Why I think a new Union is unlikely for now

It's looking likely that the current Yes, or at least Howe, White and Sherwood, will re-unite with Anderson Rabin Wakeman for one night only at the Hall of Fame induction. This will only fuel the expectation of many Yes fans that history will repeat itself, that Yes and ARW will come together for a new Union.

I am sceptical. It could happen, for sure. This is Yes and its Byzantine line-up history is surely far from over. But I'm guessing that an official Yes/ARW reunion, beyond the induction ceremony, is unlikely.

People see the parallels with ABWH v. YesWest, but I suggest that was a very different situation. Two bands, both struggling, found the union mutually beneficial, a solution to both sides' problems. But today's two acts are more comfortable, so the same incentives don't exist.

While we talk about ABWH v. YesWest, remember that YesWest were moribund. They played no shows and released no material in the entire period ABWH existed. Rabin was off doing other things for much of the time. Despite looking, they failed to find a replacement for Anderson: yes, Squire wanted Sherwood, who sang on some demos, but both Rabin and indeed Sherwood himself never supported the plan. They had recorded some demos, but Atlantic reputedly rejected them.

The owners of the Yes name today are in a very different position. They have done 8 years of international touring and released two albums, that sold reasonably well. They're a proven deal. It looks like their label would happily take a new album from this line-up. I'm sure the label would be happier with the higher sales that Anderson back in the band would bring, but official Yes today has shown it can cope without him.

In the run-up to Union, ABWH were imploding. Remember that all the shenanigans around Howe and Wakeman being replaced by session musicians, that was happening before the union was agreed. They could barely stand to be in a room together. The band was dysfunctional. It's no surprise Anderson was thinking about the other guys! He'd worked with them recently and to great commercial success.

In contrast, ARW now are getting on like a house on fire. They appear to being have more fun, to have tighter relationships, than most Yes line-ups ever have had. No-one appears to be looking for an exit.

ABWH were falling apart and YesWest were struggling: the union looked like a good idea to the alternative. Today, ARW and official Yes are probably smaller commercial concerns, but both seem more stable than their predecessors. A union may be just as attractive, but the status quo is better these days, on both sides.

There are plenty of other differences to stop history repeating. The relationships are different. There's no Squire, who had seemed the most likely figure to bring people together. People are on different sides. Three quarters of ABWH had all worked extensively with Squire and White, and half with Kaye too; in comparison, Downes and Davison have no connections with the other side. It's been longer apart. Anderson had barely left YesWest, compared to now, over 12 years since he was in Yes.

If a reunion now is less likely, could anything change that? What would tip the balance and push everyone together again?

Money is the obvious factor. If one or other band sees their ticket sales collapsing, that could see them hurrying to negotiate a deal, although equally they might just choose to pack it in, let the other side 'win'.

Line-up changes would also shift the dynamic. If Rabin returns to soundtracks, or Wakeman decides to milk the recent top ten success of Piano Portraits, then the remaining two are in a much weaker position. Health problems could hit almost anyone, in Yes or ARW.

Interview with Julian Colbeck

As we await Anderson Rabin Wakeman, perhaps it's a good time to re-visit their spiritual predecessor, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. When ABWH played live, they had an additional guitarist and keyboardist. (ARW talked about a similar arrangement and even announced Gary Cambra for the touring band, although they are now working as a quintet with just bassist Lee Pomeroy and drummer Lou Molino.)

Julian Colbeck, who was that second keyboardist on the ABWH tour, kindly agreed to do an interview with me. Colbeck has plenty more to his career than his time in the Yes orbit: we also talked about his work with Steve Hackett and with Charlie. But we started with ABWH:

Can you talk me through how you got the job in ABWH?
In 1989 I was being managed by Pete Smith who was also ABWH's tour manager. Right before rehearsals were due to begin, Matt Clifford, who had played keys on the ABWH album, announced he was going to join the Stones on their Steel Wheels tour. This was interpreted as a bit of a slap in the face for ABWH (which it wasn’t, but..) and so they needed another keyboard player pretty quickly. I went up to see Jon [Anderson] in London, played a bit of piano for him in his living room, and was offered the gig. Next stop, go say hi to [manager] Brian Lane. Yikes!

How did you work out the arrangements between you and Rick [Wakeman]?
Essentially Rick plays and played all the ‘signature’ parts - solos, refrains etc. - and I played all the ‘orchestrated’ parts. Put even more simply, Rick plays all his bits and I played whatever was left; stuff that even an octopus like Rick couldn’t manage.

