Where are they now? - Jon Anderson
This page last updated: 1 Dec 2024
On other pages: Anderson Rabin Wakeman
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Overview of the direction
of Anderson's career
Anderson has multiple projects on the go, although it appears Zamran,
his sequel to Olias of Sunhillow, or his Chagall
project will be his next focus. In a Mar 2023
interview, Anderson had talked about the Chagall project and
then continued, "That's the future of my life [...] I've only got
four other musicals lined up." It is unclear what all of those
projects might be. Asked about timelines, he replied, "It will
happen when it happens." In an Apr
2023 interview with Rolling Stone, Anderson said,
"I'm at a place in my career where I'm feeling like I'm in a very
creative mode all the time. I'm finishing four projects for the
coming five years. You're going to have a lot of music coming out
over the next five years." In neither interview did he specify
what all these were. (Are the "projects" from the second interview
all "musicals", as in the first interview?) Anderson's key
projects involving new music appeared at the time to be the Chagall project, Zamran, 1000 Hands and "Opus
Opus". In an interview for Mojo issue 364 (dated Mar
2024, published Jan 2024, presumably conducted late 2023),
Anderson spoke of having "10 projects on the go" and picked Zamran
as the one he is working on most. He also said there he has no
plans to stop making music. Two of those projects seem to have
merged: in an interview with Prog magazine (#153, Sep
2024), Anderson said, "It was Zamran and now it's all part
of another project, Opus Opus. It's all crashing
together." However, his priorities shifted late 2023 to the album
True (recorded Nov 2023-Mar 2024 and released Aug 2024) and
touring with
the Band Geeks. In a Jul 2024
interview, asked if he was working on projects other than True, Anderson said, "Only 10!
[...] They're all hovering around. I've been working on [a]
musical, Marc Chagall [...] I'm slowly going to be involved in in
producing a musical about Marc Chagall [...] I've got three or
four musicals that I wrote when I was in a very strange place. I
started writing about... it's a famous Greek tragedy called
Antigone. And I wrote a rap opera [...] it still sounds great! I
haven't found anybody that might be interested but... [...] It's
just one of a dozen ideas that are still floating around and one
day, I'll find a record company that really says. 'OK, we'll
release it, but don't expect any money.' I'll say, 'OK'." In
another Jul
2024 interview, he said he wasn't planning on doing a second
album with the Geeks and that, after a "couple of years", "other
things will come along, like my work with Roine [Stolt; see here],
my 1,000 Hands: Part Two, Zamran maybe, you never
know." However, he still has further touring plans with the Geeks
and has since also said he will do a second
album with them. In the Prog interview (dated Sep
2024), Anderson said, "I said to Richie [Castellano, leader of the
Band Geeks] that it's a kind of miracle that we're doing this, as
thought we're meant to be together. Perhaps it's for the next two
or three years, perhaps longer, who knows." In
Oct 2024
interview with YesShift, he said he is planning a second
album with the Geeks, saying they will probably start working on
it "next month" but implying most of the work will be in 2025.
In another interview
that month with SOAL Night Live, he again talked about a
second album with the Geeks. When asked about future projects in
the same interview, he talked about Chagall. Asked what he will
be doing next after work with the Band Geeks in an Aug 2024
interview, Anderson said: "Hard to say, really... I've
been working on a follow-up to Olias of Sunhillow. [...]
I'll just keep my fingers crossed that, over the next couple of
years, I will be able to present Zamran, which is the son of
Olias, and it'll happen when it happens." In an Oct 2024
interview, he said, "I'm jumping right into to it [Zamran]
at this moment. [...] I reckon by next summer [2025], I'll have
everything ready for the Chapter One, coming out, sometime,
I'm not going to say when, but I think I know what the first
part of it is". In a Sep
2024 interview, discussing True, Goldmine
reminded Anderson of his comments to them in 2021 that he was
"not going to release another album". He replied, "I meant
what I said, and I still do. Except ..."
