Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only John Anderson. John.
Speaker 1: Great to have you on the podcast. So tell me
Speaker 1: how'd you cope with lockdown during COVID.
Speaker 2: I got on with a lot of music, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: The day we were told to stay indoors, away from
Speaker 2: the chaos was I was doing a barbecue and I
Speaker 2: slipped on the top steps near the barbecue is and
Speaker 2: I broke my foot in two places. For the first
Speaker 2: six months of COVID, I was on crushes. But it
Speaker 2: made me want to go in the studio and create.
Speaker 2: And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: And what did you create? And you did it alone?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I create a lot of stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: I called it the opeless opus, and then I did
Speaker 2: it up to opus opus. And it's a combination of
Speaker 2: the miracle of playing all the white notes on the
Speaker 2: keyboard because I can't play them both at the same time,
Speaker 2: black and white like a normal person. So I just
Speaker 2: played the white notes and I was playing this music,
Speaker 2: and I record little sections and then I record another one,
Speaker 2: and then I record another one. And during the course
Speaker 2: of about two weeks, I recorded about twenty sort of
Speaker 2: musical events if you like. And then I actually went
Speaker 2: on tour I think it was with the Academy of Rock,
Speaker 2: these young teenagers, and we had a great tour and
Speaker 2: we called COVID on the way home, which was crazy.
Speaker 2: But that's the way things happen. But expect the unexpected.
Speaker 2: But the remarkable thing about working with teenagers you feel
Speaker 2: young and vibrant until somebody does a self.
Speaker 1: Or when you look in the mirror.
Speaker 2: And said, wait a minute, you got a couple of
Speaker 2: things going on here.
Speaker 1: Tell me about only being able to play the white
Speaker 1: keys and not the black keys at the same time.
Speaker 2: It's just one of those things. I you know, I
Speaker 2: never learned to play the piano, so I sort of
Speaker 2: made it up and I just used the wine notes
Speaker 2: all the time. So it works for me, you know.
Speaker 2: And and I tell a story that when I was
Speaker 2: doing my solo show, halfway through it, I'd start playing
Speaker 2: the keyboards and singing along with the keyboards, and I
Speaker 2: could never sing with the piano. I played the piano
Speaker 2: book can never sing with it until I actually broke
Speaker 2: my back. I know it's a strange idea, but it
Speaker 2: actually broke my bike putting up Christmas tensely things on
Speaker 2: the front door of our house. And I felt over
Speaker 2: on the wall and brought my back and from that
Speaker 2: moment on I could actually sing at the piano.
Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of stuff going on. So you were
Speaker 1: putting up tinsel.
Speaker 2: And sparkly tinsel and the lights on the front door
Speaker 2: because it was Christmas.
Speaker 1: How far did you fall?
Speaker 2: Probably a four foot back backwards onto the wall which
Speaker 2: had a sharp sort of edge to it, And and
Speaker 2: God bless my wife, she phoned up the the ambulance
Speaker 2: to come and get me. And the ambulance came and
Speaker 2: got me, and I kept saying I need some morphine.
Speaker 2: My back is hurting me. And the guy would say, well,
Speaker 2: we'll give you so when we get to the hospital,
Speaker 2: and I said, yep, I need it now because it
Speaker 2: really hurts. And the guy said, oh, are you John Anderson?
Speaker 2: I said, just can be morphine? He said, can I
Speaker 2: have your autograph? Then we're in the bloody back of
Speaker 2: the well. To think about it, We're in the back
Speaker 2: of the ambulance and he's asking me for an autograph.
Speaker 1: And how do they treat it? Broken back? And how
Speaker 1: long did it take to recover.
Speaker 2: A long time. You basically put on a big type
Speaker 2: thing around your chest and sit up a lot. And
Speaker 2: that's when I started creating some music as well.
Speaker 1: I remember, Okay, you live in California. I don't want
Speaker 1: your address, but generally speaking, we're in California.
Speaker 2: Are you in California?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm in La.
Speaker 2: Oh great, I'm Central California.
Speaker 1: And how'd you end up there?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a nice story actually, because I came to
Speaker 2: work and live in La some thirty years ago doing
Speaker 2: an album called with Yes called The Big Generator, which
Speaker 2: was one of those experiences that I'll never forget. And
Speaker 2: it just happened that I was working on an album
Speaker 2: at the time called Toll Tech, which not many people know,
Speaker 2: which is my invitation to make music about the Native
Speaker 2: American character energy that they are wonderful people, the indigenous
Speaker 2: people of this part of America. And so I was
Speaker 2: making some music and I'd had a lot of meditation
Speaker 2: up until that point in time, and I kept seeing
Speaker 2: this beautiful girl jump up and wave at me halfway
Speaker 2: through the meditation. And so a friend of mine who
Speaker 2: worked at BMI, said, I have a friend would like
Speaker 2: to meet you. She actually writes and organizes the musicians
Speaker 2: with the company. What's the company called? So the problem, Bob.
Speaker 1: It'll come to you. It's a mental role there. You
Speaker 1: got to go through all the pages.
Speaker 2: No, you know, imagine movies, you imagine the company. She
Speaker 2: worked for them, and she came to visit me for lunch,
Speaker 2: and I said I would prepare lunch, and thinking about it,
Speaker 2: I actually prepared local pizza.
Speaker 1: Which was a good.
Speaker 2: And she came in and it was the girl that
Speaker 2: I've been seeing in my meditation. And I remember just
Speaker 2: trying to play some music for her but not quite
Speaker 2: coordinating the idea that I just met somebody I'm going
Speaker 2: to fall in love with and get married to. And
Speaker 2: I didn't tell her that, but it just happened to
Speaker 2: last life. So my wife, Jane and myself got married
Speaker 2: and we've been together thirty years and we still love
Speaker 2: each other like crazy.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, pardon sorry.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to stop you there. You had
Speaker 1: a meditation. You saw her? Yeah, she walked in the
Speaker 1: front door right, a little bit slower. How did the
Speaker 1: romance begin?
Speaker 2: Well, I looked at her, sugar Hans saying, I love
Speaker 2: you we're going to get married. You're incredibly beautiful. I
Speaker 2: said that in my head. I didn't say it very early. Okay,
Speaker 2: is that sugar hand, you know? And I was mesmerized.
Speaker 2: I was totally mesmerized, and thankfully she actually liked me.
Speaker 2: And then her sister lives in central California and we
Speaker 2: went up to visit the town of San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I just fell in love
Speaker 2: with the idea of living in this part of the world.
Speaker 2: And that was it. And here we are, still thirty
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 1: Okay, but going back, she comes to your house to
Speaker 1: hear music. You know you're going to marry her. How
Speaker 1: do you actually convey to her? How does it become
Speaker 1: a romance?
Speaker 2: Well, she said to me. The last thing she said
Speaker 2: to me was send me a cassette of some of
Speaker 2: the music, please, because I was working on this music.
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I'd love to, so I sent her
Speaker 2: a cassette but also a note saying, would you like
Speaker 2: to go to dinner? Would you like to go to
Speaker 2: the beach, would you like to go and play tennis?
Speaker 2: Would you like to go and see a movie? I
Speaker 2: wrote about twenty things you know that we could do together,
Speaker 2: and she got back to me, here's my phone NUMBERY.
Speaker 2: She phoned me up and we got together two days
Speaker 2: later and that was it. Love.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're British, she's American. You know, it's been thirty
Speaker 1: years already. But are there any innate differences in people
Speaker 1: and having a relationship with someone from another country?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's smart and I'm a dumb guy. I'm a singer.
Speaker 2: That's what I do, want a singer in a band.
Speaker 3: And okay, so you wrote this stuff and then you
Speaker 3: went on tour with Paul Green's Rod, Right, how did
Speaker 3: that come together?
Speaker 2: Well? I met Paul sound twenty twenty some years ago. Actually,
Speaker 2: I was on tour with Yes for a little while
Speaker 2: and we're playing at the Philadelphia Forum Spectrum and after
Speaker 2: the show, came outside the dressing room and there were
Speaker 2: some young kids, you know, about a dozen kids with
Speaker 2: T shirts School of Rock. And I said, oh, guys, yes,
Speaker 2: you're in a rock school. And they looked at me
Speaker 2: and said, yes we are. And I said what kind
Speaker 2: of music do you play? We like Frank Zappa and
Speaker 2: we actually like Yes. And I thought, oh, young kids,
Speaker 2: how old you? Thirteen? Fourteen? Fifteen year old. And then
Speaker 2: Paul Green came up and he was the guy who
Speaker 2: Jack Back Black Pet played in the movie. Paul Green
Speaker 2: comes up and says, hey, John, how are you doing.
Speaker 2: These are my students. Would you like to come to
Speaker 2: Philadelphia and work with these kids? And I said I
Speaker 2: don't think so. And then a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 2: he sends me a cassette. In those days we had cassettes,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was the kids playing Hard at
Speaker 2: the Sunrise, which is an incredibly difficult piece of music,
Speaker 2: to say the least. And I called him up and said, well,
Speaker 2: you didn't tell me they were this good. And he said, listen, John,
Speaker 2: we're coming to LA in about three days. Would you
Speaker 2: get up and sing with the band? And I said yeah,
Speaker 2: because they had a documentary that they were promoting in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, So I said, yeah, I'll get up and sing.
Speaker 2: And it was a great fun They played it so well,
Speaker 2: the song. And then I struck up a relationship with
Speaker 2: Paul and he invited me to go to Philadelphia to
Speaker 2: sort of hang with the kids and sort of teach
Speaker 2: them a little bit about stage presence and that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. So I did, so me and Jane went
Speaker 2: to Philadelphia in the beginning of February, which is the
Speaker 2: coldest month you can ever go to a city, you know,
Speaker 2: But we just enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 2: And that's many years ago, twenty four years ago, and
Speaker 2: so it's life, you know. And then I went on
Speaker 2: tour with them for a couple of short tours, one
Speaker 2: in East America and one in the West, and then
Speaker 2: about ten years later went on tour with them again.
Speaker 2: Ten years later went on tour with them again, and
Speaker 2: so I'm staring doing a European tour with them this summer.
Speaker 2: They're just beautiful, young talented people. What can go wrong?
Speaker 2: Twenty four young talunted people.
Speaker 1: Okay, I know they're good because I once did their
Speaker 1: convention and they played a Frank zappasong. Blew my mind.
Speaker 1: They even knew it. But okay, they come to you.
