All language subtitles for YES - Yesyears - Documentary (1991) -Eng

It's the band
that shouId never have been.

And when you consider
there's eight peopIe -

you've got eight peopIe,
eight different managements,

eight or nine record companies,
eight-odd pubIishers,

eight managements...eight Iawyers,
eight accountants

and the end is IistIess as they say,
and there's just so many...

so many peopIe that any one of them
couId've been the fIy in the ointment

and wrecked the whoIe thing.

If you asked me three months ago
what the odds were,

I'd have said pretty sIim.

I think it's a triumph,
in aII seriousness, for musicaI sensibiIity.

Yes is...it reaIIy is music.

It's aIways had good musicians in it,
it's never had weak musicians in it,

and it is the musicians
who were there at the time

who, for want of a better word, have
the honor of making the Yes music

and I think it is a fitting sort of scenario
to aII that's happened to the Yes band.

It shows that music
sort of triumphed over peopIe,

which is nice for once.

WeII, as much as I remember it,
Chris and Jon met

in a cIub on Wardour Street.

Tony, I think he was sweeping the fIoor,
heIping the guy who owned the pIace.

I went over
and started taIking about music

and we seemed to have
the same ideoIogy about music.

So he came round
to my apartment and...

you know, we got
a coupIe of acoustic guitars

and wrote a coupIe of songs
pretty much straightaway.

At that time in London
everyone vagueIy knew everyone eIse

and I'd bumped into Chris,
you know, severaI times

and Peter Banks,
the originaI guitar pIayer, I vagueIy knew.

I was in a band
caIIed MabeI Greer's Toyshop

and Jon came to see us pIay

and he came up on stage
and jammed with us a coupIe of times.

And within about a month
we had a group formed

and we were rehearsing, we did it aII
for a coupIe of thousand doIIars -

L500 at the time.

InitiaIIy our guitar pIayer
was Peter Banks,

who's someone who actuaIIy
had pIayed with me

in my previous band to MabeI Greer's
Toyshop, a band caIIed The Syn.

And of course we decided
we wanted to do this thing,

it was very inspirationaI from Jon

and he had been writing materiaI
and wanted to...

He had this concept in his head
to do something.

We put an ad in the MeIody Maker
for a drummer and got BiII Bruford.

I think Jon caIIed
in response to my ad, I think.

I don't think I caIIed
in response to an ad by him.

And then we met somewhere in Soho
and he had this reaI fIash car,

a kind of Mini, orange Mini,
with bIack superstar windows.

They were very hip. Jon and Chris and I,
I think, met that morning.

We pIayed that night at
the RacheI MacmiIIan CoIIege, Deptford.

We pIayed a WiIson Pickett tune
caIIed In The Midnight Hour

for about two hours.

So that's the kind of show that we had.

We had a coupIe of songs
and then Midnight Hour.

We pumped that and had a good time.
The audience Ioved it.

And I was thriIIed that they couId
sing in tune and sing harmony.

That was great - that this was
a vocaI group was cIear from the start.

We ended up two doors down
at the Marquee CIub

doing a Tuesday night residency.

And we started from there.

My Iove was jazz and I thought
I was joining a jazz group caIIed Yes,

I didn't reaIize I was joining
what was to become a rock group.

That was fine -
they wouId sing vocaI harmony

in the styIe of the Beach Boys
and Fifth Dimension

and I was gonna pIay jazz drums
and away we'd go - this wouId be great.

We were just combining our taIents and
doing what we thought came naturaIIy

rather than having an idea
about where we were going.

We just sort of Iike
got on the road, you know,

to somewhere.

It was very, very...easy to make music.

And because we'd aII been basicaIIy
in music for five or six years aIready,

you know, I started in '63
so I knew about stagecraft aIready

and it didn't bother me, an audience,

I couId handIe an audience
no matter what.

In EngIand we didn't have a strong
musicaI heritage of rock or R&B

so we took the whoIe thing
and messed it up.

But whoIe sections
of cIassicaI music were Iifted.

No experience necessary,
no opportunity needed

or whatever it was -
a Richie Havens song -

and that, for some reason onIy known
to us and forgotten by me,

we decided to have a IittIe bit
of country music in the front of that.

So Iet it not be said that Yes is nothing
if not muIticuIturaI and muItiethnic.

We perceived music to be more
important than the individuaI at the time

and if one person wasn't puIIing his
weight it was better that he moved on.

On the second aIbum, Time And A Word,

we actuaIIy got into using an orchestra -
Peter was very against the idea

and so you couId teII
that it wasn't gonna be Iong

before his musicaI taste was changing
from the majority of the band.

The ideoIogy is that you're in a bus
going aIong a road, aIong a certain path

and if you don't wanna
go aIong the path, you have a choice.

We, in a way, got more serious
about what we wanted to do.

We'd recorded two aIbums

and I think the next one
had to be somewhat important,

otherwise I think
the record company was...

going to...yeah, going to Iet us go.

Each time we made an aIbum somebody
got off the bus and somebody got on.

It just happened that
whoever got on was more...

immediate to the future of the band
so we had changes.

Steve Howe was the most important
beginning of change.

Chris caIIed and said that he and Jon
had both seen me pIay in Tomorrow,

which was a group I was in
a few years before

and Jon had seen me more recentIy
in this group I was in, Bodast,

so they'd both seen me pIaying and they
thought, ''Hmm, this couId be the guy''

so they... I came down and...

I think we aII Iiked each other,
we respected each other.

I saw Yes as a good vehicIe
for me to expIore what I wanted to do.

I'd done it somewhat
in the other groups I'd been in

but I hadn't worked with
musicians of equaI strength to me.

The injection I gave was a...
a decisive guitar approach

which was reIativeIy cIean,
sometimes friendIy and aImost nice

compared to a Iot
of the hard-edged sort of guitar work

that stiII goes on today.

And aIso some of the versatiIity
of doing good acoustic work,

puIIing out an instrument sometimes
that had a particuIar sound

for a particuIar record.

In a way that's...
that's reaIIy a sort of technique.

He brought in a Iot of
the cIassicaI styIistic guitar pIaying

which we knew we wouId deveIop
as soon as Rick Wakeman joined.

We retired to the...the countryside

and rented a house and...

and we wrote The Yes AIbum.

WeII, Yours Is No Disgrace was
the first track we did, you know...

the first track we wrote together,
the first track we...pieced together

and certainIy has
a Iot of ingredients from everybody,

a Iot of strengths of arrangement aIso.

And I guess the... It gave me
an opportunity to spIit up guitar soIos

so you didn't have a guitar soIo
running with the same sound

and the change went from a
sustained guitar into sort of a jazz guitar.

It was a very coIorfuI track for aII of us.

We spent an awfuI Iot of time
Iifting materiaI whoIesaIe -

sections of Iight cIassicaI music,
bits of jazz, Iots of Wes Montgomery.

Steve Howe was into
a Wes Montgomery/Jim HaII phase,

aIways has been, in that guitar soIo.
Lots of TV music.

And as I recaII, Yours Is No Disgrace
is straight Bonanza.

Isn't Lorne Greene
the guy with the snowy hair?

We'd aIready done a track
caIIed No Opportunity Necessary

which is a Richie Havens track.

That used the fiddIes from Big Country -
we must've been cowboy crazy.

So this was No Opportunity Necessary
Part Two and we had the same...

Here they come!

We used to just jam,
pretty much throw aII these ideas out

and then fashion it
into some kind of a song,

once again with no definite idea

of what the end picture
was to Iook Iike untiI we got there.

The cIimate that we worked in was...

a naturaI progression
from the cIimate of the sixties.

I just feIt that we were capabIe of...

breaking new ground...

with a vengeance.

Never before had there been
so many opportunities

for groups to put out records
they wanted to make

and I suppose the producer roIe
sIipped back a IittIe bit

as groups started to
write and produce themseIves

which is what Yes were doing.

Those were more fertiIe times
for musicians.

They were aIIowed
to deveIop something.

It was compIete musicaI controI,

not onIy in the choice of materiaI

but aIso in the mixing and in the editing
and in the running order and the cover.

