{"id":30288,"date":"2026-01-09T05:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30288"},"modified":"2026-01-12T08:41:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T13:41:25","slug":"all-connected-yes-through-the-years-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/all-connected-yes-through-the-years-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"All Connected: Yes Through the Years (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

2023\u2019s <\/b>Mirror to the Sky<\/b><\/i> earned some of Yes\u2019 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?<\/b><\/p>\n

Jon Davison:<\/b> We are working on music all the time. Steve is so comfortable in the producer chair. We\u2019ve 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\u2019re keeping this comfortable creative flow going.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re 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<\/i> and The Quest<\/i>, the album just before it. But it\u2019s also very different, which is exciting because it shows that we are continuing to evolve.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite song from the Yes repertoire?<\/b><\/p>\n

Wow. I love so much of it, but I tend to get sentimental about the songs we haven\u2019t played for a while. So I\u2019m really missing doing \u201cAwaken.\u201d I don\u2019t 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\u2019s a different kind of perspective, so I don\u2019t find myself gravitating to just being a listener of Yes. And I miss that. So it\u2019s fun to go back and think, \u201cWhat\u2019s something we haven\u2019t played, or what\u2019s a song or album I haven\u2019t thought of for a while?\u201d So currently it\u2019s [1977\u2019s] Going for the One<\/i> and songs like \u201cAwaken.\u201d I love that song, and I would love to be able to perform it again. And I think we will, coming up here soon.<\/p>\n

The band has done a number of tours focusing on a specific album; this tour it\u2019s going to be <\/b>Fragile<\/b><\/i>. In all the years that you\u2019ve been with the group, is there anything from the back catalog that you\u2019ve <\/b>never<\/b><\/i> done live? <\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question! Yeah, some of the stuff from the first couple albums. I will say that Steve has really supported those albums; we\u2019ve done some one-offs that are really interesting, like \u201cSurvival\u201d [from 1969\u2019s Yes<\/i>] and \u201cSweet Dreams\u201d [from 1970\u2019s Time and a Word<\/i>]. Those are songs that haven\u2019t seen the light of day \u2013 as far as being performed \u2013 in forever. It\u2019s hard to imagine, but there are so many. There are some great moments on [1978\u2019s] Tormato<\/i>, too, and we\u2019re looking at that album.<\/p>\n

I would love to have the band look more laser-focused on Relayer<\/i> [1974]; as you mentioned, we\u2019ve been doing the album series, but that\u2019s one that we haven\u2019t 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\u2019ve gone in different directions. But I think it\u2019s time to get back and really look at Relayer<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The current tour celebrates <\/b>Fragile<\/b><\/i>, also from \u201871. Among a long run of landmark albums, what is special about that album for you? <\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s an unlikely album to choose to do live, because it\u2019s such a studio-centric concept. It\u2019s a bit quirky as a live concept, but surprisingly, we\u2019ve been doing it and all that quirkiness seems to go away.<\/p>\n

You know, a Yes listener generally is album-oriented. They know the ins and outs of Fragile<\/i> from beginning to end. So they are so supportive of it as they hear it in that flow, in context. So we all \u2013 the audience and band alike \u2013 just get swept up in the whole experience that is the complete album.<\/p>\n

After all these decades, what do you think explains the enduring appeal of Yes and the band\u2019s music? <\/b><\/p>\n

In this day and age, everything\u2019s so immediate; people want it quick. And there\u2019s great production skill and vocal harmony skill in so much songwriting today; I\u2019m not knocking it; I love all kinds of music. But there\u2019s also this wave of pop music [being] almost like a TV commercial: it\u2019s all instantaneous. As Freddie Mercury used to say, pop music\u2019s just disposable tissue; you use it, discard it and forget it. So there is that element to it.<\/p>\n

[As far as Yes,] I think there\u2019s so much to it. I think that having a pure album experience \u2013 one that takes you on a journey, that\u2019s very thoughtful, that\u2019s imaginative storytelling \u2013 is very refreshing to people. There\u2019s all the virtuosity that draws people in, but it\u2019s also Jon Anderson\u2019s beautiful melodies, which are to the level of the Beatles. There\u2019s that wonderful quality, the melodic quality. I was just talking to someone about \u201cLong Distance Runaround\u201d [from Fragile<\/i>] and how we hadn\u2019t played it for so long. It\u2019s such a joy to sing; it\u2019s such a gorgeous melody when you analyze the flow of it and how it builds. It\u2019s as great as any melody that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n

I think there are all those elements in Yes. In classic rock, there\u2019s 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<\/i> those avenues, and it\u2019s a complete picture, and that\u2019s just something that\u2019s classic and timeless. Much like classical music, it will never die, and for the very same reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… 2023\u2019s Mirror to the Sky earned some of Yes\u2019 best critical reviews of the last several years. With that kind of wind at your back, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,56,62],"tags":[5793,2413],"class_list":["post-30288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-prog","category-rawk","tag-jon-davison","tag-yes","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30621,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288\/revisions\/30621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}