The Yes story remains exciting. In 2020 the Steve Howe faction goes on another album tour, this time with the ambitious 1974 album "Relayer" in the center. In the interview, Steve Howe and Alan White not only spoke in detail about the live performance, but also about plans for a new album, a possible reunion with Jon Anderson and Co. and the future of one of the most enduring bands ever.
The almost 22-minute piece "The Gates Of Delirium" on the first LP side of the album "Relayer", which is unusually aggressive and uncompromising by Yes's standards, deals with Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace". This is a topic about which Yes literally has a song to sing in view of the frequent changes in personnel and internal disputes which have led to the fact that, after the project Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (1988-91), since 2010 with ARW and Yes featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman, respectively, a competing formation of Yes musicians exists for the second time
eclipsed: In May you will come back to Germany live with the program "Relayer + Classic Cuts". How important is the avant-garde album "Relayer", which is strongly influenced by fusion, for you?
Steve Howe: Generally speaking, it's one of our best albums where we took the concept of "Close To The Edge" with a long main track and a corresponding richness of content. On the other hand it simply has a power that comes across well live on "Sound Chaser" and "To Be Over". We already played "The Gates Of Delirium" live in the summer of 2019 and thus warmed up for this tour, on which we will present this album, which has been rather ignored in Yes live history, in its entirety.
Alan White: Yes have always been musically very adventurous, but especially with "Relayer". We broke new ground on it
eclipsed: "Relayer" was more aggressive and had more fusion elements than ever before or after a Yes album.
White: Patrick [Moraz, keyboarder, note] brought some new blood into the band at that time. Compared to Rick [Wakeman, ed.] he was more jazz than classically oriented
eclipsed: How will you and especially Geoff Downes, who is a completely different keyboard man, do it live?
Howe: Geoff has already done a good job on "Gates Of Delirium" and knows the repertoire well from his time with Yes, starting with "Drama" [1980, ed.] and then from "Fly From Here" [2011, ed.] until today. Every keyboard player, from Tony Kaye to Rick Wakeman to Patrick Moraz, has made his own mark on Yes, but Yes keyboards always remain.
