CIRCUS Weekly
October 17, 1978

TheYes Decade
Rick Wakeman Looks Back 10 Years 
for the Roots of Their Latest LP

by Kurt Loder

To those who dote on progres-
sive rock, Yes represents the
state of the art - seamless har-
monies, tons of technique, and
a penchant for the ineffable that would
make cult poet Kahlil Gibran seem
hard-nosed by comparison.
  The group's detractors, on the other
hand, tend to see them as the most
insufferably puffed-up English art-rock
outfit of the '70s, seed for such home-
grown chaff as Kansas and Starcastle.
  Over the years, Rick Wakeman,
Yes's classically trained, beer-drinking
keyboards player, has been of both
minds. When he joined the group in
1971 (replacing original organist Tony
Kaye), his years of private tutoring and
piano study at London's Royal Acade-
my of Music enabled him to scale new
heights in prog-rock virtuosity with the
group. But by the time of _Tales from
Topographic Oceans_ in 1973, their in-
creasingly bombastic approach (and
teetotalling vegetarianism) had become
too much even for Wakeman, who quit
to go solo.
  Times change, though, and when
Wakeman returned to the Yes fold last
year to record the million-selling _Going
for the One_, he found vocalist Jon An-
derson, bassist Chris Squire, drummer
Alan White and guitarist Steve Howe to
be a much looser group. And now, with
_Tormato_ (Atlantic), their tenth-anni-
versary album, he's convinced things
are better than ever.
  "I think everybody's cracked a little
bit, I really do," Wakeman chuckles
cheerfully. "It's pure insanity now. I
think because it's our tenth birthday,
we wanted almost to turn a full circle.
The early Yes music was like 90-percent
vocals, good vocals, built around melo-
dies and lines - which gradually got less
and less and less, into really introvert
pieces of music. And then it sort of came
back out again through like _Going for
the One_, and I think it's now turned a 10-
year cycle."
  _Tormato_ is the group's eleventh al-
bum - and the first one since 1970 on
which no track runs longer than eight
minutes.
  "It was basically a double album that
could come out in two parts," Wakeman
explains. "It's very strange for a Yes
album. It's gone one stage farther back
than _Going for the One_ - it's gone back
to _Fragile_/_Yes Album_ days.

  "For example, Chris came along with
a sort of Bo Diddley song, and Jon wrote
the words to it, because one morning we
were readin' all about the slaughter of
all the whales, and that hit us all pretty
hard - unnecessary slaughter of ani-
mals, I think, is a little over the top. So I
started makin' a few funny noises on the
Moog, like the whale bein' hit by the
harpoon up its rear end, things like
that. And then Alan started doin' the Bo
Diddley rhythm - and the next thing
you know, we were into the song. It was
amazing. "
  That song, "Whales," is but one of
several surprises on the album. There's
also an out-and-out rock & raver called
"Release, Release," a hint of jazz in "On
Silent Wings of Freedom," and, with
"Onward," the first fully orchestrated
Yes track in eight years.
  "I think what's gonna happen is, at
first it'll be such a shock for a lot of
people that they might almost be turned
against it," Wakeman worries. "But
then, if they listen again, they'll hear all
the Yes, all the normal things there. All
that's changed is the rhythmical ideas,
and perhaps the length of the pieces of
music."
  If Yes has gone through some
changes (they actually have an occa-
sional drink now, and - with the excep-
tion of Steve Howe - they're no longer
fanatical health-food nuts), so has
Wakeman. A hard-partier since his
scuffling youth (he once showed up
drunk for a Royal College clarinet les-
son, played three notes and passed out),
the 29-year-old keyboardist has slowed
down somewhat since he suffered a
much-hushed-up heart attack after
leaving Yes in the summer of '74 (he had
stayed up five days straight preparing
for a mammoth London solo concert
and required a morphine injection for a
painful wrist injury before going on
stage).
  "I have been known to over-boogaloo
on occasions," he allows. "I think it's the
country air that affects me when I come
into the big city - I hate and loathe
cities. I used to be a right old rock &
roller, but I'm too old for that now."
  Not everyone agrees that his rejoin-
ing the band was a good move, howev-
er - in fact, it almost didn't happen. In
October 1976, he quietly started re-
hearsing with original Yes drummer
Bill Bruford and ex-Roxy Music bassist
John Wetton. But what could've been
the supergroup of the '70s never came
off - Bruford and Wetton went on to
form U.K., and Rick soon returned to
his Yes slot.
  "I've never seen Rick play anything
like as good as he could play," says the
otherwise admiring Bruford. "I had no
intention of playing the kind of music
that he wanted to play."
  Wakeman's not worried, though. Life
is mellow on the farm where he lives
outside of London, he's got a warehouse
packed with more than 80 different elec-
tronic keyboards to play with, and he's
currently working on the score for a
pre-World War I spy film.
  "_Tormato_ is still very Yes - it's in-
credibly Yes - but rhythmically, the
band's gone a long way backwards to
become totally more adventurous than
it's ever been before." Rick shifts his
big boots up on a table and takes a long
contented hit off his stubby cigarillo. "I
truly love it."