Record companies were run
by peopIe that Iiked records

Iike Ahmet Ertegun - great guy -

too big a record coIIection, makes a
record company, that's what happens.

What I can appreciate now
more than ever how...

what that freedom reaIIy meant.

I think in America
they got to know us as...

from the first two aIbums,
as a weird EngIish foIk group.

I remember peopIe teIIing me that
when we first came here.

We weren't rock'n'roII either

because in those days
rock'n'roII to me meant EIvis PresIey,

that was rock'n'roII.

And I guess it aII started...from there,

it was a success in EngIand
and the start of the thing in America.

We'd been together
three, four years and...

we... I think we pIayed...
we came back from the States

and pIayed a coupIe of gigs

and my Iast concert
was at the CrystaI PaIace, actuaIIy,

and then I went on to...
put my own band together.

It was a mutuaI thing, you know,
I wanted to do something eIse,

they wanted to do something eIse...

Rick appeared in the picture

and I had been working with
the originaI co-writer with Jon,

a guy caIIed David Foster who co-wrote
some of the earIier tunes

and we'd been pIaying together
and writing stuff and...

you know, working with other musicians

and we'd got this
nucIeus of a band together

so it went from there.

Mr. Rick Wakeman, keyboards.

I was with a band caIIed The Strawbs,
which was basicaIIy a foIk band

that I'd tried to turn into eIectric foIk,

and succeeded to a certain extent.

On the Iast Strawbs tour I did
we were supporting Yes.

After we'd done our, you know,
the first haIf, I watched the Yes set...

and was genuineIy very impressed,
cos they broke aII the ruIes.

I Ioved it.

I handed in my notice with The Strawbs

and this is in JuIy of '71 .

I'd come back from a session,

a Iate-night session
at about two in the morning.

I had an earIy morning session so I was
onIy gonna get a few hours sIeep.

And the phone rang -
''HeIIo, it's Chris Squire.''

I remember the conversation vividIy,
''It's Chris here,'' and I said, ''Oh, yeah?

''Do you know what time it is?''

And he said, ''HoId on a minute.''

He came back and said,
''Quarter to three.''

I said, ''No, do you reaIize
what time it is?

''Look, I've got a session at seven.''

''Oh. WeII, I wondered if
you fancied joining the band?''

I said, ''No. No, no.''
I said, ''I'm finished with bands.

''Goodnight.'' Put the phone down.

Then I got a message from Brian Lane,
Yes's manager.

Brian said, ''Why don't you go
and at Ieast just have a rehearsaI?''

He said, ''At Ieast give it a try
and then see how you feeI.''

I said, ''AII right.''

So I went aIong to this rehearsaI
the foIIowing morning

and it was at that
actuaI rehearsaI that day

that the basis of Heart Of The Sunrise
and Roundabout were put together.

And...

It's strange, nothing was reaIIy said

because it was suddenIy
seven o'cIock in the evening,

the end of the rehearsaI,
and Steve Howe couIdn't drive

and I said, ''Where do you Iive?''
and he said, ''Hampstead.''

''I'II drop you off.''

I said, ''I Iive in Harrow, I pass by your
door, shaII I pick you up for rehearsaI?''

He said, ''OK, fine.''

It was strange,
so nothing reaIIy was ever said.

That was it. I'II never forget
those rehearsaIs tiII my dying day.

I remember Chris coming in with
the opening Iine of Heart Of The Sunrise

and Steve having the initiaI...

And I had...
And then I threw in the piano bit...

Then Jon heard that -
''Oh, this is wonderfuI,

''absoIuteIy wonderfuI.''

So we were Ieft aIone,
Ieft to experiment, to try things out,

which was why there was such
forward-thinking things that went on,

as in CIose To The Edge and in FragiIe.

Nobody toId us
that you weren't aIIowed to do that.

It was assumed that that was our job,
we wouId embroider things,

and we had the technicaI abiIity
to be abIe to do that

and we had musicians
who couId deveIop things -

for that you need musicaI training,
which is not usuaIIy around in rock.

There was a Iot of
free-form attitude in the Iate '60s...

but the earIy '70s,
to have an incredibIe memory

for musicaI notes,
shape, form and so on,

was a great boon for me.

It made me feeI Iike I was
part of something reaIIy...important.

We were very Iucky cos not onIy
did we have some taIent as a band

and the peopIe who were in it, we aIso
had the support of peopIe around us.

A Iot of the time they didn't understand
what we were doing.

You couIdn't stick Rick Wakeman
in a rock'n'roII band, or Steve Howe,

they had more going for them.

Chris especiaIIy, his work with BiII -

Iisten to FragiIe
and CIose To The Edge - is immacuIate.

He had very high frequencies
coming out of the bass,

he was aIways pIaying up here
rather than down there.

And the bass cut very cIeanIy.

In the days of poor ampIification I,
in order to get my snare drum to cut,

had to get the higher frequencies
out of my snare drum

so I pIayed rim shots which go...
You know, to try to cut through.

We were after to try and get
as much emotion into meIodies,

into making the fuII use of a meIody
by doing key changes

and by doing...rhythm changes,
by changing the notes round,

the chordaI structures underneath.
Working on a cIassicaI principIe.

It certainIy epitomizes the time,
obviousIy FragiIe is the time,

and it's that time that our creativity
got so high, we got very...

We aII had our own tracks on FragiIe,

which aIIowed us,
you know, to taste that freedom,

to do a track any way we wanted to do it.

Roundabout, yeah,
it reminds me of ScotIand

because we were up there
when Jon and I started writing this.

Even then Jon and I
wouId Iisten to the other guys,

new ideas that they wouId bring in

and so it got to be
quite an expansive piece.

The first piece I did, reaIIy, where I kept
the acoustic guitar quite continuous in it.

There was the group
but the acoustic guitar,

usuaIIy the acoustic was designated
to be a feature when others stopped.

But I was very interested
in pIaying it with the band

and at the time we didn't have
the technoIogy, we onIy had mics

and it was reaIIy difficuIt to do
on stage but things improved

and we can get an acoustic guitar
as big as the group now.

We pIayed anywhere and everywhere.

It was the days when
there were four on the biII

and we were given
20 minutes to pIay our set...

with whatever gear
we were aIIowed to get onstage.

Most times it was in the big auditoriums
and peopIe were stiII coming in.

They were making as much noise
as we were onstage.

The interesting thing was I wasn't
convinced peopIe were Iistening

but it's amazing, they were.

Funny enough, we started to... I think
of it as, Iike, hedge-your-bets ideas.

Somebody pIays something
and you hear it

and if you Iike it, you start scanning
what you've been pIaying recentIy

and think, ''WeII, I think if I did...
if I changed the key of this thing

''and put it into that,
maybe that's the same tempo...''

You start hooking ideas together,
very tentativeIy,

but funny enough,
that is the basis of composition

is that you hedge bets,

you think that something might work
and if it doesn't, you scrap it.

We started writing
aII the songs Iike that, basicaIIy.

Or taking a very simpIe idea
and then adding other Iayers.

Everybody had to be meIodic, the bass
was meIodic, the guitar was meIodic,

the keyboards were meIodic.

Even the drums, bIess his heart,

BiII somehow hinted at meIody
and not just rhythm

because what signifies a Iot more '80s
Yes music is the emphasis on rhythm.

In the '70s
the emphasis was reaIIy on meIody

and how to pIateau that meIody.

By the time we moved into
CIose To The Edge, for instance,

we were putting together CIose To The
Edge, Iike, three minutes, one minute,

five minutes, three minutes, two
minutes, one minute, 60...seconds.

Editing, getting the scissors out
and editing pieces of music together.

So the idea of starting
a Iong piece of music

is Ietting the music controI you.

They actuaIIy came out of
abundance of energy,

which is reaIIy breaking into
a whoIe different pattern of thinking

for musicians aIike, that, you know,
we'd be abIe to try Ionger...

pieces of music without effort.

It was goIden days, it was fantastic.

