Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier
Jon Anderson with Jon-Luc Ponty
It’s been a bit of a challenging week on the technical side with Mark in lockdown and without proper internet access and my move of the YMP Towers into a new location in the house. However, we did manage to listen to the Jon Anderson Christmas album, 3 Ships which was very enjoyable.
What’s Jon’s Christmas album like?
Are all the songs ‘Christmassy’?
Why listen to 3 Ships?
Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!
Join us as a Patron!
If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast financially and also have access to exclusive activity and opportunities, there is a special page you can use to sign up and 2020 is the time to join us:
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
Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier
Going For The One and its singles
Unfortunately, both I and Mark have been a bit under the weather this week but we recovered in time to listen to two classic Yes albums and record our thoughts. There’s also time for a few thoughts about Jon Anderson’s new very controversial song!
How do these two albums compare?
What changed between them?
What is Jon Anderson up to now?
Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!
Join us as a Patron!
If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast financially and also have access to exclusive activity and opportunities, there is a special page you can use to sign up and 2020 is the time to join us:
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
Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier
This week, Mark and I have been listening to the album which Jon Anderson released shortly after leaving Yes following the Big Generator tour, ‘In The City Of Angels’. It’s not exactly progressive rock but see if you agree with our assessment of the music and take a listen to an audio contribution on this subject from Stephen Lambe as well.
We also have time for a two pence about the latest Roger Dean Yes album cover and its public development as well as a very exciting YMP Announcement connected with what the YMP Patrons have been up to in secret lately. And that’s not all. There’s the result of the Dave Watkinson Warriors EP competition, news of Miguel Falcao’s PlayForChris6 project and the official press release from Steve Howe about his new album. So, Look out for all that!
What’s this album like?
Why did Jon go in this direction?
Is it worth buying?
Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!
If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast financially and also have access to exclusive activity and opportunities, there is a special page you can use to sign up and 2020 is the time to join us:
Why not get yourself one of these? Head over to the YMP Emporium via the link on the menu.
Show notes and links:
Love Is
Release date 31st July
29th April 2020: Legendary Yes guitarist Steve Howe has announced he is to release Love Is on 31st July through BMG Records. Love Is is Howe’s first solo album since the all-instrumental Time in 2011 and has a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs.
The album will be available as CD – gatefold digi-sleeve with 12 page booklet and LP – Black vinyl 180gm with gatefold sleeve, liner notes and lyrics.
Steve Howe sings lead vocals and plays electric, acoustic and steel guitars, keyboards, percussion and bass guitar on the instrumentals while Yes vocalist Jon Davison provides vocal harmonies and plays bass guitar on the vocal tracks. The album also features Dylan Howe on drums.
Many years in the making, Love Is brings together a consistently strong and polished listening experience, forging the very best from the writing and playing throughout the album. This may well be considered the real ‘stand out’ album of Howe’s solo career. The instrumentals keep a highly progressive rock guitar style to the fore, with songs that explore stories of lives lived and lives only just begun. Love Is A River is the central longer song with several textural shifts, featuring a theme played on 12 string and steel guitars.
“I called the album Love Is because it hints at the central idea that that love is important but also love of the universe and the ecology of the world is very important,” says Steve Howe. “Alexander Humboldt went around the world and recognised we are destroying the planet but that was 200 years ago! We are still destroying the planet and, I suppose, my songs show the yearning I have for the love of nature and how beauty, art and music all stem from nature. There is a theme about those things, love, beauty, ecology, nature and wonderful people.
“Love Is A River just seemed a very important track to me, a sort of quintessential track with lots of moods, lots of interesting things going on with steel guitars and acoustic guitars. Further tracks grew from time spent writing in my studio.
“See Me Through looks at the idea that we get through life by not driving ourselves that hard but attempting to achieve things with people who help you along the way and Imagination is dedicated to my granddaughter Zuni. It’s about how I see some of the things she’s experienced in her short seven years.”
“I invited Jon Davison to sing harmonies with me and add bass on the songs. If he was singing on the songs I thought why doesn’t he play bass as well and it turned out nice. He’s been with Yes for seven or eight years and he’s a great guy, great performer and a great interpreter of Yes songs.
“I’ve been singing for years, mainly in harmony but I’ve sung lead on lots of my own albums before and I feel that, as I’ve got older, I’ve got a grip on that and, hopefully, it’s improved over the years.”
The album includes many distinctive Steve Howe signatures among the instrumental tracks from the delicate beauty of Fulcrum, Beyond The Call and Pause For Thought to upbeat rock, The Headlands, and the jazz-tinged Sound Picture.