In another Apr 2023 interview, he had said, "I'm 80 next year [2024]; I feel young and foolish but I'm writing more music than I've ever written in my life and I'm very excited about the future over the next 10 years and so on." In the Rolling Stone Apr 2023 interview, the interviewer asked Anderson if he would be "touring and playing Yes songs in your eighties". Anderson replied, "Oh yeah. Of course." The interviewer next asked about the possibility of retirement. Anderson replied, "Never. There's no point." In the Apr 2023 interview, he then continued, "I have this feeling that, in my mind, in my thoughts, I'm still in Yes, even though I got very ill and they had to carry on [in 2008]. That's what bands do." In a May 2018 article, Anderson said, "As long as I can sing, I want to keep Yes going. Yes is in my DNA. Whatever I do is Yes." To Record Collector #511 (out Oct 2020), Anderson said, "In my heart and soul, I am still Yes." In the Dec 2020 issue of Prog magazine (in an interview conducted early Oct), he said, "For me, I am Yes. It's never left me." More on this below. One of Anderson's main projects had been Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman (ARW), a.k.a. Yes featuring ARW, but the band has ended.
He has multiple further projects on the go, many involving
collaboration over the Internet. In an Aug 2020
interview, Anderson said he had "a lot of projects I wanted
to finish". In another,
he said:
I also just finished a project last week that I'd been working on for three months, and I thought, "Once I've got that done, I've only got six or seven projects left to get done before Christmas, and I'll be a happy guy!" (laughs)
In a Sep
2020 interview, Anderson said, "I'm finishing four or five
projects that I've been waiting to finish for the last 15 years or
so". In a Nov
2020 interview, Anderson said he hadn't thought about
retiring: "I'll keep going. I've got a lot to do, a lot of work to
finish, a lot of musicals to finish, a lot of books to write. I
just believe that this life is all about finding your true self
and to find the divine within, so that's what I do." In a Feb
2021 interview, he said, "I've got up to about seven or
eight hours of music that I've been working on for the past 20
years. Everything's MP3s. [...] I'm surrounded by my keyboards and
my computer and I'm rewriting music that I wrote in 1981." In
another Feb
2021 interview, he said, "I've got about six or seven albums
lined up for the next 10 years. I just have to get them finished,
that's all." In a Jul
2021 interview, Anderson said, "I've been writing so much
music about, er, why did I make music in the first place," and he
later continued, "I've got the next 10, 20 years of my life
planned musically speaking. I've got so much to do, finish."
A Mar
2014 interview said, "Just this past week, he received new
music from friends in Poland, Italy and New York." In another
that month, he said he is working on "a lot of different
things this year [2014]. I'm in my 70th year so I always believed
that 70 is going to be a strong momentum for the next 20 years."
In a Sep
2018 interview, he said, "I'm creating very avidly in my
74th year and just thinking about the next twenty, thirty years
that I've got to do some really great work." In an interview
for Inside MusiCast published in May 2016, Anderson talked
about how Invention of Knowledge is
"my next step into my next life, my next 20 years of music". In an
early
Sep 2016 interview, Anderson said: "I'm just chasing ideas
that come my way – a dozen or more – it's endless. I just need a
few doors open." Anderson said in a Nov
2013 interview, "I think I'm working with about twenty
different people at the moment, with twenty different projects."
An Oct
2015 interview with Anderson said:
Anderson has "a dozen projects that I want to get finished in the next 10 years," ranging from an album he started working on 22 years ago to another that began last year [2014].
It also quoted Anderson as saying:
I think the days of just going into a studio and making an album are not what I want to do anymore[.] I'm more interested in the adventure of free-form ideas. I know it sounds crazy, but I like it when you're not quite sure what you're gonna do until you get on stage.
In an Aug
2016 interview, seemingly conducted in Jul or earlier,
Anderson said, "I'd rather just do, sort of, ideas now and again.
I think it's just a different way of thinking. We can release
music all the time. I've got this project coming up next year
[2017] which encompasses that, the idea that music is more
important than how many sell, or even the charts [...] after a
while you've gone through that experience, all you want to do is
create music without having to worry if people are gonna hear it.
So what you do, you make music, you put it on the Internet and
eventually people hear it, if they're interested. None of this
going through a record company and hoping that they're going to
promote it well, and so on and so on." Could this be a reference
to the Zamran project (see below)?
In an Apr
2017 interview, Anderson said, "I'm just a workaholic when
it comes to music. I've got a dozen albums ready to go at the
moment, but they're not really finished. I've got ideas for
multiple albums going at the same time."
