______ ______ ____________ _________ / \ | \ __/ \ __/ \__ | \| \ / |/ _ \ | // _____ || / \_/ \ // / \ \\_ \___ \ || _____ ___\ \ \_ \ \ || / --/ ______| \ \ ___\ || | | - /______ __/ \ ___/ \ \\ \_ \_ // | / ___\ _/ \_ \ \_ _// | \__ \__/ ___/ \_ \____ | \_/ \__ ___/ \___ _/ \__ \__/ \ \_________/ \_____/ \_ \_____/ \ \_ | \_ | \__ __/ \_____________/ N o t e s F r o m T h e E d g e #80 (c) THE Internet Magazine For YES Fans October 1, 1993 ______________________________________________________________________________ |yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IN THIS ISSUE ============= Steve Howe ---------- The Notes From The Edge Interview ______________________________________________________________________________ |yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE STEVE HOWE INTERVIEW by Mike Tiano -------------------------------------- The entire contents of this interview are (copyright) 1993, Mike Tiano 200 SW Clark St. #C Issaquah, WA 98027 for Notes From The Edge, Jeff Hunnicutt, Editor All rights reserved ------------------- This interview is being posted exclusively to Notes From The Edge, (c) THE Internet YES Magazine for Yes Fans If you see this interview or any portion appear anywhere else, please let me know (miketi@microsoft.com). This interview has yet to hit the print medium, so I am very protective of it. Please don't expose yourself to litigation by posting it elsewhere (either through electronic or print means). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special thanks to: Van Ryker for coordinating the interview Steve Abel & Caroline Widders for their invaluable assistance Cindy Kosek for her support and patience Alex Scott for his continued support and priceless help Jeff Hunnicutt for providing the forum and, of course, Steve himself for taking the time to conduct this interview by phone on September 8, 1993. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MOT: First I want to congratulate you on your new album IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS. It appears that the new album is really a family affair. Was this by design or was it a happy accident? SH: It was in my mind to work closely with Dylan; I didn't know that he was going to play all the tracks and then when he'd done a few I decided that it would be best if he did do all the tracks, so it gradually became more and more of a family affair as it progressed. MOT: Then you brought Virgil in, and Janet helped you with some of the lyrics... SH: On one of the songs, yeah, on "The Fall of Civilization" Janet wrote most of the words, and Virgil played keyboards on three tracks and as I said Dylan was on all the album...yeah, it became a pretty in-house thing, with Keith West, an old, old friend of mine who used to play in the group Tomorrow, and the other person who contributed a couple of things was Anna Palm, she's a violinist who lives in England; we just happened to run into each other and I thought she was easygoing and wouldn't mind working with a few people and an old friend. MOT: I guess it must've been nice after being away from your family on tour and in recording studios for many years that you're not only able to work at home but to have them help out; it must have been a lot of fun. SH: Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot. Dylan and I have worked a lot together behind the scenes jamming together and things, and eventually it transpired into this. MOT: At this time do you have any plans to tour to support the album? SH: I'm hoping to come the first two weeks of December to do some solo acoustic shows which is the show I got warmed up in England; I've done a dozen shows here. Before that I'm going to be touring with 'An Evening of Symphonic Rock' which is conducted by David Palmer and we'll use local orchestras, and we're going to be playing a new album that we've just finished called THE SYMPHONIC MUSIC OF YES. So that's going to be a month of touring now; although I was planning to do more solos, it's quite exciting, I think it ties in quite well. MOT: Will that be in Europe? SH: No, that's in the States only. The tour goes right through November in the States. MOT: How did the symphonic album come about? SH: Well, it's something that David Palmer and I have been planning for many years. He'd done a few of these records, the Genesis, Tull, and Pink Floyd records before, and we'd always planned to do a Yes record. Well, we decided we could get on with it this year with a little help from our friends. We basically went in and recorded it in all in a month, added the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jon Anderson sings 'Roundabout', and...basically it's that kind of record, we just got on with it. MOT: What was your role in the production of the album? SH: I'm the lead soloist. MOT: Did you have a hand in doing any of the arranging? SH: No, it was arranged for orchestra by David Palmer. Basically I collaborated with him to bring a realistic and yet sometimes new version of the guitar parts; you know it's not really for me to say but the guitar parts were quite integral in Yes and therefore what I do now is sometimes I leave my original part, other times I play my original part; for example we do 'Roundabout' with a few changes--it's not quite as long but it's almost as long--with different sounds in there, but there are some of the similar sounds as well. Basically it's a fresh look at Yes music played by some of the original members and added by having an orchestra. MOT: And Bill handled all of the percussion parts on the album? SH: Bill Bruford, yes. MOT: Will he be on the tour as well? SH: Yes. MOT: Any other members? SH: Well we don't know if Jon Anderson is going to be on the tour, we hope he is, and we'll wait and see. MOT: Was Bill pretty happy with the project? The reason I ask is that from reading past interviews I know Bill is not really into 'nostalgia', as he calls it. SH: That's right; when we formed ABWH Bill and I both felt that it was a new group and it wasn't just looking back at Yes stuff and we want to continue that path. In a way, like anything, an opportunity comes along you've got to say to yourself do I want to do this or don't I; Bill said he did. He's not known to want to delve back