Notes From the Edge
Conversation with
Steve Howe
nfte #285
 

To say Steve Howe is a busy guy is an understatement. Whether dedicated to performing, recording, and coordinating projects for Yes or his new solo venture Remedy, Steve continues to extend his already illustrious career. The muse must have its own room in Steve's home as it seems to come often for this fiercely creative, driven, and productive musician.

The upcoming Yes tour harkens back to the visual spectacles associated with the band in the '70s, and promises to be one not to be missed. The idea for this tour was gestating when Yes, and Roger Dean (designing the stage as he did back then), were in Hawaii last September for the final full show of the Full Circle tour. It was during this time when Steve and I discussed what was then more imminent Yes events, including recording the bonus tracks for the ULTIMATE YES collection, and his involvement with the Rhino release reissues.

This issue of Notes is devoted to our chat about these Yes events. We subsequently had an extensive conversation about his then upcoming album ELEMENTS, and that portion will appear in #286.

MOT


MIKE TIANO: Let's begin with Yes I think what's foremost in everybody's mind is that the band with Rick's return have been doing a lot of touring, but we've yet to hear any recorded output. So let's first talk about the impending sessions that you have for the 35th anniversary album. Can you give me a little background on that?

SH: These additional tracks? Well, it's been a bit of a moving target, really. We've had a few goals, and in the end, we're going to go at it quite opportunist. Go there and see how much work we can get done. We hope to get two songs done. They might be reworkings of Yes songs already been known to have been released, possibly popular ones. We're just going to do that, and then we're going to look at what it is, and maybe combine it with a few tracks that any of us have done or some of us have done on our own-a sort of solo additions. The thing's kind of floating; it might look like that, it might look like less. It might be more, but all I'm saying is it's going to be something with those ingredients, and it's going to be acoustic, in this group work, it's going to be acoustic work, but obviously on the solos, may or may not be acoustic.

MOT: So, each of you are going to have your own composition for this...

SH: Well, not necessarily all of us. If we get there with everybody doing it, but even if they're a couple, we still might go with those.

MOT: Because when I heard about what as being called the "FRAGILE concept", in other words, each one of you has their own solo tune or solo project. Was that just coincidental?

SH: Well, it's something we haven't quite got right here, because we haven't got new songs with the solos. We've got basically a collection of historic music and the "best of" concept, if you like, with additional tracks, so there's a difference. But loving as we all do the way FRAGILE sits, it seems very odd that that's been such a popular album over the years, and yet the band has never realized that one of the main ingredients was these solo tracks. It's been a forgotten sort of art, if you like, in Yes to provide a solo that lives up to what Yes is, and we did it automatically with FRAGILE, and then never did it again. So without making it like a formula, that's why I'm saying it depends on who gets what done in whatever time is given, and also really how it shapes up, so it's a little bit unknown exactly what we'll do, then but the way that it relates to FRAGILE is perpendicular (laughs).

MOT: Even though it's going back a little bit, I think it begs the question as to how this solo concept came to appear on FRAGILE. My own thinking would be that once Rick joined the band, suddenly you had five very strong musicians with individual voices, and maybe FRAGILE was an attempt to showcase each one of those, as if to say Yes have arrived, and these five individually are as remarkable as the five together. I know that sounds contrived, but I think you understand what I'm saying. How did that come to be?

SH: I guess "Clap" had shown a way, if you like, because they were kind enough to let me have "Clap" on THE YES ALBUM, and I think it was just a stepping stone from there; they felt "Oh, well we've done it on this, so... " somebody said, I'm not quite sure who it was but they should get credit if anybody remembered who actually said why don't we put five solos on it, but gradually everybody just assumed that we would. I think it was something that semi-assumed; it might have been an idea that was very early... "Oh, why don't we all add a solo," thinking that I'd done it on THE YES ALBUM, why don't we all do a solo. Yeah, great, gone on with the album, and gradually those tracks came in. That's all I can remember about it, but it is quite unusual that we didn't think about that for years.

