Jon Anderson from the band Yes: A pioneer of progressive rock discusses some of the biggest names in music history.

Buzz Knight:

I’m Buzz Knight, the host of the, Takin A Walk-Music History on Foot podcast. Follow us at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Please share this episode with a friend. Leave us a review as well at Apple Podcast or Spotify. And you can also sign up for our newsletter at takinawalk.com. You could leave us comments about guests that you’d like to hear, maybe you’d even like to suggest yourself as a guest.

Today we have a member of Rock royalty. Jon Anderson is the iconic founding member and lead singer from the English progressive rock band, Yes. This is a band that has been a soundtrack, certainly to my life and to so many of you. And so glad to take a walk down music history with Jon Anderson from Yes. We’ll also talk about upcoming projects for him in 2023. So welcome to Takin a Walk with Jon Anderson.

Well, Jon Anderson, I’m truly honored and grateful to have you on Takin a Walk. You’ve been a large part of my life for so many years.

Jon Anderson:

Excellent, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

When was that moment in time when you first realized that you were a musician, that you were stuck in this business? At what moment was that?

Jon Anderson:

When I stopped working on the farm with my brother, because my brother and myself worked on this farm about a mile or so away from the home in Accrington, Northern England. And we’d get up every morning at 5:30, in all weathers, snow, rain or shine, whatever, and we’d get on a bus and go up to the farm. And we got on the farm and we’d go out and start milking the cows and shoveling a lot of cow poop and singing. We sang all the time together because we were fans with The Everly Brothers, this is 1958, ’59. And then Buddy Holly came along and so we sang Buddy Holly and then what’s the guy with the dark glasses?

Buzz Knight:

Roy Orbison.

Jon Anderson:

Roy Orbison, what a guy. And so basically my brother had a band, you see, and they were called the Warriors, or sometimes the Worriers, and there were two singers. There was my brother and a guy called… I can’t remember his name, but he wanted to be a hairdresser, so he left the band. So my brother said, “Why don’t you join the band? We can do Everly’s and I’ll do Elvis Presley and you can do Roy Orbison.” And so I said, “Yeah, let’s do that. Screw this working hard on the farm.” I wanted to get out and tour the world, not knowing that it would happen, but he wanted to. And that’s when I started to realize being in a band was more fun than shoveling a lot of shit.

Buzz Knight:

Some would say it was a different version of shit you had to shovel at times?

Jon Anderson:

I don’t want to go there. No. But it was a breakthrough for me to realize that we could travel. We had a van and we traveled all over England and Scotland and Wales, and eventually we went to Germany to follow the Beatle trail. Now the Beatle Trail was very simple, that you play in a club eight hours a night, and then you got two weeks there and then you go to Munich, then you go to Hamburg, Copenhagen, back to Conn. So that’s what we did for about six months. And by then we were frazzled. My brother left the band and I’m with the guys, and I think I took a lot of, what was it called, acid, just like everybody else did. The Beatles had Sergeant Pepper and Revolver and everything.

So the music was going patoosh. And that’s how I stayed in the whole idea, because I just had a problem, I kept hearing music in my head, like big time ideas. And I go to see the guys in the bedroom next door. I say, “Come on guys, it’s 10 in the morning, let’s go and rehearse.” And they would say, “F-off Jon.” And for the second morning I went to them and I said, “Guys, we’ve got to rehearse, come on guys, we could be a great band.” “F-off,” they all said in unison. And so I packed my bags and left the band and that was probably the best thing I ever did. It was kind of frightening, but I did it.

Buzz Knight:

Do you remember the first time you heard Sergeant Pepper and what your reaction was?

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, Hamburg. I was in Hamburg and my friend Brian Chapman was a keyboard player. He had a hat with a balloon hanging from it with hot air and so the balloon was up in the air like that. And we were actually singing all the songs because we’d spent all night singing them. And that’s all we did all for about a week. We sang every song, every word, and smoked a lot of marijuana and a few caps of acid. Come on, it was rock and roll.

Buzz Knight:

So that whole London scene in 1968 was a hotbed of real creativity. All styles seemed to blend together musically. There was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Can you talk about some of those styles then as Yes was first formed?

