Arts & Entertainment

Jon Anderson Brings Yes Classics and New Album ‘True’ to The Cap

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Jon Anderson (Photo credit: Deborah Anderson.)

September 8, 2024

By W.B. King–

As a kid, Jon Anderson did not have designs on becoming a musician. A tried-and-true supporter of the Accrington Stanley F.C., he wanted to be a football player–so much so that he served as the team’s mascot and ballboy for a spell. Some years later while hawking programs in the stands, his yet-to-be iconic voice rose above the cheers and sneers of enthusiastic onlookers. Anderson doesn’t follow the sport as much as he used to—too much passing and not enough dribbling he told The Hudson Independent, adding “It’s a different game.”

These days the former frontman of the notorious progressive rock group Yes spends his time conferring with the muse that for nearly 60 years has yet to evade him. This valiant pursuit gave rise to Anderson penning iconic songs like “Roundabout,” “I’ve Seen All Good People,” “Close to the Edge,” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” among countless others.

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Shine On

Anderson’s latest album, True (2024), is a joint effort with The Band Geeks, which is fronted by Richie Castellano whose credits include playing bass with Blue Oyster Cult. The group came on Anderson’s radar due to their prowess interpreting the Yes catalog.

“We went on tour in August of last year and at the end, I said ‘Why don’t we make an album?” Anderson shared. Along with Castellano, the touring band features Andy Graziano, Robert Kipp, Andy Ascolese and Christopher Clark.

By November 2023, Anderson and Castellano, living on opposite coasts of the U.S., began collaborating on new material, virtually. “We Zoomed every now and again and it was great fun to do.” Over the course of the following several months, nine tracks were developed.

“We are free…all of us can dream again,” Anderson sings on the first track, “True Messenger,” which is followed by the uplifting anthem, “Shine On.” Anderson’s introspectively joyous voice is a time machine of sorts—the band expertly captures the musical prowess of early Yes as well as the many impressive iterations that followed, all while keeping the listener firmly rooted in the here and now.

“The idea of co-creation is very deep in my work. I like to bounce off other people’s ideas,” Anderson said. “Generally, I hear the music first. If I like the music, then I sing along—scat singing or jazz singing. I have tapes and tapes of me singing a lot of songs, operas, and things like that.”

When asked how he approaches writing lyrics, Anderson told The Hudson Independent: “When I was working on one of these songs, I was thinking about the Garden of Eden and why aren’t we surrounded by the gardens of Eden around the world—the human experience doesn’t need the garden? Doesn’t need the beauty? Shouldn’t the Earth become the Garden of Eden again? I was thinking about this more or less throughout this entire album.”

While his primary writing instrument is the guitar, Anderson said he also plays keyboards and records demos in his home studio. Many of the songs featured on True were first sent to Castellano “who opened them up,” creating new dynamics, Anderson noted. “With ‘Counties and Countries,’ I just sent him the song and Richie made it into a fantastic work of art, musically speaking.”

The album includes well-crafted, epic long form tunes like “Once Upon a Dream,” which pays tribute to the many rhythms, meters, melodies, and lyrics representative of Anderson’s career canon. The considerably shorter last track, “Thank God,” is a heartwarming love letter that could easily be adopted as a wedding song. Borrowing the line “you and I” from the famed Yes song “And You and I,” Anderson’s intent wasn’t to create a bookend, but he said it does “ring a bell” when he performs the song live.

“As we were building the album, I mentioned to Richie that there were certain things happening that were magical to me. [With The Band Geeks], I am working with musicians that are very open and who listen to my crazy ideas,” Anderson said with a disarming laugh. “It was like that period of time with the Fragile album, the band [Yes] was very open and very grateful to be commercially successful. After a while, you know, it wears off. People have different perceptions of life.”

A Magic Moment

In 1962, Anderson’s football aspirations were replaced by musical ones. He joined a skiffle group, The Warriors, which featured his older brother in the lineup. Based in their hometown of Accrington, Lancashire, England, they soon began to make the rounds promoting a popular song they recorded, “You Came Along / Don’t Make Me Blue.” In time, Anderson set his sights on greater exposure, a decision inspired by The Fab Four.

