YES Interview: Tempus Fugit, Indeedus

By: HP Newquist (National Guitar Museum) – February 1997

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Steve Howe and Chris Squire sit in a glass-walled room high about New York’s Times Square, looking down on the spire that is home in the infamous New Year’s Eve hall. It is a fitting place to talk about the once and future Yes as the band contemplates 1997 in the wake of the release of Keys to Ascension. It is also a bit disconcerting to have them in the same room: Squire and Howe have not recorded together since Drama, which was released more than 15 years ago.

Squire looks out the window while he muses over the obvious question: Why this lineup, and why now?

“During the Union tour, I realized -as did Jon – that we could work with Steve and Rick again, “he admits. “But the band as it existed then, with Trevor and Tony, was committed to doing Talk, so we never brought it up. As it turned out, Talk wasn’t exactly the best-selling Yes record ever, in part because we had tried to go with a new record company. And then Trevor was asked to do these soundtrack things, and Tony went off to get more involved in business sorts of things. That left us able to feel comfortable about approaching Steve, and then Rick, about working together again.”

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Howe nods, but is a bit hesitant. “For me, it was very much about timing. I had spent a lot of time lately in situations where I wasn’t playing the guitar, nor did I feel like I always had to be playing it. I worked with Martin Taylor on the Chinery recordings. I’ve been working with [former vocalist for Renaissance] Annie Haslam, and I spent a lot of time just putting together the material for Homebrew and Mothballs. Much of that was from the producer’s side. So when the idea came up for doing the shows in April in San Luis, I considered what it was that I contributed to Yes, and what it meant for me to play with them again. And there were some things during the Union tour, like playing ‘Awaken’, that gave me an appreciation of some of the less obvious things we had done in Yes, so we had that as the basis of performing together. From there we started writing and planning what we might be able to do over the next few years – maybe bringing Yes to the turn of the century.”

The big surprise, above and beyond the band getting together for the California shows, is that they are recording new material. One would imagine it being rather different to sit down and write with a group of people that hadn’t put together an album as a unit since 1974.

“It was actually very easy to write with Yes again,” says Howe, “because it was the same as it had always was. We all brought in pieces of songs, and fit them together and built on them and worked on them. Yes songs are all like that; they never end up being like they were when they started because we change them over time. Really, the hardest part for this record was finding time during rehearsals to actually work on new songs.”

Squire adds, “It ended up being comfortable enough for us that Steve even did the bass parts on a bit of “Be The One” because I was playing an octave higher than normal, like a piccolo [bass], and we were missing some depth with the drums. Steve just went in and did it. And he did a good job of it. Plus he was able to jump right back into the kind of ‘moving’ feel of Yes songs.” [Squire’s comment is an observation of the fact that Howe’s solo music tends to be less rock oriented than the music of Yes.]

“It’s true that most of what I’ve done lately is more in a traditional jazz vein or very acoustic,” Howe concedes. “But, if there’s anything I think that I can pride myself on, it’s being able to jump fairly easily from style to style. To go from doing traditional pieces with Martin Taylor to “That, That is’ was natural for me.”

As the conversation winds on, Howe and Squire talk to each other as if they haven’t spoken in years. The topics cover a variety of things, from doing “Tempus Fugit” [a non-Jon Anderson song] on tour to joking about Jimmy Page to being disgusted with the state of guitar technology and MIDI. Howe says that he can still hear the “artificial” sound produced by Roland’s V Guitar system even though he thinks the device is awesome in terms of how fast it switches settings.

But, ultimately, the two come back around to what Yes will be as it attempts to take one of its most versatile – and volatile – lineups back out on the road.

“I think the most important thing this time out is that we’re good to each other,“ says Howe. “Not just as people or bandmates, but from a professional point of view, and from one of respect. We’re older and maybe a little bit wiser, but maybe that also means that we each dig in our heels more than we used to. We have to be careful to treat each other properly – then it can go as long as any of us could ever expect. But it’s more than music. It’s respect.

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About HP Newquist: HP Newquist is the founder of the National GUITAR Museum, the first museum dedicated to the evolution and cultural impact of the guitar. He has authored books that have explored a wide range of subjects and include: Legends of Rock Guitar (with Peter Prown); The Way They Play series (including Blues Masters, Hard Rock Masters, Metal Masters, Acoustic Masters), with Rich Maloof and the award winning The Great Brain Book: An Inside Look At The Inside Of Your Head. Newquist is the past Editor-in-Chief of Guitar Magazine. He wrote Going Home, a Disney Channel documentary featuring Robbie Robertson, as well as directed the film documentary, John Denver – A Portrait.

Note: This interview is reprinted from an article by HP Newquist, originally published in GUITAR Magazine – February 1997. It appears here courtesy of Newquist and The National GUITAR Museum.