MIKE TIANO: So... Chris Squire, "Swiss Choir"... [laughs] That's quite a mouthful, isn't it?

CHRIS SQUIRE: [Laughs] Well, it's supposed to be. I think there's a grammatical term for what that is, but I don't quite know what that is. I must look that up.

MOT: Was that intentional?

CS: I thought it was very cute. I had the idea for the title a long time ago, and when it came to this album, I thought, "Oh yeah, there you go. That's a great title for it." It's supposed to be amusing as well.

MOT: It's definitely is that. So how did the concept come about? Basically you interrupted recording your solo album for this.

CS: Well, yes. In fact, basically I've got close to 80% I think of the material I'm working on for the solo record; I'm pretty much in good shape, a lot of the lyrics had gotten written and I was heading towards that. And then suddenly around all this I was talking to I think it was somebody in Tenth Street Management at the time; think somebody was trying to come up with ideas about what myself, and Alan, and Steve to be doing while Jon was on his holidays, you know, and I think somebody came up and said, "Why don't guys do a Christmas album like Mannheim Steamroller or something," and I said I'm really not familiar with that stuff. But just for the matter of interest I looked them up and had a listen, and I kind of thought it was a little cheesy, honestly, so I went back to them and said no, I don't think that's the right kind of thing for Steve, myself, and Alan to be looking at. And then I thought about it a bit more and I thought hey, what about if just get in touch with Jeremy Jackman who used to be in that choral band, the Kings Singers, who were always on like night TV and stuff in the '60s. They were an a cappella kind of a group that did... it's kind of a secular, and some of it was church kind of music. My friend Jeremy Jackman was a member of that band--they really weren't a band; they were a choral group.

So I called him up, and I just said to him, I have this idea, what do you think about the idea of the Kings Singers doing some kind of Christmas thing with a rock backing, and he said, "Well, I'm not with them anymore," although they still exist, and he said, "I have my own choir that I'm the director of," and I said, "Oh that sounds even better then. So what do you think: get your choir and sing these things if I put together like a rock backing, could we get to sing these traditional songs?" So that's really how it all came about. I really started it like September the 4th or something, and we pretty much had gotten it finished by about a month later, which is an incredible pace to work at, because it's 13 songs in all, and the album went very, very much like clockwork, actually the whole production of the album.

MOT: Yeah, a month is very, very fast for an album to come together.

CS: Yeah, it is, well especially when it involved not only people playing instrumentally, but having a whole choir come in and sing 13 different songs... quite labor-intensive.

MOT: As you know, there's a gazillion Christmas albums out there, so what would you say how this differentiates this pack besides say the rock slant?

CS: Well, I don't think anyone has ever done this before. There are people who have Christmas songs in a pop/rock genre; all kinds of things like that. What's different about this is that these are standard old, traditional carols I knew as a kid in the church choir, and I just remembered the ones that I used to like the most, and just went to work on arranging them, and I don't think that's ever been done before actually, and that makes it different.

MOT: I think I have to agree with you; I heard "Silent Night" on chrissquire.net, and if that's any indication, it sounds like the arrangements are going to be very creative. When I saw the title I thought "(Groan), not [yet another version of] 'Silent Night'," but then when I listened to it, I was just overwhelmed. It was not what I was expecting at all.

CS: I'm hoping that's the kind of reaction that people are going to have to it. I know that we've set up this new thing, chrissquire.net. So obviously we're trying to create a lot of interest out there with that, and we've got an overwhelming amount of orders [laughs] for the album coming directly to us. so that's how I'm releasing it, basically through my site and also it'll be available on Amazon and Play.com and iTunes - those outlets, but won't be in stores.

MOT: So people can go to Amazon or your website obviously, but if they want to go to Amazon or iTunes...

CS: Yeah, yeah, it may probably be a little cheaper on Amazon; I don't know. It depends on the way their price structure is; I don't know how they work on that. It's safe to say they buy enough from us, I guess that they discount them probably a little more than will be on my site, but of course I will encourage everyone to come and buy directly from me [laughs].

