES: The Self-Preservation Society
By Stuart Maconie
Contributed by Ben Williams
Give or take a lost weekend or two, Yes are 36 years old. "When
they began, only rock stars and solicitors had telephones, now small
children can download the riff from Owner Of A Lonely Heart as a ringtone
for a mobile phone that's the size of a matchbox. They don't, by and large,
preferring the songs of a gentleman called Fifty Pence or some such. But
they could do. When Yes began, colour television was science fiction. Now
their shows are beamed around the world on the Internet or etched onto
shiny silver discs and can watched on one's laptop computer. This was "back
in the day" when the only iPods came out of Thunderbird 2 and Napster was
the Daily Mirror's racing correspondent.
Like many bands of their '60s vintage, though, Yes were intoxicated with
visions of mankind's future. Their album sleeves teemed with mystical and
visionary images of life on worlds to come, far-oft galaxies, sentient
fish, space galleons and "futuristic fortified cities for military monks",
that kind of thing. That last one is Relayer, by the way, and the
description is Roger Dean's whose famous swirly Yes logo adorned many a
teenage haversack in rudimentary felt tip form.
In fact, the future turned out to be pretty much all about really small
phones and really big, flat tellies; space travel became a thing of the
past, and Britain's venture to Mars was delayed due to signal failure near
the Becquerel Crater.
Yes's music though, with its stirring symphonic rhetoric, its bewilderingly
complex funkiness, its grand gestures and soaring harmonised choruses
continues to speak to something noble and elevated in the human spirit. For
36 years they have sung of Siberian Khatrus and The Revealing Science Of
God, "total mass retain" and "whispers of clay". And millions, including
me, love them for it.
Over those 36 years, Yes have played some remarkable shows in remarkable
places. On Saturday, August 3, 1968, they played at the dauntingly named
East Mersea Youth Camp near Colchester and began with a 10-minute version
of "Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour. Three months later they opened
for the closing Cream at that band's legendary farewell concert at the
Royal Albert Hall. On Sunday August 9,1970, they were halfway up a bill at
Plumpton racecourse sandwiched between Chris Barber's Jazz Band and
Caravan. And on the infamous 1974 North American tour, where the heady
wave of marijuana from the 19,000 strong audience at Philadelphia's
Spectrum Centre was so strong that according to singer Jon Anderson "you
were stoned within minutes of walking on stage", they emerged from a kind
of fish's mouth-cum-cave at the back of the stage and drummer Alan White
had to be crow-barred out of the plastic pod that encased his drum kit; a
misadventure that ensured them celluloid immortality thanks to St Hubbins,
Tufnell and Smalls. Having negotiated this little local difficulty they
proceeded to play the four lengthy sides of Tales From Topographic Oceans
in their entirety to the joy of the blissed-out weedheads of the city of
Brotherly Love.
That fragrant night, the opening acts were The J Geils Band and Edgar
Winter. Tonight though, they are in an Edwardian theatre in Oxford where
even St Bruno is banned and support is provided by Roger De Courcey and
Nookie Bear. It's probably best if we start at the beginning.
If you grew up in Accrington during the early 1960’s and each morning you
were woken by the cheery though strangely contrapuntal whistling of the
milkman, it's very possible that your gold top was being delivered by one
John Anderson. Finding his flair for the theatrical stymied in the dairy
trade, Anderson and his brother played in a band called The Warriors who
were signed to Decca. He later put out flop singles of his own as Hans
Anderson on the Parlophone label.
By 1968, he had dropped an aitch and was Jon, nurturing his rock dreams
whilst scraping an unlikely living as a cleaner in a London nightclub
called La Chasse. Mr Sheen and J Cloth in hand, he chatted one afternoon at
the bar with Chris Squire, a bassist and vocalist and former member of the
Syn, who'd recorded for Deram, Decca's prog imprint.
Discovering a shared love of The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel and the Fifth
Dimension, the two were soon writing together and formed the nucleus of a
new band called Yes, signed to Atlantic on the recommendation of the
legendary Tony Stratton Smith. After a couple of minor hit albums and
fluctuating line-ups, the band's breakthrough came in 1969 with The Yes
Album, establishing the key elements of the group's sound, dynamic playing,
clear, bright harmonics, pop choruses snuggling gently against dizzying
technique and time signatures, all topped off with elliptical, crossword
clue-style lyrics delivered in Anderson's trademark piping alto.
