yes: classic or dud? search and destroy

Key to Yes vocal greatness is the combination of Jon Anderson and Chris Squire singing together.

They made solid songs that make sense.

I love "I've Seen All Good People," but how does the country-boogie breakdown make any sense whatsoever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H49r9y5eEU

I can imagine Steve Howe (who is an incredible guitarist) searching the ranks of "Best Guitarists Ever" list, and wondering why he falls several rankings below, say, Johnny Ramone.

I would wonder about this too. I don't think you need to fetishize complexity to question it: what makes Johnny Ramone one of the best guitarists ever? If you'd picked someone like the Edge or someone like Clapton, I could see where you were coming from (and I think Howe could too).

I do think that much of what Yes did was tightly composed and doesn't just sound flashy or wilfully complex to me, e.g. on Close to the Edge.

exactly. Close to the Edge (the entire record, not just the song) is amazingly tight as a whole

No one would ever doubt the "tightness" of Yes.

When Yes is tight, it might be gross

Howe is subtle, I think. If he's falling low on lists like that, it might actually be that he's a little underrated.

Even when he's subtle he's awfully prodigious. So, yeah, subtle in that it doesn't always sound like flash, but the dude rarely takes the easy road. But, like, Steve Hackett - that dude is subtle.

Steve Howe is a master of coming up with unobtrusive rhythm parts that you will never be able to figure out how to play

we've never had a Steve Hackett thread, huh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt1_g8zVf1o&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONm1gNPWq9g

Man that Fish Out of Water LP is fantastic

^^^^^

Something I really appreciate about Howe is that he is one guy who has been able to integrate elements of the classical guitar tradition into the rock idiom. There's this huge, rich tradition with a technical approach that's pretty fundamentally different from how most blues/jazz/pop guitarists approach the instrument that's just there, begging to be drawn on. Yet hardly anyone does, even the metal guys who talk about their classical training. (And of course Howe doesn't limit himself to that tradition! He's just as comfortable throwing in some country picking or ripping out a heavy fusion solo.)

Really? Fish Out of Water. Hm, it's got Bruford and Moraz on it. I'll look for it.

howe is totally awesome, one of my favorite guitar dudes

xpost, Yeah, but those prog guys, from Genesis to even early Rush, were all about busting out the classical moves; that's one element that made them so hated by the punks, not just their technical proficiency but the fact that they showed it off by way of the most staid and stuffy tradition. And some of the worst metal guys are the ones that do incorporate classical elements. Search anddestroy one Yngwie Malmsteen. Obviously someone like Richard Thompson is as good as Howe, but without the taint of prog (as much as I like prog, and Steve Howe's playing!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpEWNVy0bYI

Most of the 'classical moves' in prog and metal don't really seem to have that much to do with the actual Spanish (or even English)-derived fingerpicked tradition on the nylon-stringed classical guitar though. I'm not a classical guitar professional but my training is in classical guitar and most shred-metal guys don't do what I (try to) do: more like Bach or Paganini melodies transcribed for a flatpicked style.

In the case of Hackett, I just don't think he sounded like a very good classical player on something like "Horizons". (Seriously, look up any professional - or even student - performance of the Bach prelude he's quoting.) Howe actually played like someone who understood the tradition, could comfortably work within it and create original work in it (at a higher level of, yes, difficulty than "Stairway to Heaven" or the intro to "Farewell to Kings") and actually integrate it into rock music.

(What makes classical music staid and stuffy btw?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlXlaOeYl2c

(Not my favourite performance but a perfectly good one that is available on Youtube)

After posting all of that, I'm thinking back on Yes and wondering how much of Howe's fingerpicking and contrapuntal guitar technique was actually coming from folk and country rather than classical. There's "Mood for a Day" and bits of "Roundabout" of course... will need to pull those records out again...

(Really like Richard Thompson too, btw!)

I think Howe is on record as being massively influenced by country music.

Sund4r OTM, most of what is being referred to as 'classically influenced' prog or metal electric gtr playing is basically guitarists imitating virtuoso violinists. There is precious little drawn from classical guitar technique.

Also, Gentle Giant are the wrong whipping boy upthread. They may have been complex (in a way that was GENUINELY influenced by classical and baroque music) but they were very tight, tight in the way that Discipline era KC was tight.

(What makes classical music staid and stuffy btw?