A recent Jun
2017 interview illustrated further some of the diversity of
Anderson's activities and the various ongoing projects. The
interviewer has raised Survival and Other
Stories and how it was made through multiple online
collaboration, to which Anderson said he has "5 hours of music",
implying made in a similar way. He continued, "I'm waiting to
decide how to release it [...] it's so much music and everything
is so different. So, it's a question of how to put it into the
world and, er, I have some ideas to do it with [...] computer art
and also make it like a game [...] I have so many stories that I
have been writing [...] 4 musicals, if you like, which is music
and songs and me talking about the story. And they will come out
at the same time. So it's a large concept idea." We see here
common repeated themes of a large backlog of material, and of some
uncertainty how best to release it and of releasing it in some
unconventional digital way, involving a game or, in other
interviews, an app. Anderson has talked about the same ideas with
respect to other projects, like the Zamran
material. That material often stems from these many online
collaborations—as have other projects like Survival and
Other Stories or, less directly, Invention of Knowledge—but
there is also reference here to 4 "musicals, if you like". Many of
Anderson's projects do appear to involve a story element, whether
they're still music projects or entail a theatrical presentation
in some form.
I decided this year [2013] that I was going concentrate on finishing a lot of work in the studio. My studio is chockablock full of music. I've got to sort it all out and here I am writing a new song now, this morning. It's compounding by constantly creating music, which is amazing, but I've got to get it organized. I think this year I won't do too many shows.As well as various traditional releases, Anderson has released a number of pieces of music digitally and made further tracks available for free through various online channels. In an interview in Apr 2011, Anderson explained: "I put songs up there [on Facebook] [...] I don't think they will be released, er, commercially, but I put them up there because I like them". In the Feb 2013 interview, asked about his next studio album, he replies:
I'm not going to make any more albums. I'm just going to create new music, probably through apps. You've got your app and you've got a couple hours of music. That's what I've got, I've got so much music that I want to put it out there, but it has to be put out there in a certain form other than the norm because we're not living in the norm any more.He did go on to make further albums, but in the Jul 2021 issue of Goldmine, he said:
I'm not going to release another album — I had an album called 1000 Hands — Chapter One [...] that I thought was going to be a Grammy Award-winning album — obviously not [...] you start thinking, 'I'm not going to aim for that ever again.'But in an Aug 2021 interview, he said: "I never stop creating. I have a musical [project] in the works, one of many, plus three new albums to be released over the next three years."
Instead, I'm just going to release all the music I've made over the last few years in various formats — downloads, singles, videos and so on.
Everything I’m doing from this
moment on is being visualized, and that’s what I’m really into.
I think it’s the way to go, because in the old days we used to
have - what was it called - “album covers.” The idea is, you get
not so much album covers anymore, so why not create visual art
to go with your work. That’s what I’m thinking. More or less,
people want to “see” the music like they used to in the old days
with a big album cover. So, that’s what I’m working on at the
moment.
A Jul
2011 interview had this: "I think people should be able to
have at their behest, like, four hours of music, entertainment,
visual knowledge, different pathways[.] That's what I'm trying to
do with modern technology, not just another song and another
song." An interview
from around May 2013 had this:
[I've been] thinking about creating an app that I could use to put all this music up I’ve been creating in the last ten years. And then I want to evolve that app, and create a situation where people can get new music every month, and then every six months they’ll get albums that they’ve never heard from me before, with Vangelis or by myself. The idea is that within the next five years, the app itself will have probably all the work I’ve ever done, and be up to 12 or 14 hours long.
[...]
the idea would be to “visualize” everything, so that not only are you listening to music, you’re actually seeing a visualization of it at the same time. In the ’60s you had those lights at gigs in San Francisco with bands like The Doors, they were just projections at first and then it evolved over the years from projection to these large scale giant TV monitors you have [...] now, and you’re getting incredible visuals using computer animation. I think that’s part of the experience of the 21st century, music as a visual experience as well.
In an Aug 2013 interview on Planet
Rock radio (UK), Anderson talked about his many Internet
collaborators, saying "I'm working with a dozen or so people on a
constant level". He then went on to say he and collaborators were
"working on an app [...] rather than an album" as a way of
"releasing music over a period of time", which would also be
accompanied by "visual art" and be "more of a game" that would
allow the user to "go into a world that's different every time."
In Sep 2013, Anderson posted the following call to Facebook:
I'm searching for an experienced and knowledgeable Theatrical Agent to help me realize my dreams. I’ve written Musicals, Children's Musicals, Dance Theatre and other works over the years and it's time for them to be seen and heard. I need a fellow dreamer who can be honest with me, and help guide me to the people who can help see these wonderful projects to fruition.
In a Mar
2014 interview, Anderson said, "I'm working on a couple of
really interesting theater pieces, one for a local [central
California] dance company."
