L O S T   C H A P T E R S

THE SOLO ALBUMS
A group decision at this time led to the recording and release of solo albums from each member. It allowed everyone the chance to do a whole record exactly as they saw fit and to use some of the backlog of material that had accumulated amongst them.

On Steve Howe's Beginnings (released October 1975):

STEVE, 1994: Clive Muldoon, the singer from Bodast was in the back of my mind to sing the songs on Beginnings. But I started doing backing harmonies and vocals with Jeremy Stenham, Beginnings' second engineer. That was really the first time I had taken on any lead vocals other than my own demos, so I was rather vulnerable to criticism. I put myself in a position where I'd possibly jeopardize the overall strength of the album by singing it myself and not having a more stronger or more experienced singer sing it. I'm pretty resilient with my guitar work, but I found at that point I was quite vulnerable vocally. So that's why on The Steve Howe Album I only sang one song.

PATRICK, 1995: With the piece "Beginnings," Steve gave me the Em Fmajor Em progression and I came up with the rest. I worked for three weeks orchestrating, arranging, voicing the whole thing. Rehearsing the orchestra, conducting the orchestra, playing the harpsichord, hiring the guys for the chamber orchestra, giving the thing life. One thing he said was, "Do something like Vivaldi." I said, "Okay," but of course it doesn't sound like that, it sounds like what I've done.

On Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow (released June 1975):

JON, 1988: Olias of Sunhillow was my schooling. I locked myself away and learned to play all the instruments. That's what Olias is, it's a sort of schooling for me and I'm very happy about that. I just had one guy with me doing all the overdubs who was doing all the engineering. I would keep going and going until I drove myself crazy! But I came out on the other end, I'm very happy to say.

(1994) I put a lot of mystery into the actual writing of Olias, the story. It is once said there were four tribes on this planet: Negro, Asian, Nordic and Oriental. Of which we all come from, we have a little of everything in us and we were tribal people. I didn't want to just spell it out. I thought if anyone wants to know about what I've leaned they can find it out. there were a couple of books by Ver Stanley Alder (that inspired Olias), one is called The Initiation Of Life and the other is The Third Eye.

On Fish Out Of Water (released November 1975):

CHRIS, 1991: Obviously it was a good outlet. I spent a cumulative period of about nine or ten weeks. I didn't spend an overly long period of time making it, actually. I had put a studio in my house and I was like christening that with my album.

BILL, 1995: It was recorded at his house. There was a good engineer Greg Jackman, and Andrew Jackman his brother did the string arrangements as I recall. I remember driving over to his house for a couple of weeks and a small basement studio that seemed okay. We did the tracks live, there wasn't a click track and then the strings were put on later. It was nice of him to ring me up for his record...Squire should have made another one by now, really. It's a crazy thing. He could have done a record quite decently if he could have got himself out of bed!

As to how Patrick Moraz's The Story of i (released March 1976) came about:

PATRICK, 1995: In 1975, during the tour with Yes in Nashville at the Hyatt Hotel, which was at the time really an architectural wonder design. I was telling Jon in the limo, "Think about people like us when we are fifty or sixty, when we have pretty much done everything and seen everything. So we are invited to go to these hotels, like in the jungles of Brazil - similar to this one, but 900 stories high. And we'd have to play these games and the games might take three years and you never have to pay bills, it's all free." Jon said, "What's at the end, when you're at the top?" (And I said),"You just have to jump! There is only one rule...any participant can never fall in love with another. And then of course this couple fall in love and at the end their love is so strong that it triumphs, they jump and are whisked away by mystery instead of crashing down like everyone expects."

RARE ALBUMS

THE PARIS SESSIONS (FROM 1979 - THIS MUSIC REMAINS OFFICIALLY UNRELEASED AT THIS TIME)

CHRIS, 1992: Nearly everything was shelved from that album. I did about six tracks, I think. There were some vocals from Jon. I don't think I got around to singing any harmonies on them. It never got that far.

TREVOR RABIN, 1995: Boy, that music is bad! It's like what happened? It's like everything unraveled, no one could play or write...even the sounds were dreadful. There was nothing - I can't believe these are the same guys I play with!

On the business problems at the time:

JON, 1980: Basically the management side of it is a law unto itself at times. Sometimes they apply pressure; that's a manager's job...I believe Yes, as a group over the last two or three years, has had nothing but pressure. That's why there was a need for time off. We were getting on each other's nerves.

CHRIS, 1980: There are always outside aggravations. People making stupid decisions, financial problems, and all that. You can always get over them if musically you're all going in the same direction. But there are other times...

On the unofficial bootleg of these sessions:

ALAN, 1995: It was kind of unfair in a way. It was something that we were just getting into writing. They were just demos, we hadn't gotten into recording. I mean Rick was throwing peanuts at me and I was throwing them back at him in the middle of songs! It's not like a professional recording. And then it leaks out into the market; it's kind of strange.

"Everybody Loves You"

This song ended up on Jon Anderson's Song of Seven album.

"Golden Age"

A portion of this song was used on "Some Are Born" (the main refrain) from the Song of Seven.

"Flower Girl"

This song was rehearsed, but recorded for the Song of Seven album.

"Friend of a Friend"

"Tango"

"The Tower"

"Dance Thru Lights"

The music from this song became the verse of "Run Through The Light" on the Yes album Drama.

ALAN, 1995: The beginning of the song started in Paris. It was a thing that Chris had and it developed later.

9012LIVE - THE SOLOS
RELEASED MARCH 1986

This EP featuring the solo spots of the 90125 tour was released simultaneously with the 9012LIVE video to help promote it.