Like with "That, That Is"...I had a solo piece called "Togetherness" or "All Together" it was called, then we called it "Togetherness" on that recording, so we tended to combine parts of those, like we did always, but not give actual single tracks--except maybe "Sign Language" is quite a duo between Rick and I, heading towards that way again. But we haven't done a lot, and it hasn't been in the wisdom of the band or the management to see that that could have been something we rolled over, over and over again, and through the years we could have maybe found a lot more happiness (laughs), kind of giving space for those ideas, but sometimes we did. In a way DRAMA maybe "Run Through the Light" was a bit like that; it was a bit of a Chris song, but often, like "Parallels", Chris will, you know champion a song so that it gets done and he likes it. That's slightly different from a solo track, although the actual solo track begs clarification; not on FRAGILE, but maybe the way we've used the idea in other ways, but not as clearly.

MOT: Well, looking back on that album, it seemed like you and Rick had really the true solo spots, I should say.

SH: Yeah.

MOT: Whereas Chris, Jon, and Bill really had utilized the band.

SH: That's right. We played with Bill, and he had an idea, and we played it. It was really simple, and it was great fun. I wish in fact we would play it somewhere. I might suggest that. And I don't know who else played on "We Have Heaven"...

MOT: Did you play on that?

SH: I don't think I did, no. I can't remember. I can't remember doing that, no. Chris had Bill on it ["The Fish'] of course. I loved being able to do "Mood For a Day" because I hadn't ever done a Spanish guitar solo in my life, and that was really a turning point for me to do that kind of writing and feel I could put it somewhere. It most probably asserted me in different ways from some of the other members, because like Rick, he could play his piece. Why doesn't Rick play that piece ["Cans and Brahms"]? It's a lovely piece.

MOT: That's true, very true.

SH: I'll ask him.

MOT: You preformed "We Have Heaven" [in concert the previous night]. That's amazing. It's just nice when Yes pulls these little things out of a grab bag. "To Be Over" would be nice. You could surprise somebody with something from the first two albums. There's a whole wealth of material there, and hopefully you as a band will draw more on that in addition...

SH: Well, hopefully we'll turn a tide next year in our stage work and do some other things, combine some of what we do obviously. There are pieces we're going to do, but hopefully we'll be able to pull in some new interest tracks.

MOT: You mentioned leaving open a doorway for everybody to do all these solo tracks. I guess it's another thing that I don't know the answer to, and that is why was the band willing to go along with letting you put "Clap" on THE YES ALBUM: because they just had a short space to fill, and they had nothing else, or was that to accommodate you?

SH: I remembered some things about that. I wrote "Clap" on the 4th of August, 1969, and I wrote it, and I went out on tour later that year with Delaney, Bonnie, and Friends, with Eric Clapton on that tour, and I think somewhere on that tour I think played it one night. but When I finished that tour and got the call to join Yes, I was really sure that this was a good tune, and I remember at the farm [at] Langley, when Yes were there, I remember which room it was in the lounge, I said to them, "Oh yeah, I got this thing," and I've played it, and they said "That's great. Why don't we put it on the album?," so (laughs) I didn't answer them really. Why don't we put it on there, because they thought it was really fun, that I could do that kind of a solo, so that piece did instill a lot of possibilities for me, because it opened that door to me, and that was perfect to have a solo.

I'd like to clarify to our serious fans about a thing that was a bit dubious that went on THE YES ALBUM remastered version, where there's a version on there I didn't approve of, of "Clap" where I played the beginning of "Clap", and then I played "Mood For a Day". So they sent it to me, and I said, "Oh no, I don't like that," and they said "Sorry, it's too late," so (laughs) that sometimes happens, and so there are some things like that on some of the things where I actually said well, I would have thought "no" on this, and although they ask for my input, sometimes by the time it got to me in England and I'd given it a day or two to respond, and they said "Oh, that's great"... so I almost went through the roof actually when they said "Oh, no it's too late. We can't stop that version."

MOT: What is it about that version that you didn't care for?

SH: Well, you've got [Rhino's] THE YES ALBUM, and you've got a version of "Clap" that's [done] in the studio then goes into "Mood For a Day". Well, the deceiving thing is, and I'm absolutely sure of it, is that I hadn't written "Mood For a Day" when I was recording "Clap" for THE YES ALBUM. The other thing about it is it sounds later to me, that I'm thinking about combining the two pieces [to perform live], and I'm just trying it out in the studio. So in a way it doesn't really, to me, fit on [Rhino's] THE YES ALBUM, because it shows another side of "Clap". I think we did try and record it in the studio, and we had gigs and I guess I'd had been playing it on stage, and they said why don't you just record it on stage, and I'm glad we did. It added a certain edge to it that wouldn't have been on a studio recording...

