“We weren’t trying to make a pop song, that’s for sure”

As follow-up to the divisive Tales From Topographic Oceans, Relayer was never going to be an easy record to make. Crafted shortly after Rick Wakeman’s departure, it marked a more modern sound for Yes and became the band’s only studio album to include Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz. Prog steps back 50 years to uncover the story of the album that could have featured Vangelis.

Sid Smith

Jon Anderson is looking back on events that happened 50 years ago when, as a 30-year-old man, he was fronting one of the most commercially successful bands of the time. He laughs incredulously as some of those memories come to the fore. “There’s a brilliant photograph somewhere where we’re all holding the faders on the mixing console, and everybody’s got hold of their own lever. That’s the perfect picture of what the band was like at that time. Everybody wants to do their best, but everybody’s on top of each other and not quite knowing what’s next. It’s a funny photograph but it actually depicted where we were and musically; we were all just trying to do some really good stuff.” The Turkish-American electronic music composer İlhan Mimaroğlu once said,…

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Prog Italia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 156

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