Speaker 1: They're teenagers. It's bad enough being on the road with
Speaker 1: twenty something musicians. Yeah, what's it like being on the
Speaker 1: road with all these teenagers.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great fun because they're young, you know, they're fun,
Speaker 2: they're hopeful, they're grateful, they're thankful and so on. That's
Speaker 2: what you are when you're young, when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 2: you know there's no point in getting around it. They
Speaker 2: are youthful, joyful and exuberant people and they can play
Speaker 2: their instruments.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just say you decide you're going to
Speaker 1: go on the road with them, which you have a
Speaker 1: number of times. How far in advanced? You give them
Speaker 1: a set list? If you were to call it, how
Speaker 1: many songs do they learn? Is a set list? Set
Speaker 1: in Stone? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Paul Green is brilliant. He is a real character and
Speaker 2: quite remarkable teaching young musicians to get their act together,
Speaker 2: and he does it in such a great way. And
Speaker 2: he's the guy that says, do you want to do
Speaker 2: Close to the Air? I just said, yeah, do you
Speaker 2: want to do on You? And I? Yeah, do you
Speaker 2: want to do Starship Trooper? Yeah? And you know he
Speaker 2: just gives me a list, so see, yeah, I'll sing
Speaker 2: them all. So I got into a thing this last
Speaker 2: tour we did in August just last year, I said,
Speaker 2: why do we do some mashups? You know we could
Speaker 2: do you guys can play Kashmir Zeppelin and it goes
Speaker 2: straight into long distance run around. So Kashmir happens, and
Speaker 2: then I started doing a Yes song, and then we
Speaker 2: started doing Eminem's first hit record. I can't remember what
Speaker 2: it's called, but it sounds so good when the kids
Speaker 2: play it, and that goes into Starship Trooper, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's like you mashed them together, and we did.
Speaker 1: So. If you're playing cash miror are they playing instrumentally
Speaker 1: or are you singing.
Speaker 2: The Robbert player, No, no, no, I'm not singing it.
Speaker 2: The girl tests brilliant singer. She sings it, and I
Speaker 2: do some harmony and I'm playing bass very badly.
Speaker 1: And what keeps you on the road at this point
Speaker 1: in your life.
Speaker 2: The adventure of it experiencing audiences. I just finished a
Speaker 2: tour with the Bang Geeks, a wonderful bunch of musicians
Speaker 2: who live out of Long Island area of New York,
Speaker 2: and somebody sent me a video of them performing of
Speaker 2: All Things Hard at the Sunrise. This is about a
Speaker 2: year ago, and I kind of freaked out. These guys
Speaker 2: are so damn good there. It's like note for note
Speaker 2: exactly correct. They sounded like the Yes of the seventies.
Speaker 2: So and it wasn't that they just they copied the music,
Speaker 2: of course, but they didn't sound like the record. They
Speaker 2: sounded like them performing it with a certain edge to it.
Speaker 2: So I thought about it for a month or two
Speaker 2: and called up. I got the phone number of the
Speaker 2: bass player who runs the show, Richie Castellano, and I said, Richie,
Speaker 2: how you doing? It's John Anderson. They said, hey, is
Speaker 2: that you John? I said, yes, me. Why don't we
Speaker 2: go on the road and do some classics and epics? Richie,
Speaker 2: he's there. What I want to do is do four
Speaker 2: epics and the rest of classics. So we do close
Speaker 2: to the edge gates of Delirium Awaken, which is heaven
Speaker 2: and ritual from topographic, and we can do that, and
Speaker 2: then we'll do a bunch of you know, classics like
Speaker 2: I've seen all good people you know, roundabout that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. So we put together the show. We just
Speaker 2: did the twelve shows of on the West Coast about
Speaker 2: a month ago, two months or six weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: that was a great, great fun to work with these guys.
Speaker 2: So hopefully we'll do it every year.
Speaker 1: Okay, you called yourself, Are you your own manager? How
Speaker 1: does it work?
Speaker 2: I'm looking for a manager?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well you put it out there at this point, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, someone like you, someone like you at this
Speaker 1: late date obviously has an opinion on managers.
Speaker 2: I can't talk about it anymore. That's about it.
Speaker 1: So what are you looking for?
Speaker 2: Somebody who understands me, which is a it's a hard
Speaker 2: it's a hard gig, but very interesting.
Speaker 1: And then who actually books the tours? You have an agent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have an agent, really great guy, Steve, And
Speaker 2: of course Paul Green booked the European tour. We start
Speaker 2: off in Budapest and then we play in Amsterdam, and
Speaker 2: then we play in Madrid and so on.
Speaker 1: So when you play these gigs with other either the
Speaker 1: Long Island Band or the Paul Green Band, Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the audience is the audience the fans from the seventies.
Speaker 2: Who comes combination, you get a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: you get classic yes fans, you know, and they say, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to go and see Johns to sing again,
Speaker 2: which would be good. And you know, I always put
Speaker 2: on a good show whenever work. I love it. And
Speaker 2: you get some young people coming to see these young artists,
Speaker 2: young teenagers, and they've already done quite a few festivals
Speaker 2: in Europe over the years. There's a classic Frank Zappa festivals,
Speaker 2: so everybody goes on in place Frank Zappa, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's always a lot of fun to to to
Speaker 2: be around that kind of energy. You're not quite sure
Speaker 2: the audience are gonna the audience are gonna have a
Speaker 2: good time because we have a good time. And that's
Speaker 2: the way I think about music. If you're having a
Speaker 2: good time, the audience don't get it. And generally it
Speaker 2: happens that way.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you were a lot of your
Speaker 1: success was with the band with multiple members, different song
Speaker 1: writers the seventies. Accounting to what degree did you get
Speaker 1: ripped off or you had a fear shake.
Speaker 2: Rip off? Herdi mean sorry financially, Oh yeah, that happens.
Speaker 2: You know, nobody escapes that event in the music world,
Speaker 2: shall we say, or in a kind of world. But
Speaker 2: it never bothered me that much. I have some funny
Speaker 2: stories about it, But to me, it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: you read what you saw.
Speaker 1: We'll tell a couple of funny stories.
Speaker 2: No, no, I can't tell you well, no, I can't
Speaker 2: think about it now.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Okay, And after all these years, after essentially fifty years,
Speaker 1: how are you doing financially doing good.
Speaker 2: You know, We've got a lovely little house here up
Speaker 2: in the hills away from the village. Who life. You know,
Speaker 2: it's to noisey down there. So we live on this
Speaker 2: hill and surrounded by deer and antelope play, you know,
Speaker 2: with the deer and the antelope play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got the song reference.
Speaker 2: And I'm creating all the time, music and stories and
Speaker 2: musicals and all this kind of idea of music being
Speaker 2: forever broadening your mind and thought and so on. I
Speaker 2: just feel that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, So where exactly did you grow up?
Speaker 2: Originally in Acrington, which is north of Manchester, twenty nine
Speaker 2: miles north of Manchester, a little town called Acrington, which
Speaker 2: is famous for well, probably many things, but the main
Speaker 2: thing they were famous for Acrington's Stanley football team. They
Speaker 2: were one of the first eleven teams that created the
Speaker 2: first league in the history of soccer.
Speaker 1: And to what degree were you interested in playing soccer?
Speaker 2: Well, I was the bow boy and I go and
Speaker 2: get the ball and throw it back on the pitch.
Speaker 2: I was the ball boy and then but I wanted
Speaker 2: to play for Akering to the Stanley that was my
Speaker 2: gig and I had a track suit and I'd play.
Speaker 2: I'd rehearse when when the players were doing there. What
Speaker 2: do you call it rehearsal? I suppose it is when
Speaker 2: they kick the ball around on them on the car park.
Speaker 2: I'll be there. I'd be there, dribbling away and a
Speaker 2: little small. I was very small from my age. And
Speaker 2: the guy who was the trainer of ackering to the
Speaker 2: Stanley Leslie Leslie Cocker, who eventually became the trainer to
Speaker 2: England in a World Cup, said to me, John, you're
Speaker 2: good at dribbling, but you're too small. I think you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be playing this game. Just be just be a
Speaker 2: ball boy, okay. And that's what I was. I was
Speaker 2: happily told you can't play for England, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: so that I'll join my brother's rock and roll band.
Speaker 2: He had a rock and roll band called the Warriors,
Speaker 2: and there were two singers him, my brother Tony, and
Speaker 2: this guy called Charlie who actually gave up singing in
Speaker 2: the band and became a hairdresser. And it just happens
Speaker 2: to be that at that moment in time, the Beatles
Speaker 2: released a song called Love Me Do and Tony, my
Speaker 2: brother who he sang all the Elvis Presley songs in
Speaker 2: the band, and I joined the band and started singing
Speaker 2: Who's that guy with the dark glasses? Roy Orbison? I
Speaker 2: did all his songs because I'm an auto tenor you
Speaker 2: see cry cry.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's come back a little bit. How many kids
Speaker 1: are in the family, three boys and a girl? And
Speaker 1: where were you in the hierarchy?
Speaker 2: That was the third boy?
Speaker 1: And what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: They just had a good time living and my dad
Speaker 2: was very he was a traveling salesman. There were ballroom
Speaker 2: champions of Lancashire because there was a big cup on
Speaker 2: the over the fire place, and they were happy and
Speaker 2: it was a wonderful life because I worked on the
Speaker 2: local farm with my brother Tony since I was then
Speaker 2: ten years old eleven years old, and we sang Heavery
Speaker 2: brother songs all the time. It was like, you know,
Speaker 2: in all weathers, I'm serious weather up in the north
Speaker 2: of England you get a lot of snow, a lot
Speaker 2: of rain, more rain and then a lot of snow,
Speaker 2: then sunny days around Easter. It used to be beautiful.
Speaker 2: But we used to deliver milk, milk the cows shovel
Speaker 2: a lot of cow downg what we call shit, a
Speaker 2: lot of poop, and I'd shovel it and put it
Speaker 2: in a wheelbarrow and tip it over into the tip
Speaker 2: And all that was used for spreading all over the
Speaker 2: fields to make the grass grow. It's called I can't
Speaker 2: remember what it's called, fertilizer. Fertilizer.
Speaker 1: Well done, Bob, okay, So let's go back to that era.
Speaker 1: What kind of kid were you were you? Popular? Good student,
Speaker 1: bad student?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was a nice guy. You know. I
Speaker 2: used to run errands from my mom and do this
Speaker 2: and that and the other, go and play football up
Speaker 2: on the car park with local kids, and play cricket
Speaker 2: even on the car park with local kids. And one
Speaker 2: of the guys that I used to play against lived
Speaker 2: a couple of blocks down the water street. His name
Speaker 2: was David Lloyd and he actually played for England cricket
Speaker 2: Test match. He's one of the most famous commentators now
Speaker 2: in cricket. Sweet guy too.
Speaker 1: So did your parents teach you to dance?
Speaker 2: No, the ballroom dancing, you know, is a different, different world.
Speaker 2: It was all that kind of Fred Astaire type dancing.