and keep playing the old material; on the other hand he does have a perspective which means that if the job's going to be done well then he'd like to do it. MOT: Do you plan on doing any other work will Bill in the near future? SH: Bill and I stay in touch , there's a few tunes we've kind of knocked around together; you know one never knows, I always hope that there'll be some sort of return to ABWH in the near future. MOT: So you do plan on touring solo the first two weeks of December. SH: December, yeah, I'm hoping to pick up after the symphonic music tour has ended and I hope to do two weeks of touring venues where maybe the orchestra hasn't been, or possibly...or somewhere [laughs]. MOT: I guess it'll be a natural segue for you; since you'll already be in the states touring on the symphonic tour you'll just pick up and continue on. SH: Yes. You know, it's getting to be a bit of a squeeze but I'm hoping to be able to satisfy most fans. MOT: I can tell you that a lot of Steve Howe fans here in America would love to see just you on stage with an acoustic guitar playing by yourself. People who have seen your show in the UK have said that you pull it off magnificently, Steve. SH: Thank you. I pride myself in enjoying it and therefore I want to do it very, very well. MOT: I find it encouraging that you're singing as well, it's nice to hear you sing the songs as well as play them since they're from your heart. SH: Yeah, that's it, these songs did get me in shape, it happened I went about it more professionally than I have before, and I was very determined to sing these songs. Usually whatever singer you work with will want to change things and once they'll come to do a certain thing they'll want to change the melody, and I've put up with that for about, maybe thirty years, so I feel it's about time-- besides all of my other solo albums where obviously I do what the hell I like, but--you know you plan to get your singing in order and you do a certain amount of it which gave me a chance to experiment with my voice a bit which I like to do and go for the songs. MOT: Are you happy with the way your vocals turned out on THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS? SH: Well, pretty much so, yeah, I mean...I'm not Mario Lanza, but then again neither is Bob Dylan, or John Lennon, but I certainly want to sing in a way that's suitable to the music, I don't think I'm completing with other vocalists because really I'm primarily a guitarist but I think I can bring forward my music better if I'm singing it myself. MOT: I have to agree; personally I'd rather hear you sing your own songs rather than have someone come out of nowhere to sing them. SH: That's right; they step into a funny position. You know, the music suits me because I write it. MOT: Can you tell me the song titles from the Symphonic album? SH: Well it's going to be fairly common knowledge--'Roundabout', 'Close to the Edge', 'I've Seen All Good People', 'Mood for a Day', 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'--which is [chuckles] quite amusing--and 'Heart of the Sunrise', 'Starship Trooper', 'Wonderous Stories', and 'Soon' from 'The Gates of Delirium'. And also 'Survival'. MOT: 'Survival'? Really? That's amazing... SH: Yeah, it's a very broad spectrum, you know; that's why. MOT: I take it 'Close to the Edge' is an abbreviated version? SH: I think 'Close to the Edge' is about seven or eight minutes. We basically tackled things that were flexible and with my view of this, particularly with 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' and 'Survival' but really I could basically rethink the guitar 'cause that's usually what other people do, or that's what's apparently done. But I was given the opportunity to rethink the guitar and come up with my own idea of those songs. There's quite a lot of acoustic guitar that...obviously 'Soon' features steel guitar, I use the original guitar on 'Close to the Edge' and quite a few other songs are the guitars I used to play because I think the sound is somewhat familiar with the music. Other times I change sounds because I wanted a change; there aren't really any rules so I didn't have anybody saying I couldn't do this. But basically I treated it like any other recording session where I want to make sounds that I believe in; in 'Starship Trooper' most of the time I'm playing on electric twelve string until 'Wurm'. So in a way there were things that I wanted to do with that,some of it is changed and some of it is restated. MOT: And the symphonic tour is going to go on for how long? SH: Four weeks. MOT: Before I forget I implore you when you come on your solo tour to please come to Seattle...! SH: OK, I'll try and arrange it. Because I think it's a better idea to go to some of the other territories that the symphonic music tour isn't going to although it's of course going to major territories so in a way most of my time should be spent in major territories where I haven't just been there with the orchestra. I'd be quite happy to do it and hopefully the timing will not be too close. MOT: Are you happy with your arrangement with Relativity? Do you think you have the freedom to create the type of music you want? SH: In that respect I'm personally happy, yeah, I have the freedom to make the work the way I wanted to much like Yes did in the 70s, and certainly not like many groups in the 80s. So it's very nice and I appreciate them very much for that reason. They have a particular view of me as a CD artist and not so much as a single artist; infinitely I don't do singles for Relativity, I obviously do tracks for the radio. Hopefully somewhere in there there's enough mileage for me to keep developing, I certainly don't particularly want to stand still, just stay static; I think I want to keep expanding. Next year I plan to do a solo acoustic record with new guitar pieces and maybe a few rerecordings of some of my other pieces as well. Yes, I quite like this solo acoustic work in that it gives me a chance to build the whole picture in one performance and that makes a nice change from the pretty detailed overdubbing that I do; I pride myself to that, I overdub in an unusually good way where in fact one assumption is that I'm doing too much with just all overdubs, because