When I was just finishing off THE STEVE HOWE ALBUM, I knew I was going to record "Meadow Rag", and I had an electric version that came out on HOMEBREW II, which I really quite liked, it was two guitars. For some reason, I was sure I had to record it on acoustic guitar, but I kept leaving it, and right at the end of the album when I was mixing, I suddenly said "I want to record this song; I've got to record it," so I recorded it in RAK studio, and it was a little bit testing (laughs), maybe to play it even was quite testing, and I later played it with ease on the Steinberger on my tours. But always on the acoustic it was quite tricky but more enjoyable as a sound in a way. So I remembered doing that at the last minute and feeling a bit closed in, and then I said, "If I recorded that live acoustic, it would have had what 'Clap' had," which was the feeling of performance in it, and not just I've just finished learning how to play this composition, and now I'm in front of a microphone (laughs), and I think I put the score right in my mind by playing it on electric...

But we were talking about "Clap"; it was the beginning of so many tunes that I've written, hoping that there's space to go in different ways with I can start my writing.

MOT: To be clear, THE YES ALBUM has both the original version of "Clap" and the bonus track where you go into "Mood For a Day".

SH: Yes.

MOT: I thought one interesting thing about the original live version was what I would call, for lack of more knowledge about it, the restored version of the introduction.

SH: (laughs)

MOT: What did you think of that, where you say "it's all rubbish"?

SH: I realized as time went by when we released THE YES ALBUM, that "Clap" had been called "The Clap", and it was quite embarrassing really... it was just meant to be Clap, and it was a bit of a droll title on its own. It should have had a bounce word with it, but we didn't, and it 'was "Clap". But then Jon, on the record he actually said, "Steve's going to now play 'The Clap'," so all I did was I looked for another recording, which I had loads of-of "Clap" in the early days, and so I looked for a couple of intros, when Jon did various things. There was no pattern to any of it; how I actually started playing "Clap" was very varied.

MOT: So that intro belonged to a different take?

SH: Yes, the new one actually belongs to a different take... I mean, so we have the introduction from the Lyceum, which is at the time the only introduction we had to "Clap". Jon said "Oh, now Steve's going to play 'The Clap'," so at this point I thought why go with that. So one idea I had was no introduction just [sings guitar intro] and off it goes, which could have saved some controversy. But even that wasn't perfect because the original one had a little overlap of Jon saying "Steve's going to now play 'The Clap'." It was that reverb. So I found this other one where Jon and I were jesting... I thought it was silly enough, and at least it was clear that I was playing "Clap", not "The Clap", so I did it just for that piece of mind.

MOT: Did he think "The Clap" was the title? Did you actually hear him say that?

SH: On the original record he does.

MOT: No, do you remember him actually saying that... because I've listened to the original myself many times, and it sounds more like an echoey type of thing, so I'm not sure he's really saying "The Clap", because it's like kind of echoing through a concert hall or something; it's almost like the word "the" is maybe an illusion.

SH: No, I think he does say it, because I know Jon's voice, and he may have said it. There was nothing wrong that he said; it was just that it got picked up, so I saw the opportunity to correct it.

MOT: Obviously the record company picked up on that, and that's how they took out the title, just because they heard Jon say "The Clap" rather than you submitting the song, saying, here's the actual title?

SH: Back in the 1970s?

MOT: Yeah, right. It got printed as "The Clap".

SH: Yeah, I know; things were that vague then. We knew very little; we didn't realize the importance of that moment, and then it had gone from "Clap" to "The Clap", so (laughs) it was almost too late.

MOT: You kind of jumped ahead to questions I was going to ask on the round of remasters, actually that's a good lead in here. As you said you heard things after the fact that you really didn't approve of, and...

SH: I'd like to explain that.

MOT: What was the process? They wanted to have expanded versions, and from my understanding, they actually came to you. Are you the only one that supplied the outtakes?