Speaker 1: Well, did you have to go to them with them
Speaker 1: to the ballroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could go down the road and watch them
Speaker 2: dance around and it was really beautiful to watch. But
Speaker 2: I was more interested that. By the time I was
Speaker 2: ten eleven, I was interested in being in a band.
Speaker 2: So I joined the band and it was called the
Speaker 2: Little John Skiffle Group, and I played the washboard and
Speaker 2: we were very loud and noisy. Okay, well, American music
Speaker 2: actually a lot of classic American country music.
Speaker 1: You're born just before the Second World War ends? So
Speaker 1: what was life like in the fifties in England for you.
Speaker 2: Delivery milk?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean in terms of a couple of things.
Speaker 1: In terms of music. You look through a US lens,
Speaker 1: we have Ike Turner, Rock Rocket eighty eight, we have
Speaker 1: Rock around the Clock, then we have Elvis and then
Speaker 1: it's sort of a dry period with teen idols, although
Speaker 1: we have the Beach Boys of Four Seasons and then
Speaker 1: come the Beatles. What was it like from a UK viewpoint?
Speaker 2: Well, what hammer was? My brother had a motorbike. He
Speaker 2: actually you ever see Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones Worse? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's my brother. He had the helmet. Yeah, no, a helmet,
Speaker 2: didn't use a helmet, had a cap, dark glasses and
Speaker 2: a big shield on this motorbike some being motorbike, which
Speaker 2: is like a shaft driven noisy bugger. And he said
Speaker 2: to me, John, we're going to go and see the Beatles.
Speaker 2: They're playing at Southport. And this is like April sixty three, Yeah,
Speaker 2: around that time. I said, okay. So it rained all
Speaker 2: the way there, because you know where I lived, it
Speaker 2: rained all the time, the North Sea or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so we actually went to see the Beatles performing
Speaker 2: in the Floral Hall in Southport in April sixty three.
Speaker 2: And of course we'd heard on the radio Love Me Do,
Speaker 2: and we all liked it, you know, and we sang
Speaker 2: all the way to the gig and went in and
Speaker 2: they're probably about let's say, five hundred and six hundred people,
Speaker 2: mostly guys and a bunch of girls at the front.
Speaker 2: Mostly guys, sort of you know, teenagers. They were called
Speaker 2: you were raither a rocker or hippie. These were sort
Speaker 2: of a mixture, but it was kind of the energy
Speaker 2: was so powerful and the Beatles sounded so amazing that
Speaker 2: you get involved in it. He started shouting and screaming
Speaker 2: after every song. They didn't scream in when they were playing.
Speaker 2: The girls at the front didn't scream. They just waited
Speaker 2: till they finished the song, you know, twists and shout
Speaker 2: and then yeah, wonderful. And it was a revelation for
Speaker 2: me and my brother because we had a band, and
Speaker 2: so we learned all the first album of the Beatles
Speaker 2: and we played that and felt like we were in
Speaker 2: the Beatles sort of. We even had a Beatle air cut.
Speaker 2: And we went to see them about six months later
Speaker 2: in Blackburn, which is only five miles away from Acaring Town,
Speaker 2: and got to the gig and couldn't hear them. Everybody
Speaker 2: was screaming. Everybody was screaming. You could hardly hear them.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic the being with your brother.
Speaker 1: Were you playing gigs out? Were you getting paid or
Speaker 1: you just hauling?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, we got paid. We played working men's clubs,
Speaker 2: very important men's clubs.
Speaker 1: I don't know what a working men's club.
Speaker 2: Is, Okay. Working men's club is when you go there
Speaker 2: and you set up your kid drum kit and your amplifier,
Speaker 2: and then the first person that goes on stage in
Speaker 2: front of about one hundred local people, all drinking a
Speaker 2: lot of beer and the first guy comes on. He's
Speaker 2: a comedian, tells a few jokes and some of them
Speaker 2: dirty and some not, and the crowd are getting h
Speaker 2: it's fantastic. Where's the stripper and this? So the stripper
Speaker 2: comes on and she does her strippering, and then we
Speaker 2: go on after the stripper, and the problem was that
Speaker 2: she would had to come past us in this whole
Speaker 2: way as we were standing there to go on stage,
Speaker 2: to come past naked, and it was frightening, very frightening,
Speaker 2: three young lad like me. Anyway, we go on and
Speaker 2: play four songs, then come back off, and then the
Speaker 2: comedian will go on, then bingo, and then another stripper
Speaker 2: would go on. And that's a working men's club.
Speaker 1: And do you remember how much they would pay the group.
Speaker 2: Five pounds which paid for the petrol and some fish
Speaker 2: and chips.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you work it. How long do you go
Speaker 1: to school?
Speaker 2: Till I was fourteen? And then I said I've had
Speaker 2: enough because I wasn't learning anything in the last two
Speaker 2: months that I was at. The school was actually cool,
Speaker 2: Saint Christopher's, which was kind of nice. The Saint Christopher
Speaker 2: is the patron saint of travel, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2: I traveled. I'm still traveling now.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're fourteen, you stop going to school. Your
Speaker 1: parents are cool with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, got a job in the on the farm,
Speaker 2: helping to keep the ball rolling at home, and so.
Speaker 1: You know, okay, you're working on the farm. I've actually
Speaker 1: worked on a farm, and it can be it can
Speaker 1: be very hard work. Yeah, so I can't imagine you're
Speaker 1: working on the farm saying well, this is my future.
Speaker 1: So what was what were you thinking in your brain
Speaker 1: as you're doing all this?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously we had the rock and roll band that
Speaker 2: we play every weekend, and then you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you don't think about much other than just
Speaker 2: hearing the next hit song on the radio, learning it
Speaker 2: and going on stage and playing it and just getting
Speaker 2: into the idea of maybe one day we can have
Speaker 2: a hit record. And then this, this, this really happened.
Speaker 2: We were actually rehearsing in our little rehearsal room from
Speaker 2: downtown in Acrington there and this this guy came up
Speaker 2: from Manchester and I think he was They call him
Speaker 2: Jack the Lad, a guy that seems to know everything.
Speaker 2: He came in and heard us playing, he says, I
Speaker 2: think you guys are really good. Do you know do
Speaker 2: you want? Do you want to make a hit record?
Speaker 2: And we said yeah, and they said, well, next Thursday
Speaker 2: can you come down to Manchester and play for my friends.
Speaker 2: I have a couple of friends who've got a lot
Speaker 2: of money and they can make sure you have a
Speaker 2: hit record. And I said that'd be great and Tony said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that'll be really good. He didn't talk, but he said
Speaker 2: it'd be really good. And the guy said, so this Thursday,
Speaker 2: cant can you come down to Manchester and play to
Speaker 2: my two friends? And my brother Tony said no, I'm sorry, No,
Speaker 2: We're playing at baddy Ham working Men's Club and the
Speaker 2: guy said, well cancel it. Oh no, I can't cancel it.
Speaker 2: We promised to go and play and the guy said, well,
Speaker 2: screw You'll go and find another band. So he went
Speaker 2: five miles away to Blackburn and got in touch with
Speaker 2: a band called I'll think about it in a minute
Speaker 2: and uh morton, morton, somebody's more than somebody's five morton. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they were called us something and he went to them
Speaker 2: and within six weeks they were top of the charts
Speaker 2: with a song. Yeah, he actually could do it and
Speaker 2: there was as he could buy anything, you know, and Juliet,
Speaker 2: I think the song was and such wonderful moments in
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've missed this big opportunity. What's your first
Speaker 1: break if there is one.
Speaker 2: There wasn't one. I brought my nodded. Well. Basically what
Speaker 2: we did was kind of cool because we decided to
Speaker 2: go to play in clubs in Germany and Scandinavia. It
Speaker 2: was the way to be able to learn your trade
Speaker 2: if you like, you know, you go and play in Cologne, Frankfurt,
Speaker 2: Hamburg and then Helsinki and you do two weeks in
Speaker 2: each a city and they go around. You go round
Speaker 2: and round doing that. And of course that was an
Speaker 2: incredible time. It was like the mid sixties. There was
Speaker 2: so much music around everywhere you looked and listened. It
Speaker 2: was great music. And we became a good band, you
Speaker 2: know at that time, I thought, and we were doing
Speaker 2: basically you played from seven to midnight and fifteen minute
Speaker 2: breaks and the the manager of the club will definitely
Speaker 2: give you some pills to keep you awake. So we
Speaker 2: started on that train of let's take a pill now man,
Speaker 2: you know, he said, yeah, but you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: take into later on in the night. No, I want
Speaker 2: to take it now. It makes me speed. It's called speed,
Speaker 2: and that's what we all did. And we did all
Speaker 2: these gigs around and round and around, go around in circles.
Speaker 2: And then the greatest thing that happened was Sergeant Pepper
Speaker 2: came out. So by then we were on speed marijuana.
Speaker 2: It's called hashies in Europe and LSD. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: let's try this stuff. And then we put on Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 2: That really blew everybody's mind in the world, I think,
Speaker 2: because it was brilliant. I just wanted to be a beetle.
Speaker 1: How did you get the these gigs in Germany and Scandinavia.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's an agent. There's always an agent. There's always somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, you ask ask around, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you hear Sergeant Pepper, which really was mind blowing,
Speaker 1: especially there were no singles on it. It was a
Speaker 1: thing to itself. And you're doing these European tours. What's
Speaker 1: the next step for you?
Speaker 2: Well, the next step was we we we played show
Speaker 2: in Sweden, No Copenhagen, beautiful place, and we had to
Speaker 2: do this one more show. Before we went to the
Speaker 2: next town, which was Clone, and then down to Munich
Speaker 2: and then up to Hamburg, same same thing. And I
Speaker 2: just hattened to take Lstta and I went to see
Speaker 2: one of the greatest movies ever. It was Dr Schivago,
Speaker 2: so Doctor Chibago. I was so in love with that woman,
Speaker 2: whatever her name was. Anyway, I went to see that
Speaker 2: and then went to the gig, and I noticed that
Speaker 2: everybody in the band takes somewhere ste so we'd look
Speaker 2: at each other. We're supposed to be playing music. We're
Speaker 2: standing there on the stage and there's people looking at
Speaker 2: us saying, well, come on, then get on with the music.
Speaker 2: And we're all looking at each other saying, how do
Speaker 2: we do this? We couldn't put it together, you know, mentally,
Speaker 2: we couldn't put it together. It's just not possible. So
Speaker 2: the guy fired us and we went down to Cologne
Speaker 2: and carried on with doing seven hours of singing and
Speaker 2: playing every night. And then one day I just had
Speaker 2: a vision, a musical vision, and I just had this
Speaker 2: idea we were a pretty good band. I thought we
Speaker 2: were a pretty good band of warriors, you know, And
Speaker 2: so I went to the bedroom and woke everybody up. Say,
Speaker 2: come on, guys, let's rehearse. Guys, go away, John please,
Speaker 2: they all said, in unison and go away. But guys,
Speaker 2: we've got to rehearse. Man. We can be really good.