“The Beatles came through and gave this energy in the sixties. Like a million other people in the world, we all wanted to be Beatles,” Anderson recalled. By 1968, he had made his way to London working odd jobs and pursuing a solo career. His life forever changed on April 7 of that year, as he recounted in 2017 while being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his fellow Yes bandmates.

“It was 49 years ago tonight that I met Chris Squire in a bar, it was a magic moment,” Anderson said of the innovative bass player and songwriter. “We got a band going.”

When reflecting on the induction, Anderson told The Hudson Independent that while Squire sadly passed in 2015, he was there in spirit, taking part in the worthy honor. The immensity of the moment, he added, was overwhelming. “I was hyperventilating the whole time until Rick Wakeman started telling jokes,” he said of the band’s collective acceptance speech. “You got to get up on stage and sing a song in the middle of it all, all that energy and people—a lot of famous people there—you get to nervously thinking, ‘I hope I can sing okay.’”

The briefly reunited band went on to perform a stirring version of “Roundabout,” which was met with thunderous applause. In Squire’s place was Rush’s Geddy Lee who humbly accepted the invitation to play bass. “He was such a sweet guy and just played perfectly,” said Anderson.

His old friend Squire, along with former bandmate Alan White, who passed away in 2022, are never far from his thoughts. When working on new material, he often listens to it when enjoying his daily walkabout. “I think of Chris and Alan every day when I do my walk because I’m hearing music and I can sense Alan and Chris. There up in heaven and their listening saying, ‘Go for it, Jon, it’s going to make you happy,’” Anderson said, adding that on True, Squire’s influence can be heard in Castellano’s playing as he is “such a big fan.”

Semi-Symphonic Cosmic Music

The road to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame began in 1968 with the first line up of Yes, featuring Anderson, Squire, guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye and drummer Bill Bruford. Among the group’s first gigs was opening for Cream at the Royal Albert Hall in November of that year. Also on the bill was another then unknown act, Taste, the Irish blues band led by Rory Gallagher.

Over the next few years, the Yes band lineup changed with Steve Howe, Wakeman and White joining on guitar, keyboards and drums, respectively. Among heralded albums from this time period was four consecutive U.S. platinum or multi-platinum sellers: The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972) and the live album, Yessongs(1973). Albums such as Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973), Relayer (1974), Going for the One (1977) and Tormato(1978) also charted quite well.

By 1980, Anderson left the band, but returned to the fold for the album 90125 (1983), the group’s highest-selling album, featuring the number one single, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Over the next two decades, Anderson played in Yes and offshoots of the group until he formally parted ways in 2008.

With the release of True, Anderson is continuing to add to his ever-growing catalog of solo material that began with his first album Olias of Sunhillow (1976) and was followed by many other records, including Survival & Other Stories(2010) and 1000 Hands—Chapter One (2019). “I write semi-symphonic, cosmic music,” Anderson said of material he is currently working on. “Whether it will be released, I don’t know. Songwriting, he added, is a “natural event” that is ever occurring in his day-to-day life. “I have seven cassettes here that I found about a month ago and I’m going through them…I’m on there with my guitar and some really interesting chords, it might be my next album.”

Perpetual Change

A spiritual seeker, Anderson, 79, said “the reason we are here” is to find the divine. “That should be taught in school. Children at the age of three or four should know that the art of life is to find the divine and that it’s all around us in all different forms of life.”

Anderson’s celestial search will continue when he and The Band Geeks visit The Capitol Theatre on September 19, 2024. The night kicks off with a performance by The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, featuring Carl Palmer.

Fans can expect choice tracks off True as well as a healthy dose of Yes epics and classics, including “Yours is No Disgrace” and “Perpetual Change,” which were performed by Yes when the band graced The Cap’s stage in 1971.

“We [also] play ‘Close to the Edge,’ ‘And You and I,’ ‘Roundabout’…it’s just Yes music no matter what,” Anderson said. “This album [True] is Yes music…in my heart and in my soul…and that’s what people need to know.”

For ticket information, visit: www.thecapitoltheatre.com

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