Ideas for Yes music
Anderson has often talked about making Yes-like music or his
version of Yes music or re-visiting older Yes material. Several
projects on the rest of this page, he's described as being
Yes-like. Before the recent Anderson Ponty Band, Anderson had
generally eschewed a band format, but had still talked about
making more Yes-like music. Back in the Oct 2010 issue of Classic Rock Presents... Prog,
he said:
I haven't stopped creating Yes
music in my heart. One of the things I realised was that all the
solo albums that I ever did had nothing to do with Yes; I didn't
want to 'pretend' to be Yes, because I don't want to do that.
But now I feel like that it is
part of my DNA, and I can't stop wanting to create large-scale
pieces of music that obviously have a very strong connection
with Yes, because that's what I did with the band. I helped to
create these larger pieces of music.
Asked whether he means to form an alternative group, Anderson
replied:
It won't be a band. It's just a
collection of musicians that want to do it. [...] [describes the "Open"
project] That's one of the things I've learnt over the
last five or six years — to work with people via the internet.
I'm working with a dozen people round the world, constantly
writing songs. They're just fun songs, crazy songs, sad songs,
hope-for-peace songs. As well as doing the big pieces I'm still
writing [...] short songs, because I still love doing that kind
of work as well.
I really want to do the final, great Yes album. I've got an idea of what it looks like, what it sounds like, but I'm not sure how to pull it off. [...] it's one of those things. I know what it should be, I know there's a lot of people who would love it to happen and I would love it to happen as well.
Another
interview later that same month raised the question of a
reunion:
Anderson had previously said more on this topic in this exchange from a Feb 2013 interview:“I’m very open to it,” says Anderson. “It’s been 50 years now. You think something has got to happen. To me, a great album has to be made. That’s what I think. I don’t know how it’s going to be made, but the final Yes event should happen. I’ve talked to a couple of people about it and they get it. I really want to do this. I’ve even written eight songs for the record that I’m thinking would work with a full orchestra and a choir.”
Is Steve Howe into this idea? “I don’t know,” says Anderson with a sigh. “Maybe he’ll read this article and say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ I don’t know.”
Anderson: I wish [Squire]'d have called the band something else, it would have been more real, but bands do it, Journey carried on without their singer. I wish them luck; it's not my idea of Yes, obviously. My idea of Yes is "Open" [see below] and what I'm doing now. Emotionally I haven't left Yes at all. [...] I still have a great feeling about the future of my idea of Yes music. I'm still committed to the wonderful Yes music we've created over the years. I want to continue to make that kind of Yes music [...]However, in other interviews, Anderson has been more cautious. In an Aug 2014 interview with Anderson had this:
Interviewer: [...] Are you open to the idea of an extensive tour with them [Yes]?
Anderson: I wanted to tour in 2009 when I got better and they said no. They turned me down. They said maybe next year [2014]. That's kind of bizarre to me that they'd say they already had a singer, six months later that singer, probably a lovely guy, couldn't handle the touring [...] Now they have another singer, they didn't call me or ask me if I'd be interested, they just say oh he's sick, which is a lot of rubbish.
Interviewer: Would you ever work with them again?
Anderson: Sure, I'd love to. There's no reason why we shouldn't bury the hatchet, get together and make some music and do something very special for all the Yes fans around the world. And there are thousands of people who would like us to get together [...] Rick would have to be in the band. There's no point in just me. We'd probably do some shows or something, some beautiful new music [...] we could make a movie or something like that, just to honor all the fans.
“That moment [when the band continued without him in 2008] really hurt,” Anderson admits. “I think we’d grown apart over the years, and when it came to the crunch, you know, business is more important and that’s what they wanted to do.In a Feb 2021 interview, asked what his favourite Yes album is, he replied, "The next one."
“But we’re still brothers,” he adds. [...] Noting that a[...] reunion could happen if Yes ever makes it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [...] Anderson says he’d be happy to sing with them again.
As for a full reunion should it be offered, though, he demurs. “It’s not what I want to do,” he says.
