Yes Guitarist Steve Howe: Carrying the Legacy

Yes, progressive rock’s most venerable and long-lasting band, returned last year (after nearly a decade of musical silence) with the emphatic and shockingly epic Fly From Here, their 20th studio album. Founder and longtime vocalist-figurehead Jon Anderson had been replaced with Benoit David, the lead singer of a Yes tribute band, which left many fans either irate or totally perplexed. But even the band’s toughest critics were silenced when they heard the music.

Fly From Here is arguably the band’s finest work since the ’70s, due in large part to the resilient six-string elegance of guitar wizard Steve Howe. Glide recently caught up with the world’s busiest guitarist—who also contributed to XXX, Asia’s 13th studio album—as Yes (now with another new lead singer, Jon Davidson) were preparing for a highly-anticipated North American tour. Along the way, we revisited some of the veteran band’s most misunderstood albums, jawed about the making of Fly From Here, and discussed the future of Yes.

Is Yes rehearsing at the moment?

Well, we did a month or two around South America, and that was a kind of an end to the story of some of the music we’ve been playing for the last couple years since we got back together in 2008. We’ve already gone through quite a lot more material than we could play in one date. We’ve been bringing in some different material to play that we started in South America that we hope some of the American fans will notice.

We’re looking at material—a couple songs are pretty big. I don’t know if I should say although , someone else may have already said, but I think we should if we can avoid it so that the show has a few surprises from the past couple years.  You have to move the set around. We we’re doing songs we haven’t done in quite awhile—songs like "South Side of the Sky," "Onward," "Soon," and "Astral Traveller," we hadn’t done those for awhile. But instead of going back to them, we cleared the set out and injected some songs that are a little more challenging.

You guys have been around for so many years and have such a large amount of material at your disposal. I assume there are songs you feel you need to play every show, but in general, how do you construct a setlist? Do you base that on material that feels fresh or that you haven’t played in awhile? Does a particular person lead the charge?

It’s a very historic situation—since 1968, we’ve had to make up our mind what to play. And it’s down to the guys in the band. Often, it takes somebody just to put a list together. I’ve done it a few times; other people have done it. But that’s purely based on what’s been talked about. So you put songs on there that people want to play, and you just try to organize it a little. And you just build up ideas between them, and there are a few debates, "We’ve done that one too often…" The ball gets kicked around the yard a bit. And you go on and play probably too much on-stage, for like 2 hours 20, and you decide, "2 hours 10 would be better, so something’s gotta go!" And that’s difficult, too, because we love all of our stuff, and obviously we’d like to play as much as possible, but there are songs like "Roundabout" that are pretty hard not to play. We love playing "Roundabout," it’s still a great song to play, so we don’t have a great problem with that. But also equipment, how we’re going to do a particular song, because we like to play songs in the original key and with the original arrangements. And everybody’s gotta do their homework, so it’s a job to bring in these songs, and people have to get down to it a little bit on their own so that they can walk into a room and say, "What’s next?" If you can’t do that, then you haven’t done your homework, and you’re going to hold everybody up. That happens, but we try to avoid it.

How is (new singer) Jon Davidson working out?

We’ve done a whole tour with him—Australia, Japan, places like that. So he’s used to us, we’re used to him. He’s a good guitar player, does some nice rhythm guitar for us. Basically, from the set that we were doing with Jon Davidson, we’ve taken some songs out and put some in, and some of it, we haven’t played for a long time.

Has he been adding things to the arrangements?

There’s some strummy guitar we need—I usually record it on the track with a nice strummy guitar, but it’s nice to hear it played precisely and well. He’s capable of doing some really intricate rhythm parts that I played originally, and he played it when I didn’t originally on stage, and he played on "Life on a Film Set." I didn’t know he was just going to walk on and do that. He’s a good player. I think he plays bass as well, actually.

Have there been any discussions about who will be permanently replacing Jon Anderson? Is Jon being viewed as the real singer—as in someone who could potentially record with the band—or is he being viewed as strictly a live replacement?

This has been put in a few ways, and obviously after that first tour we did in April, that was his—not audition—but his chance to prove he can do this. And he did it, so we booked a summer tour. So basically, without a formal announcement, he is our lead singer at present, and I don’t see how there’s any other way we could say that. We certainly hope to continue together—we haven’t speculated or announced that in the most clear-cut way, but I believe another member of the group did say that once before. So it’s been on the internet that he is our singer, but that was premature to that actually happening, so we can talk retrospectively about the whole of the tour, and we’re doing the summer with him, so we’re obviously very happy with him.

