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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.
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