YES featuring ARW - division, part 2

13. December 2017

Yes YES featuring ARW

YES featuring ARW - division, part 2

The story of Yes is a story full of surprises and imponderables. This includes the separation into two autonomous fractions. First happened in 1989, when Jon Anderson moved away from "Yes-West" (the pop-oriented group led by Chris Squire and Trevor Rabin) to revive Yes's classic seventies sound with ABWH (Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe). When the band - long again in a singular incarnation - continued in 2008 with a new singer due to health problems of Anderson, the former members Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman announced ARW in 2010. The first concerts were in 2016 and since April of this year, after the name change to Yes feat. Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman, there are now also two Yes formations nominally. The following interview took place in July 2017 during the Night Of The Prog.

eclipsed: How far along are you with the recordings for your first studio album?

Trevor Rabin: Each of us probably has his own view on this. We're really taking our time to make it up to you. We're not just doing this for a record company. In my opinion, we have not yet found the exact point at issue. Management and fans keep asking when it's time. We also need the courage to be a little patient.

Jon Anderson: I'm writing the lyrics right now and in the last few months we've been collecting the music we have for it. For me, this is perfect Yes music, and it's the right time to do it. It's crazy, wild, powerful.

Rick Wakeman: It's very exciting. We send each other music via Internet, because we live in different parts of the world. We have a lot of really good stuff.

eclipsed: How would you describe the style?

Rabin: We don't want to repeat ourselves. After the Mona Lisa, da Vinci did not immediately paint such a woman again.

eclipsed: So no second Owner Of A Lonely Heart or 90125?

Rabin: I hope not.

eclipsed: But will it now sound more like the Yes of the seventies or those of the eighties and nineties?

Anderson: All of it, just all of it. It's all coming together now.

Lest mehr im eclipsed Nr. 196 (12-2017/01-2018).