Speaker 2: I've got some ideas musically. We could do a little
Speaker 2: bit of John. Will you go away please? They said
Speaker 2: in unison, And I said, okay, I'm packing my bags,
Speaker 2: I'm leaving, which I did. I left, I got my
Speaker 2: suitcase and I went to Munich. And the rest is
Speaker 2: in my autobiography. It's a good story though.
Speaker 1: Okay, at what point in this story do you start
Speaker 1: playing original material?
Speaker 2: Probably not until I got to London. I was a
Speaker 2: couple of great things happened where I had a visitation.
Speaker 2: Where I was sitting in this beautiful English gardens in Munich,
Speaker 2: and I was mumbling to myself over and over why
Speaker 2: am I here?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing?
Speaker 2: What's going on? What's going on? And the voice said, John,
Speaker 2: nothing matters? And I thought, who the heck was that.
Speaker 2: There's nobody around me. I'm in the middle of a garden.
Speaker 2: And the voice said, John, nothing matters. Well, that did it?
Speaker 2: I said, Oh, my god, somebody's watching me or watching
Speaker 2: over me. What the heck's going on? I'm thinking. But
Speaker 2: something really beautiful happened that I ran to the department
Speaker 2: that I was staying in and there was a telegram
Speaker 2: on the floor. When I opened the door, the telegram
Speaker 2: who was from my mom and it said, John, there's
Speaker 2: a band in Frankfurt want you to sing with them,
Speaker 2: and here's the number. And that was it. It was like,
Speaker 2: somebody wants me, because that's why I was so screwed up.
Speaker 2: I just thought nobody wanted me, but they did, and
Speaker 2: I went to work with them for three months, and
Speaker 2: then I went to London and that's where I met Chris.
Speaker 1: How did you meet Chris Squire?
Speaker 2: Well, I was working at a bar over the Marquee Club,
Speaker 2: a very famous club in London, and all the people
Speaker 2: that played the Marquee came up to the club, you know, normal,
Speaker 2: and I clean up and wash up and help help
Speaker 2: around to survive, and you know, people like who they
Speaker 2: wander in have a few drinks and then even everybody
Speaker 2: who played at the Marquee Club would pop up to
Speaker 2: the club and he met all the greats at that period.
Speaker 2: It was like sixty eight sixty nine. So I was
Speaker 2: there cleaning up one evening and the guy that ran
Speaker 2: the club, a really nice guy, said, I know you're
Speaker 2: looking for a band, John. I said, yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 2: for a band. I said, well, there's a bass player
Speaker 2: over there. I think he might be looking for a singer.
Speaker 2: I thought, okay. So I went toward to this very
Speaker 2: tall guy and said, Hi, my name is John and
Speaker 2: he said my name is Cruse. And I said, so
Speaker 2: you have a band. He said you're what's the band called?
Speaker 2: He said Mabel Greer's Toy Shop. Oh really, yeah, what
Speaker 2: do you want to do? I said, well, I love
Speaker 2: singing and I love pu you know Paul McCartney. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know. I liked his voice and my voice is
Speaker 2: high like that. And he said what kind of music
Speaker 2: do you listen to? Though? I said, oh, I love
Speaker 2: Simon and gar Phone Call. I think all Simon's really
Speaker 2: got his chops together a songwriting wise, you know. And
Speaker 2: they said do you write songs? And said, well, mess
Speaker 2: around with my guitar. I'm not not good. He said, well,
Speaker 2: why did you come to rehearsals of my band Mabel
Speaker 2: Greeners Toy Shop tomorrow and I said okay. Then, and
Speaker 2: before before we partied, he said, why don't we come
Speaker 2: back to my appointment, Well, we'll jam and we wrote
Speaker 2: a couple of songs and I thought, this guy's really nice,
Speaker 2: you know. And the following day I went to the
Speaker 2: rehearsal place to work with his band Match and the
Speaker 2: drummers left because he was getting paid. Nobody got paid
Speaker 2: in this band. But he went to Paris to work
Speaker 2: in another band. So I got a copy of the Maybe,
Speaker 2: I got a copy of Melody Maker, and I looked
Speaker 2: for drummer looking for band, and there it was as
Speaker 2: a love Week kit and a van. My name is
Speaker 2: Bill Bruford, I said, he's the guy. So we phoned
Speaker 2: him up and he came the following day and he
Speaker 2: joined the band. And then the question was, well, what
Speaker 2: are we going to call ourselves? Because Chris said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe Grease Toy Shop is pretty cool, and I said no,
Speaker 2: the best band that I ever heard was an Irish name,
Speaker 2: an Irish band. They called themselves the Do you remember then?
Speaker 2: Of course that I thought that was perfect, very Irish.
Speaker 2: So we rehearsed and rehearsed and did a show. We
Speaker 2: did most of the show, just doing a funky version
Speaker 2: of Midnight Hour.
Speaker 1: And at this point we're Tony and Peter in the band.
Speaker 2: Tony who oh Tony? Yeah, Tony was a keyboard player.
Speaker 2: Peter Banks was the guitar player. Yeah, it's just the
Speaker 2: drummer left. How would I get a thing or you know?
Speaker 2: But yeah, you believe you know, that's basically it.
Speaker 1: So you play this funky version of in the Midnight Hour?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where does it go from there?
Speaker 2: For about an hour, well, we just had to make
Speaker 2: up time. We knew four songs, one of them we'd
Speaker 2: written I'd written with the with Chris that first night,
Speaker 2: and then another song that Chris had, and then we
Speaker 2: did Midnight Hour. It was just a show tour. It
Speaker 2: was just our first show together and we thought we
Speaker 2: were pretty good, you know, And.
Speaker 1: How does it become yes? And how do you get
Speaker 1: a record deal?
Speaker 2: Well that's story. And it was just generally okay, everybody
Speaker 2: put a name of the band in a art. Okay,
Speaker 2: because I started to become the boss, they used to
Speaker 2: call me Napoleon because I was small, and so I'd organized.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, everybody write down a name. I wrote
Speaker 2: down World. Chris wrote down live, it's gotta be short,
Speaker 2: and Peter Banks wrote down yes, and that was it
Speaker 2: because we went through, we went through what we put
Speaker 2: in there with what's this?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is it the yes? Peter said no, no, it's just yes,
Speaker 2: and we looked at each other and said, yes, that
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a name, you played one gig long
Speaker 1: version of Midnight Hour. How do you end up getting
Speaker 1: a record deal with Atlantic?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's that's another story. The great thing happened was
Speaker 2: Ertigan is coming from New York to see you guys.
Speaker 1: That was wait wait wait wait wait, that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: You're nobody's who is the connection with Armit?
Speaker 2: Okay, here's the story. So what happened was we were
Speaker 2: doing pretty good. We started doing gigs in and around London.
Speaker 2: We did some of Manchester and then we did some
Speaker 2: up north and of England and we were we got tired,
Speaker 2: you know, we started playing good and you know, Bill
Speaker 2: and Chris were really rocking and we got going and uh,
Speaker 2: I go to a phone call from our friend who
Speaker 2: ran that club, the Shaft Club, Chase, and he said this,
Speaker 2: this guy wants your phone number. We have phone numbers,
Speaker 2: He said, can you can you phone him? He wants
Speaker 2: to see if you can play tonight at the the
Speaker 2: pretty famous speakeasy club in London. And he said, they
Speaker 2: want you to play tonight because the band that's supposed
Speaker 2: to be there just got stopped from getting on a
Speaker 2: plane in New York. And we said, so who who
Speaker 2: who do How are we going to replace? He said,
Speaker 2: somebody in the Family Tree and we said, what the
Speaker 2: heck's that? There's a band called the Family So we
Speaker 2: got went to the club and started setting god to
Speaker 2: do our little show that we had, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden people started coming in there row people at
Speaker 2: Pete Townshend came in and a couple of other guys
Speaker 2: from the big bands, and I said, who are we replacing?
Speaker 2: Said Slide in the Family Stone? Oh fuck, what are
Speaker 2: we gonna do? Well, let's just play, man, Let's just
Speaker 2: do it. Let's just do it, and people, Paul McCart,
Speaker 2: it was all these people came, these droves of people
Speaker 2: came to see Sli in the Family Stone. So we
Speaker 2: did our show. You know, we were we were kind
Speaker 2: of nervous and frightened, but we played hard and we
Speaker 2: got it there. The show a midnight hour yeah, that'll
Speaker 2: do it. I can't remember the songs that we were doing,
Speaker 2: but we were doing some good, good music at that time.
Speaker 2: We're doing actually variations on kind of themes like Yes
Speaker 2: became famous for, which is creating introductions to a song
Speaker 2: and then middle sections and building it up and you know,
Speaker 2: like structure using structure, And it kind of worked and
Speaker 2: went down very well, and we passed a lot of
Speaker 2: joints around it and make sure everybody was happy in
Speaker 2: the Stone. Oh boy, what a night. And that was
Speaker 2: the beginning of our friendship with the manager of that
Speaker 2: club and a really sweet guy, and he was the
Speaker 2: one that got in touch with somebody Atlantic Records, and
Speaker 2: they said, we heard about what happened you. You did
Speaker 2: a great job for sliding the family Stone and Roy
Speaker 2: Roy was the manager, and he said, I think I
Speaker 2: might be able to get you to meet rma Urtigan
Speaker 2: and maybe you could be on Atlantic Records. And I thought,
Speaker 2: any record come pretty I don't care who it is,
Speaker 2: but we need to make a record sort of thing
Speaker 2: because I thought we were playing pretty good on stage.
Speaker 2: It would be good to record some of the show,
Speaker 2: put it out as a record and see how we
Speaker 2: go and We had a couple of songs that we
Speaker 2: thought were commercial but not really, and I think commercial
Speaker 2: became sort of dare I say a nasty word in
Speaker 2: my mind, We're never going to be commercial. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be commercial. I'm too old. I was twenty
Speaker 2: seven years old.
Speaker 1: Something.
Speaker 2: I feel too old. I don't want to be a
Speaker 2: pop star sort of thing. So we carried along the
Speaker 2: train of writing music that became a time in a
Speaker 2: word and things like that. From the second album. I
Speaker 2: can't remember much about the first album, even though.
Speaker 1: Okay, I got a few questions about the first album. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we get there, Ahmed comes to see you, and
Speaker 1: then what happens.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've mentioned this many times and I'll mention it again.
