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Produced by Wayne Hall, Jeffrey Crecelius and Preston Frazier
I’m officially on leave but Mark and I had to comment on the storm around Ice Bridge Gate this week.
If you haven’t been on social media for some time you may have missed what happened so we aim to bring you up-to-speed on all the tortuous twists in this tale.
- Who wrote The Ice Bridge?
- Where did it come from?
- Why is a very similar tune on a 1980 film and Sale of the Century?
Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!
1) Hi, in regard to my earlier tweet and to put the matter beyond any further debate…The Ice Bridge is sourced from a Francis Monkman composition “Dawn Of An Era” (Bruton Music) which I mistakenly assumed as being one of my own library pieces.
— Geoffrey Downes (@asiageoff) July 27, 2021
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Theme music
The music I use is the last movement of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. This has been used as introduction music at many Yes concerts. My theme music is not take from a live concert – I put it together from the following two creative commons sources: thanvannispen and archive.org
8 replies on “Ice Bridge Gate – 493”
So Francis Monkman is now yet another part of the Yes family tree, providing a branch that can lead us off in yet more directions.
The moral of the story here is: Patience, while all the facts are sorted out, in any dispute. Don’t overreact in your thoughts or words. Many, many folks have no patience or very little nowadays in this high speed internet world. They want instant gratification, instant info & answers, especially younger people.
Geoff is a very decent man so he not surprisingly owned up to his honest mistake. I know he’s embarrassed for himself & for the band but this will blow over, as most things do. Contrary to a rumor out there, he is not going to resign from Yes.
I think that a better “scandal” name would have been “Ice Im-bridge-lio”
The questions surrounding the piece were answered. But now I’d like to hear from the other name on the track credit, Jon Davsion. Did he know that the tracks he received from Downes were from the late 70s and were not a new composition? How did he feel when he found this out, and what were his thoughts as the drama unfolded. Was he amused, concerned, didn’t care too much, annoyed? Will be interesting the next time someone asks for his thoughts on the matter.
I was wryly amused to hear Mark repeat his accurate observation that the opening statement of “The Ice Bridge” is immediately suggestive of ELP. I’ve done some digging and I can report that this scandal runs even deeper than we thought! It turns out that ELP’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” is near-identical to a piece on an early acetate by library composer Aaron Copland recorded in 1942!
(At the time of writing, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was unavailable for comment, as were Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) and Sir Hubert Parry (1845-1918).)
PS: Gerry Anderson’s “UFO” is a sublime work of cold-war adventure fiction, expressed through the metaphor of alien incursion. There was a austere time in the 1990s when the only way to own the first few episodes on VHS cassette was as the cut-and-shunt feature compilation “Invasion: UFO”, which I have long since chucked out, having acquired the discrete episodes in digital form. It was the bodging together of the episodes you were being critical of, wasn’t it Mark, and not the exquisite source material?
(I once stood next to Henry Potts as we watched a band play Barry Gray’s “UFO” theme at an SF convention.)
“Kevin”, not “Mark”. You know who I mean…
Perhaps it’s worth noting that, irrespective of who wrote the source material, “The Ice Bridge”, which most Yes fans (other than the “no Jon, No Yes” brigade) seem to laud as a return to form, has its themes written in the 1970s. Similarly other recent Yescapade which have been considered “good Yes music” include the material on “From a Page” and “Fly From Here” written in the late 70s/early 80s.
Prehaps the era in which material is written (or the age of the musicians?) has more impact on the music than the personnel. This observation is loosely based on ideas in Prof Edward Macan’s excellent book “Rocking the Classics” where he hypothesises that progressive rock started in Engalnd because of a particular set of musical, cultural and political circumstances.
Hi Guys
I really enjoyed listening to your views on Ice Bridge Gate, level heads indeed 😉 I liked the song from the start, no matter who wrote it – Yes did a lot of “cover” versions of songs in the past and we dont hold it against them, and I still like My Sweet Lord despite all of its lack of originality. As a fan, my way of showing I am all for them and their music was to go all out and buy the deluxe version of The Quest……..keep up the good work.
Steven