The Yes Album charted well in both the UK and the States. Early in 1971,
they made their first transatlantic trip as support to JethroTull and later
that same year, keyboard player Tony Kaye left and was replaced by former
Strawb and legendary sessionman Rick Wakeman, whose CV included Cat
Stevens's Morning Has Broken, David Bowie's Hunky Dory and Clive Dunn's
Grandad. With a satisfying click, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.
The rest is history. Confusing, fluid and litigious history but still the
very warp and weft of rock's rich tapestry. These colourful threads lead
somehow to my sitting here between Whispering Bob Harris and Jon Anderson's
wife Jane watching a ventriloquist and his bear not seen on British TV
since the heyday of Russ Abbott's Madhouse telling vaguely off-colour jokes.
"It was my birthday last week," says De Courcey. "I got a sweater. Shame. I
wanted a moaner or a screamer." It's the way he tells them. How will The
Revealing Science Of God sound after this, I wonder?
It is all in an indubitably good cause though. Last year, as part of a BBC
television show, Rick Wakeman became involved with children's hospice in
Oxford called Helen House. Since then he has maintained his relationship
with the charity and tonight he has arranged a special benefit evening at
the New Theatre, Oxford with all proceeds going to the House.
It speaks volumes for the currently cordial state of affairs within Yes
that on a rare night off from a fairly gruelling world tour ("we just want
to go home," admits Anderson) the other band members would so readily agree
to slotting in a show for which they would receive precisely none of your
English pounds and would have to share a stage with Davidson, DC Courcey
and ursine chum. No one would pretend that things within Yes have always
been so relaxed; in the late '80s and early '90s, the band, sans Chris
Squire, toured as the marvellously literal Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford and
Howe whilst behind the scenes lawyers bought shiny new powerboats from the
proceeds of their wrangling over the name Yes.
The incarnation that is currently celebrating 36 years in progbiz can
rightly be termed a classic one. It's the one that recorded the legendary
Tales From Topographic Oceans, that four-sided Aunt Sally shyed at by
generations of sneerers and perhaps the high watermark of prog's
grandiloquence; Wakeman on keyboards, guitarist Steve Howe, Alan White at
the drum stool, Jon Anderson on vocals and bassist Chris Squire.
Squire is imposing. He has a home in Ibiza where his favourite haunt is a
nightclub called Amnesia and you can bet he has no trouble getting his
Bacardi Breezer at the bar. His bone-jarring handshake belies the often
melodic delicacy of his basslines "Melodic.. .well, I certainly hope so,
old chap," he blusters, a little embarrassed. Steve Howe now has the air of
a mildly eccentric Professor of medieval History than an "axe hero".
British rock has never produced a better guitarist though. And you have to
love a man who introduced the prairie twang of pedal steels and the
rollicking of ragtime to the Mittel European stylings of progressive rock.
Last night, Yes played in the grounds of Powderham Castle in Devon. This is
Steve's manor - not literally, I don't think they sold quite that many
records - and he entertained the crowd with a bijou solo set featuring Bob
Dylan's Just Like A Woman and music hall ditties such as Bye Bye Blues.
Wakeman is tall and genial, the lustrous yellow hair still hanging around
the shoulders, the demeanour jovial. Bumping into him in the hotel lobby,
he takes me over to the tour manager, all cod-earnestness. "Could you
arrange for all the women that are still in my room to be taken and put in
Stuart's. Or at least the fat one." Wakeman's blokey, proletarian good
humour always made him rather a charming oddity in the world of '70s prog,
more biryanis and Watney's Red Barrel than Buddhism and Blavatsky. In
recent years, ITV producers have cottoned on to Wakeman's everyman appeal
and he has developed a second career as a presenter and light entertainer,
being one of the stars of the recent Grumpy Old Men series.
Jon Anderson isn't exactly grumpy but there is certainly a flash of steel
behind the elvish exterior. You get the occasional glimpse of why certain
former band members referred to him as Napoleon. Like when he offers this
explanation for the band's current stability. "Everybody here is with the
project. We have some very simple rules. If you want to work, great, stay.
But if you want to mess about then leave because we have work to do".
