You can't ever really replace Jon Anderson because he's been such a force in the music business.
— Chris Squire
I would work with Trevor Horn any day of the week. I have a great relationship with him.
The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.
After awhile, you start realizing that change is good for you. It's healthy.
Everyone enjoys downtime at home, I'm sure, for various reasons, but I find the whole system of being out there and doing shows for people - the more of it you do, in fact the more energizing it is, for me individually.
I learned to do a few tricks that other people hadn't done before. I developed that trebly bass thing a little further.
'The Yes Album,' of course, was the album that put Yes' name on the worldwide stage.
I like working with modern sounds in the studio as much as I'm happy to work with a basic rock n' roll format.
Strangely enough, 'I've Seen All Good People' is, I think, the second most played Yes song on American radio after 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart.' And then I think 'Roundabout' is third.
I was a big Who fan when I was 15, 16 years old, and I used to go watch them play at the Marquee Club in London as often as I could.
I think partly the problem with Yes - and I've had this discussion with people from the Hall of Fame in the past - is that it's going to be difficult to decide how many of the members of Yes you're gonna put in it and how many you're not because of the extensive membership of the band through the years.
The Beatles had a six-year career, from 1963 to 1969, which - to me, in my early 20s - seemed like a phenomenally long time.
Because of all the various people who've come in and out and brought along ideas, I've been on a learning curve throughout all these years. Of course, everyone that's been involved has influenced me as well. And I'm grateful for that.
It's not beyond the possibility that there still could be a YES in 200 years' time... of course with different members, unless the medical profession comes up with something extraordinary.
It's been a long time since we've been out there playing new material, and we have really enjoyed that. Of course we still enjoy playing the Yes standards as well, but it's great to have a bit of a challenge and pull off new material.
We've never been to Israel. I'd like to play in Israel.
In many ways, I think about the possibility that there could still be a Yes in 100 or 200 years from now, just like a live symphony orchestra.
Steve Hackett is a very underrated writer and actually a very good singer.
Yes's whole career was never really planned in any sort of way. It's always sad when a member leaves, but it's exciting when someone new comes in, and that regenerates the freshness of the band.
Over the years, there have been challenges about who can use our name. It's quite simple: A majority of people left in the band at a certain time own the name. It's not like I'm the guy who has the name under my own contract.
Yes is what I like doing more than anything else. Somewhere along the way, as people came and went, it fell to me to kind of keep it going and oversee the spirit of the enterprise, as it were.
It's always a little more difficult after taking a few years off, which we did from 2004 through 2008. It's more difficult to get the machine in gear again, but when you become used to it, then it becomes easier.
'Close to the Edge' is the album where we first attempted to do the extra-long-form piece of music, having one song taking up the whole side of a piece of vinyl.
Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people.
Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson have rejoined and gone off again and rejoined, but I've been there the whole time, and even though Alan White is the 'new' drummer, he has been there since 1972, so he also deserves the credit for being around for 20 years.
Jon Anderson and I, we really liked a lot of classical music, and we wanted to get some orchestral arrangements going on 'Time And A Word.'
Steve Howe met Paul Simon and said that Paul was very approving of our version of 'America.'
I hope, after I'm gone, there will still be a Yes.
I think what the story of Yes has been is we've wandered in and out of different styles over the years.
I wouldn't object to working with any former member of Yes, really.
Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things.
On our studio album 'Fly From Here' in 2011, we spent a year and a half promoting that around the world.
I like the Foo Fighters a lot - apart from them being friends of mine as well. They're definitely a fantastic live act to see: so much energy and possibly even bigger in Europe than they are in the U.S., and that's great.
I have never played anything live - except for a few special occasions - from 'Fish Out of Water.'
There's always the joy of the performance and fine-tuning new interpretations. Over the years, we've all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that wasn't there in the first place.
Philly has always been one of our favorite towns to play in, and the fans have been very loyal and very supportive over the years.
The great thing about Yes is that it has always been flexible.
Back in the day, the album was king in many ways. And, of course, we were very tied in with the birth of FM/college radio in the States, and what we were doing suited the format of those young radio stations.
Most popular records are action-packed to the last semi-quaver.
'Fragile,' of course, was a very successful album for us, especially here in the States. It had a lot of solo pieces on it, though.
I think I'll not attempt to do a 'Fish Out Of Water 2.'
'Onward' was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down.
I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles' 'Every Little Thing,' but I don't know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don't think we ever did it actually in the show.
Not many people know this, but when Yes first started doing club dates back in 1968, '69, we did a few tracks from 'The Magic Garden' album in our set. We just loved the harmonies that the 5th Dimension had as well.
The fact I've been in every lineup of Yes has been more by default than design.
I thought, 'Wow, if we could have a career that was five or six years long, that would be fantastic.' And, of course, never even thinking it would still be something I'd be doing in 45 years.
There's been talk of YES possibly doing something on Broadway in New York. People have approached me with that idea, and there are discussions about that.
I really believe that the aliens are us from the future. It seems to me a very plausible reason that explains a lot of phenomena as opposed to green men with one eye from outer space.
Usually, when we go out, it's because we made a new studio album, and that becomes the focus of the tour throughout the world for a year or so.
In many ways I think 'Fly From Here' is a return to classic Yes; people seem to have been really enjoying it, integrated into the set along with the old material.