this is what I always set out to do and what I intended to continue learning about doing with TURBULENCE and THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS. MOT: Speaking of TURBULENCE I heard a rumor that you weren't totally happy with the results. Is that true? SH: No, the music was exactly as I planned it, nothing was ever changed, I was perfectly happy with TURBULENCE. It took a while for it to be released but that's because it took a while for me to find theright people. But, no, I'm perfectly happy with TURBULENCE. MOT: Earlier you mentioned the possibility of an ABWH recollaboration. Is that something that could happen, or something you would like to happen...? SH: It's something that can't happen at the moment so one's got to view it with a certain optimism and yet not depend on it. In a way the only thing I will say is that I'm not sure that I particularly want that kind of group life; I want the adventurousness of the music but if all are giving more musically, having more control over our own music and if the four of us can maintain that control and enjoy that sharing then it would be nice. I can't say that it would be right if we're going to try it but I certainly like to think what it would have been like if we kept doing it. So you know Yes UNION which was such a major diversion in our lives and it took away a great deal; we lost a tremendous amount on that and we didn't gain a great deal, Yes gained by the reinjection of four, mainly ABWH, four members who were very much fully active --Jon, Bill, myself, and Rick who are actually the epitome of the constantly working musicians, and I can't possibly view Yes in that way because Yes just are Yes and they rarely do anything else and there's not other productivity; I would find that stagnating. So I produced records last year, what came out in England in February a guitar record called ARTISTRY OF by Martin Taylor, a brilliant guitarist from Scotland, and that was produced by me, and I'm producing my son's new group, I've finished my guitar book which is coming out on GPI Publications [Miller-Freeman] called THE STEVE HOWE GUITAR COLLECTION, that and two records released this year, a solo tour...you know I mean that's work, I don't see what Yes is doing, I can't think of anything that they've done other than stew in a studio, so in a way I think they're very, very snails in the race and I don't even know quite how they could survive, they're just not highly productive like Yes were in the early days: certainly we made two albums in one year, we made albums every year, we continuously toured...that's basically the kind of life I like, an exciting musical adventure. Like Trevor Horn called the second Buggles album ADVENTURES IN MODERN RECORDING and I think that's one of most appropriate thing to the idea of Yes, but in a way we carried the flag in different ways, different members; quite likely the members that aren't in Yes are highly capable of carrying the musical sort of stampede if you like; I mean I'm not in a rush to do anything, I spent three days working with some young guys coming up with a few tracks...there's so much to do in different fields. I've also got a video out in America now called THE TURBULENCE PLAN from Warner Bros Video, and that I did last year which uses my video; I'm a bit of a filmmaker as well although I didn't make this film it contains film, video that I shot while I was making TURBULENCE in the studio. So I look for things to do to keep me amused and also these people who drifted into this via the guitar. MOT: Is THE TURBULENCE PLAN is currently out in America? SH: Yes it is. The guitar book as I say is going to be really exciting because it's not just a guitar book like anybody's guitar book, this is a history of recording, it lists all the albums and records I've made, it covers my career, we talk about recording studios and the amps I've used, we talk about the whole process of work in the public domain including showing off the remarkable guitars I've collected and we've got a really exciting book, instead of a lot guitar books recently which have been good reading at bedtime. We've tried to do something that will be a reference book; people will be able to find out why this is like that or what this example is, and we're hoping it's going to be an archive style coffee table book where it interests people at a few levels, not just with the pictures, one's got to find out about the guitars. These are in perspective, we've ordered them in broad categories which in itself helps to formulate the grid of the book which is also chronological with certain amazing stories, we talk about the collection and...along the way the big picture fits right. MOT: Tony Bacon helped you on it, right? His book THE ULTIMATE GUITAR BOOK was very good... SH: Tony Bacon, yes. Funny enough that book had no less than fourteen of my guitars; a few of them are mentioned, but some of them--obviously it couldn't be posted all the time as one of Steve Howe's guitars! But I've been working with a photographer called Miki Slingsby and Miki usually photographs fine art paintings and he's absolutely great with guitars, and he's got these, such living, lifelike pictures. Also archive pictures, guitars in use, behind the scenes sort of stuff. We're really are very, very confident that the book's going to arouse a certain different sort of understanding. My guitar collection does not duplicate; most guitar collections, the owner has ten Les Pauls, or five Stratocasters, and it's really tedious; I can't understand why anybody would want the same thing over and over again. My collection boasts between seventy and eighty in 1993 and it covers the whole spectrum of stringed instruments, really, not just two or three guitars, obviously guitar, mandolin, all of affiliated mandolins. It's been a good life's work I really hope that people are going to realize that it's not a magazine but a kind of document. It'll be out in December. MOT: In the press clippings I've read Jonathan Elias said that Jon Anderson agreed that the quality of your playing and Rick's playing on UNION was lacking and that's why he brought outside musicians. On the other hand Jon has said he wasn't let anywhere near the mixes, so there's a little