What was the mood within the band? Did the band and crew just consider this to be the real Yes?
The mood was generally good and there was a general acceptance of this being as real a ‘Yes’ as could feasibly have been formed in the past couple of decades. That said, everyone had their own dressing room (Jon had a wigwam that got carted around with us and to which no one ever wanted to get summoned) but as I recall, Bill [Bruford] and Rick spent most of their time with Tony [Levin], Milton [McDonald, second guitarist] and myself in the band dressing room. Steve [Howe] kept himself to himself but was never less than charming and civilized. OK, and weird, but in a nice way. 

What happened after the tour? And what's the story behind the French sessions that led to Watching the Flags That Fly [released as part of Jon Anderson's The Lost Tapes collection in 2006]? Who else was involved in the sessions?
The Opio sessions were designed as pre-production for the next ABWH album, which morphed into Union. Everyone was invited. No one came. Just Jon, myself, an orchestrator called Mike Marshall who Jon was also writing an orchestral piece with, and two crew. One of the crew, Rick’s keyboard tech Stuart Sawney, played guitar whenever guitar was needed that neither Jon nor I could hack. In particular, Stu plays the lovely solo on After The Rain [released as "After the Storm"].

Which songs did you co-write?
Some songs Jon had sketches of beforehand, some were my ideas that Jon and I fleshed out together. I’d say it was about 50/50, possibly 60/40 in Jon’s favor. I actually loved writing with Jon. It was inspirational, if challenging. I remember him being pissed off he couldn’t sing into a Roland MC-500 MIDI sequencer. Everything was recorded onto ADAT but none of it was ever intended (so far as I was concerned anyhow) as releasable material; just ideas and demos.

Then what happened – how did you hear that ABWH had merged back into Yes?
After the final ABWH tour, Jonathan Elias had come on the scene and ‘ABWH’ sort of ballooned into Union, which, so far as I’m aware, was a nightmare for which the word clusterfuck must surely have been coined. I was not involved in its recording in any way but one song I had had a hand in writing of (Take The Water… to somewhere, who knows?) made it to the album. I was neither credited nor paid. After ABWH I think I started work with Steve Hackett so quickly lost track of where the Yes guys were at or what they were doing. I certainly had no idea that ‘Watching The Flags’ would ever be heard of again and was utterly gobsmacked when one day it just sort of landed on my doorstep as a ‘record’. To be honest, I was appalled, even though some of the songs were good and some of the arrangements interesting. These were demos; not intended for public consumption.

[Colbeck also said that he cleared up songwriting and royalties for Watching the Flags That Fly with Anderson after the release.]

You then returned for Symphonic Music of Yes: what are your memories of that session?
Symphonic Music of Yes… ummm, not entirely glowing memories. At the time everyone was mad at Rick (who knows why this particular time) so they needed a keyboard player and so I obliged. It was produced by my chum Alan Parsons, so that was nice, but the music and sessions themselves I recall as being somewhat stressful and I didn’t (and don’t) like the album.

You did some further sessions with both Howe and Bruford: can you tell me about them?
These were much more fun. I worked with Steve and his son Dylan and we recorded all sorts of interesting things like Walk Don’t Run and who knows what else. With Bill, we did some music for TV. Again, this was great fun. Lord knows what happened to the music from either session.

You worked for several years with Steve Hackett: what did that period mean for you?
Working with Steve was always a joy. I did all manner of projects and things from live shows to live recorded gigs (Time Lapse - that band only ever played that one gig!), to duos, writing, you name it.

I've read that it was during the Japanese performances released as The Tokyo Tapes that you decided to retire from live performance. What brought about that decision?
 I simply looked around on stage during the final show and saw a bunch of old men - including if not especially, me. I was 44 at the time. Now I look back on those shows and see a bunch of young men. Life is funny like that.

You also worked on Captain Crash vs The Zzorg Women, Chapters 5 &6 [a sequel to Flash Fearless Versus the Zorg Women, Parts 5 & 6], by Steve Hammond and Dave Pierce: tell me more!?
Yeesh! Yes, well that was along time ago, 1980 or thereabouts. I’d known the four writers in London in the early 1970s and had spent many a happy and stoned evening at their houses when the material was being written. In 1980 I left the band Charlie, with whom I’d made a bunch of albums, and moved to LA with Rick Jones and Dave Pierce. We moved in with the unfortunate Steve Hammond (one of the other four writers) and were happy to be supported by Steve’s long-suffering wife Sandy as we routined and rehearsed ‘Crash’. Crash ran for a month or so in a fleapit equity-waiver theater on Santa Monica Blvd but was an amazing experience with an amazing cast. I was the musical director and played keys. The cast was essentially seven gorgeous young LA actresses, three of the four writers, and Lewis Arquette, dad of the little blond Arquette girls who’d come in many nights and watch their dad perform. One night the sleezebag director surreptitiously recorded the show and that’s the album you can hear today. I never even knew anything had been recorded until I was given a copy of the album twenty years later. The music business really makes you go all warm and fuzzy, and so often too.