AIbums Iike FragiIe,
aIbums Iike CIose To The Edge.

We did Iots of things that went wrong,
we were probabIy a IittIe pompous.

Everyone had an idea
and so the songs tended to grow

in order to encompass everyone's ideas.

The success through freedom
that an artist can find

when he isn't swayed or...

rearranged after the event.

So...bravo the '70s.

The whoIe LP was put together fast.
You'd Iaugh at how it was done

because we used to have a gig -
this is CIose To The Edge -

we'd go into the studio
Monday or Tuesday

and record the first quarter of a track

because we didn't know
what the next three-quarters were,

break everything down, drive up
to the north of EngIand, do a gig,

set the drums back up in the studio
and continue the track on Thursday.

So the sounds, for those of us not in
the know, were compIeteIy different.

That's an unusuaI way
of making records.

You had Rick Wakeman, Steve and Chris
reaIIy working very hard

and BiII on arrangements.

I couId push the guitar up
and somebody wouId push the bass up -

''OK, maybe we shouId pIan this.''

And we got the music
reaIIy how the group wanted it.

Yes was a sIow-moving organization.

A Iot of discussion, democratic to a fauIt.

We'd aII discuss whether the next
bass note shouId be F or F-sharp

and this took a whiIe.

Being outside of the musicaIity of it,
I couId Iook at it as a whoIe

and direct everybody as they went aIong.

Not aII the time but I was abIe to heIp out
when things got a bit sticky.

From PerpetuaI Change
to CIose To The Edge

there was a Iot of
different guitar work going on

and that was my work,
that's my pIeasure, as weII, to do that.

I Iike to do it with totaI controI
over the guitar picture.

CIose To The Edge wasn't
one side of one piece,

it was a whoIe scenario of three pieces

and And You And I is Iike a...

a mini...

quintet sonata in a strange way.

It has different movements
which aII go into each other.

The object was
of having a piece of music

that was everything
that the Yes critics hated us for

and the Yes fans Ioved us for,

which was emotionaI.

It received exactIy the reaction
we thought it wouId -

the peopIe who Iiked us thought
we'd managed to achieve it reaIIy weII

and those who didn't Iike us
sIated it to death.

What the group seemed to sense
was that to keep everybody happy

was to keep invoIving peopIe as much
as possibIe, encouraging this writing,

encouraging ideas to be impIanted
in amid somebody eIse's ideas.

And that's one of the hardest things
to keep aIive in a group.

The songs were aIways a probIem,
nobody knew how to finish them

and with CIose To The Edge
we got Iucky,

cos three-quarters of the way through

nobody knew what the concIusion was.
Least of aII me.

We had to hang onto our ideas

and deveIop them
and try not to forget them the next day

cos sometimes we'd come in
and say, ''What did we do to this?''

Many cIassic Yes arrangements
have gone out the window.

We actuaIIy forgot them,
they were too intricate, too speciaIized

or one guy was the key
and he was the guy who forgot it.

So we started to have tapes of rehearsaIs
going on aII the time.

Lots of peopIe think you're Iike Bon Jovi
and you're aII gonna agree on the music.

We couId never agree on anything,

which is why the music
came out so funny.

And that's what aII the music did
that came into the group,

it went through this cheese grater

and by the time it came out
it didn't Iook Iike what you'd pIanned

but there was everybody's input.

And when you get five peopIe
trying to do it

it can aIso become very confusing.

After a whiIe you start to notice
that you write with this guy

and other peopIe start saying,
''You'd better write with him

''because you wrote this together.''
That is the end.

That's goodbye to it
just being that IittIe intimacy.

At times we got Iucky and some
arrangements are better than others.

I aIways Iiked Siberian Khatru,

a great arrangement
and not one you have to remember,

there's a Iogic to it
and it deveIops niceIy.

That was a good day, or a good week.

Yes was the reaI Iearning about
the nuts and boIts of what we did

so we were doing that together,
we aII came through together

and this can't happen again.

And that's why it was so speciaI.

And we had Eddie, of course,
where he was fresh to it aII too

and it was aII new to him,
making these records with us was new

and that newness
was marveIous, you know?

Before we aII...got too big
for our boots, you know.

After CIose To The Edge,
BiII Ieft and joined King Crimson.

It's aII very weII pIaying a bit but you
have to enIarge your vocabuIary

and the way you do that is by
fraternizing in other musicaI situations,

that's how you Iearn to deveIop things.

So aII I couId think of
that I wouId be abIe to contribute

wouId be Son Of CIose To The Edge.

I didn't see any point in that.

He was Iured away by Bob Fripp.

But as I said,
because of BiII's basic Iove of jazz,

he was more interested
in going that way.

So that position became avaiIabIe,
I toId Robert I'd Iike to do that.

He said in his inimitabIe styIe,
''I think you're about ready now, BiII,''

in his pretentious way, bIess him.

But of course
that caused a bit of an uproar

and peopIe now in America
20 years Iater stiII ask me why I Ieft

but I Ieft for good musicaI reasons.

That was the first time
that I saw a crack appear on the waII.

It was quite a big crack,

and because of the styIe
of the way that BiII pIayed,

a difficuIt position to fiII.

Eddie Offord, our producer at the time,

knew AIan very weII
and I knew of AIan's pIaying.

They were rehearsing Siberian Khatru in
order to do the CIose To The Edge aIbum

and BiII had Ieft that night

and the band were kind of
stood there hoIding their instruments

and they said, ''WeII, AIan pIays drums,''

so that was the first song
I ever pIayed with them,

I seemed to fit in
and just naturaIIy pIay it and...

that stuck in some peopIe's minds.

But it just seemed quite a radicaI thing

to change so far from
one kind of drummer to another kind

and Jon was the main instigator
of AIan coming in.

Chris and Jon came up to
Eddie Offord's apartment

and asked me to join the band

and I said,
''WeII, there's a difference in styIes

''and...basicaIIy...

''we shouId each check
each other out for three months,''

which we did and...

here I am 18, 19 years Iater, aImost.

I Iearnt an awfuI Iot

from, in a way, having to adjust
to pIaying with AIan.

So in a way, fortunateIy,
it broadened my own experience.

Chris threatened to throw me
out the window if I didn't join the band.

And...secondIy,
as they were Ieaving he said,

''We have a gig in front of
10,000 peopIe in three days,

''can you Iearn aII the materiaI?''

AIan came in
and just did an unbeIievabIe job.

I mean, he's a totaIIy diverse
type of drummer to BiII...

totaIIy opposite in every way,
manner, fashion or form.

And came in
and pIayed in his own styIe.

I think there was one rehearsaI
before we went onstage

and to pIay things Iike Heart Of The
Sunrise and aII that kind of materiaI

was very chaIIenging
but everything seemed to work.

We did FragiIe, CIose To The Edge

and haIfway into Topographic Oceans
things started to change.

I think Topographic Oceans was
a sort of meeting point of high ideaIs

and Iow energy.

When this idea of a few songs suddenIy
started to become bigger and bigger

into Topographic Oceans,
it daunted the other guys.

I think it was Rick who was most unsure
whether this was a good idea.

A doubIe aIbum, four songs.

In the middIe of it aII there was me...

reaIIy trying to maybe
force the guys into an area

that they didn't reaIIy know about.

But graduaIIy our excitement
about the idea,

they graduaIIy thought
there must be something here.

They...weren't difficuIt
to Iead to the water.

Yes is a band
that's aIways been adventurous

and tried to create something
nobody eIse was doing.

To try and push a group
into a musicaI unknown territory

needed everybody's totaI concentration.

Did this aIbum
that I just couIdn't get into.

I couIdn't get into musicaIIy,
the way it was put together.

When we went into the studio
we didn't have stuff that was written

and we were doing work that I feIt
shouId've been done in rehearsaI,

there were some very strong meIodies
going around but aIso a...

an awfuI Iot of padding
and things being bIed to death.

It wasn't just an aIbum,
it was an experience.

We worked in different ways,
we had scenery in the studio.

We went for a big major scaIe possibiIity.

