Geoff Downes has had an interesting career, to say the least. In 1979 he and Trevor Horn scored a worldwide #1 pop hit as The Buggles with "Video Killed the Radio Star," which became the first video played upon the launch of MTV.
In one of the most improbable career moves in rock music history, the pair then joined progressive rock stalwarts Yes for the 1980 album Drama, replacing departing keyboardist Rick Wakeman and vocalist Jon Anderson. That lasted for just one album, after which Downes and Yes guitarist Steve Howe joined John Wetton and Carl Palmer in the supergroup Asia, whose hugely successful self-titled debut album launched Geffen Records in 1982.
The subsequent decades have been a mix of Asia projects, solo albums, and writing and producing for a diverse array of artists for Downes. Most recently he rejoined Yes for its new studio album Fly From Here, the title song of which is actually a previously unrecorded song he and Trevor Horn wrote for Drama in 1980.
Geoff Downes spoke to Examiner.com about returning to Yes, the new album, fan's expectations, the band's summer tour with Styx and more in the following interview.
Thanks to Geoff Downes, and to Jamie Simone of PFA Media for arranging this interview.
How did you become involved in the new Yes album Fly From Here?
It started off just before Christmas, actually. I think [producer] Trevor [Horn] had agreed with the guys that he was going to do one of the tracks on the forthcoming album, which was actually a song that he and I had written back around the Drama era.
So we both thought, 'Okay, that's nice, they're going to do one of our tracks,' and Trevor was quite keen that I come along and do some of the keyboard parts on it. So it really built from there. We had some more material that we put forward, and they wanted to do it, and it was sort of a gradual progression. Then they asked me to play on the whole album, so that was it. I was hooked in, as it were.
"Fly From Here" goes all the way back to Drama, but it's changed a lot. Are the different movements that appear on this record parts that you wrote specifically for this record, or are they recycled parts from that era that just never got recorded or performed live?
There's a couple of things that we had then that we threw in the pot as well, and there's a couple that are completely new. I think that once we decided we were going to make it into more than just the standard song, and it was going to develop into something bigger, we started to build ideas around it. The whole thing just kind of kept morphing daily into something else.
It changed its shape quite a few times, but generally speaking what we ended up with was the way we envisioned it.
Do you approach writing for Yes differently than you would for another project because of the progressive rock nature of it?
To some degree. I think that I've always been very much of a chordal person. The chords are the foundation of everything. Some of Yes' stuff is very linear, albeit complex, but it's single-line melodic stuff. So I kind of had to wear a different cap working with Yes. It's not so much chord-based.
It's interesting, because it pushes you in a different direction and makes you do things you're not always used to doing, and you don't fall into the same old traps you might fall into in a more conventional project.
Did you have any trepidation at all about returning to Yes? Your previous stint with the band was during a very dramatic period of change.
As time has gone by . . . when Trevor and myself first joined for Drama, it was a huge wrench for Yes, because they'd never had a different vocalist, and they'd had different keyboard players, but our background was essentially a pop background, and Yes positively shied away from any pop connection.
So I think that was a huge shift in their chapter, but I think the fact that it got me involved with other progressive rock projects - and obviously with Steve [Howe] over the years in Asia - when it comes to it now, I'm sort of considered in that genre anyway, whereas before I don't think I was.
So the entry this time is a lot smoother, certainly than it was thirty years ago.
You're coming back into the band in another period of change. Obviously Benoit David has been with the band for several years, but this is the first record with him, so it's bound to come under extra scrutiny. Did that cross your mind going back in?
Yeah. It's all very well going out and singing as close to Jon Anderson as you possibly can, because that's the sound of the music. So I think it's great for him, and it's given him a lot more confidence that he's had the opportunity to come out and be himself. That's important, that he's had that opportunity, so he's no longer copying someone. He can actually be himself on some of the songs, and that's given him a lot more confidence.
What new songs from Fly From Here are in the live set right now?
Well, at the moment we're just doing one, because we're on a fairly restricted time frame. I think it's 86 minutes or something like that. That's the way the show is run, and obviously Styx has similar restraints. It's quite a lot of music, three and a half hours, because Shane Alexander warms up.
So it's quite a lot of music, and that's just the way it is, really. We've only got the chance to put in one of the songs, which is "We Can Fly." But we have been doing "Into The Storm" at sound checks, so we're hoping we can squeeze that in and just take one of the other songs out at some point. I look forward to that.
I think people, now that the new album is out, they appreciate hearing and seeing what the band's up to today, rather than it just being a nostalgia trip.
The album has debuted very well around the world. That must be pretty gratifying.
It shows that what we set out to achieve was justifiable. There hasn't been a new Yes studio album for ten years, and I think largely this album has been extremely well-received by the fans, who are a very critical bunch as you probably know. (Laughs).
