"Drum solos are boring!" -- Keith Moon
"Drum solos are boring!" -- Keith Moon
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
I can't remember it, but I know I never really liked it.
One of the very few drum solos I enjoy listening to. A good example of his preference for working round the snare and that cutting sound he gets from it that many people mention in Yes books. The way they come out of it back into the main Perpetual Change riff is very powerful.
If you're talking about Howe's solo, then that's correct of course. I was thinking more in line with the ground arrangement of those instrumental parts in which he performs it. He was also known for planning his solos or often reproducing studio solos live, although never as strict as, say, Gilmour or Hackett.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
Howe has been known to complain that some solos (he specifically mentioned "All Good People") have become such an integral part of the song that he CAN'T really improvise in those spaces anymore; the audience would think it sounds "wrong". And he's right - a lot of solos were so idiosyncratic that they became the melody line at that point, and would've sounded wrong had he not played them.
I'll have to go back and listen to Bruf's solo; I can't really remember it. But as a general rule, I'm against drum solos. Now, if they're played AGAINST some background, they have a context to exist in (like Chicago, playing against a latin percussion background, or Portnoy in the last bit of the Metropolis pt. II Scenes from a Memory album), and they make sense. But by themselves? No.
Gnish-gnosh borble wiff, shlauuffin oople tirk.
That may be the case for solos, but he did change the way he played "Wurm" live over the years. It's so different, to my ears at least. Same chords, yes, but different rhythms, strumming etc.... to be honest, that's one track I prefer the studio version of. It's been a Yes live favourite for 40+ years now but I never liked the way they changed it. For one thing, Wakeman's solo should never have come first! The whole piece is building towards the climax when Howe's solo finally explodes. I know they must be so bored with it by now and obviously because it has so much room for stretching out and jamming a bit in a live setting, they take advantage of it. I don't blame them, I just don't like that track live the way I used to. On The Yes Album, though, it's a killer!
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
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