Speaker 2: Well armored, incredibly dressed, very Turkish guy, beautiful, he looked immaculate,
Speaker 2: like a million bucks. And he was producing the great people,
Speaker 2: oh you know he was at that time. He was
Speaker 2: producing Ray Charles and of course I wish I could
Speaker 2: remember their names. How we'll do in a minute, all
Speaker 2: the great people that were on Atlancet Records. Unbelievable, And
Speaker 2: he came to see us. Anyway, we played our little
Speaker 2: four songs and I went to the lute, have a
Speaker 2: p and Roy happily comes running in and starts with
Speaker 2: a peer. I said, John, I'm really going to get
Speaker 2: this guy, this American guy. I'm gonna make sure you
Speaker 2: can make a lot of money. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: you the best contract. And at that moment in time,
Speaker 2: somebody pulled the chain in the toilet next to us,
Speaker 2: and out it comes home. A article said, oh, well
Speaker 2: that blew that. Oh that's a great story, so it is.
Speaker 1: Interested.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he signed us up for ten years, you know,
Speaker 2: three points whatever it was in those days. But we
Speaker 2: managed to slowly but surely get better deal along the way.
Speaker 2: When it took us a couple of albums to make
Speaker 2: any sense about what we're doing. And then we did
Speaker 2: the Yes album, and that was really when we sort
Speaker 2: of felt we're in the game. We're in the game.
Speaker 2: We're hammling okay, tour.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the first album, which is where
Speaker 1: I come in. How'd you decide to cover every little
Speaker 1: thing by the Beatles?
Speaker 2: Every little thing she does? It's a great song, you know,
Speaker 2: and we did it very well. You know. That's when
Speaker 2: Yes started to sort of expand an original song into
Speaker 2: something a little bit more rocking and jiving or whatever.
Speaker 2: Dun but that was the whole idea. I think Chris
Speaker 2: was brilliant at letting me, you know, listening to me,
Speaker 2: and then letting the band try it out, because you know,
Speaker 2: there was not doubters at all. They just say, John,
Speaker 2: why do you want to do this? Why do you
Speaker 2: want to do this? And I'd say, just try it out,
Speaker 2: just try it out. So we had a song that
Speaker 2: I was writing, yours Notice Grace, and they're trying to
Speaker 2: start a beginning of it. Anyway, that's the third album.
Speaker 1: So on the first album, you do that every little
Speaker 1: thing that was not you know, there are certain songs
Speaker 1: by the Beatles that are covered all the time. I
Speaker 1: didn't know another cover at that particular point in time,
Speaker 1: and you rearranged it and made it your own. I
Speaker 1: mean it was just utterly fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was part of my experience of listening to
Speaker 2: at that time. I was listening to a lot of
Speaker 2: music by no I hadn't got to Sibelius by them,
Speaker 2: but I'd listened to the Planet Suite and things like that,
Speaker 2: the very commercial symphonic music and drag ideas out of
Speaker 2: that and who is it did that as well, King Curmson.
Speaker 2: You know, they were doing all sorts of stravinskyisms here there.
Speaker 2: Everybod started listening to the classic music was written one
Speaker 2: hundred fifty years ago, fifty years ago, symphonic music, and
Speaker 2: they try to bring it into the modern rock and roll.
Speaker 2: And that's basically what happened. It was just the idea
Speaker 2: of structure. Structure will make it work. If you've got
Speaker 2: a good intro, you can always play in the middle
Speaker 2: and then at the end, you know, okay.
Speaker 1: But there are some originals on that first album I
Speaker 1: think are just great yesterday and today looking around.
Speaker 2: Survival, Yeah, I love Survival. Survival that story. That's going
Speaker 2: to be my title of my autobiography, Survival and other Stories.
Speaker 1: So the first album comes out, I mean it was
Speaker 1: like a mystery in America. I was actually turned on
Speaker 1: by my dentist, which is something that didn't happen back then.
Speaker 1: But what was the album comes out? What was your experience.
Speaker 2: Do you know? I don't remember very much about it.
Speaker 2: I think everything was a blair at that time. Because
Speaker 2: you were doing interviews. People wanted to know what you thought,
Speaker 2: which was not very much, but just general people wanting
Speaker 2: you to great. Guy called Chris Welch. He was a
Speaker 2: big fan of our beginnings and the Melody Maker. You
Speaker 2: do interviews about this and that, and it's just one
Speaker 2: of those things you pull apart an album you've just
Speaker 2: made it, and then you look back and think it
Speaker 2: wasn't that good. And the second one was Time of
Speaker 2: a Word that wasn't that good. You know, you just
Speaker 2: got through that emotion of doing it, thinking it's really
Speaker 2: really good, Oh, it really sounds great, and then you
Speaker 2: listen back to it anything within a couple of three months,
Speaker 2: yet you bore it's not working. Are you're performing it,
Speaker 2: but you're thinking about the next step you're going to take.
Speaker 2: And that's been my juxtaposition as a singer in a band.
Speaker 2: I don't play anything. I just have to sing all
Speaker 2: the time and pretend I can play the guitar, which
Speaker 2: I could hardly play. But I was always thinking about
Speaker 2: what we've gotta be doing a bit better. And then
Speaker 2: people come into your life. I met we were doing
Speaker 2: a TV show in France, and it was so funny
Speaker 2: because we were told not to be too loud. Of course,
Speaker 2: we were very loud at that time, and so we
Speaker 2: started playing I think it was yours noticed Grace, and
Speaker 2: the credits came up. They cut us off. We'd waited
Speaker 2: their whole day to do this song. At the end
Speaker 2: of this it was a it was a sort of
Speaker 2: a game like come on Down, you know that kind
Speaker 2: of TV show, and so we waited a day, makeup
Speaker 2: and everything to play it, and just when we started playing,
Speaker 2: it was too loud, so they faded us out and
Speaker 2: the credits came up at the end of the And
Speaker 2: that night I met Keith Charrett and that really yeah,
Speaker 2: because he was playing in a trio on the TV
Speaker 2: show and he said to me, do you want to
Speaker 2: come and see my I'm gonna I'm gont on the
Speaker 2: left bank, you know, I'm just going to do a
Speaker 2: jam session tonight, And I thought, charm session. That's really cool.
Speaker 2: So I went just to see him. I sat by
Speaker 2: myself and he came in and started playing the piano,
Speaker 2: and the drummer was there playing the drums, and he
Speaker 2: kind of looked at the drum and said, what's the
Speaker 2: bass blake? The drummer said, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm French. And so they're playing when he's Keith Charis
Speaker 2: just diving away on the piano and I couldn't believe
Speaker 2: how good this guy was. He was eighteen years old.
Speaker 2: And then the bass player came. He was six foot
Speaker 2: so handsome, and he brought a real big stand up
Speaker 2: bass and he starts. So jaris playing away with the drummer,
Speaker 2: and he starts tuning up his bass and I can
Speaker 2: see kit Jar going, what the fuck are you doing? Man?
Speaker 2: We're playing jazz, And all of a sudden the bass
Speaker 2: play went but boom boom boom boom boom boom boom
Speaker 2: boom boom boom boom, brilliant. All of a sudden he
Speaker 2: was locked in and Jarrett screamed and they carried on
Speaker 2: playing for an hour. It was like magic. He learned
Speaker 2: about jazz, real jazz. When you see that happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, first album comes out America almost good Time, and
Speaker 1: a word comes out. It's like a secret. You can
Speaker 1: barely find it in the record story. Where does Brian
Speaker 1: Lane come in?
Speaker 2: Well, we had we had a manager, Roy who was
Speaker 2: a really great guy, just not working in tandem with
Speaker 2: what we were trying to do musically, say, and so
Speaker 2: we were just invited to meet this company that actually
Speaker 2: it was the company that created a movie, a very
Speaker 2: famous movie called Platoon. They were pretty big in the
Speaker 2: business world. You know. We were very lowly and who
Speaker 2: are we to even it goes through their front door
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But we went through the front door
Speaker 2: and then we were introduced to Brian, and Brian started
Speaker 2: the managers along with other people. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people in. It wasn't just this band and that was that.
Speaker 2: And from then on it was just knowing that, gosh,
Speaker 2: we are sort of stable, shall we say, but a
Speaker 2: little bit awkward at times, and where we're going musically,
Speaker 2: who's who wants to go this way? There was that
Speaker 2: story when when I went to say, come on, we've
Speaker 2: got to rehearse. Guys got to rehearse, felt like Pinocchio,
Speaker 2: come on, you got to rehearse. Let's do that, and
Speaker 2: they say not John, just leave leave us alone. I mean, see,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing happened in a way that it
Speaker 2: just happened that I felt out of balance, if you like.
Speaker 2: And it's a funny way of thinking it that I
Speaker 2: was in this speakeasy and it was very early in
Speaker 2: the night and I walked past this band there was
Speaker 2: nobody in the club. I think there's two or three
Speaker 2: people drinking, and they were playing really good. But the
Speaker 2: guitarist was really good. And he was playing what you
Speaker 2: would call one of the most beautiful guitars I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It was a Gibson, wonderful shaped guitar and he was
Speaker 2: playing the hell out of it, and you know, and
Speaker 2: they were doing good music. I don't know kind of
Speaker 2: music they were doing, but he was good. And I
Speaker 2: mentioned it to Chris that where are we going musically,
Speaker 2: because I don't know, you know. Chris said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we need to decide. Sometimes you got to change one
Speaker 2: of the guys in the band if things aren't rolling correctly,
Speaker 2: you know. And I said, well, I just saw this
Speaker 2: guy in the band called Bodhast and Chris said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, I know, well, I know him, I've seen him,
Speaker 2: so let's try it out. So he try somebody out,
Speaker 2: and the shape of the band evolves, one might say.
Speaker 2: Another musician comes in. And that's when I linked together
Speaker 2: with Steve, and all of a sudden I was in
Speaker 2: musical heaven because we could write music together very quickly.
Speaker 2: With Chris, it was now and again music we'd write something,
Speaker 2: but with Steve is like every day we're writing a
Speaker 2: couple of ideas, a couple of ideas, a couple of
Speaker 2: and more and more and more. So it was a
Speaker 2: spontaneous combustion of musical energy that got us into the
Speaker 2: fragile world.
Speaker 1: Okay, so does Brian Lane come in after the first
Speaker 1: two albums? Is that approximately when he comes in?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, Steve Howe comes in. How do you get rid
Speaker 1: of Peter Banks? And what does he say?
Speaker 2: Well, of course he was upset. You know, I think
Speaker 2: we were. I was upset anyway that we had to
Speaker 2: think about changing somebody in the band. It's just one
Speaker 2: of the things you kind of live with it and
Speaker 2: sit down and say, well, what is the best for
Speaker 2: the future of where we're going, and that's what you do.
