Hopes and desires for Yes in 2022 with Simon Barrow – 515

Great show today with Simon Barrow and we all agree that there is a market for well curated box sets as Robert Fripp has done with KC. Similarly Ian Anderson with Jethro Tull, truly wonderful packages. Until there is one individual holding the rights and able to curate the releases, I doubt it can be done.

Happy New Year all. As always, Yes will surprise us with new releases, both group, solo & collaborations. The band members are working on new material for a hoped for followup to The Quest. Of course, Billy has his hand in many areas, including a new Circa album that will be out this year, a new solo album, work on a new Arc of Life album, etc. I’m hopeful the Yes early years BBC/live archive will come out this year.

On the Asia front, there’s a planned 40th anniversary release for the Asia debut. They’ve looked at doing a box set, a picture disc, a video documentary, and other ideas, so we’ll see what shows up. Sadly, the original master tapes are believed lost in the Universal fire, along with many others. An announcement should be coming soon, as the album anniversary is in early March. Roger is involved, as expected. So that’s all good news for Asia fans, including me.

Simon, I would love to help with the Yes in the 90s book. I have a huge Yes collection, as many know, so can send you items via email, Messenger or Dropbox. I was the largest contributor to Jon Kirkman’s Yes books. See my IMDB page for my resume of sorts.

Thanks, of course, to the legends that are Dave Watkinson and Doug Curran for those offers regarding images for ‘Yes in the 1990s’. I will, naturally, be in touch. Indeed I was going to drop you guys a note anyway. But if there are other people out there (perhaps a little less ubiquitous in Yes circles than the dynamic duo!), please don’t be shy and do get in touch. I’m sure there are many more visual Yes gems hiding out there which deserve to be seen.

Now on Dave’s “it’s COMPLICATED” comment about Yes rarity releases. Well, indeed. I think all three of us referenced and acknowledged that in this episode. Also, it’s important to stress that the difficulty isn’t necessarily with current management and copyright managers – they’re doing their best, for sure. At least some of the challenges will arise from decisions made in the past, many of which they will have little or no control over.

From the ’60s and ’70s it took popular musicians and bands some time to figure out how the business they were part of worked, and of course there were also plenty of people around looking to make a buck out of them. Then, from time to time, artists would have a cash-flow problem and sell rights in ways that would later be regarded as inadvisable.

The net consequence was a lack of artistic control for too many musicians – something Bill Bruford has commented on several times. From the outset someone like Robert Fripp took a contrary approach, particularly in the light of his legal arguments with EG, and his setting up of (in the first instance) Digital Global Mobile. That has reaped benefits.

Things are a little different with Yes, and while others will know much more about all this than me, I’m sure Dave is right to be hopeful about what we can expect over the next couple of years… fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, the new and expanded edition of my own ‘Solid Mental Grace: Listening to the Music of Yes’ progresses, most likely for a Spring release at this stage – publishing being the movable fast that it is!