TONY, 1985: We were thinking about releasing the solo parts (from the tour) on an EP, sometime in the future...with Chris's solo and Jon's solo. I think it would take up too much space to do something on an album, because we have lots of songs and want to get as much on as possible. But I think an EP would be a very good idea for some of the solo stuff.

CHRIS, 1991: We made the 9012Live video from the tour that year which was kind of a cool thing to do, because that's how we met Steve Soderbergh straight out of film school. He later went on to become Mr. sex lies and videotape. I guess we were his first full length project. We got a Grammy nomination for the video actually, unfortunately Sting won it, because it was kind of Sting's year at the time.

"Hold On"

"Si"

"Solly's Beard"

"Soon"

"Changes"

"Amazing Grace"

CHRIS, 1995: I was just fiddling around at the sound check with my bass pedals and bass guitar and I just started playing it. It seemed like it was a tune that everyone knows and it just developed from there. There wasn't any big spiritual criteria involved in picking it..."Hey, I've got to do this song." I had been listening to Dvorak a lot and that tune was somehow in a very similar mode.

"White Fish"

YESYEARS
RELEASED AUGUST 1991

To celebrate Yes's twentieth anniversary Atlantic put together this fine four CD box set that quite nicely sums up the bands career up to that point.

STEVE, 1991: They were going to use "Machine Messiah" from Drama and I suggested "Tempus Fugit," since it was more representative of what we were trying to do. I didn't like any of our jams consistently; there were a couple of wild bits on some of them that I thought, "Did I ever play that?"

ALAN, 1991: There's numerous (obscure) things we could have put on, and I have a small collection at home, but they're just too personal to the band.

STEVE, 1994: I was very involved on the Yesyears album, but there are things on there I had no idea were on there that I was very upset with. First, I think I'll cry if I hear "The Fish" on another compilation. then "Soon" starts without my steel guitar solo, which I think is pathetic - Jon just starts singing like he walked in the door. Then they stupidly used the edited take of "America," which also angered many fans. And the worst thing is that they put in "And You And I" by the 90125 version of Yes and not the original, which I think is the travesty of the album.

TREVOR RABIN, 1995: I think the box set was okay, but it seemed to be done without much love or dedication. I was consulted, but certain things like the version of "And You And I"...on the one hand I enjoyed playing it and I think the version that the 90125 band did was an interesting version and for people buying the box set it might have been intriguing. But I think it might have been good to have included the original, so that's one of the problems I have. I was happy to have our version on it, but I think we did it much better on the Talk tour.

RICK, 1993: There's another farce - the boxed set that we all contributed to paying for! What can I say? There's Jon and me at Vevey and I thought - "What a lousy recording!" So I asked then why it was so bad and I was told it was the only recording available. So I then said,"Why didn't you ask me - I've got the actual master tape at my house!" There are some other bits that are also bad and Jon said he'd got the masters at his house, but they didn't even ask us!

CHRIS, 1994: We were consulted on it; a guy at Atlantic Records asked for our input and it we had any obscure tapes. I'm satisfied with the music that ended up in the set. There was another sort of anthology that I compiled in the early eighties called Classic Yes; it was smaller, but it had some live tracks that hadn't been released until then.

PETER, 1991: It's a bit of old history in a way. If I listen to any old material, I usually end up thinking, "I wish I hadn't played that or that singing sounds weird!" I guess it holds up pretty well, but I'll have to sit and listen to it which is not that easy to do.

(1994) I wasn't consulted. It was a case of, "We're bringing it out. We hope that you like it." But I thought it was done very well. Everyone on that box set got an advance from Atlantic Records depending on what their contribution was. And the only person who didn't get an advance was myself and that's when I decided to start suing. This was nothing to do with writing royalties, it had to do with playing on the damn thing. I got myself a lawyer in Los Angeles and we started fishing around. It's very silly really. There are even two royalty statements which I have copies of, one with current members and ex-members and how much advance they're getting from this box set. And then there's a separate royalty statement and the only two people that aren't getting advance royalties off it are myself and Tony Kaye. What the reason for that is I have no idea...I've never received a penny for any of that stuff that I played on.

"Something's Coming"

JON, 1970: We had been arranging songs for sometime when I heard Buddy Rich's West Side Story, which gave me the idea to arrange "Something's Coming."

PETER, 1991: We did "Something's Coming" which I think was my idea, the thing from West Side Story - which was our grand finale. And it used to go down very well.

(1994) It is probably the closest thing recorded that sounded like the way the band sounded. There were no overdubs at all except for the vocals. It is more representative of how the band sounded (live) than any of the other stuff I think.

"Montreux's Theme"

STEVE, 1994: Everything for Going For The One was recorded again when Patrick left, except for "Montreux's Theme." But he's not really on that song because he was mixed out. I don't want to say who, but somebody lost the 24 track to that song and you can't lose a 24 track very easily. So only that mix survived, when we said, "Let's hear it without Patrick," since he had left the band and that's what killed the tune really. It wasn't that Patrick contributed much to it, because in fact Chris and I wrote that. I wrote quite a lot of it to be honest...but I wouldn't like to say that because I nicked something to make up the tune!

CHRIS, 1994: Some of the things that we did when we were in Montreux were very interesting musically. Some of those little snippet things, on the Yes box set - there is a little vignette sort of piece. We had a few things like that, very much in Steve's style.

"Money"

ALAN, 1993: "Money" was a song I wrote the kind of backing lick and we were messing around with it one day.

CHRIS, 1992: (It's) very uncharacteristic (of the band). It's got a bizarre commentary in it by Rick that you can barely understand.

"Make It Easy"

TREVOR RABIN, 1995: That is just a very, very rough demo that we put down. We were somewhat horrified when it ended up on the record the way it did. I know Jon was, because he's not on it! We were surprised, because we thought they were going to edit it and the song landed up on there in its entirety.

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