An Evening With Yes
When: March 19, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30 p.m.)
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
Tickets: $55 and $85 (plus service charges) at 250-220-7777, the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre box office, or selectyourtickets.com
Playing in a legendary rock band, even one as low-key as British progressive pioneers Yes, has its privileges.
But considering that ribald rock ’n’ roll decadence was never Yes’s forte, the band’s walks on the wild side are less dangerous than those of its ’70s rock peers. And considerably less tittilating.
Once, when the band’s drummer, Alan White, was travelling to Victoria from Seattle aboard the Victoria Clipper, he was spotted by one of the ship’s senior staff. A few handshakes later, and White was being shuttled to the Clipper’s staff-only area, the ferry-service version of being handed the keys to the catamaran. “He recognized me and let me get in [the bridge] at the front,” White said with a laugh, down the line from Los Angeles.
White, 64, is used to these types of encounters. Yes hosts its own annual rock ’n’ roll cruise, entitled Cruise to the Edge, which gives White and his current bandmates — guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, singer John Davison and keyboardist Geoff Downes — five days to spend with its most hardcore fans, who can chat and have pictures taken with Yes between the band’s on-board performances.
When asked if the question-and-answer sessions aboard the ship (which sails out of Miami in April) ever run off the rails, White said Yes superfans are understated almost to a fault. “People appreciate the fact they can have some insight into bands they have grown up with for a long time.”
White, who lives in Seattle, has enjoyed a 37-year career with the Grammy-winning group, the longest-running and most successful prog-rock band around. He is behind only Squire (who co-founded the group with singer Jon Anderson in 1968) and Howe (who joined in 1970) in terms of tenure, which is all the more impressive when you consider the constant lineup changes that have come to define the group.
Anderson, one of the most identifiable singers in rock, has not been with Yes since 2004. Other core members, such as keyboardists Rick Wakeman and Tony Kaye and drummer Bill Bruford, have also long since left the group. All told, Yes has had 19 members, a dubious honour that White and his current bandmates spend very little time thinking about.
“We reminisce on some things about what happened when, but we’re also very occupied with keeping things current and looking towards the future,” White said. “The band still has that frame of mind when it moves forward.”
Yes has been in Los Angeles for the past two months recording a new album that is expected to be out by summer. The sessions were more modernized and technical than in the past, White said. Yes has recorded in both analog and digital, though format rarely matters in the end. The only constant when Yes is in the studio is that everything adheres to its exacting standards.
Yes does not often improvise, given the complexity of its material, White said. “We very rarely do anything in the studio that can’t be repeated on stage. We are conscious of that.”
The band doesn’t leave a lot to chance in concert, either. Yes will arrive in Victoria Monday, two days before its show on Wednesday, simply to rehearse. “You’ve got to tighten things up,” White said. “Some of these songs, we haven’t played for six months. We need to get in the mode.”
The band’s Victoria debut is the first of many 2014 dates, and is included as part of a unique tour that will see them perform three records in their entirety each night: The Yes Album (1971), Close To The Edge (1972) and Going For the One (1977). White likes the idea because each album represents a different stage of the band.
“Close to the Edge is a pretty iconic album from the early ’70s, and Going For the One was a slight change of stream in what we had created. And The Yes Album has most of the radio-playable hits the band had. It’s a great mix.”
Though he has played songs like I’ve Seen All Good People and Roundabout many times, there is nothing easy about some of this material, he admitted. “Awaken is not an easy song to play, and neither is Close to the Edge. We’ve always maintained a very high level, so that when you go see the band you will see a [degree] of professionalism on stage.”
The band’s characteristic seriousness took a hit or two back in the day, according to White.
The band’s cosmic lyrical themes and virtuosic musicality veered into parody at one point, before the band righted its ship and moved in a poppier direction on its biggest album to date, 1983’s 90125.
White remembers the scale of one particular production jumping the shark, so to speak. He is glad to not have to relive that on this tour, which is more understated.
“We concentrate these days more on the quality of the music. We have a certain amount of production, but nowhere as big as those dinosaurs we used to carry around,” he said with a laugh. “This one is a little bit more controlled. It’s subtle. It goes with the music.”