SH: I was one of the sources that they could look to, and obviously because I had been there. I had copies of most things we did. Obviously I provided a lot for them, and what my role was supposed to be was to do that, and then when they had looked through all the stuff and kept finding things and send me stuff. "What do you think this is?" and I said, "Sorry, that's one of my tracks; that's not Yes," so they go, "OK." So then they'd send me a mockup of, say, FRAGILE with extra tracks or they'd just send me the extra tracks, and then I'd listen to it, and I'd recognize mostly where they'd come from, they were things that I had. It seems apparent that was the point, being there was to be critical of the choice, whether we should go with this tune, whether we should show this form, whether the vocal is too dry and Jon wouldn't like it, and talk about the things that are going to affect us as a band. Well, that was my hope; but I had very little chance to do that on the remixes due to this constant problem with it going ahead too soon, even though I respond really quickly to it, and I fax them. We have conference calls about it, but we get to that point of frustration, for me, where I haven't been able to stop a few things that I think, you know interest factor aside, it was a little bit of a risk.

There's some exciting things as well, and some things that need some clarification of who's doing what on it, and who's going to clarify what it's called, because these songs sometimes don't have titles, they just have work titles or "the new song", you know what I mean? All that process goes through my mind, and there was either more time or there's more detail in the box [In a Word: Yes], there was a lot of time spent working those things out. But this was actually a bit of a pet hobby of mine, some of these rarities, and I think some of them I would either edited, or not used. Either edit and take out moments that I felt like well, nobody will ever know we went on and on with that for too long. Let's take it out, and let's make seem like we're a little bit tighter here-tighten up some sections, or discard it if it's really pushing, not so much the quality of sound, but actually the quality of the material. We're not sure what this material is and we're playing it.

That version of "Turn Of The Century" with electric guitars, on GOING FOR THE ONE... that shows the way we have to learn things, just to be able to play them. First of all, you don't know what all the colors are going to be, but you have to somehow play it, and somebody says "Let's play it." You pick up a guitar, and you start playing it, so it started on electric, or that version did, and I don't know whether it's always good, because there's a lot of other music that goes on in some of these other versions (laughs), and that's what I might have shortened occasionally... it's funny to feel close to something that you usually control, and you can lose control of, and I suppose, not that I control Yes at all, but I have an opinion that helps to control Yes or helps to control our responsibilities to our fans, to the label; and they respect that, but as I say sometimes there's been a weak link in the timing, so that a little bit more care and thought could have been provided maybe to make some of it a bit less... if there is anyway that's intrusive and messy or bad performances, then obviously we keep trying to have as few of those as possible.

MOT: Which of the remasters that feature your playing do you think is the most successful in terms of the bonus tracks?

SH: I wouldn't really say that off-the-cuff, really, without looking at them and thinking about them. I mean, like there's another "Siberian Khatru", called "Siberia". It's the same thing, but we go into longer sections of bits you've already heard and things like that, and I've said, I believe they're going to put it on some website, where I responded to [that]... explained what some of these tracks, more or less, note for note, that they are the master until we get to this point, and then we edited out all this, and then we rerecorded the end, and that's how, I believe, we did "Siberian Khatru", we basically had it, but then we didn't like it the next day, and we shortened it in an area, and then we reinvented situations--we could have actually just edited the bits out, the third verse of "Siberian Khatru" has a different riff, and that version doesn't, so we must have completed it. But some of it can be guesswork because we could have played all of the beginning, possibly exactly the same on two takes and pretty indistinguishable that one of them is the master and one of them sort of exactly the same as the master, but we didn't finish it the same.

MOT: There are a lot of gems on there too, particularly little things that give insight into the creative process, like on "Gates of Delirium", after "Soon", you go back to a section from the middle of the song.

SH: That's right.

MOT: Or I think probably the most successful, in terms of a look at how you work was, "And You And I", because that one section hadn't been written yet.

SH: That's right.

MOT: (sings) "And you and I climb over the shapes of the morning... ", so you did something a little different, and although interesting, that [version of] "And You And I" does not measure up to the released version, because you wrote that last piece and worked it in, and then it seemed to just flesh it out.