Speaker 2: And even talked to him about what he would do now.
Speaker 2: He had a couple of guys he wanted to work
Speaker 2: with anyway, so he wanted to go with this other
Speaker 2: band and he said, yeah, that'd be that would good luck?
Speaker 2: You know, what are you going to do? Good luck?
Speaker 2: And okay, so then you get on with it.
Speaker 1: The Yes album is a great leap forward from what
Speaker 1: had come before. Yeah, we have yours is no disgrace
Speaker 1: Starship Trooper. I've seen all good people. Did these all
Speaker 1: come from you now? Meeting and writing with.
Speaker 2: Steve, Yeah, it was a combination of My suggestion was
Speaker 2: very simple, let's get out of London. Let's go and
Speaker 2: find a farmhouse, cottage, rental and we can be somewhere
Speaker 2: totally different than where we are now. And we found
Speaker 2: a place in Devon. We all went there to work.
Speaker 2: You're there, you connect, you become more than what you
Speaker 2: were before because you're getting to know each other, know
Speaker 2: each other O. There's a good parts, quirky parts, nice parts, whatever,
Speaker 2: but you're you're you're, you're connected. And I thought that
Speaker 2: was the way to go. And I have some great
Speaker 2: memories of being in that farmhouse, which Steve Ole lives
Speaker 2: there now. And the memories were really good because it
Speaker 2: was it was like very to say the least, it
Speaker 2: was kind of jazz rock. We we would go there,
Speaker 2: we would try this, we would try that, and the
Speaker 2: idea of working as a group became more like a family.
Speaker 2: If you're like, Okay, we're here, we're stuck together. You know,
Speaker 2: somebody's gonna make breakfast. That we had a roady who
Speaker 2: made breakfast and things like that, but you're actually together
Speaker 2: for the first time without any outside influence. And that
Speaker 2: was really crucial for me at that time because I
Speaker 2: knew these were great talented people. I felt very comfortable
Speaker 2: about writing lyrics and melodies. I was a melody crazy,
Speaker 2: you know. Every time I every time I heard it,
Speaker 2: I start writing a melody in my head and singing ideas.
Speaker 2: So I felt very comfortable about where we were going.
Speaker 2: And it worked out. I said, basically, we'll learn all
Speaker 2: this music as well as the songs that were pretty
Speaker 2: getting known for America. Every little thing was that went
Speaker 2: in the show. These new songs we should we should
Speaker 2: go on the road and play the play them as
Speaker 2: as a practice to go in the studio, rather than
Speaker 2: go in the studio and start start off with the
Speaker 2: drums and the kit and the bit to No. I
Speaker 2: think we've got to play it in the studio. So
Speaker 2: the only way we can play in the studios go
Speaker 2: on the road as a band playing some new music
Speaker 2: as well as this old music from the first couple
Speaker 2: of albums. And that was the way the way it worked.
Speaker 2: And by then we had a feeling that we were
Speaker 2: getting great reaction from the audiences. They would come in
Speaker 2: to see us again and again. So no matter if
Speaker 2: we went up to play Birmingham, you'd always see the
Speaker 2: similar crowd of people would come and I think you
Speaker 2: just feel, you know, it's like Bob, Yeah, you just
Speaker 2: feel that everything is happening. You go, well, this is
Speaker 2: definitely better than we were six months ago. And then
Speaker 2: we went in and recorded what became the y S album,
Speaker 2: and then the fragile.
Speaker 1: Okay See recorded the Yes album. In America, it was
Speaker 1: commercially more available. You didn't hear it on the radio.
Speaker 1: I know you were doing interviews, et cetera. Was what
Speaker 1: was your experience on the inside relative to the success
Speaker 1: of the Yes album?
Speaker 2: How do you mean sorry?
Speaker 1: It seems artistically it's a great leap forward from the
Speaker 1: two previous albums, especially the second album, and in retrospect
Speaker 1: everyone can see how great it was. Did you feel
Speaker 1: from the end standpoint of your band that wait a second,
Speaker 1: we're blowing up or did you still feel a way
Speaker 1: we got a big hill to climb.
Speaker 2: I think we were just feeling good about we had
Speaker 2: a really good album. We were performing it and audiences
Speaker 2: were great. The next step, I have to get myself
Speaker 2: in chronic. I can't say the word chronological order. After
Speaker 2: the the S album was to go into the Fragile album, right, but.
Speaker 1: Before we get the fragile, how does Rick Wakeman get
Speaker 1: in the band?
Speaker 2: Well? That's that. That was the the reason we called
Speaker 2: it fragile is because being in a band was very fragile,
Speaker 2: never quite sure what's going to happen next, and something
Speaker 2: was going haywire on the on the American tour. When
Speaker 2: we went on tour doing the S album we were
Speaker 2: doing with Jethro tell I think we were on tour
Speaker 2: and magnified in front of five thousand people all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, ten thousand people. Is you're magnifying your your
Speaker 2: your creativity and how big can we get and how
Speaker 2: big should we be? And you know, shouldn't we have
Speaker 2: great lighting systems and things like that, and so you're growing,
Speaker 2: You're just growing, and you're thinking, well, the music's got
Speaker 2: to grow as well. At that time, the Mug had
Speaker 2: just come out with a new system and Moog and
Speaker 2: them sounds you could get, and Keith Emerson was playing
Speaker 2: a Moog and stuff, and it just happened that We
Speaker 2: did a track I think it was Yours Nice Grace
Speaker 2: with the Moog theme and everything, and just happened that
Speaker 2: Tony wasn't that interestry at that time in creating other
Speaker 2: sounds other than the organ, which he played amazingly well.
Speaker 2: But it just happened that at that time we'd actually
Speaker 2: done a show with Rick Wakeman's band. You probably know
Speaker 2: and you remember the name. I don't, ah, and I
Speaker 2: just thought this Rick Wakeman is He's quite brilliant, and
Speaker 2: that was the next step. You're going to bring in
Speaker 2: another musician, musician who's going to upgrade you musically speaking
Speaker 2: and sound wise. And that's that's basically what happened. We
Speaker 2: just got on with the next album, which again you
Speaker 2: call fragile because everything is so fragile. You don't know
Speaker 2: if you're going to be here today or tomorrow. There
Speaker 2: was just so much surrounding. Yes, at that time it
Speaker 2: was pretty intense at times, and just wanted to get
Speaker 2: on with the next piece of music.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked earlier, you're twenty seven years old, you
Speaker 1: don't want to be commercial. Suddenly round up how it
Speaker 1: becomes like this gigantic worldwide hit. And I must say
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like anything else on the radio, and
Speaker 1: no one would have predicted it would have become that hit.
Speaker 1: But it becomes a worldwide hit. So what was your experience.
Speaker 2: I remember we were and that it's Pennsylvania rehearsing, and
Speaker 2: we went for a drive to go for dinner or
Speaker 2: something like that, and on the way the roundaback came
Speaker 2: on the radio. We never heard ourselves on the radio.
Speaker 2: Went turn it up, turn it up, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the middle section of roundabout wasn't there
Speaker 2: and it went straight to the organ solo, and I went,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, they've edited it. Well, they could have asked,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like so they got a big persiszk
Speaker 2: take the middle out. And it was correct because it worked,
Speaker 2: and it was brilliant and it sounded great, and it
Speaker 2: was just like all the movies you've ever seen of
Speaker 2: the band hearing themselves or artists hearing themselves on the
Speaker 2: radio for the first time. It's freaky, it's wonderful, and
Speaker 2: you feel like we made it at last, We made it.
Speaker 2: Little did we know?
Speaker 1: You know? Okay, it's unbelievable success. Meanwhile, there's a change
Speaker 1: in the band. You know, because we're all hungry for
Speaker 1: rock press. At that point, Rick Wakeman comes out with
Speaker 1: seven keyboards, he's wearing a cape, and then he goes on,
Speaker 1: I'm the only person who eats meat in the band.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Were you all taking this with a grain of salt?
Speaker 1: Or was everybody saying, well, you know, he's kind of
Speaker 1: an attention hog.
Speaker 2: No, here's Rickman. Oh he's sparky and capes and and
Speaker 2: he plays so damn good. He was. He was quite brilliant,
Speaker 2: and he's brilliant as as he's proved over the years.
Speaker 2: He's played on so many records that are very well known,
Speaker 2: and you can't take that away from him. He's brilliant.
Speaker 2: He's Rick Wakeman.
Speaker 1: Okay, So next comes close to the Edge. This is
Speaker 1: real kind of a breakthrough in that there's one song
Speaker 1: that's a complete side long. Did you feel liberated by
Speaker 1: your commercial success and said I'm gonna do whatever I
Speaker 1: want to? How did you approach close to the Edge.
Speaker 2: It's very simple. We were on tour with Fragile, and
Speaker 2: no matter where we went, people played, especially the radio
Speaker 2: stations in the university cycle. We go to university. After university,
Speaker 2: do a show and go to the radio station and
Speaker 2: they put on yours notice Grace. You know, don't think
Speaker 2: about making it short. It's nine minutes long.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like all of a sudden, wait a minute. FM radio.
Speaker 2: That's the key, that's the key. The key is radio
Speaker 2: can play your music now because FM radio accept long
Speaker 2: form pieces of music, and they would play all the
Speaker 2: Heart of Sunrise and all this kind of thing without
Speaker 2: a blinking of an eye. They actually played it. And
Speaker 2: I started talking to Steve because we'd sort of bonded
Speaker 2: pretty tightly about songwriting ideas and things, and we started
Speaker 2: coming up with an idea. I've been reading hermann Hesse
Speaker 2: Journey to the East, which is a beautiful book of enlightening, enlightenment,
Speaker 2: and so I just started thinking, yeah, we'll just go
Speaker 2: let's just go for it. You know, you do. You
Speaker 2: can only fit twenty minutes on a record because after
Speaker 2: twenty minutes it goes wonky the sound because it's vinyl,
Speaker 2: you know. And that was the trials and tribulations of
Speaker 2: being in a band where everybody agrees and then doesn't
Speaker 2: really agree, and then you kind of you go sort
Speaker 2: of a left and then a bit of a right
Speaker 2: swing and Then all of a sudden, we'd finished close
Speaker 2: to the edge and I got a phone call from
Speaker 2: Bill Bruford. I'm leaving the band, said Bill, could you
Speaker 2: say that again? I'm leaving the band? Why? Well, I've
Speaker 2: had enough. Okay, what are you going to do? Is
Speaker 2: I'm going to join King Crimson? Bill, you bastard. I
Speaker 2: didn't say that, but I just thought, what's wrong with us?
Speaker 2: That really freaked me out. I thought there was something
Speaker 2: really badly wrong with us. If he was going to
Speaker 2: leave after creating what I think personally is a wonderful
Speaker 2: piece of music, why did he leave?