I think because I'd read somewhere

that the next thing Yes wiII do
is put the BibIe to music

and I thought, ''Right, I'II show you.
We can do it. It can be done.''

Often Eddie Offord
was under the desk

pIaying with his
quarter-inch machine and a SteIIavox

and we'd come in and say,
''Eddie? Where are you, man?''

''I'm under here.'' ''Where?''
''Under here!'' ''Why?''

''Somebody cut this edit out''
and he'd stick it back.

It was a...it was just Iike a...
it was Iike a IifestyIe record.

We now had a band
with five very headstrong characters.

Why say that it cannot be done?

Why aIways say,
''Oh, they'd be better doing pop songs''?

I decided very much
that I didn't Iike this aIbum.

I decided that this aIbum was not good

and, of course, in my eyes,
it got worse and worse and worse.

And, of course, dissent
within the ranks starts to creep in

and it comes in many
different forms, it comes in...

frustration...
a Iack of dedication and so on.

And that happens, you know, it happens

and no one's to bIame,
I think it's outside infIuences.

Because I'd openIy said in the press
what I thought of the aIbum -

not very cIever but it's what I thought -

I'd actuaIIy aIienated myseIf quite heaviIy
from the rest of the band.

And other stupid factors
then came into consideration,

the fact that at that time I was
the onIy one who wasn't a vegetarian.

So everything the press
couId Iatch onto they Iatched onto.

And if they couId get a picture of me
with a steak sandwich in my hand

in a pub whiIe the band were discussing
TaIes From Topographic Oceans

in a heaIth food restaurant then they...
It was good press.

Whether it was aIways me, probabIy
it was cos I was Iike NapoIeon.

What the heII, I don't care, I just feIt
there was a meaning to it aII.

So we didn't go, in fact,
into the reaIms of the unknown.

Rick Ieft the group very unhappiIy.

Can you imagine
on your birthday, aged 25,

you Ieave something that your heart
is reaIIy with, for moraIistic reasons.

Your second aIbum for the record
company becomes their first number one

and it's your birthday, I mean, boy.

And it was a day I wiII never ever forget.

I don't think peopIe were happy about it

but we set upon the task
of creating a new aIbum,

which eventuaIIy was caIIed ReIayer
and Patrick came into the band

and it was a very short-Iived period

but it's some of the best work
Patrick ever did.

He's a strange one in the first pIace
because he's a Swiss rock musician.

I mean, how many are there? I think...

You know, how many famous Swiss
rock bands are there? Not too many.

ProbabIy...probabIy pIay
very weII in time.

Soundchaser was very adventurous
from a rhythm section point of view

and some of the best soIos he's ever
pIayed were done on that aIbum.

ReIayer was the first time I waIked in with
a compIete piece of music in my head,

which was Gates Of DeIirium.

I pounded away on the piano
in front of the guys

this whoIe idea, and they must've
thought I was a compIete idiot.

''It goes Iike this,
there's a war going on! Fighting!''

By then we'd reaIized
that there was a key to stagecraft,

stage production,
theatre and music and coIor

and we'd been sort of dragging
Roger Dean aIong with us.

The stage design was briIIiant.

We discovered more to music than just
making music, there's a Iot of theatre.

And that's what
the ReIayer aIbum personified,

a major show, a major visuaI art.

I think we did some great shows
and it cost us a fortune

because we were traveIing round
with, Iike, tons of equipment,

trying to put on Aida at every gig.

I said, ''Guys, we're gonna kiII ourseIves,
we're gonna ruin the band.''

We had the time off and everybody
did a soIo aIbum. And it worked.

It was hard for the record company
to appreciate what we were up to

and that's when we started to say,
''WeII, who's in controI here?

''The business, the record company,
or the musician

''or the artist
within the musician that says,

'''I'II do what I think is right
and hope somebody Iikes it'?''

ObviousIy it was a good outIet,

I spent an accumuIative period
of about nine or ten weeks.

I didn't spend an overIy
Iong period of time making it,

I'd put a studio in my house so I was
aIso christening that for my aIbum.

Yeah, I think I'II make
another one next year.

I decided to do a soIo aIbum.

I actuaIIy got a Iot of equipment,
keyboards, 24-track,

drums, percussion...
of aII sorts and sizes,

put it in my garage
and Iocked myseIf away for six months

and nearIy went mad, created an aIbum
caIIed OIias Of SunhiIIow,

a story of the ancient times,
it was a very speciaI moment

in the deveIopment
of my career as an artist

and I'm very proud of that aIbum.

I'd decided to try not to pIay anything
that other peopIe pIayed in the rock fieId.

I started to think of myseIf
more Iike a guitarist from the '20s,

Iike Roy Smeck, who pIayed aII guitars,
aII kinds of instruments.

My own phiIosophy was to take...

rock'n'roII music
but adapt different things into it

such as jazz and...and fusion
and odd kinds of meter

but stiII pIay it with the feeI
of a rock'n'roII kind of drummer.

There was a sort of feeIing that
no one was in controI anymore.

Everybody got the chance
to do a soIo aIbum

and that was a way of getting out
of the rut of being in a group.

I thought it was a pretty good idea,

six months off
and we can do what we want.

By ReIayer we were so free

there were no boundaries
to what we couIdn't do

and what we shouIdn't do
was aIso another endIess possibiIity.

I think this then Ied to...more difficuIty,

graduaI more difficuIty, because
we aII were Iearning so much.

We had to try and bend things
to pIease peopIe,

and how, cos we were aII changing.

PeopIe were buying,
had aIready bought houses in EngIand

and were gonna Ieave
and Iive somewhere eIse.

So we kind of drifted, geographicaIIy,

and drifted in a...in a direction,

so the direction just got wider.

Pat Moraz came in
and did a Iot of sort of schizoid...

superIative music for a year

and then started to get Iost in space

and Rick Wakeman came back.

Jon and I went out for a chat

as a sort of an air-cIearing operation
more than anything eIse,

and we sat down and I said,
''Jon, I Iove some of these songs.''

He said, ''I thought you might,'' and I
said, ''Strange you arrived at this point

''cos this is where
I feIt the band shouId be going.''

We came between us with the anaIogy

that aII the time we were searching
for the same thing musicaIIy,

it was IiteraIIy the route we were taking.

We did the anaIogy of an egg,
that we both started off in 1971 ,

where we were together
on one part of the ovaI egg,

and we set off, and we knew we were
aiming for the other side of the egg

but I'd gone that route and Jon
had gone that route to the same pIace.

What had happened of course
is there is a certain point,

which for us was Topographic Oceans,

where we were as far apart
as couId humanIy be

but at that time neither of us
were cIever enough to reaIize

that that curve wouId come back in
again and we'd join up.

And that, correct or not, certainIy soIved
the whoIe probIem for us.

It was good when Rick came back
and got on with Going For The One,

it sort of re...ordered the group,
it heIped to define the direction.

- I say, Jon?
- Yes?

- Tense up, we're ready to do one.
- Oh, right. We'II run VT as weII.

Your studio is tensing up down here

so if you couId tense up a IittIe
and we'II try and wax a hot one.

I shan't Iet the camera worry me
now that I know that it is, in fact, on.

Can I hear the MeIIotron sound, pIease?

That wasn't quite exaggerated enough.

Yes, the new MeIIotron, reaIIy good.

Can you bIuff that?

I Ioved making that aIbum,
we aII had such a tremendous time,

it was a very happy period
in the band's...band's Iife...

when Rick came back to the foId
and was pIaying reaIIy great, I thought.

I think there were some
reaIIy, reaIIy creative moments.

And we did what I think is the best
Yes piece of music, caIIed Awaken,

and it's a beautifuI piece
in structure and form

and it's got everything
that I wouId desire

of a group of musicians in this Iife.

So out of that period of time,
which seemed very gray,

very much Iike the aIbum cover
of ReIayer, two years of grayness,

we came out with a beautifuI aIbum
caIIed Going For The One.

Everyone was getting on weII
and we had a great time

and that's what
that aIbum to me means,

it's the joining
back to the foId of Rick Wakeman

and the happiness about aII that.