On Patreon
and social media
Jon Anderson has started a Patreon. This has
3 levels (Silver, Gold and Platinum), described thus:
He explained to Prog magazine
(issue 128, Mar 2022): "Record companies think I'm an old fart who
isn't going to sell many records, but I have so much music from
the past 20 to 30 years sitting around". There were three MP3s to
download in the first ten days, and 32 posts (across all
tiers) up to 8 Mar 2022, which were titled:
These are a mix of music and other things. The "Opus
Puzzle" is described by Prog as "a sonic jigsaw made up of more
than 20 short pieces [...] which fans can edit together to win a
"present"". However, the Prog article goes on to say that Patreon
will not include any unreleased material by Yes, Yes ft. ARW or
Jon & Vangelis. Anderson is also planning to release his autobiography "Survival and Other Stories",
through Patreon, chapter by chapter. Uploads have continued,
including the 5-song, 24 minute suite "The Sun Stealers" in early
May 2022. Jan 2024 brought "Open
Open Open" (over 20 minutes in duration), which appears to
be a re-working of "Open", with a 5-minute
preview available to hear without joining Patreon.
Patreon Q&As have included his playing snippets
of upcoming planned releases, including in late 2023/early 2024
songs for True, the album with the Band
Geeks.
Anderson continues to regularly upload other music
to other social media platforms.
With the Band Geeks
Anderson toured the US in 2023 with The Band Geeks,
and they returned summer 2024. A studio album, True
(Frontiers, FR CD 1422; duration 58:13), was released 23 Aug 2024
on CD and 2LP, co-produced by Anderson and Geeks leader Richie
Castellano. What is described as the "First Two Legs" of the Yes
Epics, Classics, and More Tour was announced
(tour
promo video), with 12 dates in the north-east US 30
May-27 Jun 2024 (27 Jun sold out; 15 Jun show sharing billing with
El Monstero), and then 9 dates from east to west coast 21 Jul-16
Aug (with 4 shows having Carl Palmer's The Return of Emerson, Lake
& Palmer show in support; a 30 Jul show was cancelled). A
third leg saw 7 dates in the north-east US 11-27 Sep 2024 (with
two shows having The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer in
support). (Anderson said they turned down an offer to open for
Heart.) Promo
described how "the set list will contain numerous YES songs from
all stages of the band's [...] career that feature Jon as their
lead vocalist and songwriter. The tour also promises the
introduction of new material created by Jon and The Band Geeks."
Opening night set: intro music: "Firebird Suite";
"Yours is No Disgrace", "Perpetual Change", "Close to the Edge",
"And You and I", "I've Seen All Good People", "The Calling",
"Heart of the Sunrise"; interval (with "Counties and Countries"
played over the PA as background music); "Shine On" (from True),
"Awaken", "Thank God" (from True), "Starship Trooper",
"True Messenger" (from True), "Roundabout", "Owner of a
Lonely Heart". However, the set soon evolved. "Owner of a Lonely
Heart" was omitted at 2 subsequent shows and then moved earlier in
the set, with "The Calling" dropped. Thus, the regular set by
mid-Jun was: intro music: "Firebird Suite"; "Yours is No
Disgrace", "Perpetual Change", "Close to the Edge", "And You and
I", "I've Seen All Good People", "Owner of a Lonely Heart", "Heart
of the Sunrise"; interval (with "Counties and Countries"); "Shine
On", "Awaken", "Thank God", "Starship Trooper", "True Messenger",
"Roundabout". The 15 Jun set was shorter being at a casino: "Yours
is No Disgrace", "Starship Trooper", "Close to the Edge", "I've
Seen All Good People", "Shine On", "Roundabout".
In a May
2024 interview, Anderson said they would do "a couple of new
songs from the new album [...] But we'll save [...] doing the new
album until probably next spring [2025]". To
Rolling Stone in May 2024, Anderson said, "My dream
is that we can do another tour next year and do an hour of new
music and an hour of Yes music. Maybe we'd mix them all together.
I don't know yet." In a Jul 2024
interview, Anderson said, "Next spring, we'll do it ["Build Me an Ocean"],
when we do a tour. We're talking about touring next year doing
both the album [True] and the music we're doing now [...]
Next spring, we can do the whole album." In
an interview with Prog magazine (#153, Sep 2024),
Anderson said, "I don't know if we can do it [True] all
at once. [...] But it would be good to play more of it that the
three songs we're currently doing." In the Oct 2024 YesShift
interview, Anderson said, "we hope to tour next spring doing the
Yes hour and then we'll do the True album hour". Asked if they
will the tour the UK, he replied, "that's the next step [...]