I get the impression also that journalists may not be Andersen's ideal
Sunday lunchtime companion. For one, there's a vegetarian roast with his
name on it at a restaurant down the road on the outskirts of Oxford and for
another Anderson has had to endure sarky put-downs and callow mockery for
three decades. Yes were briefly fashionable with the rock press for about
twenty minutes in 1971 but even then most "scribes" preferred Ducks Deluxe,
the fools. Cleverly, I insert a few well chosen, learned references to the
complex, rapid 15/8 time intro to Heart Of The Sunrise and I think my Yes
credentials are tacitly acknowledged. "The songs aren't that complicated,
you know," he smiles. ""We've just always been very good at making them
seem complicated". Warming, Anderson tells me, apropos last night's gig in
Devon, that it was in that very county "at a little B&B type place" that
Yes wrote a lot of early material. "We stole the intro from Yours Is No
Disgrace from an old TV police show called Gideon Of The Yard. You'll be
too young to remember. It was a Dixon Of Dock Green-type thing. Perhaps I
should say 'sampled' not 'stole'. Borrowed. Yes, we wrote a lot of Fragile
there."
Yours Is No Disgrace isn't actually on Fragile. It's on The Yes Album. I
don't point out this out though because it would be rude and, let's face
it, a bit frightening. Anderson has already told me that they have "one or
two fans who are a bit too keen, to be honest. But I'd rather not go into
that."
Yes inspire this kind of devotion. On this tour, where some songs have been
rearranged for acoustic performance, Alan White says he's often felt sorry
for the blokes who are playing imaginary drums in Row C. "I want to shout
out 'No, we've changed it, it doesn't go like that. I don't do that roll
there anymore. You'll make a fool of yourself." White is an amiable North
Easterner domiciled in Seattle. An old friend of his from his hometown of
Pelton in County Durham - Malcolm is now a well-heeled fan who follows the
band on tour -tells me that his mum and White's worked together and he has
known the drummer since childhood. "He was a bit of legend round our way.
He was the great local drummer who was going to be a pop star. He went down
to do Sunday Night At The London Palladium and the next thing I knew he was
in the Plastic Ono band." It is White's drumming, swathed in reverb by Phil
Spector till it sounds like the Last Trump, that is the best thing about
Instant Karma.
This then is Yes and these past 36 years have seen their fair share of
strangeness. Other branches of their family tree snake out mysteriously
towards, to name but a few, Vangelis (Jon Anderson collaborator), The
Buggies and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (Trevor Horn was once a Yes producer
and indeed a member of the band) and maverick American film director
Vincent Gallo, a huge fan who, bizarrely, used that aforementioned
fearsomely tricky Heart Of The Sunrise to accompany a strip joint scene in
his film Buffalo 66.
Upon entering the demure surroundings of Oxford's New Theatre, it becomes
apparent though that connoisseurs of the strange arc in for an evening that
makes all the above as routine as rain on a bank holiday The first inkling
of this is the Tombola, an event familiar to attendees of garden fetes and
school open days, less so progressive rock gigs. Fiver a punt, everyone
wins a prize. ("All prizes worth at least five pounds" the sign adds, lest
any accusations of chicanery be laid at the venerable band's door). I have
my eye on the Elvis '68 Comeback Special DVD but actually come away with
Now fiftysomething. Then again, it could have been worse. It could have
been the tickets to join the studio recording of "popular ITV daytime show
Loose Women".
The tombola is doing a roaring trade. As indeed is the silent auction,
where bidding is brisk for a round of golf with Rick Wakeman, dinner with
same or a signed bag of Yes goodies. I take my seats for the curious and
noteworthy array of support acts. There is a bloke from the Sky Sports
phone-in who tells some jokes. There is a hyperactive and actually pretty
fabulous juggler/comic called Steve Rawlings. There is De Courcey and bear.
Wakeman himself in a yellow drape jacket plays Eleanor Rlgby in the style
of Prokofiev, some nursery rhymes a la Ravel, and an instrumental rendition
of Morning Has Broken which he prefaces with a very funny account of how
Cat Stevens ("Yussuf something or other, he is now," he adds gruffly) has
never given him proper credit for his flowing piano intro - which let's
face it, is the highlight of a dull song - and how he now refuses to tell
anyone how it is played. "If you're wondering why the piano is placed so
you can't see my hands, it's so you bastards can't nick it off me either".
He is then joined by Alistair, a young man in a wheelchair from Helen
House, to perform one of Alistair's very respectable songs. And so we come,
with the apprehensive mien of a dog about to be bathed, to Jim Davidson.
Doing gags about the blind and the deaf at a benefit for the terminally ill
and disabled takes, depending on your perspective, either colossal chutzpah
or the hide and indeed brain of a rhino. You be the judge. The rest of his
act ranged over a variety of targets/subjects such as "slapper" ex-wives,
drink driving laws, people from Wolverhampton and the discomfiture implicit
in soiling one's trousers during a matinee performance of Mother Goose.