SH: Oh yeah reaching a whole new place, and some of that was done just by saying that at this point, we're going to open it up, and we're going to carry on here and do something else and then we're going to join this, and I know how we did the end, and I think we did the middle the same way, where Jon was in a vocal booth... or he was in the studio and I was in a vocal booth or something like that, I was in this place that you could get the guitar really separated from any noise, and we'd sit there, and we kind of almost write something; I mean we knew what we wanted. We wanted a vocal bit with a 12-string guitar. And we just kind of went in there, and we had an idea. He had an idea, and where the chords come, I don't know. They're movements within chords, more than chords; it's all one chord, but just kind of moving around, and that, as you said, wasn't in that earlier version, and we didn't even have the space for it; so of course we would have put some tape back in, or maybe what we're hearing is just a quarter inch mix anyway, but we'd put some tape in; we'd play the new bit (sings), and then we cut to that, and I know at the end, which we thought "Oh, wasn't it great?" at the time, and then we just went back and said that big chord and all that stuff, that doesn't work. So we replayed the end, and then Jon and I went in, and we conjured up that stuff. In fact, it's only me playing at the end with Leslie guitars and steel guitars, just making this sort collage of noise and floating behind the song, and that's where that sliding out steel guitar came in.

In fact, it [CLOSE TO THE EDGE] was the first time I'd played steel guitar. I mean I could hardly play it; all I could make it do was make quite interesting noises (laughs) and play a few tunes, and some of what I play on [the steel on] stage was actually played on [regular] guitar, but it's become a kind of continuation of the steel part. It was nice playing steel in Hawaii, because I had felt very much this is one of the main homes for it. Nashville is one thing, but here it's like, part of the lap steel history and the Dobro, Hawaiian guitars-wonderful instrument, and something I want to spend much more time playing, so there are openings for that sound for me in the future, I think.

MOT: So, wrapping up the Rhino remasters, were there tracks that you particularly wanted that made it on there?

SH: Well, you know, I took a little bit of note for the other guys feel about this kind of thing. They don't feel great about it; they're not very keen on releasing these other takes. They're playing ball because it's a kind of run, if you like, in their mind I guess, is a foregone conclusion that people may want it, and Rhino certainly want to do it to create interest and value and all that kind of thing on this. But I do have a certain caution knowing that they don't like it too much. So I picked up on some of that caution, if you like, so if I was to be really cautious on my behalf and theirs, then I would think that there could have been some tracks... yeah, I wasn't the reluctant one at first. I've become a little reluctant about some of it, because of the caution that I feel for the band, so I'm in the middle really. My interest tells me that that stuff is pretty good, whenever I've played it to people, irrespective of the quality, they've usually jumped up and down and said that's great, just because it's not something they know or it's a different thing.

That applies to "The Gates of Delirium" done as a studio demo, I mean... I would explain about the kind of catastrophic edit process we'd just used... see, I was saying we could improve those. We can make them better now, just because it's so easy to do. Anyway it wasn't made better; it was kept as it was, and we really didn't mind at the time. We just went, "Oh, we'll cut it there because we going to go into this bit," and we'd go ding, ding, ding (laughs) we'd go hurtling into another bit. Well, it could have been done better; I'm just beating around the bush really, saying that I think it is really interesting... not that I want to spin people buying these anymore, and in a way I think my idea separates it, is that maybe we could have had the reissued masters as one package, and you could have collected up maybe a series of CDs, that were all the outtakes and retrospective things. This way you can compare on the same CD really where we went to, where we went wrong, or where we went right on each version, so I guess I'm saying really that my heart says go with it, partly because of a lot of different things that were discovered in my collection.

Five years ago or maybe even longer, I did basically two DATs-worth, which is about three hours of stuff that was rare Yes, and then I told Rhino that I had it, and there's one bit that's so mad that it may never come out, but there's things I like like that, where it's total mayhem, and that's why I think it deserves a separate place, because it's no good saying this is a song we forgot to release. These are things that Yes were attempting, and I think in a way that we have a lot of fun. There is a side to Yes' humor that doesn't get shown, and there are some things we've done that are kind of funny, we always say "Oh, that's junk, chuck that away." But there's an element, a humor in them that I think that is part of what Yes had in the early '70s; Rick was a stand-up comedian then, and behind our grandiose, spiritual experience of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, there's also a lot of humor in the band, in our enjoyment outside of music, was to laugh and be happy, so (laughs)...

MOT: A revelation of [Rhino's] TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS was "The Ancient" and the "Leaves Of Green" segment being done by the entire band. As I say on the liner notes on the CD, it's a pretty bizarre arrangement.