Europe and then Australia". He later added, "when we were
finishing the [2024] tour, we actually rehearsed "Counties and Countries" live". In
a May 2024
radio interview, he said he would like to add "It will be a Good Day"
to the set. In an Apr
2023 interview, Anderson talked about the initial run of
dates and said, "The idea was, "Let's give it a whirl. Let's see
how the fans react to it and how we do." From then on it'll be,
"Let's go to Europe. Let's tour the world."" In a Mar 2023
interview, Anderson said they hoped to tour Europe as well.
The band is Anderson (lead vocals, guitar, percussion), Castellano
(Blue Öyster Cult, MorningStarlett; bass,
additional guitar, vocals), Christopher Clark (Brand
X; keys, vocals), Andy Graziano (guitar, additional
bass, vocals), Robert Kipp (keys, vocals, percussion, acoustic
guitar and controls the video screens), Andy Ascolese (MorningStarlett, Kasim Sultan's Utopia; drums),
with Rob Schmoll (acoustic guitar, percussion) guesting in places.
(The idea for 2 keyboardists was Anderson's.) By his own account,
Castellano is also the musical director, tour manager, business
manager, accountant and merch designer for touring.
The 2024 tour announcement
on 5 Mar continued, "Jon and the Band Geeks are currently
putting the finishing touches on a brand new nine track cd set for
release in late summer with a first single and video targeted for
release in late June." A May
press release then read:
After a [...] 2023 tour with The Band Geeks, Jon Anderson decided to expand the creative partnership [...] to create new material for a potential new studio album. The result of this effort is "TRUE" which will be released on August 23 by [...] Frontiers Music. The 9-song album will be a welcome gift to all fans [...] The album’s collection of songs harkens back to YES’s classic 70’s sounds as well as to their latter-day success with the album "90125". The album’s release will be preceded by 2 singles and videos, the first arriving mid-June for the song "Shine On". The album was co-produced, engineered, and mixed by Band Geek bassist and musical director Richie Castellano.
The video for "Shine On" came 13 Jun 2024 (4:23; video).
It was directed by Tom Flynn. In his Apr 2024 Patreon call,
Anderson had said the first single would be "Counties and
Countries". A second single, "True Messenger" (video),
followed 28 Jul 2024. "Counties and Countries" was the third
single (video),
released the same day as the album. Tracks:
The Japanese release on Marquee Inc., Japan
(MICP-11902) included a bonus track, "Build Me an Ocean (Piano and
String Quartet Version)". Writing credits above are as per the
liner notes. Writing credits online differ: those on Spotify etc.
omit Ascolese and Clark on (5) and (8). The album credits list
Anderson (vocals), Castellano (bass, guitar, keys, vocals),
Ascolese (drums, percussion, keys, vocals), Graziano (guitar,
vocals), Clark (keys), Kipp (Hammond organ, vocals) and Ann Marie
Nacchio (additional vocals). The album was produced by Anderson
and Castellano, with Ascolese as an associate producer. Musical
arrangements were by Anderson, Castellano, Ascolese and Clark. The
album was largely recorded at the Band Geeks Studio in Staten
Island, NY, engineered by Castellano and Ascolese. It was mixed by
Castellano and mastered by Sam Stauff. The album will be available
digitally, on CD and on 2LP (black, transparent blue or limited
edition orange). There is also a limited edition (1000
copies) gold vinyl edition exclusively at TalkShopLive.
The
album did not make the main US album chart, but did make #2 in
current rock, #4 in current independent releases, #13 in album
sales, #13 in album and track equivalent album (TEA) sales (i.e.,
factoring in digital sales of individual tracks), #18 in
current digital sales, and #19 in digital sales. The album did
not make the UK top 100 albums, but did make #10 in
rock/metal, #18 in independent releases, #15 in downloads, #46
in album sales and #71 in physical album sales in its first
week. It entered the UK progressive albums chart at #2 in Sep
2024; it was still at #19 in the Nov 2024 chart. The album
peaked at #17 in the US iTunes chart, and likewise at #4 in
Spain, #11 in the UK, #12 in Germany, #14 in Canada and in
France, and #28 in Australia.