I'm curious about the Charlie reunion in 2009: what's the story behind that?
2009 Charlie album was essentially a Terry Thomas solo album but on which I played some keys so Terry ended up feeling it merited being released under the name of Charlie. Terry sent me stems and I recorded my parts in my own studio and sent them back to him. That’s it, really. It was and is a really good album but unless we could somehow release it under the name of the Foo Fighters, it stood about as much chance of selling or being played as I do of representing Colombia at free-form ice dancing at the next Winter Olympics.

There is an even newer Charlie album, Elysium, on which I actually played rather more keys and on which I think Martin Smith, a Charlie founder member and current player in ELO or something, also played. It too is a really good and solid album with some killer tracks. I loved playing ‘live’ on this; no sequencing, no auto correct, just me sitting at an acoustic piano, a Rhodes, or a B3 and playing shit. Well, not shit, I hope, but just playing. As for its chances of success, see above but switch Colombia for Pluto.

Do you have any more plans to work with Charlie?
I’d actually love to. Steve Gadd (the other Steve Gadd drummer) sadly died of cancer two years ago and the album is dedicated to him. I nearly died of cancer this past year too but since I still seem to be around I could be persuaded to come out of retirement, should we be able to be convinced that anyone would be interested in listening to us. Now I’m ‘so much’ older, I actually couldn’t give so much of a fuck about being an old man on stage. I wouldn’t have to look at me, the audience would, so that’s their problem.

Thanks to Julian for his cooperation.

• Julian Colbeck's Keyfax online store 
• Alan Parson's Art & Science of Sound Recording, by Parsons & Colbeck 
• Charlie official site

ABW... R?

Online fan discussion continues to be dominated by Rick Wakeman's announcement of a project with Trevor Rabin and other ex-Yesmen. Wakeman seems to have confirmed Jon Anderson as the third man, as widely predicted. Now, the March 2010 issue of Classic Rock Presents... Prog claims Bill Bruford will come out of retirement as the fourth member of this group.

I like Prog magazine, but my gut feeling is they're wrong. It would be a dramatic volte face for Bruford, who has so firmly retired and who has so often made clear a complete lack of desire to ever re-join Yes. That said, it wouldn't be the most surprising turn of events in the story of Yes...

[18 Mar update: Bruford has now denied his involvement.]

The possibility of ABWR has seen comparisons drawn to the original ABWH, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, the rival Yes line-up formed in 1989. The pull of the historical parallels is so strong that fans seem almost to presume that the bass player will be Tony Levin (or Jeff Berlin) again, that Bruford will play electronic drums again, that there will be a tour of Yes music plus again and an almost inevitable new Union with the current Yes line-up.

Stop! Do not be taken in by these fantasies. ABWH was 21 years ago. 21 years is as long as the time between Yes's first album, Yes, and ABWH! We're in a completely different context now and there's little reason to expect this to unfold in a similar way. I wouldn't be surprised to see Anderson and R. Wakeman back on stage with Howe/Squire/White at some point - the nostalgia will always exert a powerful gravitational pull - but I expect an ABWR, or AWR, in 2011 to be a very different beast to ABWH in 1989. Let's wait for a new story to unfold rather than trying to force it into the shape of an old one.

Henry

Yesmen together outside Yes

Apparently, on last Saturday’s Rick’s Place (Rick Wakeman’s radio show on Planet Rock), Rick announced that he is working on an album with Trevor Rabin and two, as yet unnamed, other ex-Yesmen. Cue furious speculation at Yesfans.com about what this might be and the identity of the two others. Billy Sherwood posted a non-committal message that would seem to imply he wasn’t involved. If I had to guess, I’d say the other two will be Jon Anderson and Tony Levin (whether you consider him an ex-Yesman or not), but we know so little, it could be almost anyone.

Perhaps more important than who the other two Yesmen might be is the question of what this project is going to be. Is this basically a solo album with guest appearances, or is this a full-blown collaboration? What many want is a rival Yes, a second ABWH. Given Rabin and Wakeman both seem averse to large-scale touring and given both appear to remain committed to their many other works, I get the impression that we’re not looking at the genesis of a rival Yes band.

