All Connected: Yes Through the Years (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One…

2023’s Mirror to the Sky earned some of Yes’ best critical reviews of the last several years. With that kind of wind at your back, what can you tell me about the prospect of new studio music from Yes going forward?

Jon Davison: We are working on music all the time. Steve is so comfortable in the producer chair. We’ve got an excellent engineer, the great Curtis Schwartz. I live in England, so Steve and I can get together with Curtis a lot of the time. So we’re keeping this comfortable creative flow going.

We’re writing and wrapping up an album now; it should come out, I think, around April of next year. It will have the same sort of flow and ebb of Mirror to the Sky and The Quest, the album just before it. But it’s also very different, which is exciting because it shows that we are continuing to evolve.

Do you have a favorite song from the Yes repertoire?

Wow. I love so much of it, but I tend to get sentimental about the songs we haven’t played for a while. So I’m really missing doing “Awaken.” I don’t often listen to Yes, I confess, just purely as a listener. Growing up, being a fan and loving it so much, it was the music I always listened to. But somehow being in the band, it’s a different kind of perspective, so I don’t find myself gravitating to just being a listener of Yes. And I miss that. So it’s fun to go back and think, “What’s something we haven’t played, or what’s a song or album I haven’t thought of for a while?” So currently it’s [1977’s] Going for the One and songs like “Awaken.” I love that song, and I would love to be able to perform it again. And I think we will, coming up here soon.

The band has done a number of tours focusing on a specific album; this tour it’s going to be Fragile. In all the years that you’ve been with the group, is there anything from the back catalog that you’ve never done live?

That’s a good question! Yeah, some of the stuff from the first couple albums. I will say that Steve has really supported those albums; we’ve done some one-offs that are really interesting, like “Survival” [from 1969’s Yes] and “Sweet Dreams” [from 1970’s Time and a Word]. Those are songs that haven’t seen the light of day – as far as being performed – in forever. It’s hard to imagine, but there are so many. There are some great moments on [1978’s] Tormato, too, and we’re looking at that album.

I would love to have the band look more laser-focused on Relayer [1974]; as you mentioned, we’ve been doing the album series, but that’s one that we haven’t quite taken on. We actually had that slated for an entire tour; the tour book was printed, we were all worked up and ready to go, and then Covid hit. And that shut everything down. And then through time and working with new material and having a reset, we’ve gone in different directions. But I think it’s time to get back and really look at Relayer.

The current tour celebrates Fragile, also from ‘71. Among a long run of landmark albums, what is special about that album for you?

It’s singularly unique, I think, because you have the grand pieces and then you have the shorter solo songs, which are fun. In a way, it’s an unlikely album to choose to do live, because it’s such a studio-centric concept. It’s a bit quirky as a live concept, but surprisingly, we’ve been doing it and all that quirkiness seems to go away.

You know, a Yes listener generally is album-oriented. They know the ins and outs of Fragile from beginning to end. So they are so supportive of it as they hear it in that flow, in context. So we all – the audience and band alike – just get swept up in the whole experience that is the complete album.

After all these decades, what do you think explains the enduring appeal of Yes and the band’s music?

In this day and age, everything’s so immediate; people want it quick. And there’s great production skill and vocal harmony skill in so much songwriting today; I’m not knocking it; I love all kinds of music. But there’s also this wave of pop music [being] almost like a TV commercial: it’s all instantaneous. As Freddie Mercury used to say, pop music’s just disposable tissue; you use it, discard it and forget it. So there is that element to it.

[As far as Yes,] I think there’s so much to it. I think that having a pure album experience – one that takes you on a journey, that’s very thoughtful, that’s imaginative storytelling – is very refreshing to people. There’s all the virtuosity that draws people in, but it’s also Jon Anderson’s beautiful melodies, which are to the level of the Beatles. There’s that wonderful quality, the melodic quality. I was just talking to someone about “Long Distance Runaround” [from Fragile] and how we hadn’t played it for so long. It’s such a joy to sing; it’s such a gorgeous melody when you analyze the flow of it and how it builds. It’s as great as any melody that’s out there.

I think there are all those elements in Yes. In classic rock, there’s an equality among all the musicians. Chris Squire made a statement. As much as Jon did, as much as Steve did, as much as Rick [Wakeman] did. You could be a keyboard player and a huge fan of Rick Wakeman alone and understand Yes. But you had all those avenues, and it’s a complete picture, and that’s just something that’s classic and timeless. Much like classical music, it will never die, and for the very same reason.