Despite having read Chris Welch's and Aymeric Leroy's books on Yes, I don't remember suggestions that Vangelis could have been the composer of "Soon", the final section of "The Gates of Delirium".
However, by reading an obituary written by Paul Wiffen, I stumbled upon this:
"In 1974, Rick Wakeman quit Yes over the Tales From Topographic Oceans album and tour, and so Yes needed a new keyboard player. Jon Anderson and his record company boss Phil Carson had heard about this Greek keyboard wizard in Paris but no-one could give them anything but the address of his home/studio, so they jumped on a plane to Paris and took a taxi to the address they had. A beautiful girl opened the door to them and waved them in when they said the name Vangelis. As they walked to the pile of keyboards in the distance, an arrow flew across the room and embedded itself in a bullseye target next to them.
“Is he trying to kill us?” asked Jon Anderson. Phil Carson peered at the perfectly placed arrow and replied, “I think if he wanted to kill us, we would be dead already!”
In fact, archery was one of Vangelis’ favourite hobbies and he almost represented Greece in the Olympics when he was a teenager. In every studio where Vangelis worked he would put a target so that when he was struggling to come up with the right melody, he would loose off a few arrows to help him focus.
After the initial fright they were soon able to persuade him to come to London to try out with Yes for a few weeks and Phil Carson agreed that they would ship all of Vangelis' keyboards to London and arrange his visa status.
Things were going well in rehearsal and a piece emerged which Yes fans often refer to as 'Soon' (the final quiet section of 'Gates Of Delirium' from Relayer) which featured mainly Vangelis’ keyboards over which Jon Anderson’s angelic vocals and Steve Howe’s slide guitar (bathed in echo) soar in almost painful beauty. Vangelis was in and plans started to be made. But then someone mentioned touring and Vangelis was adamant that he would never tour again. So within minutes Vangelis was out of the band he had just joined!
Vangelis didn’t care, he and his keyboards were legally in London where he had tried to come 10 years before with Aphrodite’s Child. He quickly made a deal to give Yes the copyright on ‘Soon’ in exchange for not recouping the costs of bringing him and all his equipment to London and the visa charges, plus a gentleman’s agreement that Jon would sing one song on Vangelis' next solo album (presaging an extraordinarily successful partnership)."
https://www.soundonsound.com/news/va...-2022-obituary
Can any of the Yes scholars onboard confirm this story?
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