discrepancy there... SH: You're telling me! Well basically it's a real kick in the pants to hear from...you see, what production is is basically teamwork, you've got to get with the people and understand what they're like, and you find out what they do, and in no way did Jonathan give me the feeling that he was unhappy, disappointed, or that I wasn't prepared to come back and do something again and again; he knows what I'm like, I mean I look for it, I find it, I'm not content until I've got it and basically the guitar parts I did were constructed like that. Now, there's the time you say, well, this one doesn't work you do this again. And if Jon or anybody ever walked in and said, I don't like that, would you do something else, I'd do it. Because basically I understand what teamwork is supposed to be about. But what happened with Jonathan seems to be that he playing us all off against ourselves so he was mister nice-guy with everybody and right behind Jon and myself goes about changing things, he actually got another guitarist to come in and play my part on 'Shock to the System'. I played the solos, I played a couple of bits in there, and all the other bits have been copied from me and they got some session guitarist in just to play my parts! Well the sound he used is a predictable heavy metal guitar. I used a Fender Telecaster, 1955, nicely processed and worked out, so we really got the sound down and then there's some other idiot playing on my track. Now, what's he doing there? Who has the right to say that I, Steve Howe, will not appear on 'Shock to the System'? And the other things were all edited around, vocals that he always said to me wouldn't be over the guitar solos were over the guitar solos, that were edited from 'Silent Talking' where the guitar elevated the music, the singing went over the elevated music-guitar...all these things were just really confusion. Now he can say that we were confused but what a producer is supposed to do is allow musicians to be reasonably confused, put on lots of ideas and then sit back and really judge the band and make something of that music and always somebody comes off here and somebody goes on there, and I would have been quite happy to do that. We were at a dilemma about missing keyboards, it was a strange time. When I played records with ASIA with Synclaviers and Fairlights somehow it was confusing what was exactly going on because he never seemed to draw much out of Rick and therefore he got other people in to play keyboards. And this is supposed to be a Yes record! What a disgrace! An absolute disgrace. But the songs like the first song, 'I Would Have Waited Forever' is so haphazardly mixed that you get the feeling you're going to be listening to it on a transistor radio. I mean, Bill's drum kit on there, the exact same drum kit on TURBULENCE, if you think of the drums on TURBULENCE you'll be convinced that *that* is a great drummer playing a great kit. You listen to it on UNION it sounds like it's in a paper bag! Now if a producer takes over much like Trevor Horn did with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, you know he's putting his reputation at stake and he better do a good job, maybe a few musicians more have been a problem when a producer is given too much license. But basically when we made ASIA, one, that was a team, Mike Stone, a great producer, worked with us and got those things so we *were* all happy together, much like all the early Yes records were done like that; and there can be slip-ups where somebody goes on holiday and comes back to make record. Well, don't go on holiday. So I made myself available and also sung on a great deal of it, some of which Jon for some reason didn't approve. It was all planned to be used, it wasn't haphazard, there were lyrical ideas I put in to support Jon, behind him, much like in 'Close to the Edge' there were counter vocals, imaginative ideas all of which were highly approved and praised by Jonathan Elias and he doesn't want to put them in any of the mix at all...and there you are...UNION is the album where everything Jonathan Elias mixed turned out sounding like rubbish. So much for the great ideas of Yes that we all had, eight of us together, we didn't even hold out that far making sure, of being allowed to make sure when the tapes were being shipped. I would call Jonathan and say, where's the mixing, I'm coming over next week, he said, 'I'm not sure because I'm still copying to another format and then it goes to L.A.' and then I'd be in New York, and then I'd be in London, and then he'd come to London then I went--it was like a game. I can go on all night about that. It was made with the right intentions but it was taken out of our hands which it should not have had; and we believed in Jonathan which was a big mistake and what we got was basically a very inferior record. Thanks goodness I contributed through the grace and good insight of Roy Lott at Arista [who] called me up and said, 'I think we need a bit more of you on the album, we reached that point we've spent millions on this we now want a track to come from you.' So I just looked in my private music that I have here and I found a few tracks, I sent them to Roy, he picked out 'Masquerade' and said, 'This is the kind of track I'd like on the album to see, thank you very much.' I said, thanks, Roy, that's really nice. I got nominated a Grammy for that and that track to me is the only good thing about that whole album. I'm not knocking what Yes contributed--I think 'Miracle of Life' is very good, I don't really like songs like 'Lift Me Up' personally--and the rest of it and so they had the freedom to do what they like. We should have been looking after our own ship which was called ABWH/Yes and instead we got believing that somebody else could do it, and to be honest I know now that there is no player than can do my guitar, that's why I was at the mix at most of the music of Yes, I was at the mix of TURBULENCE grasping at things, you know. Because I know that without my view of the guitar nobody seems to know what to do with it and it's a joke. Electric guitar is like acoustic guitar to me which is, you can't just record it and put it out and say, that's the guitar. You need the position, you need a tonal