That says a lot, them actually taking it on board and even considering it among the better Yes albums. That's very rewarding for all of us, because we did put a lot of effort into the album.
The tour you're doing with Styx is billed as the Progressive U.S. Tour. From the perspective of the members of Yes, do you consider Styx a fellow progressive rock band?
If you go back to their earlier stuff, quite a lot of it has influences in progressive music. I wouldn't say that they essentially were a progressive rock band in the sense of how people use the term today, but certainly there are progressive elements. Then they went through those changes and became, loosely the term "AOR" applies. Yes also had a period in the 1980s where the music, there were songs you might have said were AOR.
Those are terms people generally use to make it easier for themselves. Styx has their own style of music, and I think that's justifiable, the same way that Asia and Yes have had - Yes particularly has a unique style that seems to have transcended all styles of music for 43 years.
Yes is really basically the prototypical progressive rock band, as far as many fans are concerned.
I would say so. Certainly to me Yes is almost like its own style. It's identifiable throughout the changing genres that have been there, and it's retained a progressive streak throughout.
I've been following your blog since the tour began. You had some controversy right in the first few days with some of the fan reviews that were online. Tell me about that.
I started a little bit of banter, I suppose, in many ways. I don't think it's all in too much seriousness, but a couple of them got a bit rude, and I picked up on that. And I think it sort of blew a little bit out of hand at one point. (Laughs).
I was asked to do the blog by the Yes website. They thought it would be nice for this tour if I did a blog about what it's like to be on the road now. And I think largely, apart from some of my more off-the-wall political rants (laughs), people find it generally fairly entertaining and interesting.
You seemed to agree with the fans to some degree that the first couple of shows were a little bit rough. Is that a fair assessment?
I think so, yeah. I don't think you can escape that. They maybe weren't as good as they should have been, and I think it made us a bit more conscious that it needed some more work to get it up to the kind of par of previous Yes shows. And I think when you're incorporating a new member who's now been in the band thirty years ago, it does take time to get all the moves and feel all the changes and that kind of thing. It's not something that you can do by studying it on paper.
Having said that, I think it came together pretty quickly. We're hitting the spot every night now, and it's starting to get enjoyable in the fact that we've got a feeling where everyone's going with it. I think that's important.
Some of the fans were hitting specifically at the rhythm section, and you've talked in your blog about how slow you feel some of the tempos have been. Are you happy with the rhythm section and where it is right now?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's an observation, not a criticism. They have been playing them in that way for quite some time now, and I think they've built a vibe that's more heavy. And I think that's one of the reasons why they are slower in places.
I just have to get used to it, that's all. I'm not saying that as criticism, because that's the way the guys do it, and I think Yes' rhythm section is one of the greatest rock rhythm sections in the world. The bass and drums sound like nobody else.
I'm not that overly concerned about it. I joke about it in some ways, because quite a lot of fans come up to me and say, "Hey man, can't you speed up the tempos? Tell the guys." (Laughs). They maybe want to hear it exactly like the record.
I don't know whether it bothers people sufficiently, but I'm quite happy with it, just as long as I know where they are and where they're going. (Laughs). That's the main thing.
Will there be more touring on your own without Styx later in the year?
That's the plan, yeah. We're hoping to go out . . . we'll probably take August off and go out in September. Any which way, we're in Europe starting starting in November . . . in the end of October, so that will go right through up until Christmas rime. So there's a big stretch of just Yes at that point. And that's something that we're looking forward to, because as I say, we've only really been looking at one track from the new album so far.
It would be nice to maybe put the entire "Fly From Here" suite in to perform on that tour. So we're hoping to put as much in as possible in the coming months.
Will this lineup remain together past this tour and do more albums and tours in the future?
I sincerely hope so. I think the way to look at it is, the latest release, Fly From Here, I think in many ways has gone quite a long way toward re-building the band in the fans' eyes, and showing them that we're ready to accept new challenges and take on new directions.
And as I said before, I think Benoit, this being his first album with the band, I think that has cemented him in the position of lead vocalist, and I can't imagine that anyone at this stage would want to change that.
But Yes does go through changes. That's just the way it is. I think that Yes' music is kind of on its own out there, and it goes through different chapters, and that involves different people. I don't think it's a case of, any year is better than any other. They can all co-exist quite comfortably.
The reality is that anything that exists for 43 years is going to undergo some changes.
(Laughs). Well, that is likely, isn't it, when you think about it. Some people will knock me when I use my sports team analogy, but you follow a sports team and players come and go, but the team is the thing that still remains.
I think when you follow a band, you're following a - and I don't like to use the term "brand", but you are following a kind of style, if you like. So I think you have to accept that there will be different people involved from time to time.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about Yes, Fly From Here, or the tour?
I'd just like to thank everyone for getting behind the album. It's very endearing that we've done something that's generally been given the thumbs up by the fans. That's very encouraging for us.
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