Yes Lyrics

Also Known As: Yes! (Summer 1968-early 1969)
Members:
Steve Howe -
guitars, backing vocals
(1970-1981, 1990-1992, 1995-present)

Alan White -
drums, percussion, backing vocals
(1972-1981, 1982-present)

Geoff Downes - keyboards
(1980-1981, 2011-present)

Jon Davison -
lead vocals, guitar, tambourine, keyboards
(2012-present)

Name Origin:
While the group members searched for an appropriate name, guitarist Peter Banks suggested they called the group 'Yes', a very short and positive word. The others agreed that the name was not meant to be permanent, but just a temporary solution.

According to liner notes from Beyond & Before (1998), Peter Banks' original rationale when he came up with the name was that it would stand out on posters. That the three letters would be made large to take up the available space whenever they were billed. Which would have been pretty clever because if their band had been billed on the same poster with another band with a longer name it would look as if 'Yes' was the main attraction.

From: London, England
Genre(s): Progressive rock, symphonic rock, art rock, psychedelic rock, experimental rock
Formed: in London in 1968.
Active From: 1968-80, 1983-2004, 2008-present
Associated Acts: Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe Asia The Buggles Mystery U.K. XYZ
Did You Know:
• Jon Anderson did not appear on the YES album Drama. Only Chris Squire has played on every YES album which is why the courts have given him the rights to the band's name.

Quotes:
It's just adventurous music. Rock is fantastic, but I also like folk and all sorts of music. With YES, in the beginning we played pop music - THE BEATLES, Frank Zappa, THE BEACH BOYS - and it was an extention of that experience, where you're going to do rock music but adventurous, not basic, working from the structure, like symphonic structure, where a lot is going on, and instrumentation, so we expanded on that, we expanded our musical thinking. Then I did that with my solo work and my work with Vangelis, doing different things, writing for dance theater, working with Kitaro and others - it's all experiments in music.
-Jon Anderson

Oh yeah! Thanks to working as a lorry driver, I found "The Cavern". I was driving in Liverpool delivering sugar and flowers, and then I drove around the corner and saw "The Cavern" where THE BEATLES started... and about six years later I was playing there!
-Jon Anderson

I think mostly YES, because YES is very very famous in the world. We sold thirty-five million records, and as a solo artist I didn't sell that many records - maybe four million - but it's my solo work. And now I'm doing the one-man show where I sing and play and talk about my music, I have a projection and animation with me that's very creative. I have a DVD available now of this show, it's just been released in Europe - a very interesting DVD.
-Jon Anderson

I think we all have the same spirituality deep inside and we grow to learn more about it all the time, and we try very hard to become better people as we grow. We search all the time for the truth. We learn more about the world and we can't have thoughts like, "We are better than them" or "They are not good enough for God". This is very bad way of thinking, you know?
-Jon Anderson

Well, we've been collaborating for a few years. We first met when he was doing a record in the late 80's, and it was called Seraphin, (1988) and I did a bit of a guesting on that. And then we collaborated in the 90's on an album called Voyagers, (1995) which was a real joint record between both of us. And, you know, we were getting on quite well, so we started to work on some more tracks about three years ago, and I just -- I just sensed that this was the kind of mood that I wanted. You can't always predict what mood you are going to get, if you know what you get when you work with certain people. But it's a great indication, you know. I went along with the idea that Paul was the right guy for this record. And he's on eight of the tracks and I do four myself, so he's a free-wheeling sort of collaborator/writer, does his mini keyboards and percussion stuff, and just a good friend as well. So it just means that when I go to Geneva, and WorldCom Music is a great environment and it's a very helpful situation to have somewhere to cope sometimes, when either of you have exhausted your possibilities in one place.
-Steve Howe

Well, I'll actually say yes. That was my aim and my goal. When I was a boy playing, jazz was strictly for older people and as I got older it seemed to get older and older and in my mind you always avoided accepting it. My son is 34 and he's been playing jazz for 10 years. He didn't need the age to play the jazz, but I guess in my preconception I was prepared to wait. I was prepared to think that maybe when I'm 60 I'll just be playing jazz guitar, but I don't ever want to step up on the stage and say that I'm playing like these people. I don't think I ever will. I will always play with a rock/ blues and jazz tinge but look at my experience in acoustic music, my country pickin' and my classical guitar. Those are very complex pictures, many of the guitarists that I liked didn't do all that stuff, not many of them recorded in different ways, like Chet Atkins is the only one who did. He played Spanish guitar and electric guitar, so what I'm really saying is because I'm experienced and everything I don't think my jazz will ever be the same and I don't want it to be. I'm not trying to follow in somebody's footsteps. I'm trying to carve out my own version, it will be Steve Howe's version. It won't be emulating or imitating. I don't think that would do me any good.
-Steve Howe

We were pissing in the wind, we were having a great time. We didn't know about the troubles that were going to come to the group and in our own personal lives. The difficulties with marriage and love. We didn't know, we were just in the heyday of pissing in the wind. We were playing anything we liked, we were so proud and egotistical really that we were doing exactly, no compromise, exactly what we wanted. Nobody told us anything and that tells you something doesn't it? Look at the music that came out of the 70's. The record companies knew nothing, they knew how to market, advertise, print and sell them, but they didn't pretend that they understood how a young band in the 70's was thinking and how we could create. When we came out with The Yes Album Atlantic were really relieved because the band had already had two records out that hadn't meant anything, so the third one was really the make it or break it record, believe me that is true, we were going to get dropped if that record didn't take. Now that record did take and it built the way for Fragile and Close To The Edge. By the time we got to Close To The Edge we were headlining all over the world, we never opened for another group.
-Steve Howe

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