The better he does, the more right he gets to be there. I can’t put much more of a finer point on it, but we’re going on with it, so that is a step toward what you’re talking about. It’s still wait and see, but it looks really good.

Listening to you talk made me realize another way of explaining it—it’s a very complex album, very dense with parts. Yes was striving to be a band that didn’t bask, didn’t strum chords—we actually always played things. (Hums guitar melody to opening track, laughs) Some of that stuff is very tricky and quite surprising, and some of it would be very hard for even us to play. None of us really remember "Rejoice," or don’t remember very well. We’ve tried to play "Silent Wings of Freedom" on-stage, and it just never really worked. A lot of it didn’t really translate to stage particularly besides "Onward" and when we simplified "Madrigal." Rick and I had so many notes, and there’s not a lot of space in it. "Silent Wings of Freedom" was also very improvised. In the shortest sentence I can say, it was very overplayed and under-produced. Lots of notes! And some of it should have just cleared up, and I blame myself and everybody else in the band because everybody was guilty of that kind of thing.

We weren’t on such a high with production at the time, probably caught between changes and trends. Drama proves itself that it knows where its going—it starts, and you’re like, "What the hell is this?" And it just plows through the whole time in—I won’t say immaculate—but close to immaculate level of strength. And yet Tormato does have its moments, that’s for sure. "Release Release" does have its moments, but it’s not that satisfying to listen to, at least for myself—I can’t talk for everyone else. But there are some nice moments in it, and I think there should have been someone else there helping us with that one a little bit. We’d always had a really good engineer, and we were a bit lost at sea with actually the tonal landscape and the space. And maybe "Arriving UFO" has more space—its’ a little more thought out in the way we played together. A bit gimmicky but effective. But some of the other music was a little too intense and tried too hard. That’s my summary of Tormato.

Another one I wanted to ask about is Tales from Topographic Oceans. It’s one of the most misunderstood and under-appreciated albums in rock history. I know you and Jon were leading the charge with that album; do you still feel like it was a success when you reflect back on it?

Do you want a long answer or a short answer?

Whatever you’d like!

I’ll give you a medium view of it. Jon and I had this idea—the band did need some persuasion and a lot of encouragement. And when it came out, everybody was a bit like, everybody was a bit in shock, like, "What kind of album is this?" It got a few slatings, and of course Rick was affected by some of these UK press slatings, because there were all these friends writing about his record! (laughs) He kind of outed himself from it and said, "Oh, you know, it really isn’t that good! I’m not sure about this." So jumping ahead of course, it was only after that tour that Rick actually left, which shows you how out of sync he got with Yes. But a really great thing happened—the bookend of side one and four are really the whole strength of it. But the middle, sides two and three, is really Yes in experimental mode. I was playing lute on side two, and we were playing this really weird stuff we had never played before. We were about to go there with "Sound Chaser" and other things, but that line-up had never been quite that adventurous before then, and we probably over-stepped probably where we could go on three, but we turned it around and did a beautiful (leaves of green) thing with my guitar credenza idea. So that was really strong, but going back to one and four, they are really very powerful and well-arranged music, but what happened with the reception is that we got out on-stage and played it, and people got to really like it.

So we had a new vibe, but it really grew. And after that six months to a year, people were saying, "It’s fantastic! It’s a fantastically good work!" Fewer people are critical of it now than, say, when it first came out. It’s become a specialized classic—it’s the only double-album project we ever did of new material, so it does stand out in itself, and it does take a very big nod to what we were fundamentally, which was a progressive rock group—not called that at the time—but we became known as a progressive-rock group. It was very imaginative music, and we had a lot of fun doing it. In the way groups do with big projects, it’s fraught with challenges—musical and technology. It was the first 24-track album we ever made, and we had all sorts of problems with that. It took four months to record, which by today’s standards, is actually quite good. The ’80s and ’90s got very extravagant—people sat around in studios twiddling their thumbs. In the ’70s, you got in and made your record, so four months of work was a long time. So I love it, just love it, but mainly one and four. On two, Yes was stepping out of being the group we were before. There were lots more sides on things like "And You And I" that were more in line with new age music, if you like. And three, with its strange sounds and unusual instrumentation, we tidied it all up on side four and made it something solid.