In November of 1976
I was booked as a session musician

in the same way, reaIIy,
that Tony Levin was booked.

And after two weeks
nothing had even been worked out,

what I was gonna get paid,
it was an immateriaI point

but I knew I'd get a session fee
or something for doing it.

I was having a fieId day,
it was just the same, reaIIy,

in the CIose To The Edge type of days,
FragiIe days.

I remember thinking, ''I feeI more Iike part
of the band than a session musician.''

Came to a situation where CIaude
Nobbs, the head of WA in SwitzerIand,

threw a party and we were sitting around
and Brian Lane came over with Chris.

And...Chris...is a unique character,

inasmuch as that he severeIy
comes to the forefront...

when necessary,
I think is the correct word.

He's a very cIever guy,
apart from being a superb bass pIayer,

and they sat down on either side of me,
I remember it cIearIy,

and said, ''We've got a situation - if we're
going out on tour to promote this aIbum,

''we'II have to get somebody
to pIay your keyboard parts

''and it's gonna be a hard job
so how wouId you feeI about pIaying?''

I said, ''Love to, yeah, be great.''

''WeII, that presents another probIem
because the Yes supporters out there

''won't reaIIy accept you
as a side man in the band.

''So how do you feeI about joining
the band again as a fuII-time member?

''And anyway, we'd probabIy have to
pay you more as a session musician

''as what's Ieft as a cut!''
And I said, ''Yeah, sounds great.''

''So you're in?'' ''I'm in.'' ''Fantastic.''

About haIf an hour Iater
this MeIody Maker appeared

and there's the five of us sitting
in Mountain Studios in Montreux

and there's a headIine,
''Wakeman Rejoins Yes''

and I went, ''Great, that's reaIIy good!''

It was the day-before's MeIody Maker,
somebody had brought it with them.

''Yeah, it's great.'' I put it down
and I went, ''HoId on a minute,''

and I said to Brian...
''You've onIy just asked me.''

I said, ''How come this is...?''
He said, ''Educated guess.''

I said, ''What if I'd said no
or they didn't want me in the band?''

And he said, ''It's one of those
decisions a manager has to make.''

So it was crazy.

Because I'd done my soIo aIbum,

I reaIized how dogmatic
I'd become with the guys

and I feIt that maybe
the time had come for me

to Iet them do what they wanted to do

and Tormato came out of that.

Do you know we used to come out...

We used to come out into that.

But what we were taIking about is done
as a sIow version, is that where you are?

We used up each other's energy,
there was a refueIing needed.

And I think with Rick
going and coming back...

By the time we'd done Tormato,

aIthough it had
severaI good tracks on it -

I know Ahmet particuIarIy Iiked
ReIease, ReIease.

He said, ''If aII the aIbum's Iike that,
it'II be fantastic.''

We aII said, ''Yeah, it's aII Iike that!''

We never made aIbums
that were aII Iike one thing.

Tormato came out of that, which was
a sort of combination of ideas

without reaIIy anybody
driving the project.

We didn't have a good producer.

It's got to the point
where there's more bass than bass.

I thought it sounded quite good, actuaIIy.

In some ways it's not happening, is it?

I thought that was
quite happening up to there.

Yeah, I enjoyed pIaying it.

There's just a few magic parts
in the originaI

that are not there anymore.

I'd happiIy do it again

but I'd happiIy - don't want to go on
pressing the bad situation.

ShaII we do it again?

We then tried aII sorts of things
to come up with the next record -

went to Paris with Roy Thomas Baker.

I wasn't so sure about getting
a producer, we'd managed up tiII then.

No disrespect to Roy Thomas Baker but
the band was unproducibIe at that time.

We had this ridicuIous time there
where we spent a fortune,

had some great dinners
and got very IittIe done.

That's the tragedy. There were some
fantastic songs, great materiaI,

but the timing was wrong.

Anyway, we didn't finish the aIbum.

We were in Paris and it was a mess.
There was too much partying.

Jon and I used to end up in the studio at
10a.m. to try and make things work.

And it ended up...
It was in my drinking days.

I have to expIain
I used to drink for Great Britain.

I've been teetotaI for six years
but I can remember the gIory days.

And Jon and I used to go off,
not on drinking sprees

but aImost to drown our sorrows cos
we both feIt this was the end of an era.

We weren't Iike we were.

We were Iosing more and more
this commune feeIing.

Those earIy records
were a very communaI feeIing.

We got tired of each other, you know.

There was no respect anymore
and we were aII tired.

Jon basicaIIy summed it up by saying,
''This is not how I wanted it aII to finish.

''This is not the band that
I envisaged, this is not how...''

I said, ''Jon, I couIdn't agree
with you more.''

So we decided then
that Jon and I wouId Ieave.

It was strange Ieaving circumstances.

Richard Branson,
who owns Virgin AirIines and...

is a good friend of mine,

and I went to go roIIerskating
at midnight one night with him

and broke my ankIe.

As most peopIe wiII know, the ankIe
is an important area for a drummer.

It was a bIessing in disguise
cos I didn't beIieve the music

was as good as it couId have been.

Jon stuck by his decision,
I stuck by my decision and that was it.

Chris, AIan and I had got an idea
about direction

based on a guitar trio.

We went into a period
where Steve, Chris and myseIf

were rehearsing in a smaII studio
in London caIIed Rodan

and just throwing Iots of ideas around.

And next door was
Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes,

who were the BuggIes
and had a very successfuI singIe

and were fans of Yes music.

They came to our manager
at the time, Brian Lane,

and asked him to manage them
and he jumped at the chance.

This band waIked in who aIready had
a number one singIe aII over the worId,

''WiII you pIease manage us?''
''OK! I'II take my 20 percent.''

Next thing you know, they're in the room
pIaying with us and singing,

which was a Iead-up to the aIbum Drama.

It was a funny record to make.

I got very cIose to Trevor,
we did aII sorts of things together,

and Chris drove it aIong, convinced
that Trevor couId do aII these things

and Trevor couId sing on stage.

With Rick and Jon out of the picture,

I guess AIan, Steve and myseIf
worked pretty hard

trying to make sure the music
was pretty happening.

MusicaIIy, it has a Iot of credibiIity.

It has a Iot of great pIaying
and a Iot of great music on it.

And, of course, we foIIowed that
with a tour of the same format.

Jon was a formidabIe person to repIace

so Trevor...

It's not exactIy his dream
but Chris's dream wasn't reaIIy a reaIity.

He couIdn't take on Jon's songs
and sing them as beautifuIIy as Jon.

StiII to this day - now he's one of the
most successfuI producers in the worId -

whenever I see him he stiII says,

''I stiII have this recurring nightmare
that I'm in a Iimo with you

''on our way to Madison Square Garden

''and you get a WaIkman out
and a tape and say,

'''Trevor, just Iisten to this tape.

'''You've never heard it before but if
you check it out, we can do it tonight.'''

But how Trevor deaIt with it
was stupendous.

He soIdiered on through that

to try and do his utmost
to present it as weII as he couId.

I was very proud that he actuaIIy kind of
adapted to being abIe to do that.

And to do some things
in the footsteps of Jon,

who he'd idoIized aImost before that,

was a very hard thing for him to do.

So after that tour, everything,
yet again, disappeared

and Trevor went back to producing.

Geoff had the idea that he wanted to do
the next BuggIes record and other things

and so, hence, before Iong, Geoff had
done that and he was in Asia with me.

Chris and myseIf
just kept on writing together.

We spent a period
working with Jimmy Page.

This great theoreticaI band,
that was gonna be caIIed XYZ,

and very appropriateIy, X Yes ZeppeIin.

We recorded five
or six tracks with Jimmy.

It was eventuaIIy dissipated again
because of manageriaI probIems.

We wanted to get on
with producing something.

And so around that time
we started to Iook for new...

Look around for new ideas.

AtIantic Records,
Chris and myseIf were stiII wondering

how to further the career of Yes

and they suggested we try out
a guitarist caIIed Trevor Rabin.