Like Manning, Davidson employs the defence of "taking the piss out of
everyone" though I have to say I felt the forces of organised capital and
the military/industrial complex got off pretty lightly lie concludes with a
gag about that comedy staple, the Sharpeville massacre. Boom Boom, indeed.
During the interval I hear one youngish fan saying, somewhat tersely, to
his girl friend, that if he'd wanted half an hour of "shit comedy" he'd
have stayed at home and watched ITV.
One assumes that the show's second half was much more to his liking. As I
write, Yes arc atop the music DVD charts with their Yes Acoustic set and it
is this that they perform tonight. That DVD package has the slogan
"Guaranteed No Hiss!". This, of course, is self-deprecating irony and
actually untrue. For the gathered fans like myself, there are hits galore
here; All Good People, Owner Of A Lonely Heart, Long Distance Runaround,
Roundabout re-invented as a Chicago Blues shuffle. The appeal of Wondrous
Stories, wetter and more debilitating than the Solway Firth, has always
eluded me but the folks ate it up. Anderson explains that Nine Voices
concerns an event where chieftains of the nine indigenous peoples of the
world convened to sing in harmony on a remote beach. Predictably, Jim
Davidson does not guest on this. Anderson provides all the stage intros in
his whimsical blend of Formby (George) and Baggins (Frodo), though Squire
explains the arrangement of Roundabout during which Wakeman and Howe, the
cards, sigh heavily, take out newspapers and read. It's all top stuff.
There was a lot of community clapping. I don't want to clap, not because
I'm being all aloof and/or miserable but because I know there's a bit
coming up in 15/8 that's going to wrongfoot everyone. I do tap a knee
desultorily during All Good People though, because I'm sitting next to Jon
Anderson's wife and it seems churlish not to.
There is an after show party at which many perma-tanned showbiz types and a
lot of ordinary fans are present, some of them having bid for tickets. One
stops me and with a wry and frankly suspicious look asks if I'm "a closet
Yes fan". No, I say, truthfully. I'm in no closet. I have long since
stopped apologising for liking great music like this. I no longer try and
convince myself that The Vines and The Datsuns are actually any good. And I
now realise that the only three good Kings Of Leon songs all sound like The
Groundhogs. A lovely couple ask me why then the media hates Yes so much and
at the same time spends much of its time "blowing smoke up Radiohead's
arse" when there is more than a little of Yes in those local favourite's
oeuvre. I can only shrug.
Two very lively Geordie ladies launch into a funny boozy, vitriolic
denunciation of St John Peel. "He was on the Glastonbury telly coverage and
he said he was going to watch Yes 'just to remind myself how much he hated
them'. Wanker".
I make conciliatory noises but really I feel their pain. What strikes me
most forcibly is that nearly all Yes's fans and indeed the band are clearly
drawn from the working-class and yet this music is routinely derided as
somehow "effete" or "bourgeois". Conversely, in my experience, it is almost
always almost public schoolboys who get most excited about Oasis.
I fall into conversation with Alistair, the young musician from Helen
House. He's a WORD fan on the strength of the recent Jeff Buckley coverage,
of whom Alistair is a devotee. He promises to send me a demo and I point
out that he can now boast that he's supported one of the world's major rock
bands. "They've been great. It's been quite a night, sharing a stage with
Yes. And with Jim Davidson of course. Sadly, without a weapon to hand."
Frankly, I had a ball. The audience had a ball. Bobby Davro seemed to be
enjoying himself over by the crudités. Furthermore, some sick kids and the
people who love and care for them got a jolly and mad night out and some
welcome help and support. You would need to be a pretty corrosive cynic not
to find your cockles gently warmed by this plus your estimation of Wakeman
and Yes heightened, even if you dislike them as much as John Peel does.
The lady who paid £1300 at auction will doubtless enjoy her dinner with
Rick Wakeman immensely Someone is watching my copy of the Elvis '68
comeback special with relish I hope. And perhaps even now, a man in a Close
To The Edge tee-shirt is conspicuous but happy being part of the studio
recording of the "popular ITV daytime show Loose Women". No Tale From A
Topographic Ocean, no Wondrous Story, can have had quite such a strange and
happy ending.
Yes have two new DVDs on offer - YESSPEAK: the 30th anniversary and Yes
Acoustic.
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