Speaker 1: What was there?
Speaker 2: What was wrong with me? I thought it was me.
Speaker 2: I just thought it was.
Speaker 1: You know, well fifty years later, what was it?
Speaker 2: Well, he wasn't getting old with Chris as much as
Speaker 2: I thought he was. He wasn't like it, wasn't enjoying. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, Christmas said, there's the beat. People said, no,
Speaker 2: it's there, just to the left, but three inches to
Speaker 2: the left. No, that's where the beat is. I think
Speaker 2: they had a couple of jives like that in their recording,
Speaker 2: but I didn't take it seriously. I just it was just,
Speaker 2: you know, people not quite understanding where the beat is.
Speaker 2: But God bless them.
Speaker 1: You know, he had a parapatetic career and then he
Speaker 1: ultimately retired.
Speaker 2: Nobody I know, I know, I wrote a book, Well,
Speaker 2: it's life. You know, he has had an exceptional life.
Speaker 2: When he was out there with his last band, I
Speaker 2: thought they were just so good. I can't remember the name,
Speaker 2: but yeah, very very good, because in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: you you sort of I remember doing around that time.
Speaker 2: It was probably around the time of fried Child tour,
Speaker 2: or maybe six months or earlier, but we were opening
Speaker 2: up for The Kinks in a gig in Albany area
Speaker 2: University of New York there, and the opening band was
Speaker 2: a band that we hadn't heard about called Mavish Orchestra,
Speaker 2: and we were there early to soundcheck and we knew
Speaker 2: Mavishni were going to do a sound check at six
Speaker 2: thirty something. So me and Chris stood there and my
Speaker 2: Joe just dropped. I went, Oh, my god, these these
Speaker 2: guys have got something. I could not believe what they had.
Speaker 2: My Vish New Orchestra was on another planet and within
Speaker 2: three months they were headlining around the world.
Speaker 1: It was like, Wow, So how does Alan White get
Speaker 1: in the band?
Speaker 2: Well that was that was that big problem that Bill
Speaker 2: had left. And I was in limbo and uh Eddie Offred,
Speaker 2: our wonderful producer dude, said well, I know this kind
Speaker 2: of Alan White. And I said, Alan White. Didn't he
Speaker 2: play on uh Friday, what was it called John Lennon album?
Speaker 2: He said yeah, yeah, So I said, gosh, would he
Speaker 2: be interested? I wasn't quite sure if he would be interested,
Speaker 2: you know, And he said, yeah, you know, I'll get
Speaker 2: him to come down this afternoon at rearsal place we
Speaker 2: had in Shepherd's Bush and he came in. Joyful guy,
Speaker 2: sweetest guy in the world. And man, he could play
Speaker 2: the hell out of their arms. He really really could
Speaker 2: do it. And not only that, we because we were
Speaker 2: going on touring two weeks. He learned the whole tour,
Speaker 2: the whole show in ten days. Ridiculous and he was
Speaker 2: my best man at my wedding. Really good man.
Speaker 1: Stylistically. What was different having Alan in the band as
Speaker 1: opposed to Bill.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know. I don't know that much
Speaker 2: about there was. There was less paradials. I don't know
Speaker 2: what to say. He was just so on top of it.
Speaker 2: He played it magnificently. A great, great drummer, there's no question,
Speaker 2: as Bill was. But Bill was always semi jazz groove,
Speaker 2: whereas Alan was straight on it, you know. And he
Speaker 2: just learned everything and performed everything quite brilliantly on that tour,
Speaker 2: and we became fast friends, and I say he was
Speaker 2: my best man.
Speaker 1: So nextis Tales from Top of Graphic Oceans. It took
Speaker 1: close to the edge one step further. It's a double album,
Speaker 1: long song, ultimately controversial. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2: In short, it was, it was very well received by
Speaker 2: Yes fans, very very well received. I went through I
Speaker 2: don't know what it was it was. When I think
Speaker 2: about it, I was really scared about what I'd done,
Speaker 2: and I pushed everybody over the hell over the hill,
Speaker 2: pushing them up the mountain. Come on, everybody, we can
Speaker 2: do this. Come on, What the hell? It's only four
Speaker 2: pieces of music? What the hell? What the hell sort
Speaker 2: of attitude, you know. And then as I looked back
Speaker 2: over the first year and the terrible press that we got,
Speaker 2: and the whole thing, the whole idea, the whole idea
Speaker 2: of the dream sort of fell apart in my state
Speaker 2: of consciousness at that time, and I had a rough
Speaker 2: time when that I happened, and and then you know,
Speaker 2: we can leap from that moment because there was something
Speaker 2: going on that I just felt was wrong, and I
Speaker 2: don't I don't quite. I could never pinpoint why things
Speaker 2: just didn't sail along so beautifully into the sunset. It
Speaker 2: just did not happen. But a lot of people enjoyed
Speaker 2: the album. And the interesting thing was that over the
Speaker 2: over the next year or so, I I I lost
Speaker 2: a lot of confidence in what I was thinking about
Speaker 2: music until I seemed I seemed to get my act together,
Speaker 2: and then we did going for the One. I had
Speaker 2: a feeling that that was a very important song. You
Speaker 2: have to go for it and make it right and
Speaker 2: make it work. So by the end of the seventh
Speaker 2: is I had to somehow struggle through a couple of
Speaker 2: albums and not really knowing where I'm going in the
Speaker 2: hope that I was going in the right direction. And
Speaker 2: then we did Awaken, and that for me was and
Speaker 2: is so important to my state of mind because it
Speaker 2: really rejoined the band and the angel sang it was.
Speaker 2: It was just a remarkable feeling at the end of
Speaker 2: that album, having gone through a lot of doubt, and
Speaker 2: fear and frustration. Am I doing the right thing I'm singing?
Speaker 2: Am I singing the right thing? I'm saying the right thing?
Speaker 2: And thankfully at the end of that period seventies, it
Speaker 2: was it was really sobering experience for me to wake
Speaker 2: up and still.
Speaker 1: Dream Now Rick left and then he came back. What
Speaker 1: was going on there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was well. We we went through the experience
Speaker 2: of making an album with another keyboard player who was
Speaker 2: very very talented, very very strong. It is jazz fusion concept.
Speaker 2: Great player. He just had different h Swiss, so he
Speaker 2: has a different perception of where maybe I was going
Speaker 2: or I think I thought I was going, or I
Speaker 2: was trying to go. I was I was just going
Speaker 2: through a very sulways said a difficult time.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have relayered not so good, you have
Speaker 1: going for the one, which is a big comeback, then
Speaker 1: there's Tormatto, which is not as successful, and then you
Speaker 1: leave the band. How do you end up leaving the band?
Speaker 2: Well, because it is it had lost its balance. There
Speaker 2: was no balance. It was it was it was you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of the balance. The balance was gone and
Speaker 2: I couldn't I couldn't bring it back together. So that
Speaker 2: was the end of that. It was like like when
Speaker 2: I came, I said, well, the guys, we've got to rehearse,
Speaker 2: we've got to rehearse. Oh, John, just off okay, because
Speaker 2: that's what they said when I left the band in Germany,
Speaker 2: f off very loudly. Then I said, okay, I'm going.
Speaker 2: And that's what I did. I just let go, you know,
Speaker 2: let go.
Speaker 1: Let God you left loudly because you thought you could
Speaker 1: wake them up.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I didn't wake I didn't think about
Speaker 2: it at all. I just know that we were in
Speaker 2: Paris trying to make an album and we brought in
Speaker 2: the wrong producer and that was it. And then it
Speaker 2: just happened to Alan was out there skating ice skating
Speaker 2: or or roller skating with his girlfriend and he broke
Speaker 2: his ankle. That's it. Okay, home we go, and that
Speaker 2: was the end of that. It was very obviously, very
Speaker 2: disappointing for me, because, as I said earlier, I really
Speaker 2: believed in everybody, and when everything falls apart, you think
Speaker 2: it's fuerful. You have that feeling of.
Speaker 1: What did I do? How did Roger Dean end up
Speaker 1: doing all that? He didn't do the first two albums,
Speaker 1: then he did all of them. How did that come
Speaker 1: to be except for going for the one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was definitely perfect timing to have an
Speaker 2: artist project the band. You know, I'd say, you know,
Speaker 2: all the paperwork in the office should be Roger Deanism's
Speaker 2: a bit which never happened, but the idea was there.
Speaker 2: We've actually got an emblem and Roger creates it. God
Speaker 2: bless Roger. Steve how knew him and he came along
Speaker 2: and he said, what's the name of the album? I
Speaker 2: said Fragile and I just said, think of porcelain, and
Speaker 2: he said okay, and he came back with this lovely,
Speaker 2: beautiful little world that look for a fragile. It's a
Speaker 2: great idea.
Speaker 1: Okay, you leave, You're doing your own thing. How did
Speaker 1: you feel that the band continued under the Yes name
Speaker 1: with completely different people?
Speaker 2: And I'm not interested. I just I have no interest.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it at that time because you ultimately
Speaker 1: come back to the band.
Speaker 2: Only because it just happened. And I'll tell you this story.
Speaker 2: Then I got a go bob. But here's this the
Speaker 2: this is life. I was down in silence, France, enjoying
Speaker 2: the wonderful, beautiful, beautiful part of the world. And I
Speaker 2: was working on a project that will eventually come to fruition.
Speaker 2: You tend to start creating stuff after a certain period
Speaker 2: of your career where you you put it to you
Speaker 2: finish it, and you put it to one side, and
Speaker 2: then you have another one and you put it to
Speaker 2: one side. So you finish it with a drawer full
Speaker 2: of things that you know you're going to do and
Speaker 2: finish down the line. And I've got a dozen of
Speaker 2: them sitting in a drawer over there in the studio
Speaker 2: here that one day I'm going to get on with
Speaker 2: them and finish them. And that's when you realize, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're you're you're creative dude. Uh, it'll happen when it happens.
Speaker 2: That became my flagship. You know, it'll happen when it happens.
Speaker 2: And then I've got to call from from Steve. Oh no,
Speaker 2: it was sorry, it was Chris. And Chris said, I
Speaker 2: hear you coming to London this weekend. I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to London see the family and everything. And
Speaker 2: I went to London and Chris said, I want to
Speaker 2: play you something and I said, oh, really, you've been
Speaker 2: working with anybody? He said, oh, yeah, we've been working
Speaker 2: with Trevor Horn. And I said, oh, he's the guy
Speaker 2: that did Duck Rock with Malcolm McLaren, very very good album.
