Few voices in rock music over the past forty plus years have been as distinctive or as memorable as Jon Anderson’s, the former lead singer for prog rock legends Yes.
One of the founding members of Yes, along with bassist Chris Squire (the only Yes member to remain in the band throughout its history), Anderson has sang with the band through most of the forty years that followed, save for only the 1980 album Drama. He last sang with the band in 2004 due to a respiratory failure, keeping him from singing. Anderson was eventually replaced by Benoit David, a Canadian singer in a Yes cover band.
Since then, Anderson has been remarkably prolific without his old band, releasing two albums in 2010: Survival & Other Songs and The Living Tree, the latter being an album he made with Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Survival & Other Songs is particularly poignant, with Anderson’s voice sounding as clear and strong as it was when “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was a number one hit in 1983. The songs are personal reflections from an artist who, well into his sixties, believes his best music is yet to come. It was also made primarily with musicians who Anderson hadn’t met but who answered an ad on his website saying just “musicians wanted”.
I spoke with Jon Anderson by phone in advance of his show on Tuesday night (July 12) at the Triple Door in Seattle, about the revitalization he’s experienced at this stage in his life, collaborating with new musicians and having his voice sampled in a Kanye West song.
Throughout your career as a musician, you had collaborated with various members of Yes off and on, even on projects that weren’t Yes projects like Anderson/Wakeman and Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. For this album, you just put up an ad on your website saying “musicians wanted” to find new people to collaborate with, right?
Yeah. It was a new world out there and there’s a whole world’s studio by the Internet and there are so many great musicians out there. I had been working with a few people but I put that ad up on the website to see if there is anyone out there that wants to try to work on music and there are so many out there that are very excited to do stuff. I think that’s just what I needed, an injection of people interested in making new music. That’s where I was coming from.
How many submission did you get altogether?
In the first few months I got a couple hundred people but you pick out a couple of dozen of people over that first year. I started working with about ten people and another two or three after the next year. There’s now quite a lot of people I work with on a regular basis. I just received two pieces of music this morning, one is from a guy from Poland and another is from Romania. We’re just working on ideas for the next album. It’s a good time to be creating.
What is the difference in working with these new musicians versus the other musicians in Yes?
It’s no different than sitting down in the same room writing with somebody but we talk over Skype and a guy would play an idea and it was like being in the room anyway. The musician may send over an idea for a backing track and I work out an idea for a song or lyric and send it back and they might send it back with some drums or take away of this or add a little and we work on it. We talk about it on Skype and within a couple of days, it’s finished. I could mix it in my studio. It’s just a different way of working but it’s really a very similar way of working with anybody, really.
How do you approach songwriting differently as a collaboration than as your own things?
As I said, they would send me music and I would sing over it. When I’m doing stuff by myself, I’m just sitting there with my guitar and a small recording system to work out ideas and I send the music out to different people to work on it. I’m working on a piece of music right now that I wrote for an orchestra and the guy who is doing the orchestration is quite amazing. He’s now here putting his music into my system and it’s sounding really beautiful. There really many different levels of creating.
Can I ask you to talk briefly about a couple of songs I enjoyed the most on Survival and Other Stories?
Oh yeah.
The first is “Big Buddha Song”.
I wrote that about four years ago. Kevin Shima, who is a wonderful musician in LA, I sent it to him and he did a wonderful version for me and that is what finished and put on the record. It was always a wonderful song to sing on stage. I did it with an acoustic guitar. And that’s it.
Ok. Thanks. What about “Unbroken Spirit”?
Well, I’ll tell you a bit more about “Big Buddha Song”. It’s a song about Afghanistan. There’s a line in the song that says “the answer is in the sand”, it’s oil. It’s a metaphor for the war that we’re going through. The upside is that Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, we’re all one. Why are we fighting over religion? It’s stupid and that’s what this song is about.
As for “Unbroken Spirit”, I went through a very dangerous time when I had operations and I was very sick. My wife was with me and my spirit wouldn’t break. My strength was there and I survived.
That is incredible because I thought your voice sounded as strong on this record as it has on anything else you’ve previously done.
Yeah, I can’t believe it. I’m sixty-six and singing better than I ever sang in my life. I think it’s because I’m happy and healthy and that’s the most important thing in life.
What can we expect from this tour, including Tuesday night’s show at the Triple Door in Seattle?
I play guitar, dulcimer, ukelele, piano and I sing Yes songs, Jon and Vangelis songs, new songs, old songs, tell stories about my life and world and about being on the road with Yes. Basically just having a great time.
One of my favorite recent songs to feature your voice is with the sample of Mike Oldfield’s “In High Places” that’s used on Kanye West’s song “Dark Fantasy”. How did that come about?
It’s really good. A producer got in touch and I said, yeah, I’d love for him to use it.
I always thought your voice would be great to be sampled for the hook in a hip hop song.
The voice carries on, ya know?
Do you ever think you’ll sing with Yes again?
Not at the moment, no. I’m busy doing my work and working on my solo career.
This album, Survival & Other Songs, came out very recently and just a few months before that you released The Living Tree, an album with Rick Wakeman (the former keyboard player for Yes). You’ve been very prolific but what is next for you?
I’m doing an American tour with Rick in October and November. We’re going to put out a live album for that tour, probably in September. It’s a very nice live album. I’m working on a new piece to release around Christmas.
That’s several releases in about a year. It’s incredible how prolific you’ve been.
Well, I haven’t had anything out in about ten years, so it’s a good time.
Are these songs that you’re putting out now ones that you’ve written previously over that time or are they written more recently?
They’re mostly songs I’ve been sitting on for the past four years and we’re going to put them out over the next couple of years. There’s a lot of different music, obviously, and you work with different musicians. You get North African music or indigenous music or hip hop or dance music, there’s some spaced-out dance music that I do chants with and which is beautiful. That’ll come out next spring. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
{Jon Anderson plays at The Triple Door on Tuesday, July 12 at 7:30pm, all ages, $35 ADV, tickets available here.}
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