Jon Anderson:

I think the great music that I was hearing at that time was Buffalo Springfield, the Beach Boys, great recordings, Zappa, oh my God. And then I got turned onto jazz by… I met Keith, Jarrett, he was 18 at that time, young guy. And then I started listening to a lot of various music at that time. And that’s when I went to London and I met Chris and we were like brothers right away. And we both had the same intention. And we both loved Simon and Garfunkel. The album had just come out. Bridge Over Troubled Waters and just great new music. And that was London. And it was all like that in New York and LA, everywhere in the world. We weren’t alone with the idea that music was like an open door. Because I was probably by then about 26. I thought I was too old to be a pop star.

So I just wanted to write some music. And I started studying Stravinsky and Sibelius, and that’s changed my life. I’ve been walking over the hills and far away around where I walk every morning listening to Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto by this lovely lady called Martha, I can’t remember her last name, Argerich. An incredible performance. And I’ve been listening to it for the last month every day. Every day you keep learning. You learn structure. And that’s what I was doing with Chris and the Yes. When Yes started, all I could think about was structure. And let’s just do this kind of an idea, that kind of an idea. And happily at that time, everybody listened.

Buzz Knight:

You had a description of a band that you saw that’s pretty incredible, that really influenced you called the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And your review of that, seeing Jon McLaughlin and band there, I love it how you said, after seeing Mahavishnu that you couldn’t breathe it was such an experience.

Jon Anderson:

Unbelievable. It was like everything rolled into one. It was like Zapper meets this band meets that band, and all of a sudden this band on stage. And they didn’t have a singer, he just played this music, which was a miracle in a way. Me and Chris stood there. And we’d had the same experience about six months earlier with King Crimson in London, watching them do their first show. They played the whole album, In The Court Of The Crimson King. And it was magnificent because they just learned it, just recorded it and that was their first performance in this club. But seeing my vision it was like another level. And I think it opens up your state of consciousness about music. And that time I was lucky to meet Vangelis and start working with the Vangelis. And that was another stepping stone to musical discovery.

Buzz Knight:

When you were working at the Marquee Club, that was a place that you encountered a lot of people, that they would roll through and play there. Everybody from Pete Townsend and some other notorious characters. One of them was Jimmy Hendrix, who I think you encountered.

Jon Anderson:

Everybody encountered Jimmy Hendrix.

Buzz Knight:

What did you guys do together when you hung out?

Jon Anderson:

Me? Nothing, I was stunned. I actually saw him for the first time in Munich and he came back to the house that I was living in. I was living in the closet, these two lovely girls that were looking after me because I was out of my brain. And he sat down and smoked a joint with me and he didn’t say anything and he didn’t have to say anything. He’d just performed on stage like a God, a messiah from another world. And then I met him again. He got up and performed with Rahsaan Roland Kirk in the jazz club in London for an hour, spontaneous. And that was my first real taste of pure jazz.

Buzz Knight:

Wow. So with stimulants, you encountered Jimmy Hendrix. That’s pretty incredible.

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, he was a nice guy. He’d been there and back a dozen times. That kind of guy that you know he knows who he is, what he does.

Buzz Knight:

In terms of these major influences, the Beatles as an example, Simon and Garfunkel as an example, so Yes would then go on in those two instances to honor those artists by covering their music. Can you talk about those two amazing examples of the tribute Yes did to those artists with the great music that you put out?

Jon Anderson:

It was only… We went on tour when we first had our first album, we went on tour with… gosh, I’m going to forget his name., that’d be terrible. Freedom. He had a big song called Freedom.

Buzz Knight:

Richie Havens.

Jon Anderson:

Richie Havens, yeah. Richie Havens and his two guys who were with him were magnificent. They would put on such a great show every gig. And there was a song called No Experience Necessary. And I said, “Come on, we’ve got to do this in honor of Richie, man. What a beautiful guy.” And that’s what we did. And I remember we used to do as an encore, we used to do, “You tell lies, thinking I can’t see. You can’t cry cause you’re laughing at me. I’m down.” I’m going to do that next spring.

Buzz Knight:

I love that. But you also did Every Little Thing too.

Jon Anderson:

Every Little Thing, yeah, you reminded me. God, yeah. I think we were just searching for what to rehearse. We’d rehearse a couple of ideas me and Chris had written. Chris had written one, had a couple more ideas. I think it took a little time for us to tour together and get to know each other better with… at that time it was Tony Kaye and Peter Banks and Bill Bruford. It’s funny because when we first started rehearsing with Chris’s band, the drummer had left to get a gig in… he had a gig in France. And I said, “Why is he leaving the band? That’s the first day. We haven’t even started.” He said, “Well, he’s getting paid.” And I thought, oh yeah, I get it. That’s where we got Bill Bruford.