The first indication of new recordings with the
Geeks had come in an Apr 2023 interview when Anderson said: "I
sent it [a song, "Counties and Countries"] to Richie and he did a
beautiful rendition of it. [...] When we do a [tour] rehearsal,
we'll decide whether or not we want to throw that new song in." In
another Apr
2023 interview, Anderson said, "I have a song that I've
loved for many years that I've never recorded properly and I sent
it to Richie and he made a beautiful rendition of it and we're
gonna perform that in the middle of the show. New songs are like
new blood; you know? They're just like new energy and then you
say; maybe we will do an album or that kind of thing." In the end,
they didn't play the song live in 2023, but the studio recording
of "Counties and Countries" was played over the speakers after the
2023 live shows. The plan had been to release it as a single to
promote the tour. In yet another Apr
2023 interview, Anderson said, "I wrote a song a few years
ago. I always liked it. Then I added it together with another
song, then I sent it to Richie [Castellano] [...] We've already
recorded it. We're not sure what to do with it. We thought about
it, well, let's give ourselves two or three shows and then maybe
we'll throw it in [...] the song list [...] That's when I start
thinking, well, I've got about a dozen of these songs, in my bank
of songs at home [...] Then I'll start sending 'em to Richie and
see how we go. Over the next year, we'll write an album, we'll go
on tour, as a band with an album, maybe, maybe... We've just got
to get through this first show. (smiles)" In a Jun 2024
interview with Yesshift, Castellano says that, after they
had worked on "Counties and Countries", Anderson sent him 30
ideas, including a piece Anderson had developed with Elias. On
Patreon in Jun 2023, Anderson said they were working on four more
songs. In a mid-Sep 2023 Patreon appearance, Anderson confirmed
they are working on an album, with mention of a 16 minute song and
an 18 minute song (with a clip played). In subsequent interviews,
Anderson has described a 12 minute and a 15 minute piece on the
album.
In his 7 Dec 2023 Patreon Q&A, Anderson implied
the album was largely completed and talked of going for an Apr
2024 release; participants also got to hear part of a song
entitled "Truth is You". That title does not appear on the
finished album, but I would guess it is included just under a
different name. In the Mojo interview (published Jan 2024,
so probably conducted before or around the time of the Dec 2023
Patreon), Anderson said, "we are in the middle of creating" the
album. In a Mar
2024 interview, Anderson described how he "sent him
[Castellano] 3 or 4 songs" after they finished their first tour.
He praised Castellano's work on the material, saying he made the
songs "sound like Yes in this moment in time". Later in the same
interview, he said, "When we started doing the record, about 3, 4
months ago, I sent them 5 songs, which Richie [...] started to
make them into very Yes versions of the song. [...] By the time he
sent me the music back of me singing along with it, I was writing
lyrics"; and that, "It's very Yes. [...] It's still Yes in my
heart." He also said, "I wrote some songs 8 years ago that we're
using with the new album". He described the theme to the album is
that, "Everything will work out eventually, don't worry. Life is
for living and discovering how beautiful you are". The May
2024 Rolling Stone article described the making of
the album so:
They wound up with a system where Anderson would send them demos via email, they’d flesh them out as a band, and then compare notes on Zoom. “It was like the Seventies where I would suggest ideas to the guys and because they’re musicians, they’d get on with it,” says Anderson. “I can just play four chords and then I’m done.” (Other songs worked in the reverse order where the Band Geeks would send a piece of original music to Anderson.)
In the Oct 2024
interview with YesShift, Anderson said, "we made it via
Zoom [...] we were able to Zoom every Tuesday [...] four or
five hours each Tuesday through November [2023], December,
January [2024]". Anderson also talked about
making the album in the May 2024
radio interview. He described how the "the [2023] tour went
very well [...] and about November, two months later, I called up
Richie and said, Why don't we do an album?’ [...] because we sound
like Yes." (In fact, they had already recorded "Counties and
Countries" before the tour.) Anderson continued, "I said, 'I'll
send you two or three ideas and you can send me a couple of your
ideas, and then we'll stick them together with superglue, and make
an album.' And that's what we did. It took three months […] I'd
Zoom with them every couple of weeks, and just talk about this and
that, and, you know, try some ideas. And they would try them!