MOT: The way you chose your songs were just all songs that you enjoyed singing at the choir when you were a child.

CS: Yeah, that's right, and some of them were more religious than others; some of them were just kind happy kind of Christmas-y kind of melody. Some of them more serious, and a couple of them were in Latin too [laughs]. So we got that going. It's quite a varied bunch of music on there, and of course as a final track I also re-released "Run With the Fox" on there with an added the choir to that, to the original, and I put that on as the 13th track.

MOT: So you took the original track and just added the choir to it?

CS: Exactly, yes. Mainly because I didn't have any access to the original multi-track to be able to remix it anyway.

MOT: Oh, really. Why didn't you just re-record that?

CS: Because of the time factor as much as anything else, and all I wanted to do was just put the choir on it and re-release it. It sounds good.

MOT: Based on what you're saying just a minute ago, did you consciously attempt to strike a balance between the religious-themed songs and the more merry-type of songs, or did it just happen kind of naturally?

CS: No, it kind of happened naturally; I just work on personal tastes, really, just songs that I like and ended up with quite a good balance of the more somber ones and the jollier ones, so it's got a good balance.

MOT: "Silent Night" as opposed to something like "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" [laughs].

CS: Yeah, there's a couple like based on an old English hymns and that have got little bits of, as I've said before, a bit of Latin here and there. Some of them are just like quieter sort of things; there are a lot of noisy ones too.

MOT: Yeah, I'm looking over the set list and from what I see I don't recognize some of these titles.

CS: You probably wouldn't; I would imagine they're probably better known in England mainly because around Christmas time in England, most people are exposed to TV shows from the cathedrals and the Kings College, Cambridge, where they do a Christmas service every year that's broadcast primetime on their TV, so I think English people might known them a bit more because of that, and of course for any people who go to church at Christmas, which is usually when most people only go for the one day [laughs].

MOT: It's sounds like you may have struck a fine balance here, because your fans and Yes fans-especially the American audience--will hear songs they've never really heard before, so it's not your basic "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Jingle Bells" and all that stuff. And for anyone looking for something new as far as Christmas music, they have something new to listen to, as opposed to all those old hoary songs.

CS: That's right, I mean there's a lot of people probably in the States won't know quite a lot of material, so it'll seem like a new album to them.

MOT: Was there a particular song or songs that were very emotional for you, considering you did as a kid?

CS: Well, I got sort of emotional when I was hearing the choir go down on the tracks, because that just sounded real good to hear... it's very much based on old traditional English harmonies, and it's four parts most of the time, and sometimes there's eight parts and there's two choirs singing different passages. It was quite an undertaking actually, and Greg Jackman, the other Jackman brother, he mixed it and engineered it, and he did a fantastic job on that.

MOT: But were there one or more songs that were particularly of special meaning to you?

CS: Not really more than any of the others; I'd just say generally they were emotional to me.

MOT: So I'm sure you're probably familiar with Jon's album 3 SHIPS, which is also a Christmas themed album.

CS: Yes. I know I've heard that song, the "3 Ships" song, which incidentally is also on my album. But it obviously sounds completely different, so I'm not really aware of what other songs he had on that album.

MOT: So in other words you don't listen to the album beforehand to get an idea of what he'd done.

CS: No, I didn't actually, no. I had a set idea of what I wanted to do with this, so it wasn't really that there was any need to compare it to Jon or anybody else out there with a Christmas album.

MOT: I understand that his album 3 SHIPS is going to be re-released for the holidays as well; it hasn't been in the public eye for quite a long time, so it's interesting you both have Christmas-themed albums, and apparently you do "Ding Dong Merrily on High", which he did as well.

CS: He did that as well, didn't he. But there was no point in referencing it, because I was sure whatever he did would have been entirely different from this anyway.

MOT: Actually, that's kind of gratifying [laughs]. In other words, you didn't hear it; you weren't influenced by it.

CS: No, no, exactly.

MOT: I've read that you played tenor saxophone on the album.