SH: (Laughs) Yeah. I think one of the interesting things it shows is that we did a lot more work on a lot of other things that didn't actually get off the ground, and in the very early days I remember distinctly [and] very sadly that before recording virtually everything that you play we used to go hurtling off into something one day in rehearsal, "God, that's the greatest... ," come in the next day and go, "What were we doing?" (laughs) "Does anybody remember how we went there?" and sometimes nobody did. "I don't know what we did," "Well, surely... didn't you come out with, did you have something?," "I don't know; we kind of went up somehow... ," and then we had to just rewrite it (laughs), because we had forgot, but as soon as like recording was normal, it was like, "Put it down then before the end of the day. Put that down, so we remember what it is." That certainly was TOPOGRAPHIC, that we needed a lot of information of how to play a song.

I guess we learned to play it one way, looked at it and just kind of said, "Ok, well now everybody knows it, don't let's play it like that, but now let's play it like something else and take it somewhere else," and I think that's actually one of the strongest creative developments that Yes had was the ability to morph the material, spin the material almost into another thing, and if it was like, well if it was a bit, "Ok, this is a bit pop-y. Ok, well let's do this to it," we would construct scenarios, and I think that was good fun. That was the element of why "Heart Of The Sunrise" has got all these tricky bits in it, or were tricky when we first tried to play them. Of course now they're not exactly tricky, but it's fun if somebody puts a foot out at (sings part of HOTS), the short one in the middle, so you get a special award for playing a beat somewhere where you shouldn't.

MOT: (laughs) Actually, we kind of went off on a tangent here, but that was ok, because I wanted to go there, but let's pull back, in terms of post-35th anniversary session. Have you and/or the other band members looked at material for a possible coming album? What are the plans for a coming actual album, or are there plans?

SH: I don't know how soon any plans are going to leak, you know what I mean, so I'd say at the moment we're all saying that there aren't any, well not any definite plans... let's just go back to Christmas. Now when Jon had his accident before Christmas, we had a different game plan for this year. We would have done this tour in March, and then we would have done Europe, and then we may have said let's do an album, let's start working on an album. But we kind of feel that one of the great things about--this is the way I would explain it, the other guys might not have thought this, but when you get a new album from a new band, one of the reasons it's really good sometimes, is because materials accumulated over years of not having a good album out, not having the chance to record an album.

Sometimes [with] that material maybe a producer comes along and goes, "Well, you got a lot of stuff here; oh that's good. Oh that's good." And you put it all together because it isn't just the next year after you've made another album, and I'm talking about now Yes together as a group, we haven't made a record for a few years, and Rick's rejoined, and it's kind of nice not to put the pressure on straight away and all just go in the studio and say what we're going to play; so the process of getting ready for the record and having material and then having rehearsal, making it like a planned thing is not everybody's idea. Some people don't want to do so much of that, but if you look at it sensibly, you might see that that's how we used to work. We used to work a stage at a stage; we didn't rush to the end and then go back to the beginning and rethink it. We kind of worked plodding along through the stages of gathering songs, rehearsing songs, and then recording them, and I think that's the best byproduct of what we're doing by making sure, or making the commitment to our fans around the world that Yes and Rick are back together, instead of that just being like a one off flash, "Hey, they're back together making a new album, great! It's all happening." We're kind of, I hope deepening that belief about the group, that we've reestablishing this lineup and taking the record as the next move, kind of not too lightly.

It's not going to be something we want to jump in and throw away any opportunities of making it a really great record, and I guess we have to find out whether we're all talking about the same record (laughs). That's the real question, but we need to be on the same page, so the more we do in that direction... in a way, we're slightly cloudy when we're on tour, because we have to have meetings and stuff and talk, but it's quite difficult when you're on tour to talk about your next project (laughs). Touring is quite consuming; it's only not when you start it, but when you've done a lot, you get in a sort of operation mode. It's a bit like... an athlete has to get into a running pattern, so I guess we're going to get up and get in a running pattern to be able to work properly together and record a great record. I mean, I think it still could happen, and I don't think there's any second best. I don't think that we can do anything or should release anything other than something that is, that says a lot about us as a band.

MOT: Virgil's remixes have created quite a stir in the Yes community...

SH: Yeah.

MOT: ... both pro and con. Have you followed that at all?