correctness; you know it needs the right notes, it needs the right rhythm, it needs to be in time, in tune--it'd surprise you to think I haven't met anybody who cares enough about the guitar except me to do that with my guitars. Eddie Offord was a great, a first rate character, he moved nicely between all those areas of producing and what he might have done, who's to say? But when you're talking about Jonathan Elias, he doesn't come up this far. I know I was in back of a limousine which I rarely travel in--I prefer to travel on my own really, not in limousines--and I remember I was in the back of the limousine in L.A. and I picked up the L.A. Times and there's a whole cover piece there on Jonathan Elias, it was the first he had a chance to get back at us [laughs]! And I thought what he said was downright disgraceful, that we couldn't come up with the parts. MOT: Speaking about things out of your hands how do you feel about the new Japanese laserdisc [YES 1975 AT QPR]? SH: Well that was done without anybody in Yes knowing it'd been released. That says a lot for other people who profess to be Yes people. It's funny what some 'Yes' people will do, they'll restrict Yes from working with each other, they'll stop various members in there to collaborate, record, tour, and other people will actually go behind our backs and release these tours and not even tell us. Well, that was a real piece of backstabbing and I think there's certain things that I have the right to not revisit. And QPR was a wonderful show we did with the other act [which] should have been filmed because it was Seals and Crofts, on that show. And so QPR gets released, it's never been remixed from the original monaural mixes, I don't expect that I or whoever it was didn't know and we said it was a good job at the time, but it wouldn't please any of us now, so it doesn't please me. I wouldn't say it's an embarrassment. I treat retro stuff sometimes as I have to. If people can't find the master tapes or remix it a lot of people would say, why the hell put it out then? And I think that's a fair comment--I didn't ask to have it let out. And this isn't the end of it; this kind of stuff goes on between bootlegs and other sort of grandly moral releases that maybe should be finished up back over it, but nobody want spends the money to do it, and there's no money to make it anyway. It all seems to be very, I think the word is self-effacing; I'm pretty sure what that means. I think that there are times when in my past, like in my guitar book and I've been able to look at all of the things I've done, it's something to wallow in and enjoy, just temporarily, you know everybody's allowed to have a little moment of glory, even if it's just for themselves, just on they're own. But looking at YESSONGS, Jon hated it, and looking at other films attempted to be made or when we made a video--everything's been such a spar. I have to tell you everything that's been passed down to Yes. And it doesn't have to be; it just is, and it's partly because of wanting to be leaders. People get very sensitive about anybody in there, you know, as we all do. Like the Beatles with Paul McCartney: I mean he's the great leader of the band but nobody wanted to acknowledge him that he did that. [Aside, chuckles] Although I don't know much about the Beatles though I loved them. So really...that stuff, it's not the end of it there's more that there but in a way it's kind of fun for me just to laugh at what I've got on, and what guitars I'm playing and whether or not--it seems a bit like with in ASIA IN ASIA, you do a show and it's kind of there forever, you can never lose it. Well, QPR's gone away for a hell of a long time, and to suddenly come back and it's most probably going to be viewed like 'YESSONGS'. But 'YESSONGS' at least was mixed properly by Eddie Offord and Yes, it was polished off to some extent, it's just that certain people hated it partly cause they showed somebody's foot. But that was political too because my brother actually edited of the film so it goes through these stages where the guitar solo is an explosion with Steve Howe in focus! [laughs] So obviously there are biases I laugh about because I think we used to laugh about them along the way, and singers getting loads of air play on the video where musicians don't always get so much. One can't battle with this--and I've had it with Steve Hackett in GTR, you know, you're singing more than I am, or the spotlight keeps following you, or your guitar's louder in the mix...you know, I mean--these are the problems that there are no solutions for because sometimes the problem isn't really there, it's in the mind. MOT: I've seen the QPR disk and I have to agree to mix is...atrocious sometimes, for the lack of a kinder word... SH: Well, I was glad to hear that a few people in L.A. had took it back and said, it's so bad I'm not prepared to buy it. MOT: As far as a document of the band at the time it is a very good one, but I understand what you're saying, there are mistakes in there, 'To Be Over' especially... SH: But we were just up there having fun, I mean we were just playing our instruments, and Yes were like that. Well we didn't take notice at what was going around us, we were too engrossed in what we were doing. We all tried with small degrees of success to help along with projects, and some people got very crazy about it, Jon was off getting into the lighting rig when he wanted to change something, I needed a bending sort of mic stand and Chris wanted somebody to turn his guitar off...we all had our idiosyncrasies. MOT: Speaking of Steve Hackett, would you work him again if the opportunity arose? And are there other guitar players you would like to play with? SH: I've got absolutely nothing against Steve, I've got no ax to grind and nothing really much to say. I don't think Steve is really a problem to be honest and there are different patterns to different people and different roles that people should play and I think there's very gray areas of sensitivity for everybody, everybody thrashes about their ground or...but basically I don't think the opportunity will really come up because Steve Morse and I have been planning to do something for years and that's going to be one of the first guitar that duets