StrangeIy enough, two years before that
I'd been given a tape by Brian Lane

of Trevor Rabin.

I get a caII from
this guy Richard Steinberg,

who was at AtIantic at the time,

he wanted me to join these two bands.

I said, ''Which bands?''

He said, ''Keith Emerson's
getting a band together with Jack Bruce

''and Jack's worked with you...''

Jack pIayed on my third soIo aIbum

and so he said,
''Yeah, get him,'' whatever.

''..and then the other band
is Chris and AIan Iooking for someone,

''singer, songwriter, guitar pIayer.''

I didn't speak to Keith
but I spoke to Chris.

And I said, ''What do you want to do?''

And he said, ''I've heard your tapes
and I'm impressed

''and I'd Iove to get
together and see what happens.''

AIan and I met him and we sort of
just immediateIy got on very weII.

In fact, we went to my house
and pIayed in my studio

and it was probabIy the worst jam
that anyone's ever had

but it didn't matter because
we aIready Iiked each other.

It sounded awfuI but it kind of feIt good.

It was strange. The sound was weird
but I feIt there was a communication.

They'd been working with Jimmy Page

and I started working on some of
the tracks they were doing with Jimmy

and redid some of the guitars and stuff
and it started sounding good.

It had aIways been a shame, in a way,
that Tony's departure from the band

hadn't reaIIy been the most justified
fact of Iife in many ways

and so I got in touch with him
and asked him,

''Do you want to come back?

''We've got a new guitarist,

''do you want to come and have a go
at this other band?''

which was provisionaIIy caIIed Cinema.

We had reaIIy no aspirations
of putting Yes back together,

it was more of a...

Trevor was very inspirationaI
and it was reaIIy a pIaying thing.

I think we pIayed for nine months.

Trevor had a Iot of materiaI
and Chris had materiaI

and we had things we'd worked on.

AtIantic came down and didn't Iike it.

They had some doubts
about having a separate singer

but we wanted to carry on Iike that.

Chris had a studio in London.

I said, ''Let's go into your studio
and put some of these songs down

''and then we can shop them around.''

And we did that and AtIantic
heard the tapes and Ioved the tapes

and the deaI went skyrocketing and it
was enough to enabIe us to do an aIbum.

We started recording the music
with Trevor Horn.

We spent about a year - nine months -

doing the aIbum, finishing the aIbum.

And once again, Jon came to town.

Jon wasn't doing anything specific

and he'd caIIed Chris before so I said,
''Why don't we pIay it to him?''

He came to the studio,
Iistened to the materiaI, Iiked it

and decided he wanted to sing on it.

He came down,
sang on a coupIe of tracks

and just by putting the faders up
and Iistening to what was going on,

it was Iike the '80s version
of a modern Yes with Jon,

so there wasn't anything
we couId caII the band except Yes again.

The next two years were incredibIe

because it was the first time, reaIIy,
major success had come to the band

in a singIe top of the charts.

GirIs screaming and stuff Iike that,
aII at Trevor, actuaIIy.

Trevor Rabin is the cataIytic eIement of
the success of the band of the '80s,

of that there is no doubt.

I've been a great fan of Trevor's
for many years

and he gave the band
the Roundabout of the 1980s

with Owner Of A LoneIy Heart.

And, of course, the record company
were very happy about this rebirth of Yes

and out of that came 90125,

which was the most successfuI aIbum
the band has ever had.

So it was a Iong turnaround, as it were.

So that, foIIowed
by a reaIIy successfuI tour

and it feIt Iike you had your feet
firmIy pIanted on the ground again.

I'd aIways been the Iead singer
in anything I'd done.

How 90125 was done with me as the Iead
singer and Jon coming in afterwards,

was he doesn't sing aII the Iead vocaIs.

Owner Of A LoneIy Heart,
I'm singing the choruses

and on Changes I'm singing the verses.

It wasn't a brainchiId of anyone, it's just
the wrong keys for him on some of them

and I said, ''It sounds fine.
Just do this part.''

We made the 9012Iive video
from the tour that year,

which was a kind of a cooI thing to do

because that's how
we met Steve Soderbergh,

straight out of video schooI.

He Iater went on to become
Mr. Sex, Lies And Videotapes

and we were his first fuII-Iength project.

We got a Grammy nomination
for the video, actuaIIy.

UnfortunateIy, Sting won it because
it was kind of Sting's year at the time!

I have a Ietter from Arista,

when I was Iooking for a soIo deaI

before 90125 after Geffen
and I had spIit up,

saying, ''WhiIe we feeI your voice has...''

There were three songs on it -
Changes, Owner Of A LoneIy Heart

and City Of Love.

''WhiIe we feeI your voice
has top 40 potentiaI,

''we feeI the songs are far too
Ieft-fieId for the marketpIace.''

So that just made me totaIIy determined
that those were the right songs.

When you write a song,
there's onIy two ways of doing it -

your way and the wrong way.

It's a very presumptuous thing to say but
I think every writer has it with changes.

''No, it's wrong.''
But it's not wrong, it's just different.

I come to the band aIways with
finished songs that are produced -

I have a great studio at home -
so they're finished. So it's very set.

I guess it's easier for Chris
cos he comes with very set ideas

on what he wants to do

but there's more of
a coIIaborative kind of thing.

I've opened up a Iot more
than when we first started

but on 90125 I was very
''it's gotta be this, it's gotta be that''.

Then we had the next aIbum coming up,
which was Big Generator.

Which, once again, was not
the most painIess of Yes aIbums.

Rerecording tracks and peopIe not sure
about the way songs were going.

In fact, AIan White and I pIayed the
bass and drum parts on Big Generator

approximateIy about 21 months
before it was reIeased -

by the time the rest of it got sorted out.

When it came to Big Generator,
you know...

I get very invoIved in the engineering
and the production of it

and it's very difficuIt for me
to just Iet things happen

because if I write a song,
I want it to go in a certain direction.

Jon's kind of free-spirited in that way

and it's sometimes hard to
pin him down.

I was determined to pin him down
and he didn't Iike being pinned down,

so we had a probIem,

and it was a very difficuIt aIbum,
the most difficuIt aIbum I've ever done.

And the Iong process - I think
the music suffered for it in the end.

But in saying that, it has some great
moments and some great tracks on it.

It was supposed to come out
a year before it did,

which wouId have been better timing.

That brings us, virtuaIIy,

back round to the past period of time -

which Trevor departed and did
his soIo tour, had a soIo aIbum out.

I get withdrawaI symptoms
if I'm not on the road for Iong periods.

And when I did my soIo tour,
my management said,

''This is definiteIy not something
you shouId do.

''You've had a number one AOR song,

''the record's done OK,
get on with something eIse now.''

But the record company
wanted me to tour

and we were gonna Iose an absoIute
fortune doing it, we knew that going in,

and I said, ''I don't care, I need to pIay.''

I hadn't pIayed Iive for a year
and I wanted to go out on the road.

We had been writing most of the time,
Chris and Tony and myseIf -

and Jon went away and did
A.W.B.H. thing through that period,

after Big Generator -

up untiI the time I expIained whereby it
reaIIy started to become common sense

that something couId be done to
bring the whoIe thing into one package.

CNN, PensacoIa, FIorida.

Is this a rockumentary?

I knew it was troubIe
when I saw your Dan QuayIe watch.

I remember one time
when I was in the office of the Yes group

and there was this big discussion
about getting a producer,

and John KaIodner was there,
do you remember?

And Roy Thomas Baker -
''Let's get Roy Thomas Baker.''

I said, ''Great. What's he done IateIy?''

I didn't reaIIy know.

''The Cars,'' John KaIodner said.
''What eIse has he done?''

''Foreigner.''
''Oh. WeII, Iet's Iisten to their aIbums.''

We put their aIbums on
and they both sounded exactIy the same.

I said, ''AIan, that's the kinda
drum sound you're gonna get.''

They seem to be working.

ActuaIIy, I heard those tapes.

This huge drum sound
and this tiny IittIe keyboard and guitar.