Jumping back to the present: How did you feel about the Fly From Here project when Chris originally got the ball rolling? Did you feel strange about reviving the title track because some fans had this attitude of, ‘Well, that’s not even a real Yes song—it’s a Buggles song!"

You know, I would say it was more Trevor’s opportunity—if we get back together, why don’t we do that? Because we had talked about that at various times. It was never a finished song, and it was only available as a live song on an obscure volume three or volume four box set somewhere. So yeah, maybe it is a bit of a funny idea, but maybe they’re missing the point. The reason we liked it is because it was already there. We hadn’t really exploited it, and if we’d only played it as a three-and-a-half minute song like it was before, it would be fair criticism, but we took that and combined it with other songs like my instrumental "Bumpy Ride." So we sort of combined it, like Yes did, into actually the biggest piece we’d ever released at 25 minutes, with the Fly From Here suite, the overture, to the last closing pages of the song, so it’s actually quite an epic in itself since we developed it. And it’s been great playing it onstage, and it does take a lot of craft to play that. You can’t just saunter in and play that song! 25 minutes! (laughs) So that’s exciting!

You asked me about my initial thoughts: I knew what that was, you know what I mean? So I was familiar, and I was quite relaxed because it was part of the Drama story that didn’t get concluded. So yeah, I think it was very much Trevor who made the offer of, ‘Oh, I’ll do that with you at least." And because to get Trevor involved at that stage in the whole album, we had to concede that he was in tune with our material. But the way it transpired with the album was far more complex than anybody would have imagined. It involved Geoff joining the group, involved us going through a pretty big investment into how we were going to make this record after ten years of there not being a Yes record. It was quite weighty in its sensibility because it was a good step to take but a slightly precarious and dangerous one. People have turned their backs on these kind of albums before. I think there were a few bands who do it thinking they would go up the charts, but it did rubbish! (laughs) We slightly reinvented ourselves—well, not slightly. We did reinvent ourselves, and we’ve slightly been able to bring ourselves closer to carrying on the legacy that’s had a hole in it for ten years. So it’s a pretty good showing, I would say. And I love being able to put "Solitaire," my solo, on it, and also "Hour of Need," which is another song I’d had floating around. So basically, there was room to collaborate and work, and it was a pretty healthy environment. It wasn’t all easy, but as I said somewhere else, nothing good comes easy. (laughs)

Are you planning on playing the title track in the future?

We picked out three songs that we’ve been playing. We won’t be playing all of them now. We played "Life on a Film Set," "Into the Storm," and "Fly From Here." They’re the only three pieces we’ve played, so we won’t be playing all of those onstage now. We’ll be focusing mainly on "Fly From Here." But if we find we’ve got more time, Chris is obviously itching to play the song he wrote. And sure, I’d step up to the occasion very easily, but "Hour of Need" is quite simple to play. I know what I’m doing as far as most of the musical direction comes from the Portuguese guitar. So that would be an easy one, but there’s a balance you have to find in a set, and that touches on one of your earlier questions about how we get the set: It’s about agreement. It has to be agreed. There has to be a balance of reasoning and musicality to show that it’s worth taking something out that people love and putting something in that they don’t know so well. So it’s kind of a fine line.

I imagine that’s pretty difficult.

It’s difficult to please everybody! (laughs) of course, I might be meaning the band, and I might be meaning the audience as well.

At this point, with the staggering amount of music you’ve recorded and played live with Yes, Asia, and your solo work, it’s hard to imagine how you’re able to remember all those guitar parts. Is it straight-up muscle memory for you at this point, or do you ever find yourself struggling to remember how to play something?

It’s both things. When a show really flows and when everybody’s having a good time, and particularly when the sound is good and there’s a good feeling of high quality sound in the room, and you’ve had a good night and everybody slept last night, that can make playing "Roundabout" really a lot of fun. You can’t deny being on auto-pilot: This is a song you know incredibly well, but there are moments in it, and that’s what great about music, where you’ve gotta watch it! Because there’s something coming up where if you miss it by a split second, you’ve missed it! (laughs) So it’s about the timing, and obviously in the singing, the pitching and those things, they’re not a given. But of course, knowing the arrangement, you take that pretty much for granted. But then again, somebody might change it in their own mind, and you might say to them, "I wish you wouldn’t change that right there because that’s how it goes on the record!" So we all get to be sticklers for the accuracy occasionally, and somebody else might think something else is better, or something added is better. So those things can get a bit controversial, but that’s part of the fun of being in a band that’s trying to manage its own music in itself without a bona fide individual single leader, which doesn’t really have. It has strength in all its members, and they pop through quite a lot, and it’s not all down to one person. Certainly, Chris, Alan, and I have been steering this ship since 2008, so it can only be said that we naturally take on a lot of the arguments that need to be made.

