They’re playing nearby in a few days, and I was toying with the idea of going. I haven’t been to a rock concert in ages and thought it might be a fun change. Only guitarist Steve Howe and drummer Alan White remain from the glory days, no Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, or Squire (RIP).
I saw them at the Capital Centre in the D.C. area back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when they did the show in the round on a rotating stage. It was amazing.
But I haven’t really followed them much since the mid-80s, and they’ve released more than a dozen albums since then. So the concert might consist of a lot of “new” stuff (i.e., less than 40 years old ) I don’t know. That could be fine, if I like it, or not, if I don’t. There are sites that purport to report touring bands’ set lists, but I couldn’t find one for this tour.
I haven’t seen them since like 2004 or something like that, and I doubt I will again, if only because I’ve stopped going to live music altogether, especially if I have to pay for it, since I’m not a huge fan of what live music has become. For Yes in particular, once they took a singer from a tribute band, they became effectively just an expensive tribute band. True, they have recorded with the new line, but who cares? While I liked Magnification, their work since then I’ve barely been able to listen to.
According to Instagram, the band will be made up of Steve Howe, Geoff Downes (keyboards), Jon Davison (vocals), Billy Sherwood (bass), and Jay Schellen (drums). Schellen replaces long-time drummer Alan White who passed away in 2022. They presumably couldn’t get Bruford out of retirement and now have two people in the group that have no connection to the times when they actually made relevant music.
Davison has been their singer for about 10 years, and I’m not a fan of his voice from the recordings I’ve heard. He’s definitely quite different than Anderson, and possibly a better all-around singer, but that’s precisely the problem to me. It would be like Rush trying to find a better singer to replace Geddy’s vocals. The quality of the vocals is pretty much irrelevant assuming they’re in tune, and better vocal quality draws too much attention away from the music, which is the real highlight of the show.
Downes has been the keyboardist for the Howe tour group for awhile and was one of the two Buggles members who Joined Yes in 1980 for Drama but never recorded anything else with them until their albums with Davison. He’s been with Howe a longer time than they’ve been both in Yes as they were both in the group Asia when Yes reformed with Rabin on guitar. Sherwood was a friend of Chris Squire who was officially a member for some period in the 90s previously, and Squire’s death caused him to be tapped as their permanent bassist. I don’t know anything about Schellen.
It’s too bad that the touring group featuring Anderson, Rabin, and Wakeman are done, as given my dislike of Davison I’d probably prefer to see a band with Anderson on vocals, even if it meant not having Howe on guitar.
Thanks, I had found that site, but as I mentioned, those lists are for their 2022 tour. This year’s is a whole new show.
Wow. Somebody should tell Ticketmaster, since I got the lineup there:
@glowacks: Thanks very much for this extremely comprehensive and thoughtful review of the current state of the band. Although the Ticketmaster site has some good reviews, your comments confirm my sense that the show probably wouldn’t provide the old Yes experience I might hope for. The remaining tickets aren’t all that expensive, but even at $60 each for two, I think I’m going to pass.
Jon Anderson did some shows recently with students of the Rock Academy. They did a pretty good job and I think it’s a good way to keep Yes music alive.
I went to high school with Jay Schellen! He moved to LA after graduation to try to make it in the music industry - looks like he did! He was an excellent drummer and an extremely nice guy, and I had a huge crush on him, although we were both so shy, I don’t think we exchanged more than ten words outside of class.
Kinda a tangent. I have no desire to see bands, who may have already been past their prime when I saw them in my youth, become nostalgia tribute bands. Christ, my first concert was Led Zeppelin in 1977 a few days before Robert Plant’s son died. Whilst the Wembly reunion totally rocked, it would have been revisiting a memory. I saw Mick Jagger on this birthday (32nd?) for the Some Girls tour, and turned down a free opportunity to see the Stones perform in Shanghai in a small venue about 15 years ago so it wouldn’t ruin my memory. Ad nauseum. But that’s me, YMMV.
Yes 1980 was my first concert ever. I remember being wowed by Chris Squire and the “in the round” format, but otherwise just finding the concert okay until the encores. I never saw them again, and it’s kind of hard to imagine wanting to see any of the current variations.
I last saw them in late 2008; the lineup, at that time, was Steve Howe, Alan White, Chris Squire, Oliver Wakeman (Rick’s son), and Benoit David as vocalist. It was a tour that had been planned for earlier that year, but had been postponed due to Jon Anderson having health issues; when the rest of the band decided to tour anyway, with David (a guy from a Yes tribute band) as their vocalist, it was the start of the schism between Anderson and the rest of the band, which continues to this day.
The concert was fine, though David and the younger Wakeman were the weaker links in the line-up; now that both White and Squire have died, any version of Yes is going to be like a lot of the bands from the '70s that still tour, with only one or two remaining links to the band’s heyday.
I’m not sure that I’d go see a Yes concert again, despite them being one of my all-time favorite bands; I’m not sure it’d be worth it anymore.
I saw yes 10 years ago in 2013. The set list was the entirety of 3 of their vintage albums:1971’s The Yes Album, 1972’s Close to the Edge, and 1977’s Going for the One. I think some audience members were disappointed more recent material wasn’t included.
When I saw them in 2008, the newest Yes* song that they played was “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” At least IMO, I don’t think that the audience there (which was 95% men, age 50+) minded that the set list was nearly all from the 1970s.
*- They did play one newer song, which probably no one in the audience had previously heard, and which wasn’t actually a Yes song: “Aliens (Are Only Us From the Future).” It was from a then-unreleased project by Chris Squire with Steve Hackett; that album didn’t actually get released until 2012.
They didn’t play that nor Leave it when I saw them. it was clear in the advertising that they wouldn’t but I still think some audience members were disappointed.
My understanding is that “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is the only song from 90125 that has remained a regular part of their concert playlists (at least, for those versions of Yes that haven’t included Trevor Rabin); they haven’t done “Leave It” live since they finished the tour for that album.
I last saw them at the Cap Centre in July 1991, two months before I turned 20. I went with my second-youngest uncle, who would have been 33 at the time. I don’t remember anything, but I know it was a good show.
It looks like that was from the “Union” tour, which was sort of an all-star Yes lineup, and which reunited the two factions from the late '80s split of the band. Thus, it had the members of the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe splinter, and the members of what was then billed as Yes (Squire, Kaye, White, Rabin).
I went to see Yes on their “Masterworks” tour, which I think was 1999. Kansas opened for them. Most of the people in the audience were probably more interested in Kansas than Yes, and were very disappointed that they didn’t play Owner of a Lonely Heart. I was pretty shocked too, but the rest of the concert really broadened my Yes horizons.
) I don’t know. That could be fine, if I like it, or not, if I don’t. There are sites that purport to report touring bands’ set lists, but I couldn’t find one for this tour.