CS: Ah, no, it's not a tenor sax; it's a tenor vocal. I sing a couple of times on the album. A couple of them are like baritone solos, and in the "Bleak Midwinter" is a tenor.

MOT: Did you ever sing along with the choir or is it basically the lead vocals you handled?

CS: No, I put that on after they were done.

MOT: Oh, ok. Tell me about the other instrumentation on the album that you played.

CS: Basically I just played the bass on it, and as you know Steve Hackett played guitar.

MOT: Right.

CS: And Jeremy Stacey played the drums.

MOT: Which basses did you use on the album?

CS: I just used three; I just used my Rickenbacker, and I used my Electra bass, but I just put the bottom four strings over five stringed bass, which is lower. I just used the B, the E, and the A, and the D strings. So it's pitched a fourth lower, that bass. I also used my 8-string bass on one track.

MOT: Your 8-string bass? Which one?

CS: It's called a Ranney.

MOT: So how did Steve Hackett become involved?

CS: I had worked up all the arrangements with Gerard [Johnson], who was the keyboard player in the Syn, and we basically put the arrangements together in his little keyboard suite that he has at home. He was going to play on it, and Jeremy--he also played on the Syn album--he also now has his own studio, which coincidentally is about half a mile from my house, so it was just convenient, and he had a big room in there too to accommodate the choir recording. So Jeremy did that. And then of course at one point I was just talking to those two guys and I said, "Yeah I've got to try and get some guitar players." First I just thought maybe I'll just have a couple of guest guys; I thought about Brian May and Jeff Beck, because I know those guys pretty well, since I've been back in London and we run into each other at award events and things like that, and since I get along well with those two guys. I made some inquiries about them and one of them was off doing something in Canada and one was off on holiday somewhere in the Mediterranean and they had long-term plans, so they couldn't accommodate it.

And then Jeremy Stacey said to me, "Well, you should ask Steve Hackett, I think his style of playing would really suit what you're doing here." I said to him I'll give it a try; I had never spoke to him in my life. I think I was introduced to him once in Brazil, maybe when we were there, he had a Brazilian wife or something at the time. I also saw him play with Steve [Howe] at the Wiltern Theater in L.A. when they had that GTR project, and only just an, "Oh hi, how you doing? Nice to meet you, and see you later." kind of conversation. So I called him up, and I said, "Steve, someone suggested that you'd be great for this project. Do you feel like doing it?" I went around to his studio; he has a studio in Twickenham which is a suburb of London, and I played him everything, and he went, "Yeah, sounds great. I'd love to do it." I said, "Well, what, a couple of tracks?" and he goes, "No, I'll do the whole thing if you'd like!" [laughs]. I went, "That's fantastic!" And since then I've actually gone on playing bass and sang on the project that he's working. We traded talent.

MOT: Great. He's on the entire album?

CS: He's on every track, yeah, apart from "Run With the Fox."

MOT: How did the Ahmet Ertegun tribute [headlined by Led Zeppelin] come about, what you're doing with Alan [White] and Keith Emerson?

CS: Oh, I was just asked-Phil Carson, who used to be at Atlantic Records, who had some part in the organization of the charity event, and he just said to me, "Would you play 'Fanfare for the Common Man' with Keith Emerson?" and I said sure. I hope Rick Wakeman isn't going to be there [laughs]! Funny thing is around this time of year they have all these dinners for charities and things. I went to a charity last night, and Rick was there actually, and I was guided to where I was supposed to sit, and they had Greg Lake's name on the table... [laughs] I suddenly went cold. I thought is he going to be here, because I don't know if he'll be weird or not about me doing it ["Fanfare"]. I don't know, or maybe he wouldn't be. Anyway, so it's me and Alan and Keith.

MOT: One last quick question. What do you see as being the major goal for Yes' return in 2008?

CS: Major goal? Well, it would just be nice to playing to people again and that stuff. Hope everyone has a good time, enjoys it. As far as an actual set list, we haven't really discussed that yet. 

For details on SWISS CHOIR including a list of online stores offering the album, visit Market Squire at chrissquire.net. In addition it's available from Zune.