Buzz Knight:

And then you would do this amazing version of America as well. What a amazing song and what a great version that Yes did.

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, I remember Pete… we said, we’re going to do America and then we didn’t see Pete for a day. He came another day later. He started playing the [inaudible 00:14:02], which was a great part of the song itself. I think that was it. But I know Keith Emerson had done it on keyboard, it was crazy, wild. That whole West Side Story was a boon for musicians because it was just so beautifully done. Great songs.

Buzz Knight:

So the first tour was quite a bunch of bands together. The first tour was The Who, Rod Stewart in Small Faces, Joe Cocker, Yes and The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, Arthur Brown. He would sing Fire. He had this crown that had gaslighting and it’d light his head up and all the fire would come out of his head. It was a great show, man. Everybody went on for 10 minutes except The Who, they played as long as they want because they were The Who. And Pete Townsend actually spoke to me on the last gig. He said… He came up… I was watching Joe Cocker on stage, and I’d met Joe Cocker when he was 16. It’s a lovely story, which is in my memoirs, the story. And so Peter, a very tall guy, stands behind me and we’re watching Joe. And he said, “Jon,” and I thought, Pete’s talking to me. “Jon, your band is very good. I just want to let you know, your band is very good.” And I kept thinking, Pete Townsend’s talking to me, I can’t believe it. And then he said, “I’m doing an album about a blind, deaf and dumb guy. What do you think about that?” And I said to myself, Pete Townsend’s talking to me. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to that? And then Tommy came out and that was just extraordinary.

Buzz Knight:

Did all the bands on a tour such as that, did everybody get along? Was there peace and harmony on the tour?

Jon Anderson:

A lot of drinking. In those days a lot of drinking and a little bit of marijuana. Everybody got on well.

Buzz Knight:

No issues?

Jon Anderson:

No, that came later. That came later in the dark days.

Buzz Knight:

When you think of favorite venues that you’ve played with Yes, whether it be big stadium venues or smaller venues, what are some of your favorite places that you still enjoy playing?

Jon Anderson:

Well, of course, no matter where you play, the audiences are great. There’s so many places that we played over the years with Yes. Very magical times. And I reflect on that when I’m on tour. I actually love small theaters. I played my solo show in New York at the BB King Little Club around the corner on Fifth Avenue… 42nd Street, whatever. They were great shows. And then we do Madison Square Gardens with Yes. And we’re, what the hell, all these wonderful people, 20,000 people for five nights. And you go, I can’t believe this is happening. So in life, you have extremes. So now I am happy… I’m more happy just to tour.

I’ve been touring with these young teenagers, the Academy of Rock, Paul Green, who invented School of Rock, has a Academy of Rock. And we toured last August, which was just incredible fun because I said to them, “Why don’t we do Close To The Edge, guys? And they all said, “Okay.” They just started doing it. It’s like they didn’t argue. They just said, “Okay, we’ll do that.” And they were just brilliant people, young people, and very wonderful. And you get the chance to do that in a lifetime. We did it 20 years ago with the School of Rock when it was the School of Rock. And I’ve done it a couple years now with the Academy of Rock. And we’re going on tour next summer, Europe, with Academy of Rock kids. And I feel like a kid when I’m with them until we do a selfie. We do a selfie and I say, “Who’s that old guy?” I says, “It’s me.”

Buzz Knight:

The fun looks so contagious at the School of Rock events.

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, because they’re not beaten up yet. Hopefully they’ll never get beaten up emotionally about this crazy business that we live in. And survival is all down to music. If you can get your next level of consciousness about music, that’s the survival thing. And it makes you want to make more music, whether it reaches people or not, it’s not the point, it’s just making new music. And it was only about, gosh, it was 15 years ago when MP3’s came up in the computer. You could use an MP3 and work with people around the world. And I put an advert on my Facebook saying, “Musicians wanted, send a minute of your music and if I like it, I’ll get back to you.” And I got about a hundred people over a period of a year or so. And I got back to about 20 of them, 25 of them.