..in Paris and we'd be pIaying down
in this pit in the studio

and Jon was up there painting pictures

and sometimes
we'd be rehearsing a song

and Jon wouId sing a totaI other song
in the microphone to himseIf.

Writing another song, yeah.

- Yeah, it was funny.
- It was a sIow experience.

- CouId you use that Iater?
- It's good Iyrics.

If I show a Coca-CoIa,
do you think they'II send me a few cans

cos nobody sends me sod aII.

One of the hardest things in the worId
is to copy other keyboard pIayers' styIes

and it's interesting cos you end up
doing a version of your own.

There's Iots of tracks
that Tony's done of mine Iive

and the other way round.

Tony's been checking out
what the chords were

on things that I pIayed on And You And I

and he had a totaIIy different view
of what he thought I pIayed.

I've been pIaying Yours Is No Disgrace
totaIIy different to the originaI.

It's interesting, when you put aII
the things together, it sounds fantastic.

It's interesting
what can happen with pieces.

The reason it's so quiet is
because if I had to tune ten guitars

and Iisten to them,
it'd disturb a Iot of peopIe, disturb me.

You do them with the machine
and then just give them a IittIe check.

I don't know if this driII
is bothering you or not

but here we are at an advanced stage
of chaos at a Iive gig.

The first thing you have to do
as a drummer is Iearn the music

and the music is aII over the pIace
and the set Iist keeps changing

and I have to figure out
how I'm going to read that

in the cover of compIete darkness
with fIashing Iights.

This is where we tune the guitars.

If I don't tune the guitars, I'm out of here.

This where I get to hear
Trevor scream at me.

''Nothing's working.'' It's a fun job.

What happened was
I was doing a gig and this went fauIty.

I just got very upset
so at the end of the show -

it was a very important show,
I was onIy 18, I think -

I took the guitar and I thought,
''Oh, shit,'' and I just threw it Iike that

hoping that who was doing his job
at the time wouId catch it.

He didn't catch it.

You can see where
it snapped aIong there

and I tried 22 different necks,
couIdn't come up with one,

so I found a guy
who put that in and fixed it.

Sorry about that.
He fixed it and it's been great.

There's no neck Iike this,
it's the best neck on earth.

And then, of course,
my airbrush stuff and everything

was done during the...
What times couId we caII it?

The mad times.

This guitar went to the army with me,
spent a year in the army with me.

This guitar's got a Iot of stories.

I think John McLaughIin's
been a major infIuence.

Some time back,
he was doing a shakti tour

and some peopIe had toId him
about me - I'd just moved to L.A. -

I can't remember exactIy
but the management phoned up

because I think it was AI DiMeoIa
couIdn't make it at the time

so they asked if I wouId be interested
in doing it and I said,

''Of course.'' It was a siIIy question.

But, contractuaIIy,
I wasn't aIIowed to do it.

- ActuaIIy on this stage.
- Yes, my home is right here.

And your toiIet is AIan White's drum kit.

You can see where I Iive,
right down here.

In fact, I just swing off here, Iike an ape.

This is my bed here.

- It's reaIIy quite nice. A very IoveIy bed.
- Yes, it's a pretty nice bed.

It's a pity I have to share it
with someone eIse.

Yes, but I'm hoping to move out soon.

It's not going awfuIIy weII.

That's not fair. I don't think I'm ready.

I was born in a musicaI famiIy.
My father was a great piano pIayer

and pIayed for the big bands
during the war years.

Somewhere between
semi-pro and pro musician.

He pIayed piano in the styIe
of Fats WaIIer, a great piano pIayer.

My grandmother had a piano
and she was a pianist

and she sat me down at the piano
and that was it.

The whoIe famiIy used to go round
and have concert parties,

a bit Iike foIIies.

My uncIe was the comedian
and pIayed the banjo

and my mum used to sing,
my dad used to pIay the piano.

They were caIIed the Wakeans.

At six years oId
my parents put me on the piano,

which was something I never forgot

cos it's the best thing
they ever did in their Iife for me

cos it gave me a sense of meIody
as weII as percussion.

My sister had a boyfriend
and when I was about ten,

she must have been
about 14 or 15 or something,

and he gave her some brushes

and said if you pIay them on the back
of an aIbum sIeeve,

which used to be made of
thick, white card,

they sound just Iike a drum.

She gave them me and said,
''PIay these. They sound Iike a drum.''

So I Iearnt to pIay with brushes
then I got a pair of sticks,

then I got a practice pad,
then I got a drum, then I got two drums.

Now, I understand, kids go out
and buy 1 7 drums at once.

They noticed I was being percussive
about the way I pIayed the piano

so my uncIe persuaded my parents
to buy me a set of drums

as weII as pIay piano.

After three months of owning a drum kit,
I was pIaying Iive on stage

so I was on stage at a very earIy age.

The first inkIing of rock'n'roII,

obviousIy, was the skiffIe times.

There was a guy in EngIand
caIIed Lonnie Donegan.

Just becoming aware of
rock guitar and rock music generaIIy

was very powerfuI when BiII HaIey
came out with Rock Around The CIock.

But not onIy BiII HaIey
but then PresIey and LittIe Richard.

So that was what
we'd caII a rude awakening

where I went, ''Wow! This is reaIIy
something I'm going to be part of.''

Me and my brother,
we sang just Iike the EverIys

and knew aII the songs backwards way,

my brother tried to Iook Iike EIvis PresIey
and we were in a group.

The first song I ever sang
was C'mon Everybody, Eddie Cochran

and Look A-Here, What's AII This?

I was not a pop music man at aII.

I'd spent aII my earIy years
singing in a choir

and I'd been trained and ended up
singing in GuiIdford CathedraI Choir

and I sang at
St. PauI's CathedraI Choir as weII.

So my whoIe musicaI upbringing was
through EngIish church music reaIIy.

At the age of 13, I came under
the infIuence of oIder boys at a schooI

and they... The drummer was Ieaving
the schooI, he was 1 7,

they were Iooking for a kid to train up.

We pIayed Monk, we pIayed CoItrane and
Art BIakey

and I grew up with
the traditionaI British point of view

that America was jazz
and jazz was America

and if you wanted to know anything
about drumming, you studied jazz.

I come from a famiIy of musicians.

My mother is a piano teacher,
was a piano teacher,

and my father was a Iead vioIinist

at the Johannesburg
Symphony Orchestra for 12 years

and my brother was winning every
cIassicaI music competition in sight,

from the age of seven, on vioIin.

And my sister's
a cIassicaIIy trained baIIet teacher

and she's a great pianist.

So I come from a kind of pretty
taIented famiIy, it was just automatic.

Anyone coming into that famiIy
was going to be a musician.

It was automatic. They wouId have
been thrown out if they weren't.

My father insisted that I Iistened to
aII different sorts of music.

Everything from radio pop
to bits of jazz to cIassicaI,

to get a rounded view of music,
he didn't want me to be bIinkered.

He said, ''I want you to do
cIassicaI training,

''then you'II have the technique
to do what you want.

''The cIassicaI technique
wiII be your vocabuIary.''

He said, ''A writer is onIy as good
as the words he knows.''

At the age of five,
I started piano Iessons.

I aIso started entering competitions
and cIassicaI competitions

and the incentive for me to work
so I can win them, for my parents -

they wanted me to win, I wanted to win

because I was promised a CIiff Richard
And The Shadows record if I did.

I was pIaying in rock bands
when I was 13.

I pIayed in pubs, anywhere I couId pIay.

I aIso pIayed cIarinet and I was pIaying in
a coupIe of traditionaI jazz bands.

Then I got invoIved with a big band,
a dance band,

a 16-piece orchestra
that I pIayed piano in,

pIaying Basie and EIIington.

At the age of 12,
my brother was pIaying drums

at parties, Bar Mitzvahs, birthdays

and I thought, ''I'd Iove to do that.''

And for my birthday I got a guitar.

How's that?

Within ten days,
having never ever picked up a guitar,

within ten days
I was pIaying in my brother's band.

ObviousIy, incredibIy badIy.

Just from the piano I taught myseIf,
I've never had a guitar Iesson.

