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You were born a month before the release of <\/b>The Yes Album<\/b><\/i> in 1971. Tell me about when you first discovered the music of Yes and what kind of an impression it made on you. <\/b><\/p>\nThe history of Yes is lengthy and byzantine. Since the progressive rock avatars began in London in 1968, more than 20 musicians have passed through its ranks. Through those changes, the successive and ever-shifting lineups of Yes have turned out a dazzling array of classic albums, earning worldwide acclaim, a Grammy Award and (in 2017) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Today \u2013 nearly 60 years after the group\u2019s start \u2013 guitarist Steve Howe leads the current lineup. Howe joined Yes in 1970, in time for the breakthrough release The Yes Album<\/i>. Other longtime members in the current group include keyboardist Geoff Downes (first appearing on 1980\u2019s Drama<\/i>), multi-instrumentalist Billy Sherwood (on board starting in 1991) and drummer Jay Schellen (2016 onward). Vocalist Jon Davison is the band\u2019s fourth lead singer, joining in 2012 and following on from founding singer Jon Anderson, Trevor Horn and Beno\u00eet David.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Yes\u2019 just-wrapped tour, Davison spoke with me about his background, his role in Yes, and the band\u2019s present and future.<\/p>\n
You were born a month before the release of <\/b>The Yes Album<\/b><\/i> in 1971. Tell me about when you first discovered the music of Yes and what kind of an impression it made on you. <\/b><\/p>\n
Well, it was many years later, obviously! You hear a lot of stories of Yes fans saying, \u201cMy older brothers were way ahead of me, and they turned me on to all this great music.\u201d I had an older brother, but he wasn\u2019t that<\/i> much older, so we sort of shared the same musical interests.<\/p>\n
At that time, Bon Jovi was at the top of the charts. Apart from \u201cOwner of a Lonely Heart,\u201d nobody listened to Yes! So I just discovered them from what was most popular at the time in high school: 90125<\/i> [from 1983] and the \u201880s Trevor Rabin sound. Then I went back from there, doing my own research. I was doing my own nerdy thing, getting into old Genesis and Yes all on my own. I was probably about 17 when I first heard [1971\u2019s] Fragile<\/i>.<\/p>\n
In your work prior to Yes, you played guitar and bass. How do you think that those endeavors helped prepare you for what you are now doing in Yes?<\/b><\/p>\n
That\u2019s a good question. Being a bass player, I appreciated bassists that had a voicing in the music rather than just playing root notes and purely supportive roles. They played around and they had a strong presence. I think that as a bass player, I could understand that language from the likes of Geddy Lee and Chris Squire. So that was my opening into progressive rock, the first thing that I could understand and relate to.<\/p>\n
You came into the group fairly quickly, replacing Beno\u00eet David. From the beginning, was it understood that you were going to be a creative collaborator involved with songwriting, or was it at first, \u201cWe just need you to come in and be our vocalist\u201d? <\/b><\/p>\n
I think Chris was always keen on trying to understand the full picture of what an artist can do, going back to Trevor Horn and Drama<\/i> [1980].\u00a0 He reinvented Yes when Jon Anderson left, and he took a lot of pride in that. And then again with Trevor Rabin, and then to some extent with Billy Sherwood in the [1997] Open Your Eyes<\/i> period. So when I came in, there was obviously a very strong focus on \u201cLet\u2019s get the set up and running; can you do it?\u201d But also [a focus on] what\u2019s going on in the periphery. Within the first six months of me being in the band, Chris invited me out to his house near Phoenix, and we were already writing music. He wanted to understand me as an artist, which I really appreciated.<\/p>\n
Did you find that as you were collaborating on writing that you had to bend your style at all to make it work in the Yes aesthetic? <\/b><\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t done a lot of songwriting, to be honest with you. Being a bass player, I approached composition from that angle. In Sky Cries Mary, my Seattle band of the \u201890s, we all wrote equally and just wrote as we played; everything was kind of live, essentially. So from an instrumentalist point of view, I was a really band-oriented musician.<\/p>\n
But I hadn\u2019t really started songwriting seriously as a vocalist until I was working with Glass Hammer. That was a self-discovery period for me, and it sort of paved the way for me to get into Yes a few years later. My only vocal style that I had developed up to that time was sort of the Jon Anderson style, which worked perfectly in Glass Hammer. And obviously that worked quite well in Yes.<\/p>\n
From the times that I\u2019ve seen the band, for the audience as a whole, there\u2019s a list of songs that they <\/b>simply must hear<\/b><\/i>. How does that fact figure into the band\u2019s mindset when it comes to writing new material? Do you find yourselves thinking, \u201cHow many new songs should we bother writing?\u201d Because as good as they are, people want to hear \u201cStarship Trooper.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
When we come to songwriting, we let the music write itself. There\u2019s always a common thread that links us to the past of Yes, especially having a legacy member like Steve [Howe] so involved in the compositions. Ultimately, I think it\u2019s about what we want to say lyrically and what we feel musically. That can be very different from traditional Yes, and I think that\u2019s a healthy thing. Because whenever you try to recapture the past, you\u2019re just imitating. So [instead] we think, \u201cLet\u2019s just move forward and create music that\u2019s reflective of who we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n