Why prog rock god Jon Anderson can't say goodbye to Yes
It only stands to reason that Jon Anderson’s new album sounds remarkably like early Yes in ways that go beyond the unmistakable essence of the voice responsible for such career-defining classics as “Roundabout,” “Close to the Edge” and “I’ve Seen All Good People.”
After all, he did record the songs on “True,” an album due to be released on Aug. 23, with the Band Geeks, a group he recruited to back him on a tour called Yes Epics & Classics in the spring of 2023 after seeing a video of them performing one of Yes' more beloved songs.
“A friend of mine who works at Sirius Radio in New York sent me a video of these guys in a small New Jersey studio doing 'Heart of the Sunrise,’” Anderson recalls. “And I couldn't believe how good this band was. I didn't know them at all. So the guy that had sent me the video gave me the bass player's phone number.”
How Jon Anderson started playing Yes songs with the Band Geeks
The Band Geeks’ bassist, Richie Castellano, has spent the past 20 years touring with Blue Oyster Cult.
As Anderson recalls the conversation, “I said, 'Hi, Richie. My name is Jon Anderson. You did a great version of “Heart of the Sunrise.” Do you want to go on tour?' He said, 'Is this really Jon?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Well, that would be a trip. Let me think about it.'”
Castellano thought it over for about a second.
“Then, he said, 'Yeah, we've got to do it. Can we do it?'” Anderson recalls.
He explained that the tour would be billed as Yes Classics and Epics, and he’d want to revisit “The Gates of Delirium,” “Heart of the Sunrise,” “Close to the Edge” and other early classics, which sounded like a brilliant opportunity to Castellano.
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'They were playing all the classic Yes songs just like Yes'
Plans were made to start rehearsals four months later in New Jersey, where Anderson was blown away by not just their abilities but how prepared they were.
“I thought, 'Whoa, what's happening here?'” he recalls.
“I was sort of in musical heaven because they were playing all the classic Yes songs just like Yes as though it's Yes. So then we went on tour and did a dozen shows, and I just felt like, thank the gods of music that I’ve been presented with this. Because not only are they brilliant musicians, they're just really nice guys, you know? That helps.”
He immediately felt like he could throw out any Yes song from the ‘70s, and the Band Geeks would nail it, from “Close to the Edge” to “Awaken.”
“It was a wonderful feeling,” Anderson says.
“I just sang with a big smile on my face. Like, 'Wow, this is just too damn good.' And I think it was towards the end of the tour, I looked at Richie and said, 'You guys are just so good. Why don't we make an album?' He said, 'Let me think about it.' Then, a month later, he called and said, ‘I've thought about it, and I'd love to make an album with you.'”
Anderson and the Band Geeks wrote songs for 'True' on Zoom calls
It took about three months to come up with the songs for “True.”
“We actually did everything via Zoom because I live in central California and they live in the New Jersey area,” Anderson says. “We'd get together via Zoom every other Tuesday and go through what we had. And we sort of built the album together over that three-month period, which ended about a month ago.”
The result of all those Zoom calls is an album Anderson has every reason in the world to call “pure Yes-style music,” including two proper epics, the nearly 10-minute “Counties and Countries” and “Once Upon a Dream,” which clocks in at an awe-inspiring 16 minutes and 31 seconds.
“It's my nature to be adventurous musically, and these guys are just so excited to do it without question,” Anderson says. “There wasn't one point that anybody said, 'Well, we don't want to do it this way.' No. They just wanted to do it. At times, it felt like I was back in time to the '70s, where I had a really good relationship with everybody in the band Yes and they would try anything.”
It’s a similar feeling he gets from the Band Geeks.
“They'll try anything that pops into my head,” he says. “So I'm very excited about people hearing the album."
In the meantime, he's back on the road with the Band Geeks and headed to Phoenix as part of a tour he’s called Yes Epics, Classics & More, the “More” being songs from that forthcoming album.
Jon Anderson on how Yes lived up to the concept of progressive
“As a band, Yes were very adventurous,” Anderson says.
“We'd go out on tour with 'The Gates of Delirium' without the album actually coming out at that time, I remember. Or 'Tales of Topographic Oceans' to an audience that really hadn't heard it, hoping, fingers crossed, that they accept it.”
It was part and parcel of being a progressive band, he says, “thinking these pieces of music will eventually get better and better as time goes along because we'll get better and better playing them. It was definitely the '70s that, to me, created such beautiful energy.”
Yes spent the decade evolving while finding new boundaries to push.
Epic Yes songs like “Close to the Edge” and “Awaken” were what Anderson views as the candle on top of the cake.
“It meant that we had actually progressed,” he says. “You can't call yourself progressive if you don't progress. And when I was touring with these guys just last August, I think it was, I just felt like I was still in the '70s mentally, in a space of joyfulness.”
The Band Geeks “really played the hell out of the music,” Anderson says. “When it needed to be perfect, it was perfect. Working with this band is pure Yesism.”
Jon Anderson says he doesn't need to tour with Yes at this point in his life
As fondly as he speaks of his experience in Yes, you might think Anderson would be receptive to getting back together one more time with the remaining members of that project that continues to define him. But he has no interest in working with Yes at the moment.
“I don't need to, you know?” he says.
“I really don't need to. Thank God for Yes. Thank God for everybody that I worked with in the band. I can sense that Chris (Squire) and Alan (White) are in heaven listening to us do this tour, and I just feel that they would love what we're doing.”
Lyrically, the new songs Anderson recorded with the Band Geeks are infused with the positive energy that’s been a hallmark of his writing from the early days of Yes through the best of his solo efforts.
Jon Anderson traces the spirit of 'True' back to 'Time and a Word' by Yes
“The idea of 'True Messenger' seems logical for the way I write lyrics about there is something going wrong around the world and we need to connect,” he says. “The harmony is universal love, that kind of thing. It's always love.”
He points to Yes’ second album, “Time and a Word.”
“'Time and a Word' was 'The time is now and the word is love,’” he says. “That was the first song we actually recorded. Or one of the first songs as Yes. So there you go. I’m always thinking peace and love. You know, all you need is love. The Beatles, John Lennon. That filters through everything I've ever done. I think that's the nature of the songwriter, to try and put the world back together again as you would like to hear and see it.”
Jon Anderson in Phoenix
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 14.
Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.
Admission: $35-$125.
Details: 602-267-1600, celebritytheatre.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Jon Anderson can't say goodbye to Yes