And I’m still in touch with them because they were really talented and they understood that they could create music. And I would sing something that I would never sing with anybody else because it’s them, because they are this music. And met so many wonderful people over the years via the internet. So that’s an interesting idea that music should never stand still in your state of consciousness. You got to next level, next thing, I’m going to sing Rachmaninoff’s third. I started writing lyrics to it because they’re beautiful melodies. And I thought, well, why not? I’ll probably write some lyrics to Rachmaninoff’s third piano. Keep me out of trouble.

Buzz Knight:

Music really is a healing force, isn’t it, Jon?

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, for sure. I remember as a kid, I’d sit by the radio where the radio stood on the floor, and I’d sit by it and I’d listen. And the things that I remember are Vaughan Williams music and Holst, Planet Suite, Mars. Used to freak me out as a kid. And then you listen to just beautiful orchestral music. And then of course, as I said earlier, you start listening to very American music. A lot of rock and roll, the essence is American. Because what I was listening to was old… they called it skiffle in England, and it was actually songs from Country and Western. So the Country and Western were the birth of rock and roll. I don’t know how it happened, but there was a certain element of whiskey or something like that. Get the drummer to really stick to it, bass stick to it. And oh, Chet Atkins, incredible guitar player, brilliant. So all that stemmed from American energy. And of course R&B came from American. So we mish-mashed everything I think, and it’s kind of cool as well.

Buzz Knight:

So we have this mutual friend, Lee Abrams, who is a legendary consultant, inventor, innovator. And he certainly was gracious to connect us. Talk about what Lee Abrams means to the band Yes and to you personally?

Jon Anderson:

Well, it’s kind of a crazy story, but I think Lee will enjoy this, is that he used to come and hang around the band with a couple of other, three other guys, and we’d see them in Miami, or we’d see them in Chattanooga or we’d see them in New York. “There they are again, it’s that guy again with all his friends.” And so we got to know each other. And he hung out like a fan of the band. And he was a very interesting guy. But I never really connected with him closely. Chris did. Chris and him got into a whole world together for a while. And then strange things happened. But I really got into the idea… I’d been listening to… I’ve said this many times, but I’d been listening to Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, which is a glorious piece of music. And I was on tour doing some… I can’t remember which tour it was, but I was definitely… Fragile, it was a Fragile tour.

And I was listening to this music and then I put it on, and then after a while I’d listened to it and then it stopped. And I’d look at the cassette and it said, 26 minutes long. The Seventh Symphony is only 26 minutes long. And up until then, I’d been listening to symphonies that were always in three parts, first, second, and third movement. But this was the first 26-minute piece that held my state of mind. And I just went, “Wow, that’s amazing.” And at that time around America, we were playing a lot of colleges. And the college radio was FM radio, and they would play the hell out of Starship Trooper, which is seven minutes long. Where any other record radio station would play, “Anything under four minutes, Jon.” Three minutes, 33, it’s perfect.

So it really made me a bit confused that there we were making Heart Of The Sunrise. And it’s a piece of music. I’m sorry, it’ll never get heard on the radio though. And so I thought, wait a minute, I found radio, that’s the key. And I got together with Steve. I said, “Steve, why don’t we just do this music and we’ll make it into a long form 20 minute piece of music.” And then he said, “I’ve got this idea.” He goes, “Close to the end, round by the corner.” And I sang, “Down at the end, round by the river.” Because I’d been reading Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, who found a spiritual energy down by the river.

During the course of the Fragile tour, we sketched out an idea for Close To The Edge. And interestingly enough, we started recording it and Chris was on board and Bill loved it, everybody loved it and the idea of it. And we’re going to just do Close To The Edge and two other songs, that’s all it is. We’ve got FM radio all over America. Meanwhile, behind the scenes in America, Lee Abrams came up with an idea. AM radio, you’ve got 40 songs to play in the space and whatever. And that’s what we’re going to do from now on all over America. So by the time we released Close To The Edge, there was no FM radio. So it was like, Lee Abrams you naughty boy.

But then a few years ago, we bumped into each other on tour with the kids, I think it was, and 20 years ago, 10 years ago. And he’s a lovely guy, and he’s kind of my… he’s like my… what’s the word, guide, to what’s happening in the world on many different levels. He’s such a smart guy. So me and Jay, we just love the guy and we go out for dinner, whatever in Chicago. But he sends me a weekly update of what’s happening in the world and he’s right on the money there he is, that we’re going the wrong way on every kind of level. One of the craziest things that hit me about a month ago was watching with my grandkids, I was watching children’s TV and it’s pretty wild and crazy. But then there’s these adverts that are just aimed at the kids who are just waking up to life and they’re dangerous, they’re very dangerous. Advertising is very dark and dangerous. I don’t like it.