Well, obviously, Union could have been much better. If it got remixed by somebody else, it would be really good! But somewhere in the mix, an awful lot of things got weirded out on that one. Union was a bit disappointing, but as far as…you asked me about if one album missed its potential, I can’t really say because we were so lucky that every time we put out an album, it sold a million copies anyway—in the ’70s. So it was a bit like, every time we did an album, we thought everybody liked it! (laughs) But on-stage, as I said to you, it’s a test to the song.

I’ll give you an example of an album that was not really tricky to make but almost impossible to play onstage, and that’s Open Your Eyes. That album was presented to Jon and I as it was being made. We really didn’t get involved, and Jon and I had some songs that we wanted to bring into it, but somehow there was no room for this. There was already this block of songs, and only the song "Open Your Eyes" was given anything like a flashing by Jon and I to see what we could bring to it. It’s a very strange album, so I always felt in my body that ‘We’re going to have more of a problem when we get onstage with this than we’re having now." So we finished the album, and Jon and I did the duet "From the Balcony," so when we got onstage, we started playing the music, and I was going—and I wasn’t the only one—"No, no, no!" (laughs) "This is not working!" This song really wasn’t working. So in the end, from the new album, we only played "Open Your Eyes" because it was the only song that the whole band had been involved in, and we could produce that onstage and it sounded like Yes. When we did the other songs, they all paled, and it’s hard to work out, "Is somebody going to play things as loud as they did on the record, or are they now going to be audible?" Or other things like that. So it was a very dicey rehearsal, and I tended up that we just played "Open Your Eyes."

So I think with all the years that Yes has done albums, and all the different line-ups with different individuals that have been a part of it, I’m not surprised that you can pick out a few problems in the work. And I like to think that most of the audience either know about it, need to know about it, or even care about it. In the end, I’m pretty tired of hearing musicians complain about how hard their lives are! I think we’ve got reason to, but I don’t think it’s what people want to hear, and it’s certainly not the image of myself I want to project. Because I think everybody in the world has problems and issues, and families and people they want to look after more they can, or people they miss, or people they long to be with. There’s all that going on for everybody, so I’m not a big advocator of the hard luck story. I’ve got some, but you’re not going to hear about it! (laughs) And that applies to the music, if I can work that back to the question. There are going to be things that you’re not completely happy with. It’s nice to come back to an album and enjoy hearing it. I do that with most of my solo albums, like Quantum Guitar or something—I go back and listen and think, "Oh, yeah, that’s great! I love that—that’s great!" All that hard work I did to put in all those guitars—it’s just Dylan and me on it. Dylan plays drums, and I play bass, guitars, keyboards, and everything. And that was all done really in-house. So it was terrific. It’s not a bad-sounding album—because I work with a lot of great people to help finish up my music. So when you’ve got that aftertaste, I rarely go back to a solo album and think, "Oh, this is the one I don’t really know about." Because they were really made with a great sense of freedom and joy and exploring. But the group albums are difference, hence the second Asia album. Alpha was really uncomfortable, none of us really thought it was finished when it came out, or it wasn’t mixed right or didn’t sound right, or this that and the other.

I spoke with Chris not that long ago, around the time the latest live Yes album came out. He mentioned that he was hopeful this new line-up could record another album together with Trevor Horn. This was before Benoit left the group, so I’m not sure what the thinking is anymore. I realize this question is probably a little premature, but have you guys even considered the possibility of recording another album at this point, or are you totally focused on the live show?

This is one of those areas in life where people think slightly differently. I prefer getting the material and getting things in place and then talking to people about it. You’ve got even the shade or the color or the totality of the material. I don’t really care to talk about that. We’re in good shape. It’s not a real conversation piece—we haven’t started anything, so to talk to people in public about it seems ridiculous to me. As it may, we can only say what we believe in, and I believe we’ll start to talk about it later.