“The instrumentals are like a mood, a place I went to one day, thought this is nice and then I develop that to a point where it’s a finished track. There might be key ingredients that I thought about using musically that I like, that I’m drawn to, and then developing them into something.”
Love Is was written, engineered and produced by Steve Howe with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. “I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio,” Howe explains. “We expand the tracks and put them on Pro Tools and everything starts to be possible. At some point, probably around 2 years ago, Dylan came down to Curtis’s studio and we recorded the drums on some of the tracks. I could see a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs and there was a feeling that it was an album, sitting there, looking at me.”
The track listing for Steve Howe’s Love Is album is:
1 Fulcrum (instrumental)
2 See Me Through
3 Beyond The Call (instrumental)
4 Love Is A River
5 Sound Picture (instrumental)
6 It Ain’t Easy
7 Pause For Thought (instrumental)
8 Imagination
9 The Headlands (instrumental)
10 On The Balcony
Formats:
CD Catalogue No. 538608592
Gatefold digi leeve with 12 page booklet with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics
LP – Catalogue Number – 538608601
180gm Black vinyl in Gatefold sleeve with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics
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
Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier
This week we turn our attention to the next person to leave the band, Jon Anderson. He called it a day after the Big Generator Tour. So, what did he do next? Find out later on.
We also have a sort of double 2 pence which is concerned with both what Roger Dean is currently up to on Facebook and why it matters for fans of the recorded output of the world’s greatest progressive rock band.
Solo album for Jon Anderson – but which one?
Who was involved?
What should Yes release next?
Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!
If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast financially and also have access to exclusive activity and opportunities, there is a special page you can use to sign up and 2020 is the time to join us:
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
This week, I’m away for work so it’s been impossible to create a full episode. However, there are two important Yes updated we need to cover so I attempted to connect with Mark from my hotel room – which worked, a bit…
So what we have is a very short episode covering the announcement of the US Tour dates for 2020 and the press release from Dave Watkinson which I’ve copied below:
JON
ANDERSON and THE WARRIORS
The Book, Vinyl
EP Record and Accrington Display
March – April –
May 2020
28 – March – Paperback Book
release
30 – March – Jon & The Warriors
Vinyl Demos EP Record release
27 – April – Accrington Library
Display Opening Day and Signing
30 – May – Accrington Library Display
– Warriors member – Signing
JON ANDERSON BOOK
Jon Anderson and The Warriors – the road to Yes
A meticulously researched book about Jon Anderson
and his early band The Warriors (who also featured future King Crimson drummer
Ian Wallace).
Published by Sonicbond Publishing in the UK it has
208 pages. It features 175 black and white photos and 44 in colour, most not
seen for more than 50 years.
Jon Anderson is the enigmatic lead singer and founding
member of Yes. He is also a composer, artist, writer, dreamer, lyricist, poet
and musician, with a career spanning more than fifty years. Many books have
been written about the band Yes, but until now none have covered Jon’s early
years in his first band, The Warriors, in any detail. This group played a key
role in developing Jon’s Anderson’s vocal range, work ethic and determination
to succeed, as well as giving him valuable experience in the music business, which
was of invaluable help as his career blossomed.
David Watkinson takes us on a journey from the
Lancashire beat music scene in the early 1960s to the vibrancy of London later
in the decade. In the short time The Warriors existed – from 1963 to 1967 –
they released a single, appeared on TV and in a movie, and spent a year
following in the Beatles footsteps as a working group in Germany.
As well as providing a complete history of The
Warriors, this book also follows Jon’s subsequent career in London, his
appearances with Gun and his brief solo career as Hans Christian. He finally
met Chris Squire and found a home in Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, as that group
gradually morphed into Yes during the summer of 1968. The book includes new
interviews with Jon and many members of The Warriors, through its various
line-up changes, most for the very first time. It also features a newly
researched family tree, long forgotten photographs, of both the Warriors and
the first line up of Yes, many items of memorabilia and an exclusive look into
the band’s diaries. It closes with a comprehensive discography and a
collectables section.
This unique and meticulously researched book will
delight both Yes and Jon Anderson fans as well as students of the 1960s music
scene. It is essential reading for all lovers of the world’s greatest
progressive rock band, and fans of the genre’s finest vocalist – Jon Anderson.
The Paperback edition signed by the author is
exclusively available through…
The book is also available to pre order from all
bookshops and online stores.