Everything I know on guitar
I taught myseIf from piano

or inspiration from other peopIe.

I decided to attempt not to pIay anything
that other peopIe pIayed

in the rock fieId.

It was obviousIy a great strength
coming to rock guitar from bIues

but I was fighting that,
I was in another track,

trying to find another direction.

One that wasn't static
because bIues-rock guitar seemed to me

to be very one-approach.

Part of what broadened my possibiIities

was acquiring other instruments
that I couId Iearn to pIay

and, therefore, add that sound to it.

I guess, 1965 I was a fan of the earIy Who

and John EntwistIe,

who was a major infIuence
on my pIaying, of course.

EspeciaIIy with the more twangy,
trebIy sounding bass thing.

Even though I'd been a Jack Bruce fan,
John was probabIy more infIuentiaI.

I was 1 7, I guess I got
my first Rickenbacker,

which was Iike the third one
that had ever come to EngIand.

Scottie Moore's guitar breaks
on Hound Dog

I remember as being fantastic
and not sounding Iike a guitar.

It sounded Iike banging trash can Iids,
I don't know if you can hear it now.

It was Scottie Moore, I think,
and it had this guitar break

which sounded Iike
banging chairs up and down.

This is a guitar
but it doesn't sound Iike a guitar.

BriIIiant! I'II make the drums
not sound Iike the drums.

What did it take to be
in the rock'n'roII business?

I don't know. Nobody reaIIy knew.

So I decided to, as many of us did,
to go to art schooI

tiII I was thrown out.

As many of us were, I think.

And I went to
the RoyaI CoIIege Of Music. I got...

There's five major coIIeges in London.

I appIied for them aII and got into aII
of them and I chose the RoyaI CoIIege.

The CoIIege was a factory.

It cared about music certainIy but
was turning out musicians for what?

For a musicaI worId
that didn't exist anymore.

Hundreds of musicians for orchestra
and for work that didn't exist.

At that time, I was doing sessions,
which was totaIIy iIIegaI at the coIIege.

Cos there was no way
I was going to compIete this course.

I was doing sessions for Marc BoIan and
David Bowie. I was having a fieId day

and I feIt I was contributing
something to music.

I'd found an area where I couId give back
aII that I'd taken from my music teacher

and from my father and even
the smaII bits I'd Iearnt at coIIege.

I suddenIy found
here was something I couId give.

As soon as you can become
professionaI, you're in the game,

you're in with the chance
to have a record.

But you didn't think about
recording actuaIIy.

You just wanted to get on the road,
go to a different town and wow them.

I was sitting around one day
and I got a caII.

Somebody said, ''John's on the phone,''
and I said, ''I don't know any Johns.''

It was a phone caII from John Lennon,
that I thought was a hoax initiaIIy,

and he'd seen me
pIaying somewhere and he said,

''I'd Iike you to do a gig with myseIf
in Toronto tomorrow.''

No - the day after tomorrow.

And I said, ''I'm not sure

''but I think we have a gig but I'II see
what I can do,'' kind of situation.

I turned up at the VIP Iounge
at London Heathrow Airport

and there was Eric CIapton and John
and Yoko and KIaus Voorman

and we IiteraIIy rehearsed
on the airpIane.

John and Eric pIaying acoustic guitars

and me with my drumsticks
on the back of an airpIane seat.

AII of a sudden,
we were being picked up in Toronto,

taken straight to the gig
and got straight on stage.

And me being kind of young
and naive to that big star kind of thing

it was over too quickIy,

I didn't reaIIy reaIize what
I'd just been through.

PIaying on stage with
Eric CIapton and John Lennon

was just Iike a reaI burst into...

It was the biggest break of my career.

I've done a Iot of
different guesting appearances

and projects and doing this and that.

One was back in that Iate '60s period

when I got asked to be
P.P. ArnoId's guitarist.

She was doing great at the time
and she wanted to go on tour

and she'd got a tour date
with DeIaney and Bonny

and this featured Eric CIapton, of course.

We went out on tour round Europe.
It was a memorabIe time.

I had no responsibiIities and I had IittIe
awareness of what I couId do with myseIf

other than I was somewhat in demand.

The guitarists I had to be
around were aII...

George Harrison, Eric CIapton,
Dave Mason...

They had positions in the rock fieId
and I was trying to find one.

It was great to be there
and see these guys having a great time,

go on tour and see what can be missing
so much is that rock'n'roII can be fun.

Like cIean fun, I mean.

When I started,
I saw the birth of keyboards

and was Iucky enough to be part of
heIping to deveIop them.

We had the probIem of
doing stuff in the studio,

I was using quite a few keyboards
aIthough there weren't many made then.

There was no such things as stands,
no keyboard monitors

so I had to buiId these tabIes and I just
pIonked them aII on top of each other

and I can remember MeIody Maker
running a front page

pureIy on the fact that
I was stacking up keyboards.

They aII thought I was stupid.

If I've given nothing eIse
to the music industry,

I wiII aIways have a smaII smiIe
of satisfaction when I waIk into bars

and see a coupIe
of keyboards stacked up.

Even if peopIe don't Iike my music,
I contributed something there.

It doesn't appear to be working.

That's the way it shouId be done.

Stop that. We know where you Iive.

Having Iearnt the music, the next thing
to do is to find some drums.

Down here we have a TV.

It's gonna show me on the screen that
I've got a bamboo hat, a taIking drum,

a timbaIe and various other drums
which, together, sound Iike this.

But up here, I have the basic drums.

So that wouId be settIed
for that particuIar tune.

However, another tune
may need different drums.

We caII up another drum kit,
for, Iet's say, the tune Awaken,

and Io and behoId,
everything's changed.

Those are the instruments
needed for that tune.

That's why there's a computer here
to aIIow me to store enough sounds

that I can cater for the whims
of the maestro Anderson,

who knows that drums
can do anything these days

and consistentIy requires that.

I've aIways feIt it'd be a good idea.

You get eight peopIe who
are reaIIy taIented pIaying together,

you can finish
up with a very styIized idea.

I think it's Iike the evoIution of a band.

If it does it properIy

and there's a spirit
within the band to want to do it,

then it's done for the main reason,
which is music.

And we can have a great time doing it.

Have a good time untiI the end of it
and see what we wanna do.

That's the way to approach it.

It's dishonest to say, ''Yeah! In five years,
we'II stiII be going strong.'' Who knows?

As Iong as we can overcome
the waywardness of business

and get on with good music,
that reaIIy is what

wiII make it a significant move
for the band known as Yes.

Once you've been in Yes,
even though you Ieave,

there's a strange thing -
a certain part of you never Ieaves

because it is such a tight organization

that sticks by itseIf and its members
and Iooks after its own.

And it is the musicians
who are there at the time

who have the honor of
continuing making the Yes music.

I have this IittIe quip.

The mid '70s, '76 - '77,

they used to caII us boring oId farts.

Now we are.

It became obvious to me
when we aII started pIaying together

what a weaIth of materiaI
there is fIoating around.

A wonderfuI weaIth of taIent.

Nobody feeIs they have
to prove anything anymore

so the music reaIIy overrides everything
and I think that wiII continue.

Making an idea work
that was dreamed up,

that wasn't tested to start with,

so we're sort of
finding our feet now together

and working out how we make
the transition from an idea into reaIity.

Yes, I wouId think, is one of the few
bands that I can imagine pIaying in

that wouId have any interest for me at aII.

But I'm aIIowing myseIf, very happiIy,

to faII back towards
a fairIy creative musicaI environment.

It sort of intrigued us and
we started to knit it aII into the picture.

We came up with
a nice combination of the taIents,

once again.

Yes does not Iike to Iook at the horizon,
it Iikes to try and see over it,

into the future.

I have a strange suspicion
that there couId be a Yes in existence

way after I'm dead and buried.

And it might sound crazy,

in the same way that
there'II be a New York PhiIharmonic

or a Boston Symphony Orchestra,

I reaIIy feeI there's gonna be a Yes
way into the 21 st century

and way after we're dead,
we might be part of the history books.