>> [Prolific Howe] had so many [ideas] that some got recycled for other projects
That's actually the opposite of "too many ideas". Things get recycled when you have too many projects and not enough ideas.
That said, I love ABWH and don't give two hoots if it wasn't "successful". Totally lived up to my expectations.
Well, considering they couldn't use the Yes name, and nor was there a rock anthem type track a la 'Heat Of The Moment', 'When The Heart Rules The Mind', 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart' etc., the sales seem very good to me.Originally Posted by profusion
I recall Bill Bruford pointing out that for all the manoeuvring that went on to put Union together, it sold no better...and that one did have the Yes name.
I think up to and including 'Birthright', and bearing in mind the awful sounds, this is a strong album. There are parts ('Birthright', 'Fist Of Fire', 'Brother Of Mine' excepting the happy-clappy 'Long Lost...') where they almost get in touch with the old magic. If only they'd dumped 'Quartet' and 'Teakbois', both of which make me wince.
I didn't read record sales into this, but rather, artistic success. I definitely felt that the first ASIA album "did not live up to advance notice."
Pretty unbearable stuff right there!
The point was ultimately that 90125 was a blip, and that the lower (and decreasing) sales of Big Generator, ABWH and Union represented the true commercial state of the Yes brand in the '80s. It took an awful lot of Arista's money to figure that one out the hard way, to be sure.
For me, "Birthright" and "Fist of Fire" are the only cohesive tracks on ABWH. There are very good ideas throughout the album (except "Teakbois"), but the songs seemed just thrown together haphazardly, and several of the songs needed the elusive "something more."
Squire's backing vocals are also sorely missed on that album.
If they thought that, they were insane.
I think 90125 is a brilliant album but it was also somewhat of a fluke to sell that many. If ABWH actually had good songs on it besides "Brother of Mine" it could have sold a million - not much more.
Let's not forget the four year gap between 90125 and Big Generator. Even now, that's a long time, but then it must have seemed remarkable indolence. A whole lot of momentum was lost over the amount of time they took on Big Generator, and the final result is a compromised project. And the next true Yes album, Union, was the dictionary definition of compromise! IMHO these albums simply weren't good enough to be blockbusters. They sound what they were, the products of squabbling factions.
My point was that technically ABWH was not a Yes album- even though I put it with all the Yes albums! Given the importance of the 'brand' in rock, I'd say they did well for what amounts to a side project.
IMO Union was hardly a Yes album either. I like a lot of it, but the notion of unity there is pretty ironic. So, you could make a case that there was no "real" Yes for at least a decade or more.
Also, it seems like the 80s favored smaller creative outfits (a la Tears for Fears) versus the behemoth organization that Yes was in the 1970s. It seems like Yes was completely out of place trying to carry on their "everyone gets to throw their ideas into the pot" 70s approach in an era where the writing was stripped down and the productions doctored up. It might have been better if they just kept it to Jon and Steve working with Jonathan Elias and some studio dudes. The resulting music would have had more clarity without all the political crap.
Oh yeah, the managers (and the musicians, I'm sure) wanted to cash in on the Yes brand. That seems to be the one constant in all the turmoil over the years.
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
I like over half of Union even if it is two different groups.
But Big Generator came out in 1987 with Talk in 1994 so not a decade without Yes.
I think ABWH suffers most from the really bad sound choices: Wimpy sounds from Steve, fake trumpet and violin sounds from Rick, and bad electronic percussion sounds from Bill (especially that awful snare).
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Am I the only one here that is enjoying the peak behind the curtain at the creative/songwriting process of these songs? I find it extremely interesting that a lot of the vocal melodies and even some lyrics appear in these demos. I always though that Jon was solely responsible for the box melodies and lyrics.
It also is interesting hearing Steve's rhythm guitar (assuming it is him). Most Yes track either don't have rhythm guitar parts, or the keyboards play those lines or they are just mixed very low. Usually the tracks just have Steve's lead/melody
lines.
Yeah Jon had a habit (going all the way back to Tormato) of including songs that should have been included on his solo albums vs. Yes brand..
"When talking about Yes, I can’t be unbiased. I can say that I do need more space sometimes to clarify where I stand on things. The Homebrew series of CDs is really a mouthpiece for my writing too. Hopefully, Homebrew Volume Three will come along later this year. The Homebrew discs have ideas which were developed by the band and you can kind of really see what I do, as opposed to the blanket credits in Yes, which we’re not going to be doing anymore. The blanket statement “This album was written by Yes” frustrated me. That’s why volume one of Homebrew really goes into the ABWH stuff. ABWH was another blanket writing credit where you couldn’t see what anybody wrote. So, when I did Homebrew, I put on a whole series of tracks that were the basis for quite a lot of the ABWH stuff.
I don’t expect very many people to be interested, but you can listen to Homebrew and see where my direction affects Yes. I like that clarification and understanding. I’m an artist that likes to be understood. There are blanket thoughts like “Jon writes all the lyrics for Yes” and at times he has done that, but other times he hasn’t. Those things made me want to try and gain some ground. I don’t think it’s purely ego. I’ll tell you what I think it is — it’s recognition for what I actually do. I’m not interested in getting recognition for something I didn’t do. I don’t want songwriting credits for songs I didn’t write and this is something that goes on. But there again, this is something that’s supposed to create smoothness in the group and less drive to get any one specific song out there." - http://www.innerviews.org/inner/howe.html
I was quite surprised by the alternate mix of “Fist of Fire” by ABWH [Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe] on the new Yes In A Word boxed set. I didn’t know the ABWH material was so compromised.
When I’m not visible at the mix, guitars get lost completely. With “Fist of Fire,” I thought it was ridiculous, because I’m not even that loud on the [boxed set] mix. My presence is important. It’s called ABWH, thank you very much! I don’t need to be on every track, but my presence has to be felt in a balanced way. This is when some of my struggles start.
