YES: A kind of magick

Union Live Part Three
I think that the last word about the Union Live DVD should go to one of the major players on it, Mr Rick Wakeman. I have been working on a reissue of one of his volumes of autobiography in which he wrote:

Yes were also in the middle of recording an album, and the general plan was to merge the two products, produce one album and call it Union. (When I heard the finished product I renamed it “Onion" as it made me cry every time I played it.)

More time was obviously needed to enable the albums to be merged successfully, but time was something that I didn’t have. I had a solo tour contractually booked and so was very limited to the amount of extra work that I could put in on the project. The end result was, as far as I was concerned, an unmitigated disaster and the worst piece of Yes product ever released to the general public.

The tour, however, was a totally different kettle of fish.

I arrived in Florida for the rehearsals, full of excitement and expectation. I sensed in a strange way that such a tour would only ever happen once, as there were too many personality clashes waiting in the wings for a head-on musical tight, so I had already decided that I was not going to get involved in Yes politics but just thoroughly enjoy performing the music - and that is exactly what I did.

It was wonderful playing with Chris Squire and Alan White again, and Trevor Rabin and I also struck up a tremendous relationship. The tour lasted nearly a year and virtually went round the world, with the last performances taking place in Tokyo early in 1992.

Far be it for me to argue with Mr W, but I really enjoyed Union when it first came out two decades ago, and whilst it is not the best album they made, it is still a personal favourite. And I have to agree with him, there was something completely magickal about the tour, and that magick comes across on the DVD.

Trust me guys, it is well worth the small investment.

YES: No tin boxes

Union Live Part Two
On the back of the cover of Mike Oldfield's seminal Tubular Bells LP (it is so nice to still be able to use the term LP - none of the youngsters who come in and out of my office know what the flip I am talking about) there is the message:

"This stereo record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment please hand it into the nearest police station."

Again this is probably lost on anyone under the age of 40, but once upon a time records used to have the following statement (or something very much like it) emblazoned on their sleeves:

"This stereo record can be played on monaural record players, but there will be a significant loss of sound"
...or something like that.

However, I have a significant warning that has to be made about the Yes DVD that I am featuring all this week. The following message was inadvertantly left off the sleeve:

"This DVD should not be played on a twenty year-old portable TV given to you by your nephew after the intern poured water into the back of the old one whilst cleaning out the bitterling tank".

Or something like that.

I don't watch television very much. It doesn't interest me in the way that music and books do, and so our only TV is a little portable (provenance noted above). The other day, I played the Union Live DVD on it, and it sounded terrible! I was feeling terribly worried about it, but then Graham plugged it into our hi-fi, and suddenly it sounded as wonderful as I had always expected that it would. maybe better.

So, before we go any further, let this be a cautionary tale. An old mono TV may be perfectly adequate to watch old films on (in my case the Prisoner box set Corinna gave me for Christmas), but it is totally inadequate to watch music DVDs.

And you need to have the optimum equipment for this DVD because it really is smashing.

I am currently working on a reissue of Dan Wooding's classic biography of Rick Wakeman. In it he quotes a Melody Maker piece from around the time that Rick joined the band:

'Part of the reason for the split was that Tony Kaye wanted to concentrate on Hammond Organ while Yes wanted to further augment their sound'.

That is as may be, but I was totally unprepared for the sound that came from the two keyboard players playing in tandem. It was rich and full, and totally surprising. Both musicians are masters of their art, but their styles are markedly different and I had always assumed that they would clash, but far from it.And the two drummers also complimented each other in a totally unexpected (well, unexpected by me) way. They are amongst my favourite drummers, but again have wildly differing styles. Alan White demonstrates why no less a personage than John Lennon had pulled him out of obscurity to join the Plastic Ono Band, and Bill Bruford just continues being the drummer of choice for all the world's leading prog bands.I had always liked the Union album, but I had expected the live stuff from the tour to be a bit of a mish mash. But I was completely wrong. It is a delight.Once again I have over-run and overshot my budgeted words. I will continue on this subject next time

YES: Everything you know is wrong

Union Live Part One
My day job is running the Centre for Fortean Zoology, which is - amongst other things - the world's biggest cryptozoological research organisation. What is cryptozoology? It is the study of unknown animals. Creatures that mainstream science does not accept exists. And one of the biggest watchwords of cryptozoology, is that accepted paradigms can be wrong. badly so.

I am running this Gonzo bloggything not just because Rob Ayling is an old mate of mine, but because (in my own little way)I have been a rock music historian for nearly 40 yrs, and this gives me an unparalleled opportunity to wade through some of the less well-trodden byways of music history, and then wax lyrically about them to a wider audience than my long-suffering wife and stepdaughters, and Prudence the dog. And I am enjoying every minute of it.

Something that I have discovered over the years during my cryptozoological career, and not uncommonly in my music historian one is the truth of the aphorism that "everything you know is wrong". I don't know who first coined the term, but I first came across it in an LP by The Firesign Theatre, and a book by my old mate Lloyd Pye .Now I am going to use it in the context of this fine DVD from those jolly nice folk at Gonzo.

If you believe accepted wisdom, the 1991 Union album and tour were somewhat fraught. According to Wikipedia (and I am the first to admit that this fine resource is sometimes almost terminally flawed:

After Big Generator in 1987, Jon Anderson teamed up with ex-Yes men Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford. The result was Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, released in 1989 and supported by a successful tour.

Because of the separate existence of Yes (part of the band's name still being owned by Chris Squire), this alternate incarnation were forced to use their surnames as the band's name after Squire threatened legal action. Meanwhile, Yes began composing and recording material for their follow-up, while Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe did the same, beginning production at Miraval Studios in the South of France in April 1990.

Bowing to record company pressure to resurrect the Yes banner, Squire and Anderson came up with the idea of merging both projects, which resulted in the 1991 album Union. In the meantime the ABWH material had been extensively reworked under the supervision of producer Jonathan Elias, which involved replacing many of Howe's guitar parts with new ones played by sessioner Jimmy Haun. Similarly, with Wakeman unavailable because of his heavy touring schedule as a solo artist, many of the keyboard parts were redone by a variety of players in a variety of studios in Los Angeles and New York. Post-production also involved Chris Squire adding backing vocals to a couple of ABWH tracks, but this would remain the extent of the "reunion" of the 1971–72 line-up as bass parts on the tracks were performed by Tony Levin.

Hmmm. This doesn't sound like the ideal scenario for a world tour. Indeed, I had always been led to believe that relationships were pretty strained by this point. Imagine my surprise when I got hold of the Union DVD from Anne-Marie at Gonzo. It is a cracker! And furthermore, everyone involved tooks like they are enjoying themselves. Far from any animosity, members of both camps are cheerfully chatting and fooling arounbd with each other, and overall there is a spirit of bonhomie that I was totally not expecting.

Musically it works far better than I had expected, and there were other surprises as well. But, as I tend to do, I have over-run my budgeted words, and will have to stop for today. In the mean time check this out: 'Roundabout' from the Union DVD...