Oh, not my perspective, necessarily, just from historical accounts of the '70s anti-Yes et al. punk perspective, I meant. There is also so much class tied in to classical music (and opera) that it is made even more inaccessible, more sobby, beyond its innate technical challenges. That is, to invoke a yardstick like "Howe plays beautifully, like a trained classical guitarist" is to add yet another reason for folks to blow raspberries. It's kind of a classical equivalent of rockism.

Personally, I hear more folk in Howe than classical, which is why I mentioned Thompson. Except Thompson, for all his virtuosity, still knows how to embrace the simplicity of, say, Buddy Holly. Dunno if I can say the same for Howe. I often wonder if Howe could even play "Wild Thing" or "You Really Got Me," start to finish, not because he can't but because he just couldn't. You know?

Doesn't his playing in Asia show that he, in fact, can? Or go back to his playing in Tomorrow.

Yeah, Tomorrow.

His first recording was a Chuck Berry cover with a group called the Syndicats.

Like I said, I know he can. And Asia represented a nadir of the square peg into round hole trend of '70s prog bands dumbing themselves down for '80s pop success. It's ironic that Howe would show such distaste for the dumb riff of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" yet still proceed with Asia. Has anyone heard the GTR record he did with Hackett that just got reissued?

SHT

(that was the actual Musician magazine review of GTR)

And "When the Heart Rules the Mind" seemed to be on the radio a lot when it was released. It was like a bland(er) version of Asia.

Now that I think about it, "Three Jolly Little Dwarfs" is my favorite Tomorrow song and I remember Howe saying he didn't like it. It was certainly one of their simpler tunes. Don't know how that would reflect on his opinion of "Wild Thing" or "You Really Got Me," though!

Disagree with the characterization of Asia. Wetton has proved over the course of his career that his Asia songwriting was not some intentional dumbing down - like that's genuinely his style.

(OK, official Steve Howe perspective on "Three Jolly Little Dwarfs" - "It's my least-favorite song; I used to love it. I used to like playing it, but it's actually one of the most trivial things we ever did, and I don't like the radio version--in fact I don't think I like any version of that song much.")

OK, so I guess what I like is how Howe integrated a contrapuntal guitar style into a loud electronic rock aesthetic with a certain level of finesse. You may actually be right that there was more folk than classical in it, although the classical influences are certainly apparent.

Oh, not my perspective, necessarily, just from historical accounts of the '70s anti-Yes et al. punk perspective, I meant. There is also so much class tied in to classical music (and opera) that it is made even more inaccessible, more sobby, beyond its innate technical challenges. That is, to invoke a yardstick like "Howe plays beautifully, like a trained classical guitarist" is to add yet another reason for folks to blow raspberries. It's kind of a classical equivalent of rockism.

But what if he does? I could see how it would be elitist (it would be the opposite of 'rockism' surely!) if I'd said "Howe is a much better player than ... because he had some classical chops" but all I said was that I like that Howe did this. Doesn't mean I have anything against other approaches.

Btw, I know what punk guys - who were after all trying to market their own music - said in the 70s but I'm not sure why I should care in 2012, any more than I care that people thought ragtime promoted immorality 100 years ago or that my Dad thought Nirvana was poisoning the youth in 1994.

I'm not even sure why it's important whether or not Howe could play "You Really Got Me", especially when I'm not too concerned about whether the Kinks could play "Sound Chaser".

None of it is important, least of all Yes, terribly.

OK, sorry if I overreacted. So your point is just that Howe takes the harder, less-travelled route each time and seems like the sort who wouldn't feel right just laying down something basic? May have a point there. (Although what about that riff on "Roundabout"?)

Yeah, basically. And some of Yes's complexity - and this is Yes the unit, not just Howe - seems to be complicated just for the sake of being complicated. Which I think of as detrimental, personally, though at its best the band knows how to arrange the flurry of notes pretty presentably.

complicated just for the sake of being complicated

Well, which pieces strike you this way? As I said, I'd definitely disagree when it comes to anything on Close to the Edge.

(But e.g. I put on Fragile today and I could maybe see where you were coming from with the bonus track version of "America". And "Heart of the Sunrise" has some of their best moments but the overall composition could possibly be tightened a little.)

What the what

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/jeffersons-star-sherman-hemsley-had-lsd-lab-recorded-002809921.html

who said the entire Yes catalogue was that difficult to play??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WBrgCUBAHcg#!

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