I do sometime in the future. I'd like to work with two guitarists in England: Martin Taylor being one, the guy I recorded, and also Gordon Giltrap. Loads of people I'd like to play with. Unfortunately [with Hackett] the learning process we did about each other did destroy some of the gloss, and I'm used to working with people who have home studios and don't worry about them so much; you just get home, press buttons, play the guitar. MOT: Which song would you call the quintessential Yes song? SH: Which is the quintessential Yes tune? I always change my mind about these things [but] I think the whole of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS. I mean, I think you have to listen to the whole TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS and then you know what Yes really were about because in a way that music was totally different from most of the other music we made because we discovered so much freedom that we really didn't have any guidelines, we changed them all in 'Roundabout', and 'Close to the Edge', we lost all sense of what a rock band's supposed to do and we were determined to do something that was bigger than ourselves, bigger than the ingredients. And I think in TOPOGRAPHIC it's a sort of swamp of musical endeavor that we made and I really enjoy it and I find it really rewarding that there was a time when we did something so vast that it almost stopped us in our tracks. We almost had to rethink what we were off doing and then we did RELAYER which was again quite adventurous but I think TOPOGRAPHIC is the great masterpiece that we did, I think that is it. MOT: I have to agree with you, I like TOPOGRAPHIC very much... SH: Good! I've been playing and singing parts of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS...one night I did quite a bit that I absolutely--I believe that any music, you can it play solo, you can play it standing on your head if you want, you can play it with an orchestra, or you can play on your own. I've played 'Close to the Edge', 'And You and I', and what was I just mentioning...anyway I've been playing some of the classic pieces in minuet sort of style, so I've been playing bits of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, that's it, and one night I started at 'Dawn of light lying between a silence...' and went through into 'What happened to this song', and then I went through into a bit of side two, and then I went through into 'The Ancient' and after 'The Leaves of Green'. I've got no problem, and neither does the audience, actually, but I enjoy it when I feel that they're going to join in, in a warm way, and there they did. So in a way my solo show does give me a chance to say, what the hell is all this about that music must be like this? You can see the way you can develop it. I like the way Bob Dylan came back year after year--he used to come back playing old songs rearranged and I think that shows that he liked it, that he can change it a bit and develop it, so I like to do that solo...but those songs, TOPOGRAPHIC particularly, and 'The Ancient', and one of my pieces from BEGINNINGS...you know, it was a very, very special time. MOT: It's amazing that you are performing these songs on your solo tour, you have such a long history of music and you're covering all the different areas... is there one style that's more fun to play than any other? SH: Well, I suppose I mainly think of myself as playing things like 'Clap', and that kind of country picking, and that kind of guitar style is basically... I can play a many great amount of styles, if you know what I mean, I can play anything as long as I know it. But I know it's got very little to do with rock 'n' roll, or it's got only got a small amount to do with Yes; in fact it was on THE YES ALBUM, 'Starship Trooper' also had that style of guitar playing... 'Roundabout', then really at that time I was trying to suggest the acoustic guitar be included into rock more than I realize at the time, that I was determined to do that. So country picking is really one of my favorite things. Stuff like 'Sketches in the Sun' is interesting, I love doing that kind of music where it's kind of verging on the edge of different things. Solo guitar is satisfying because it feels like a combustion, you hit it, it comes out, and that is the end of it. It all happens so rapidly, it's a wonderful thing. So I'd almost pick that solo guitar style as being one of my favorites. Obviously I always want to play rock guitar and I think I move across that, you know, as in THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS, I do my kind of things on 'Reaching the Point', 'Gates to a New World', and 'Grand Scheme of Things' is no exception, I come first with maybe more of a bluesy thing and there's something in there that says I'm not really prepared to hide anymore, that I'm not only enjoying being an original style of guitarist but there are but there are fashions of guitar that I like tremendously and jazz guitar is most probably the thing that creeps through as it does on a lot of music of Yes, we get the same kind of guitar treatment as in THE GRAND THEME OF THINGS... [demonstrates by humming]... you know modern chords had that sort of jazzy approach. So I get the jazz in, I get the Spanish, country picking, and the steel guitar. Where all these things came from were really, this is really a huge merry-go-round where, now I'm sitting in England in like the early 1960s listening to all American guitarists: James Burton, Scotty Moore, Frank Beecher, Les Paul, Chet Atkins, and Tal Farlow, and Kenny Burrell, and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Wow. Get me on a plane to America, I wanna hear, I wanna see these guys.' And without taking on their styles so much I just drew on their American instincts and came up with something verging on my own approach to the guitar which is sort've like a non-cliched approach; I don't even avoid madly playing anything that I knew enough about to play; I was very conscious about the repetition of popular music, as much as I like a good hook. I think a good hook's a vehicle for the guitarist to move around the guitar, not to be playing the same things. So I avoid it really because people we're doing it well and I thought Buddy Guy did