Speaker 2: He's a very smart guy. What's his name. He says
Speaker 2: it's Trevor Horn. I said, oh, good, and Trevor Ravens
Speaker 2: in this ensemble. We're going to be called Cinema. I said, oh,
Speaker 2: good for you. Anyway, he came by the house and
Speaker 2: sitting in his Rolls Royce, of course, and I came
Speaker 2: out to meet him and sat in the Rolls Royce
Speaker 2: with him, and he started playing me this hate trick
Speaker 2: of the music that became nine oh one two five,
Speaker 2: and I went, wow, this is so good. Chris, well done.
Speaker 2: And it's called Cinema. He said, yeah, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: call it Cinema. Well these are This is a great song,
Speaker 2: you know, on of a lonely hard chorus song. The
Speaker 2: song the verse is not so but the chorus is here,
Speaker 2: you know. He said, yeah, we think it's going to be.
Speaker 2: Then he played a couple of other tracks and I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, man, this is so good. And Chris said,
Speaker 2: do you want to sing on it. And I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean sing on it? Yeah, because like
Speaker 2: you say, it needs a definitely needs a better verse
Speaker 2: and one of the lonely heart. Maybe you could come
Speaker 2: in tomorrow to the studio and sing it. I said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, if I do, it will sound like yes.
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, that's what we want, and I said, okay,
Speaker 2: you got the gig. I got the gig, and I
Speaker 2: felt so refreshed that I was yes. And that's the
Speaker 2: end of my story, Bob. But it was a good
Speaker 2: story because the album did great. Owner of a Lonely
Speaker 2: Heart was a monster hit around the world. We played
Speaker 2: in front of half a million people in Brazil, which
Speaker 2: is ridiculously wonderful, along with Rod Stewart and lots of
Speaker 2: other big stories. But to play in front of half
Speaker 2: a million people, it's as far as you can see,
Speaker 2: and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it was great. Is Owner of a
Speaker 1: Lonely Heart is? The rest of the album is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: You have hold on and leave it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone a winner I got. I got to walk
Speaker 2: in and start singing it and writing lyrics a bit
Speaker 2: here and there. It's kind of change the lyrics. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, John, do what you want, okay, thank you
Speaker 2: very much. And that's then all of a sudden, I
Speaker 2: was I was six foot tall from then on.
Speaker 1: Okay, the music was totally done at that Yeah, and
Speaker 1: were there any lyrics?
Speaker 2: There was? There was in honor of a Lonely Heart.
Speaker 2: There was a song which which was sitting in the
Speaker 2: track rather than sitting on top of the track. So
Speaker 2: I just said to Trevor Abe and I said, look,
Speaker 2: why don't we just go Jutta Murda did dada da dada,
Speaker 2: because that's what the band was, the bunk. And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: that's good. Just write that down. Lose yourself. You always
Speaker 2: live your life and he said, never thinking of the future. Yeah,
Speaker 2: never thinking of the future. So John, get on with it.
Speaker 2: So I just got on with it, you know. And
Speaker 2: then the next one, with another song, Heart's another song.
Speaker 2: You start opening up and saying, yeah, well this worked beautifully.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to sing that. And Trevor Horn was very
Speaker 2: good and everybody was so nice and happy.
Speaker 1: Did you have any idea it was going to be
Speaker 1: as successful as it was?
Speaker 2: I just felt, well, the Owner was a hit. It
Speaker 2: depends if, of course. At that point in time we
Speaker 2: had to make a video standing on top of a
Speaker 2: skyscraper in London and MTV started, so everything changed in
Speaker 2: a way. So from that moment, I just felt, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm on top of the world. Thank you very much, God.
Speaker 2: I really be a better boy next time.
Speaker 1: Okay. There was an amazing tour. Okay, and that's the
Speaker 1: first tour I've ever seen where the lighting rig descended
Speaker 1: to the stage at one point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that something you were involved in or somebody?
Speaker 2: Well, originally it was the idea that I wanted to use.
Speaker 2: I'd seen Vangelis, which is another story of my life,
Speaker 2: was I'd seen a photograph of him in Paris with
Speaker 2: laser beams and it'd never been used ever, and he
Speaker 2: was the first guy to use them as a show.
Speaker 2: And I kept saying that to the guys, We've got
Speaker 2: to get some laser beams. Got to get some laser beams.
Speaker 2: And that's when these all the staging in design, because
Speaker 2: I was that kind of guy who always said, look,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people way over there. When you're
Speaker 2: playing for a ten thousand people, a load of people
Speaker 2: are way over there and they can just about see me.
Speaker 2: I'm two inches high. They should see a big spectacle
Speaker 2: of light and color. That's another That's another interview, Bob.
Speaker 1: And then how do you meet Van Gelis?
Speaker 2: That's another interview, Bob.
Speaker 1: Okay, then I'll ask you just a couple of questions
Speaker 1: and I'll let you go. Tell me about writing State
Speaker 1: of Independence.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I just as life would have it.
Speaker 2: I was told not to go near the band by
Speaker 2: Trevor horn Lessen when they're rehearsing new songs. So I was, Okay,
Speaker 2: then I'll just twiddle my thumbs for a month or two,
Speaker 2: which I did and started writing some song ideas that
Speaker 2: I had. And Van Gelis was in Paris, so I
Speaker 2: went to Paris for a while, and then I went
Speaker 2: to see Yes in this gothic castle and they've been
Speaker 2: there a couple of months and not much had happened.
Speaker 2: A lot of just wasn't happening on different levels. And
Speaker 2: then I was there. I came up with some ideas
Speaker 2: for the next ideas that da Dad, and the following
Speaker 2: day Trevor Horne said, I think the guys would rather
Speaker 2: you don't be here anymore. Don't be here anymore, f off,
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, and I went to to Paris
Speaker 2: and I went to the studio where vang Gellis was
Speaker 2: and I'm walking in and he's doing this goo goo
Speaker 2: goo goo goo goo goo goo goo cuckoo sound, and
Speaker 2: I said, it's the microphone on. He said, yeah, it's all.
Speaker 2: So I went to over sorry, singing trying to think
Speaker 2: of the sona.
Speaker 1: But I need of life, May I live, may I Love?
Speaker 2: Coming out of the sky, I named me her name
Speaker 2: coming up Silver were for it is it is the
Speaker 2: very nature of the sound of the game. And I
Speaker 2: went all the way through the song lyric and everything.
Speaker 1: Just came out of you, just like that, off the
Speaker 1: top of your eyes like that, and it blew my mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of adoption of that song
Speaker 1: by the Landscape, but ultimately on her first gath in
Speaker 1: the album with Quincy Jones, Donna Summer Donna Summers Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a good version, but I actually prefer the
Speaker 1: version by Mood Food on the Mood Swings Out Mood
Speaker 1: Swings Mood Food with Chrissy Hind.
Speaker 2: It's just she's great. She's great. But you know, Donna
Speaker 2: was brilliant And did you notice who sang on that song?
Speaker 1: Remind me I own the album. I can't remember.
Speaker 2: Here they go, I gotta remember Michael Jackson, Diana Ross,
Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder, who's the guy in America's got talent on
Speaker 2: the ceiling? Was dancing on the ceiling? Anyway? A dozen
Speaker 2: of the top singers ever sang on that song. And
Speaker 2: I feel blessed that I saw the photograph. But if yeah,
Speaker 2: if you just google Michael Jackson instead of Independence, yeah,
Speaker 2: i'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing if I can find it right now.
Speaker 2: They're there.
Speaker 1: Did you know that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, lit of Richie Richie?
Speaker 2: That was it?
Speaker 1: Sorry, Diana Ross, Brenda Russell, Christopher Krawan, Cannon, James Ingram,
Speaker 1: Kenny Loggins, Penny Lipton, Patty Austin, the great Michael McDonald
Speaker 1: and Stevie Wonder, all the.
Speaker 2: Great sing on the song that I wrote. I'm so blessed,
Speaker 2: Thank you very much God.
Speaker 1: And then it also says here in Wikipedia Summer's version
Speaker 1: is one of Brian Edo's favorite songs.
Speaker 2: Excellent, well done, Brian.
Speaker 1: Okay, so did you know that they were covering it
Speaker 1: or just one day you got the record?
Speaker 2: No, It's funny that our good friend Lee A. Brams
Speaker 2: sent Quincy the album before Thriller, because if you if you,
Speaker 2: if you read that album, it's it's a carbon copy
Speaker 2: of and Quincy always says that, yes, John, we just okay,
Speaker 2: we stole it. Okay, because they used voiceovers, because we
Speaker 2: you know, in Friends of Mister Cairo there was voiceovers
Speaker 2: of Peter Lauri and all the greats, and then that's
Speaker 2: what they used in Thriller. Of course, everybody, everybody is
Speaker 2: part of everything, you know, it's just.
Speaker 1: The way of the world. And okay, so as you
Speaker 1: moved on, hold on, that was it.
Speaker 2: That's the end of my story, Bob.
Speaker 1: Okay, I got one more question and then we're going
Speaker 1: to go. So you know, you leave Yes. You work
Speaker 1: with members of Yes. At this point in your life.
Speaker 1: To what degree is it frustrating that you have to
Speaker 1: play the old music live as opposed to the new music?
Speaker 2: Bob said, perfect question. I just came off tour with
Speaker 2: the Bank Geeks. These Bank Geeks are there's five six
Speaker 2: sorry great on two six players, five players, two keyboard players, drummer, bass, guitar.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable people, unbelievable musicians. Somebody sent me a rendition of
Speaker 2: Heart of the Sunrise again with them playing it, and
Speaker 2: I just went crazy and said, I got to work
Speaker 2: with these guys. I've got to go on to with
Speaker 2: these guys and play all the music from the seventies
Speaker 2: because that's the great music of yes, and that's what
Speaker 2: we just did.
Speaker 1: And do you feel frustrated that you can't go live
Speaker 1: and play your new music to a large audience.
Speaker 2: No. Eventually, whatever I'm doing now will evolve into what
Speaker 2: it's going to be. And I have great feelings and
Speaker 2: dreams like any normal guy, and that these things will
Speaker 2: come to pass and people will hear my latest work,
Speaker 2: and I have great dreams about it as well, where
Speaker 2: it's going to be played, and so on and so on.
Speaker 1: Okay, So as you and myself or in the sunset
Speaker 1: of our years, and you're a deep think or metaphysical guy,
Speaker 1: So what ultimately happens to us at the end of
Speaker 1: our lives.
Speaker 2: Well, we go to the next level, in the next
Speaker 2: level of consciousness. It's very been well written throughout the
Speaker 2: ages as that we keep forgetting that we go to
Speaker 2: the next level of consciousness. That's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: Take it or leave it, buddy, Okay, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it. Dear John, I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for taking all the time tell us so much about
Speaker 1: yourself and your career than to Bob in any event.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left sets