SH: We did a bit at first, and Virgil saw that, and he was really realistic about it. He did some searching on it and saw the things, and actually could fully understand why people felt the way they did. He wasn't really that surprised; obviously he would liked it if everybody liked it, there's doubt about that. But the people that didn't go with it and kind of felt that this was a bad idea, or this was done in a particular way, or blah blah blah, he could understand why they felt like that, and I think he felt a bit regretful that he couldn't have even done it better that they'd liked it as well kind of thing because as he said to me about the technology he had was really quite simple, and it could have been done much more technical a year later, you know when it came out, but of course it was ready a year before, so you know what I'm saying? You get an idea of some of his dilemmas might have been that he did really want to please everybody, but the fact that some people like it is plus for him, that he feels those people kind of are just a bit more in tune with the general direction of what he's doing.

MOT: I was wondering whether it could have been marketed a little differently, because I suspect that some Yes fans bought it, thinking they were like remixed versions of the song, you know what I'm saying?

SH: Oh yeah.

MOT: [Like] "The guitar's louder here"... it's different.

SH: But in the Bob Marley days, a remix was a remix-you add a bass drum (boom boom), and then you have the guitar (eeeeeeee), but you know I mean people should know a remix now is not quite like that, but I suppose people wouldn't expect or associate that kind of remixing with Yes. Certainly the fact that it hasn't carried very significant promotion idea, hasn't enabled it to be clarified into what it is and what it is all about, it's all about one style of thing-one approach to remixing, and I guess when we heard it, because it was pretty out of the blue to me when Virgil did "Heart Of The Sunrise", and he did three more and I played them to the band, and the band said, "Oh yeah, that's great. Let him get on and do it," and so the band liked it.

Obviously when they heard more and more of it, they have more and more bits that he changed (laughs), but they were pleased that he kept some of the parts that he did keep, you know what I mean, some small intactness to what he does, intact yet intactness of the music that you just get enough, like when he goes, "Though you see it please don't tell a word... " and then he repeats another one, I mean I think he understands the Yes song to an extent, but as I said he would have liked to have pleased everybody. The way it's promoted is in a mysterious kind of way really, where the sticker on the front is the only thing that gives you a guideline that it might be something other than a remix. Remixing Yes is being left to 5.1, isn't it, and I'm about to get a 5.1 system of my own, and I know I want it because I want to see more about that myself. I want to be able to play that and fill it up with my system.

MOT: You made me think of something-I said we'd we leave Yes, but not yet. Maybe you're not aware of this, but on the 5.1 version of FRAGILE, some of the mixes are a little different.

SH: What do you mean? They are completely different mixes. It's remixed in the sense of here's the faders. Here's 5.1, what do you do? That's what I've been told.

MOT: No, I mean, it's like you're hearing different things, like "America" has some different guitar solos in there.

SH: Well, didn't they sort out the right one?

MOT: I think "We Have Heaven"  is also a little different. I mean, having heard these songs for years and knowing them inside out, when you hear something different in terms of instrumentation or maybe the number of times something happens, you become acutely aware of it. You say "What happened?"

SH: Well, in those days, the way we fixed stuff was usually on the multitrack, so that you could play the multitrack, and the multitrack played the song in the right fashion, but in the end, there were cuts, switches, fades done on all sorts of tracks-voices would go out, you'd reverb manually, so if somebody doesn't listen to the mix and understand what the choices were that we made every split second--the verses, the choruses, or guitar breaks--if he doesn't know that music and when he sits down and remixes it, he's not going to know what guitar to use. Is it guitar A or guitar B? I mean, we don't even look at that for like 25 years, that piece of paper that says track sheet, guitar, you know?

MOT: Yeah, yeah.

SH: So, in a way, I don't see how they could mix it in 5.1 without the band, but that's a very delicate situation.

MOT: I thought Chris was involved with it.

SH: Well, maybe he was; I don't know that. They've kept that quiet from me, because it's just one of those things that I don't actually think that I'd like very much if it wasn't done sensibly.

End of Part 1 of 2 - in NFTE #286 Steve talks about Remedy, the new album ELEMENTS, and his close-knit family.
 


Notes From the Edge #285

The entire contents of this interview are
Copyright © 2004, Mike Tiano
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Special thanks to Jen Gaudette and YesFocus
This conversation was conducted on September 29, 2003


© 2004 Notes From the Edge
webmaster@nfte.org