JON ANDERSON and THE WARRIORS
THE LOST DEMOS VINYL EP
In
these early recordings by Jon we don’t get the lyrics, wordplay,
mysticism or complex sounds and meanings which later became his signature. What
we have here is a young man enjoying himself as a band member, trying to
make a few pounds, travel and to emulate the Beatles a little. In these
basic beginnings neither Jon Anderson or Ian Wallace shine much, but
what we do get are little signs and glimpses of their potential.
Jon
Anderson would go on to be the legendary singer in Yes. A
writer, musician, frontman, leader and the all-round voice of prog
rock music. On the earlier tracks Jon was most definitely
in his backing singer role, you get to hear that voice cutting through. The
last track being a total joy and a rocking surprise with Jon giving it his
all. King Crimson fans will hear just how tight Ian Wallace’s playing was
before hitting the big time too. All the band members shine, which can be heard
on the instrumental track, Rodney and Dave are solid and it is easy
to see why they brought in Brian Chatton on keyboards, his
work being similar to his personality, bright, lively and
rocking. Jon Anderson can be heard growing as a singer, musician and
frontman for the band over the three years difference in the recordings. From a
backing singer with his brother Tony to an out-of-sight, soul
groover and mover. All seemingly a long way from the music
of Yes and Close to The Edge or Olias
of Sunhillow, but it was all influencing Jon, who
was listening, learning and performing. This was Jon in
his apprenticeship years, preparing
himself for the lifelong career that was to
follow.
This
rare and exciting material came from various lofts and trunks around the world.
Hidden away for more than fifty years, the condition of some of the material
was very poor – having jumps, scratches, muffled and even stopping completely.
In my attempt to bring these recording to life again, I made the decision on a
few tracks not to over-produce them, leaving in the crackles and blemishes.
With others however I was surprised at how well and clear they came out. The
band sounds very accomplished; you can hear just how well practised they were.
The Warriors were among the best beat group acts at the time.
Featuring
seven demo tracks from the band at different times in their career, from
Lancashire at the rise of their local stardom, to the ending months in Germany
in 1967. Six of the tracks are with the full band, Jon Anderson backing
and as a lead singer with just one track as an
instrumental.
This limited – edition (500) picture
sleeved, vinyl EP 7” record, is released on Plane Groovy Records in a coloured
vinyl, a 1960s vibrant orange plus in standard black vinyl format. Played at
33RPM, this record tips it’s hat to the days in the 1970’s when Yes would
produce such an EP.
This long-lost material gives the Jon
Anderson and Yes fans a new insight into these beat music years.
Tracks
Side A
1) ‘Too Much’ (2.21)
2) ‘Can’t Live It Down’ (2.44)
3) ‘Summer Girl’ (1.54)
Side AA
1) ‘The Doll
House Is Empty’ (1.59)
2) ‘Run to Me’ (2.21)
3) ‘She’s Gone’ (2.08) Instrumental
4) ‘She’s Gone’ (2.02) with vocals
Researched, mastering, co-ordinated, images and
production by David Watkinson
Pre
orders 30 January, available through burningshed.com
Released
30 March 2020
Prices:
Limited Orange Vinyl £9.99, Black Vinyl £7.99, Test Pressing (10 only) £20.00
Free
download available of the tracks with each purchase
JON ANDERSON and THE WARRIORS – The Road To Yes
DISPLAY IN ACCRINGTON
Accrington, the hometown
of Jon Anderson, will hold a small display in the town’s library from 27 April
– 30 May 2020 in celebration of the new book and vinyl record published on his
early years in the 1960s. The display takes the form of a cabinet of
memorabilia, with one area focusing on The Warriors and the other Jon as a solo
artist and a member of Yes through the years.
David Watkinson,
the curator of the display and author of the newly published book, Jon Anderson
and The Warriors – the road to Yes, will be on hand to sign copies of the paperback
book (Sonicbond) for sale on the 27 April and on the 30 May, the latter date
being the final day where it is hoped a member of the famous local 60s group
The Warriors will attend too.
Books and copies of
the limited – edition vinyl EP will be available to purchase from David who is
happy to discuss both releases and the display.
David Watkinson was
born in Bolton, Lancashire. He has a background in antique furniture, sales and
the automotive world. He is currently working within the field of historic
furniture restoration in London and his interests include the arts, music,
classic cars, antiques and being creative. The author of the best-selling
history of the band Yes: Perpetual Change (Plexus, 2001), he has been a
passionate admirer, collector and historian of the band Yes for over 40 years.
He lives in West Sussex, England.