it best, electric blues guitar in the early days predominantly Buddy Guy for me. And then of course Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck was there, like, going off in the other direction, more progressive, more jazzy. So, there was a lot happening in the guitar and I wanted to hold my own, I didn't want to become a clone...that's quite a good line there...! MOT: I know I'm speaking for the majority of Steve Howe guitar lovers when I say that what we like so much about your playing is that you're original, and you're 'eclectic'; rock 'n' roll may be your milieu as it were, but-- SH: Well actually I'll tell you THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS is a sort of line that's been dropped, what with the guitar book and THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS, then if I've achieved them I have to enjoy doing the things up to this point in a certain way and I think that's actually very good for me. So I like to think what I've been up to and what I call the past now, which *is* the past, basically, is that in this way I've been drawing on any and every, any kind of idea I can get, just using everything as a fabric for music and it's a lot to do with the openness that I think one should be trying to apply to your life and see good in everything; see good in bad also, but--see the good that you want to see. But that eclectic side that you know, I occasionally play the lute or I play traditional instruments like the Japanese koto, things like that...the mandolin. I'd like to think that I'm not just looking forward. But I'm dragging along a lot of the basic thoroughbred guitar in my music. That's why when I start my solo show I'll be starting with Vivaldi's 'Concerto in B' because in a way I want to start at one of the earliest points that I can. I don't know, music all needs to be varied, with variations of all music. I was doing it in the 60s when I was playing in the pubs, the bars, in the Continent and in London for a year and we didn't only play Shadows, Duane Eddy, and a few top ten hits; we also played a Django Reinhard tune, a Kenny Burrell tune, we played jazz guitar, we played Chet Atkins-style tunes...so in a way I've always been doing basically what I do, I hope I've got better at it, and I'm certainly enjoying it because for a long time I was more like some of the guitarists who come in miserable to jobs, and they play the guitar at breakneck speeds and then come off and kind of complain about it. I think our own lives are so much under our own control that if you're not happy with the music then really do something else. No point in playing music if you can't give joy and enjoyment to people and get a little back yourself then you really flogging a completely dead horse that the music won't, it just can't be like that. I mean, music is painful, music is about pain, it's about enjoyment and pain, but therefore it can look like pain but really it's bliss. It's a point in your life where all that other crap that you've been putting up with all your life. But besides the crap that you put up with there's a very important struggle that you have as a human being you have a very important struggle and you have red tape and beauracracy. I like to think that I get some enjoyment out of it, and I'm not going to stand on the stage for two hours and sweat and come off and think I'm just doing this as a service as a service to the world; no, I'm doing this to refuel, refuel the charges. I'm just disappointed to find that more and more musicians are disappointed with themselves, and I think it's a great failing, a great weakness. Maybe there's a compensation, maybe I'm only just one player, much like they are, their only thing...I can't mention any names, though I'm thinking of a few people I can't mention anybody. But you know, life crashes, you don't just toil at yourself, it's like just putting egg on your face yourself. So...that came from your question about expecting things...feelings... It's much more about...it's about perception, there doesn't seem to be much perception. That's why THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS was all played and there's only one part of the whole album that's processed and that's the bass on 'Reaching the Point', which I'm very very happy with, I'm glad to have one thing that worked, but technology basically doesn't work, I do things--I mean it does, I make it work I've got previous attempts where it doesn't infringe on what I know and the way I know recording music and generally be reasonably technical minded but not do things modern through the technical stuff. I do, I use it but I don't think about it in the way that it would in any way inhibits me from doing it the old way. Because if I'm working ideas around I want it to sound like something else that would come out, that you can mainly stick it through a guitar amp. You can't live by other people's rules, music is so explosive that you have to do it the way you want to do it. Yeah, I get a lot a fun out of making my own records, I must say, and that's why in my own studio where they start is one of the great centers of the universe. There's two centers to the universe, one of them is my wife, the other one is my studio, and the studio is a sort of musical paradise, and I don't think it takes very much to do what I want; just to mention it's an old farm house, I wouldn't say it's modest but I can say it's not exuberant or extravagant, it doesn't have pink pile on the carpet. MOT: [laughs] SH: I think I like making fun of things, too; I mean I'm not really I think a particularly humorous person. Personally my family wouldn't say that I'm all that humorous. But I hope that in my music and in my current state, the way I'm playing right at the moment I get a chance to laugh a bit more and even with the tremendous stress getting it all brought under one's got to take a deep breath and say, well, we're living in a very stressful time, when civil war is just about everywhere and natural feelings is in a way a kind of-- another sort of music salvation is music where natural feelings kind of alter your chances with not drying up with suggestions and I think that you do for yourself or other people. You're only helping the rest of the problem