RIP Chris Squire

His politics are pretty admirable too.

i thought he voted tory...?

No way!

Ah, seems he used to be but certainly doesn't sound like one now.

Aside from the singles I've never listened to Yes. I'm listening to "Fragile" now and I'm surprised by how much I like it! Squire's bass playing is great, it's got a nice heaviness that grounds everything.

The couple of times I saw Yes, and certainly in clips, Squire always seemed to be having the most fun while simultaneously looking both cool and ridiculous. The other dudes, it was usually serious frowns all around, plus ridiculousness, but Squire rocked the cape and just kept moving.

NA, did you have an aversion to yes (or prog rock in general) before, or did you just not get around to listening to them until today?

It's sometimes difficult to picture but I've heard that early Yes were quite a chaotic band. Only time I got a visible glimpse of anything like that was the old footage of them driving a buggy fast all over the place and trying not to fall out of it. Though maybe my memory exaggerates.

Kind of both. Indie/punk bias against prog but also am ignorant of a lot of "classic rock" (broadly) because my parents were into earlier stuff.

Wakeman's weighed in with a heartfelt eulogy:

I knew, like many of us, that Chris was seriously ill with a rare form of leukaemia, but had heard the encouraging news that he was responding well to treatment and so felt optimistic that with treatment, love and prayer, he would beat it. Ironically I wrote to Paul Silveira, (the manager of YES), on Friday evening to enquire how Chris was and heard the desperately sad news yesterday. The phone has not stopped ringing and my inbox is overflowing with tributes from so many people which simply shows the effect that his contribution to music made to so many of us, musicians and fans alike.

We have now lost, who for me, are the two greatest bass players classic rock has ever known. John Entwistle and now Chris. There can hardly be a bass player worth his salt who hasn’t been influenced by one or both of these great players.

Chris took the art of making a bass guitar into a lead instrument to another stratosphere and coupled with his showmanship and concern for every single note he played, made him something special.

Although Chris is no longer with us in human form, his music has not gone with him and that will be around long after all who read this will also have departed this mortal coil. That’s the great gift of music. That gift can be passed on with what has been created and so Chris will always live on.

I, like all of you, send my heartfelt condolences to all Chris’s extended family and may there be some solace for them in knowing the impact he had on so many of us.

Chris’s passing, truly marks the end of an era.

We have now lost, who for me, are the two greatest bass players classic rock has ever known. John Entwistle and now Chris. There can hardly be a bass player worth his salt who hasn’t been influenced by one or both of these great players.

Just realized Squire died 13 years to the day after John Entwistle passed.

~billy sheehan still lives~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsGjl6kP0SI

Ha, mookie.

mark kozelek, who hasn't been known lately for gentleness

Onward

My condolences to the family, friends and fans of Chris Squire. I've been a fan of Yes since I was a kid and covered Yes' Long Distance Runaround, and later Chris Squire's beautiful Onward, which I can be seen singing in the new film Youth by Paolo Sorrentino. Cameron Crowe and I argued during the movie set of Almost Famous about how he wanted me to play bass with my fingers "like John Paul Jones and John Entwhistle." I would tell Cameron "but Chris Squire played with a pick!" Cameron got his way, but my heart filled with joy and melancholy when I saw the premier of Almost Famous and heard I've Seen All Good People from The Yes Album. I'll never forget listening to that one over and over again in an Ohio basement where my love for Yes ignited. Thank you Chris Squire for the beautiful music. I will listen to I've Seen All Good People tonight, over and over. —Mark Kozelek 6/29/15

Mark Eitzel on twitter, posted alongside the first track from Fish Out Of Water

"Missed the last bus to Fawley to shake the hands of this band when I was 16.. Chris was the only one who did."

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

Thanks, never expected there'd be an hour and a half's worth of Fish Out Of Water talk from him.

whoah!

I saw them at Memorial Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, on the '72 tour. A guard let me and Tall Paul in the back, and we were standing in the wings, near Squire and White, which was ideal. Squire danced while he played some of them notes, as well he might.
This is my only memory of Yes (other than: one of the first CDs I ever heard was Union, sounding excellent on excellent home speakers[not mine]).

if you could see all the roads i have traveled toward some unuseable lost equilibrium . . . run like an athlete and die like a deadbeaten speed freak an answer to all of the answers to YES

https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/t31.0-8/q85/p720x720/10714583_639668422805272_5644425391034279243_o.jpg

Wonder whose idea that was.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Gonksgobeat.jpg