New Jon Anderson interviews

There's a couple of new Jon Anderson interviews accompanying his short solo tour. The MusicStreetJournal one has this fantastic quote that may, or may not, explain many a pet cat's behaviour in the garden: "Flowers – we give flowers as a gift – for love, for remembrance, for harmony. And flowers have three components: They smell, like a perfume, they color, and they also make sound. But, you know we’re not cats, so we can’t hear it. But, they do make a sound. And it’s been pretty well proven on many levels…."

What's particularly interesting about that interview and a local US newspaper one is that Anderson's attitude to Yes continuing without him appears to have mellowed from a few months back. Whereas previously he was saying he was fit and ready to re-join the band, now he talks about not being capable of doing the sort of big tours Yes are doing: "Those guys [Howe/Squire/White] like to be on the road, they're like journeymen. I'm not like that. My body would never be able to do what they do. I can't do four or five shows a week, or all this hotel travelling. My body just wouldn't take it." And he appears more accepting of this: "I had to let the past go. I had to just let go of the band. Let go of that energy that I’ve been working with for many, many years. Now I’m working on a new sort of energy".

Anderson also makes a couple of tangential comments about his final period with Yes and writing music: "About four years ago I just put in an ad on my website: "Musicians Wanted" because I wasn't getting much feedback from my close people, which was the band. So I thought, "hey I'll just reach out to people who want to work with me." And then, talking about large-scale pieces: "They're exciting to do, because they are like climbing mountains. And I used to drag the band up the mountain half the time, and sometimes a couple would stay with me all the way. And of late it just became "Well, if you want to do that, Jon, you're going to have to do it by yourself.""