So, presuming reports are accurate and this project comes to fruition, what might four Yesmen working together sound like? The Yesmen have often worked with each other outside the band: e.g. Asia, The Buggles, CIRCA:, Moraz/Bruford, White, Turbulence, 1984 and so on. Three Yesmen working together is less common, but there are still a fair few examples: Ramshackled, Fish Out of Water, Adventures in Modern Recording, Conspiracy, In the U.K., Criminal Record, All to Bring You Morning, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Esquire, Jabberwocky and more.

But four or more Yesmen on an album, we’re down to a fairly short list. I can think of 13.

1. ABWH (1989) – of course! I almost didn’t include it here as I just think of it as a Yes album
2. The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Rick Wakeman, 1973) – Wakeman, Squire, Howe and Bruford together on “Catherine of Aragon” plus White on other tracks
3. Beginnings (Steve Howe, 1975) – Howe, White and Moraz together on three tracks, plus Bruford on others
4. The Steve Howe Album (Steve Howe, 1979) – Howe, Bruford and Moraz on “All’s a Chord” plus White on other tracks
5. The Classical Connection II (Rick Wakeman, 1992) – includes a Six Wives era recording called “Farandol” with Squire, Howe and Bruford
6. Tales from Yesterday (various artists, 1995) – Howe, Sherwood, Banks and Moraz appear, but all on separate tracks
7. Pigs & Pyramids—An All Star Lineup Performing the Songs of Pink Floyd (various artists co-organised by Sherwood, 2002) – Sherwood, Squire and White together on “Comfortably Numb” plus Kaye and Levin on other tracks
8. Back Against the Wall (various artists organised by Sherwood, 2005) – recycles “Comfortably Numb” and Kaye’s track from Pigs & Pyramids, plus new appearances from Sherwood, Levin, White, Wakeman, Howe and Downes, but mostly apart (“Hey You” unites Sherwood, Downes and White)
9. Return to the Dark Side of the Moon: A Tribute to Pink Floyd (various artists organised by Sherwood, 2006) –Kaye, White, Wakeman, Howe, Bruford, Banks, Downes and Levin all guest but often separately: “Speak to Me” unites Kaye and White with Sherwood producing; “The Great Gig in the Sky” unites Sherwood, Howe and Wakeman; “Money” unites Sherwood, Bruford and Levin (seemingly recorded entirely separately); “Eclipse” unites Kaye and Banks with Sherwood producing
10. CIRCA: 2007 (2007) – Sherwood, Kaye, White and writing contributions from Rabin
11. From Here to Infinity (Jim Ladd’s Headsets, 2007) – includes a cover of “Starship Trooper” organised by Sherwood with him, Kaye, Wakeman, White and Howe all performing
12. Led Box: The Ultimate Tribute to Led Zeppelin (various artists co-organised by Sherwood, 2008) – Sherwood, White and Kaye are all on “All of My Love”, with Wakeman and Downes appearing on other tracks
13. Abbey Road: A Tribute to The Beatles (various artists co-organised by Sherwood, 2009) – with Sherwood/White/Kaye on “Get Back” and Sherwood/White/Downes on “Let It Be”

Most of these don’t actually have the four Yesmen playing together and there’s no guarantee that this new Wakeman/Rabin project won’t be the same, with just scattered guest appearances. When do we actually get four Yesmen together on the same track? Apart from ABWH, there’s “Catherine of Aragon”, “Farandol”, “Lost Symphony”, “Beginnings”, “Will o’ the Wisp”, “All’s a Chord” and “Starship Trooper” (2007 cover), plus CIRCA:’s “Don’t Let Go” and “Look Inside” if including Rabin’s writing contribution.

I like all those albums (some more than others) as I like most of the albums with three Yesmen, but there’s clearly a huge variation between them. With some, additional Yesmen make guest appearances that amount to little more than curios. Others are good, but just completely different from Yes. And then sometimes, there is something of the Yes magic and an almost-Yes piece emerges. That list of 9 individual pieces with 4+ Yesmen would make a pretty good lost Yes album.

In terms of who’s most collaborative, across the 13 albums listed, White is on 10 (confirming his reputation as being easy to work with), Howe 9, Sherwood 8, Wakeman & Kaye 7 each, Bruford 6, Squire & Downes 4 each, Moraz & Levin 3 each, Banks 2, and Anderson & Rabin 1 each.