The second Asia record was the first really big problem I encountered about mixing, but nobody in the group liked it either. GTR was not really mixed the way Steve Hackett and I wanted. It was a bit too wet and soggy. I was around during the GTR mixes, but not during the second Asia record. And then ABWH, which had so much of my writing in it, got mixed without me.
The first Asia record reeks of me being there — of everybody being there. When everybody is there and the producer is working with everybody, you get a great finished product. But when some schmuck decides they can do everything themselves and doesn’t need the band who’s written and played the music, that’s ridiculous. “Don’t need them! We’re just going to mix that without them!” I reckon the band should have a lot of input. And when I don’t get input, I usually don’t like the record. That happened on ABWH. I thought the guitar mixing was very bad. I was available to be part of it, but I wasn’t invited. Those things annoy me.
Maybe I shouldn’t be voicing my disappointment too much because it’s over. But with “Fist of Fire,” there you are. There’s more of that stuff. I’ve got a lot of other mixes that show I was rocking and rolling, and going nuts a lot more than is audible. So, that is disappointing, because I know my sound needs projection to carry. You can’t put Steve Howe in the background and say “Oh, that’s just as good.” You’ve got to hear me in context and at times, this is why Yes was great, because you heard the bass and guitar throughout — it was a clarity of mixing.
What was your involvement in the recent deluxe edition of the self-titled Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (ABWH) album from 1989?
A deluxe edition of the ABWH album was released? Really? I’m quite disappointed because I wasn’t consulted, but am pleased it’s available. We have a new Yessongs reissue coming out as well. And the license ran out on Keys to Ascension, so someone new wants to reissue that. I warned them the video is dreadful on that one, with some very weird things happening on it. Someone also wants to release something related to 90125 and sent me an email about it. I wrote back saying “Sorry, I’m not on that one. I don’t vote on it.” [laughs] Yes has a quagmire of potential projects happening right now.
How do you look back at the ABWH album?
Some upsetting things happened in the way we made it, but I was really quite happy with the project. I remember thinking “Wow, that’s pretty interesting.” Jon came to my house in London and said “Let’s do this. Let’s put this band together.” I gave him six songs on a cassette and he walked out the door. Those songs are basically what became the album. He added to those songs. So, I have a very soft spot for the album because some of the emotional pieces are fantastic. The songs do really mean a lot to me. They are quite exciting. There are a couple of things on it I’m not even part of. Jon was ruling the roost on the project.
That album was upsetting to me only at the mix stage. I kind of hit the roof at that point thinking “Oh dear, it got mixed like other albums had during the ‘80s.” To me, that meant the amazing ability to pull out the feel. I felt “Hey, we have a band playing here and that should be reflected in the mix.” But it was cleaned up, digitized and endlessly transferred between different systems. Some of the record is very spiky and hard. I hope they’ve done something to enhance the warmth of the album.
In general, I understand you were unhappy with how your guitar parts were handled during the ABWH/Union era.
There were some very sad edits, particularly on that lovely ABWH song “Take the Water to the Mountain” that ended up on Union. That song was phenomenal. Tony Levin and I played great stuff on it and it all got edited out. Those are the kinds of things that happened. I hope the new ABWH reissue is better than what came out originally, but I wish they would have asked me before they did it, because I am a master of tapes. For instance, I have a 28-minute version of Tales from Topographic Oceans side one. You can imagine how we had to edit that down to fit on the record, which was 22 minutes long. We edited it before we overdubbed, so it doesn’t have much on it. It’s a backing track to “The Revealing Science of God.” You would only hear guitar, drums and guide vocal if I played it for you. It’s a fact of life that I have things like this. But they didn’t ask me for anything when they put out the 2003 Topographic Oceans remaster. I have a considerable amount of unreleased ABWH stuff as well. But there are so many re-releases. Yes has done that too much and it’s time to stop. But labels keep on wanting to do it.
http://www.innerviews.org/inner/howe2.html
Judging by ELP and Black Moon... maybe not
the worst Yes album had little input by Howe---I can't believe he stayed with the group at the time---
I'd always heard ABWH was "Anderson's Baby". Can't wait to hear these demos.
those demos are so great---Howe really did make the album great
I mean Anderson/Howe are like the Lennon/Mccathy of prog and many think that it's mostly thanks to JA---but I never thought that was true.
Squire and Anderson wrote some really great music together as well..
I preferred Joe McCarthy from his solo career. Much more prog, that one. Like, y'know, the Dylan of prog. Or at least the Leon Russell or Jackson Browne of prog. Ok then, perhaps only the Justin Timberlake of prog. Or the Martha Stewart of prog.
"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
Lots of the ideas on ABWH are Howe's, but what happened, as far as I can tell, was that Anderson got a bunch of demos off Howe, but it was then Anderson that was in control in developing those and making the ABWH album, which included using McDonald or Clifford on guitar and keys respectively instead of Howe or Wakeman in places.
Open Your Eyes was mainly written by Sherwood (although "From the Balcony" is Howe's tune) and much of it was recorded before Howe, then somewhat at odds with the others, even arrived at the sessions. A fair amount of guitar on that album is thus by Sherwood.
Henry
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I'm gonna be chuckling about this for the rest of the day...
"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of Yes?"
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"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
I had the impression most of that album was written by Sherwood and Squire in the early 90's, and were supposed to form the core of a solo album that Squire was working on. The story I remember hearing was when they signed to whichever label it was that released Open Your Eyes, the label chieftans insisted on the band developing the songs that Squire had intended for his solo album.
So is this sort of like Union, where even the stuff that sounds like Steve is actually the studio rat deputy, or are the solos at least actually Steve or what?
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