Everyone is really getting along with each other and we enjoy each others company and love playing live.
— Billy Sherwood
So in one sense you don't have the classic keyboard player in Yes.
I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.
So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.
So whenever I had some in-between producing time down in my studio I popped a tape in and started working on it. Working a little bit at a time, it actually took almost four years.
You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.
And as you said, everyone contributed; certain areas of material came from certain individuals.
I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.
And I found that when I built my own place and just shut the door, the creativity was endless.
I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.
I think that the climate within the band has changed, it's now in a more functional situation.
I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.
I love the feeling of creating pictures in someone's mind just by spelling out the right lyrical combination.
Sometimes I hear a drum groove in my head and I rush down to my studio.
I wasn't really writing with anything commercial in mind I just wanted to create some new music.
I'm very proud of it as a Yes record amongst many of the other Yes records.
So when bands work with me and it's 10 o'clock, usually you'd have to be getting out of the studio, we could go on until 2 in the morning cause it's my place!
So for my studio purposes, I know that I'm in my studio with technicians who've done amazing things to my board and to my power amps and I know what I can deliver out of my studio.
I don't have any assistants, I do it all myself, I don't have any secretaries.
I'd written songs with lots of people, from one spectrum to the other.
I love all Yes music and love to play it live, but I'm most interested in making new music with Yes.
So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.
I also write poems, so that is something that I really enjoy.
I write on all instruments.
It's an album that is a little bit different and probably isn't easy to get out. It's not likely that a major label would have picked it up and said that they had a smash hit record.
We came off the road of the last tour very inspired to just keep playing, so we went to Canada.
I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.
So that studio served its purpose, and still is working very well for other people right now.
I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic.
When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.