We all know that the media is just making money because that’s all they’re interested in. They don’t care what their advert’s about, sort of thing. And that’s been a very dangerous position to figure out that how can we move forward consciously if we’re teaching our kids to go and buy something they don’t really need that much. But it’s like materialism, isn’t it? And if materialism… and this was taught to me by a wonderful guy called Long Walker, a beautiful Native American guy who walked the length of America to ask for justice for the treaties that were never kept. Anyway, he said, “Young people, they’re caught up in the materialistic world and they’ll never come back. They’ll get lost in the materialistic world.” And it’s nothing to do with Madonna.

Buzz Knight:

Right on. Lee is a sherpa to where we are in the present and where we’re headed in the future.

Jon Anderson:

Yeah, I think it would be good if… stick him on TV. Come on. Come on Lee, put on a show.

Buzz Knight:

In closing, I would like to get your reflections on the loss of Jeff Beck?

Jon Anderson:

Oh God. It was only a couple of months ago. I was listening to Jeff Beck. I’d seen him perform live. I’d seen him with the Yardbirds, and I’d seen him in London. And he was such a character that I could never speak to him at all. He just got that look about it. Don’t fuck with me. But man, he could play guitar like nobody. I never heard anybody play like that. And a lot of people discovered how to do it. Brilliant, brilliant artist. And it’s just natural that eventually they have to go home like we all have to. And that’s okay. The same with Alan, he was my best man, Alan White but eventually he had to go home. And the same with Chris. So people keep heading in that direction. I think it’s just the next world. It’s another world. It’s not this world it’s a next world. And that’s what I sing about quite a lot these days. That we’re living in a very transitional world and we don’t need to look very far to understand the next world. I think all you have to do is sit very quietly and listen to the birds sing. And that’s my final word.

Buzz Knight:

Thank you for the joy that you continue to give us. Good luck on School of Rock or anything else you have up your sleeve in this year.

Jon Anderson:

Oh yeah, this year I’m doing the Band Geeks in April. Come and see The Band Geeks and Jon Anderson doing epics and classics. The Band Geeks, somebody sent me a tape of them performing Yes songs in their studio. And I thought, wait a minute, they sound just like the record. Not just like the record, just like the record. And a year ago I got in touch with the bass player, Richie. I said, “Richie, you’re crazy. You’re playing Yes songs exactly like they were recorded.” And he said, “Yeah, that’s what we do.” I said, “Well, it’s amazing. Why don’t we go on tour?” “With you?” I said, “Yeah, with me. We could go on tour and do the classics and the epics.” Because I’ve always wondered, nobody’s going to play the epics like they could be played. And they said, “Thank you.” I said, “Okay, Richie, we should do it.” And we actually have been rehearsing yesterday and they sound really, really good. So it’s going to be a great show for anybody who loves Yes. And we’re going to be touring the East Coast in April and then probably later in the year, the West Coast, but very much later, like December, January or something like that.

Buzz Knight:

Never a dull moment for you, Jon Anderson.

Jon Anderson:

No, no, I’ve got to get on with the next project. And that’s it, I’m going to sing the melodies from Rachmaninoff’s third piano.

Buzz Knight:

I love it. Well, I hope next time we won’t be virtual Takin a Walk and then we could actually take a walk in person. But I feel like I was just about there with you.

Jon Anderson:

Buzz, where do you live?

Buzz Knight:

I live outside of Boston, Jon.

Jon Anderson:

Well come and see the show.

Buzz Knight:

You better believe it. I will be there.

Jon Anderson:

I’ll get you tickets and you can backstage me, meet and greet. But we don’t do meet and greet these days because the Covid’s coming back. No, I can’t get into that. Well, it’s not coming back, don’t worry, it’s okay.

Buzz Knight:

Let’s hope everything’s got to be all right. I’m very grateful, Jon, for everything. Thank you for being on.

Jon Anderson:

Take care, Buzz.

Speaker 3:

Takin a Walk with Buzz Night is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.