Being called a 'music legend' is a very funny thing. It's nice to know that my work has been appreciated and that people have given me that status. On a personal level, however, I can't think about it too much. It means a lot... but then it doesn't.
Chris Squire
The way Yes works is when we have a new member come in, as in Jon Davison, it's appropriate that we see what differences we can get out of a new contributing member in order to keep Yes interesting.
'Close to the Edge' is the album where we first attempted to do the extra-long-form piece of music, having one song taking up the whole side of a piece of vinyl.
The fact I've been in every lineup of Yes has been more by default than design.
I really believe that the aliens are us from the future. It seems to me a very plausible reason that explains a lot of phenomena as opposed to green men with one eye from outer space.
I learned to do a few tricks that other people hadn't done before. I developed that trebly bass thing a little further.
I know I always worked hard on making sure we came out with the best possible product and of course we were working with four other people, you have to balance that as well.
Steve Howe met Paul Simon and said that Paul was very approving of our version of 'America.'
Pull the good out of it and not worry about the drawbacks.
I couldn't get session work because most musicians hated my style.
'Onward' was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down.
'Fragile,' of course, was a very successful album for us, especially here in the States. It had a lot of solo pieces on it, though.
Of course, Paul McCartney's sound is different from mine, but it's the way you hear things, really.
The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.
Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people.
Most popular records are action-packed to the last semi-quaver.
On our studio album 'Fly From Here' in 2011, we spent a year and a half promoting that around the world.
I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles' 'Every Little Thing,' but I don't know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don't think we ever did it actually in the show.
Back in the day, the album was king in many ways. And, of course, we were very tied in with the birth of FM/college radio in the States, and what we were doing suited the format of those young radio stations.
Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things.
I like the Foo Fighters a lot - apart from them being friends of mine as well. They're definitely a fantastic live act to see: so much energy and possibly even bigger in Europe than they are in the U.S., and that's great.
I guess I've become very accustomed to playing in the 7/4, which is something we've done quite a lot.
You're only as big as your last hit.
A nightmare is two bassists on stage.
The other guys and myself have agreed that Billy Sherwood will do an excellent job of covering my parts, and the show as a whole will deliver the same Yes experience that our fans have come to expect over the years.
In a way, that's always been Yes' history to a large extent! Quite a few occasions when we've had a new band member or change in members, then we've done a new album with new chops and refreshed the musical approach.
I think it was 'Tales of Topographic Oceans' on 8-track that was the funniest thing because it would fade out in the middle of a song and fade back in again, and when the tracks change, it was quite amusing.
'Close To The Edge,' we actually had played it from beginning to end before we recorded it in the studio. So we knew how long it was, and we knew it would fit on the album fine, so we didn't do any editing.
We did do the whole of the live suite from 'Fly From Here,' and that was very enjoyable to do. In fact, that is actually our longest piece of music, I think, that we'd ever done.
It depends on various things like if the promoters want to have a break so they can sell more T-shirts and booze, then they ask if we can do an interval. I personally prefer not to do that. Once you get onstage, I like to stay there.
All movies, when they're about the music business, tend to have a bit of a wide latitude in terms of how things really were.
'90125' was our biggest-selling album worldwide.
With how huge Yes was, especially in the '70s and '80s, as a touring band and actually playing at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia to 130,000 people, which is the biggest-paying show ever in rock history, you would think we'd done enough for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I've always been a great believer that you have to keep producing new things in order to keep life interesting - not only for ourselves, but for the audience as well. That's really always been our principle and way of working.
'Drama' was put together quickly; there were a lot of intense, 16-hour days. Despite the pressure, it was a lot of fun, and the end result was an album I'm very proud of.
I was working in a music store in London, and this particular place happened to be the importers for Rickenbacker guitars into England. So I started seeing these basses coming in.
I think the first three Rickenbacker basses were imported around 1964. Pete Quaife, the bassist for The Kinks, bought one. Then John Entwistle from The Who bought one. As for the third one, I asked the manager of the store if I could get an employee discount. He said I could, and so I picked up that one.
People are used to us being onstage for a while.
Over the years, Yes actually made 20 albums of original studio material.
I guess the idea of doing albums in their entirety, in sequence, appeals to people. I guess it's the memory of being able to hear the music in the way it was originally presented.
The Seventies were just an interesting time for us because we were building the brand of the name but also varying the style of the music on each of the albums we did. Very creative time of us.
We started Yes as a vehicle to develop everyone's individual styles.
I've had to replace parts in the basses when they've gotten old or worn out, so everything isn't absolutely original.
I've been called the journeyman. It's really more by default than it is by design.
The band will be going along, and somebody or another will say, 'I want to go off and do a solo career.'... They come back, and other people come in.
We've done very different Yes albums - 11 bars, 13. I think we had something that had 17/4 in it. It's just like anything - the more you do it, the more you have to do it.
Touring is a tough business.
The idea of 'Yes on Broadway' has come up. It would reflect the history of Yes.
I have never played anything live - except for a few special occasions - from 'Fish Out of Water.'
In many ways, I think about the possibility that there could still be a Yes in 100 or 200 years from now, just like a live symphony orchestra.