if you were because, you know you want to solve all these problems of rain forests and pollution and everything, how about starting with us? You know, we're most probably about the only thing on the earth that we can really, well I wouldn't say control, because we've had it and resisted it before and we would rethink needing control, but...there's a hell of a lot of problems and I think we're all feeling it , I don't think one could escape them; maybe even in TURBULENCE at the time there was a lot of that flavor for me and I was trying to get some of that album out of my system. That's what it's like now in my opinion. When I listen to John Ballard [play] one of my favorite compositions on the lute, played by him it's great and that music comes from the 16th, 17th century. It was very florine. So anyway they had the plague and a lot of people died when they were twenty, thirty...maybe we beat ourselves with these chains, it's just that we don't like the world all the time, but if we don't like ourselves we can't go forward. MOT: What are your favorite tracks on THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS? SH: [Pause]... You hear your own music from quite a different perspective. I suppose it's 'Maiden Voyage' because it has an awful lot of what I'm trying to do on guitar, you've got that twelve string behind there [sings the part] and the steel guitar comes in over it. It's almost like a huge fold. But there again I suppose 'Beautiful Ideas', I figure that's very much what I was going to do, making the idea of the few words like 'Beautiful Ideas' almost sort of like a mantra, I suppose, that if you think about beautiful ideas, then you have beautiful ideas. If you think about birds, then you get the birds [laughs]. MOT: Basically whatever you think about will eventually manifest itself. SH: I think we've really got to watch what we do think about, I think it comes true basically, it's so easy to get sidetracked. I think that happened in music as well, like going back to when I was talking about Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy and the blues. I enjoyed that, and I love that style of guitar, and if I leaned too much more to it I would have sort of almost become it. Actually I mean I do like playing lead guitar but really not that form best. I have my way of doing it and I like things that, that is...there are other things, there are many things I haven't really done. There some things I haven't done that I would like to do I suppose. I don't want to make a blues album but I want to find a way of finding the right circumstances to do these things that I would feel was honest and exciting. I think that would be a complete revelation if that happened. One of the answers I almost gave you when you spoke about ABWH is that, I don't really want to be in a group, but that sounds too arrogant, because in a way groups are very much what I know, what I've...since I've been working in music for over 27 years, so I wouldn't say that's just it, that's just the enjoyment of not being in one for a while. I think ABWH goes back to all these people who love Yes and love us working together and going to the old studios, basically do naff thing...we use the word naff, it means awfully bad [corny]. MOT: Thanks for talking to me for Notes From the Edge. SH: It's been good fun, thank you very much. MOT: In closing I have to say that I 'm sure that a turnout for your solo shows would be tremendous because among guitar players you're a giant, if you don't mind me saying so. SH: Well it's very kind; the people, all of the people in the states have been very good to me over the years and it's something that kind of keeps me working, I keep thinking, wow, there's a beautiful interest in my albums in the states and I love that and I'll only be too willing to come and run around the guitar a bit. MOT: I also have to tell you that the first time I saw Yes was in 1972 at the Long Beach (CA) Arena...that was an amazing show... SH: Yeah...I bet....that was in the hot old days where Yes could play 'All Good People' with five people and it sounded like an enormous wall of musicianship. It was beautiful. Yes was most beautiful then in my own view... you know it was just beautiful chemistry. MOT: It was an amazing time for you all. SH: Yeah, it was. -------------------------- The entire contents of this Steve Howe interview are (c) 1993, Mike Tiano 200 SW Clark St. #C Issaquah, WA 98027 for Notes From The Edge, Jeff Hunnicutt, Editor All rights reserved -------------------------- ______________________________________________________________________________ |yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THOSE ALL-IMPORTANT ADDRESSES: ============================== New subscribers, contributions, questions/comments/criticism: Jeff Hunnicutt (Editor) hunnicutt@vxc.ocis.uncwil.edu NFTE Server (lyrics, backissues, discography, rarities, surveys, GIFs): Automated. For help send mail with subject line yes-archive@meiko.com "send main help" to NFTE Server problems, additions/corrections to the lyrics & GIFs, and additions/corrections to the rarities list: Mike Stok mike@meiko.com NFTE backissues, lyrics, etc, via anonymous FTP: cs.uwp.edu Directory: /pub/music/lists/yes Contact for helping out with transcriptions: Greg Utas utas@bnr.ca For Import CD's (last resort): Joe Pizzirusso joep@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com The Yesoteric Tape(s): United States ============= East Coast: R. uS. Hartnett (hartnett@ocpt.ccur.com) New England: Ron Peterson (ron@vicorp.com) Central US: William H. Stoner III (bilbo@cis.ohio-state.edu) Southern US: Jeff Mason (jrm@elm.circa.ufl.edu) West Coast: Edward Ju (edju@chaph.usc.edu) Canada ====== Mike Hackett (hackett@cyberlink.com) Europe ====== UK: David Owen (dro@dsbc.icl.co.uk) Europe (besides the UK): None Australia ========== Andrew Studer (studer@physics.su.oz.au) Asia ==== Atsushi Shionozaki (shio@mt.cs.keio.ac.jp) ______________________________________________________________________________ |yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --< END OF NOTES FROM THE EDGE #80 >-- ______________________________________________________________________________ |yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------