Very… very much like being in Yes in the '70s actually". He
returned to this comparison to 1970s Yes later in the interview,
saying:
The idea of the new album is... same game plan, same idea in terms of the spirit of music and how, thankfully, Richie Castellano, the bass player, happens to be a brilliant... producer! So I'd send him this idea that I'd written many years ago [...] "I've seen counties and countries" [quoting a lyric] The whole idea was the song is very... Very simple song: "I've seen counties and countries / The Gardens of Eden / are calling me, calling me home." Because we forgot why we're here, we're supposed to be here to look after Mother Earth, and evolve Mother Earth... into the Garden of Eden. [...] So I sent Richie this song, and then this other little bit, in the middle, was all about a song idea that I wrote about: "Only for you / only for you / only for you [...] To receive from the divine / Who you really are" sort of thing. [...] So I sent them and then about two weeks later, this beautiful, big piece of music comes back and it's Richie, doing a big rock and orchestra and an all magical event, y'know, and I just sat there and went, 'Oh my God. This is fun! Making this album is really, really fun. You never know what's going to happen next, musically speaking, which was very much like being in Yes
The Prog article also interviewed
Castellano, who said, "Jon sent me about 30 demos, and these were
basically songs people sent him that he would sing over. If
something struck me, I would grab it with the help of Chris and
Andy. But with other songs, Jon asked me if I had anything".
In the Jul 2024
interview, Anderson explained the title: "when I spent time
in Jamaica, I'd sort of bump into the Rastafarian people [...] and
I'd say, 'How you doing?', and they'd always say, 'True, man'". In
the Prog interview, he said, "I just think it's a true
understanding of what this music is, what it means to a lot of
people, what it means to me, and that we have to be true to
ourselves and true to the idea of Yes". In the May interview,
Anderson said True was "all about the truth of where I am
at this moment in time". In a Jun
2024 interview, Anderson said, "We had a great tour
together, then a couple of months later I suggested that we make
the record that everyone is waiting for that Yes hasn't made yet.
And that's what we've done. We've created the album that Yes would
have made if they were together. [...] I can't believe how good it
is." Anderson went on to explain how the album was made: "I had
about half a dozen songs in my computer. I sent them to Richie,
and he developed them on a major level to make them sound like
Yes. I don't know how he did it, but he did. Then he wrote a
couple of songs himself, and I sang with him, and that's how the
album evolved. Then I found a couple of songs that I did 10 years
ago in Nashville with a very good friend of mine. They're
beautiful, very quiet songs. We put them into the mix and
everything sounds great." In the interview with Prog
magazine, Anderson said, "I'd send over short songs and Richie
would come back with an extension of that or combine it with
something else as we pulled the arrangements together over Zoom."
Castellano was interviewed for the same article. He said, "People
assume that Jon has nothing to do with the music. They think that
he just comes up with melodies and lyrics and then leaves. That's
not true. Jon will sing parts to you. He'll say, ' No, instead of
doing this, do ba-ba-ba and have the drums go da-da-da,'
[...] He's not going to sit at a keyboard and play it for you,
he'll sing it, and you've got to play it back to him. [...] He's a
proper musician, and a great arranger." Castellano also explained,
"I would send him [Anderson] the MIDI track, he would sing the
vocals over the demo and would assume we're done. Then I'd have to
tell him that we weren't done because then we'd bring the guys in
to record the parts and put their own stamp on it [...] we
re-recorded everything, and that totally blew Jon away."
In a May
2024 interview, Anderson said the album took 3 months to
make. In an Aug
2024 interview, Anderson said, "We actually did everything
via Zoom [...] We'd get together via Zoom every other Tuesday and
go through what we had. And we sort of built the album together
over that three-month period". In another Aug 2024
interview with talkshoplive, asked how long it took to
create the album, Anderson replied, "I'd say probably three
months. I think it was the end of November [2023] when I suggested
that me and Richie would swap some song ideas. And November,
December, then January [2024], February, we really started to
really sync in how it was going to sound. And then February and
then by the middle of March, we had it all locked up. And then you
go through different stages of mixing and mastering [...] it was
finished around February/March." In a May 2024 YouTube video,
Castellano said, "We spent the last 10 or so months recording an
album". (He appears to be including the post-recording stages in
his figure.) In a Mar 2024
video, Castellano, said the album was "done" and that he had
"finished tracking it yesterday [...] I was doing background
vocals all day." The Prog interview asked if the album was
specifically intended to celebrate the spirit of Yes? Anderson
replied, "Absolutely. That spirit was there every time we'd Zoom."
In a Sep
2024 interview, Anderson said they wanted to "make the
record that everyone is waiting for, but which Yes hasn't made
yet. And that's what we've done. We've created the album that
Yes would have made if they were together." In a Nov
2024 interview, Anderson reflected on the album, saying:
the thing that comes to mind is that I’m singing [on True] about two things. I’m singing about how we’re surrounded by such a beautiful world. And it’s the idea of developing our consciousness around the world, away from the craziness of wars.
These are crazy times that we’re living in, and to find a balance in the Garden of Eden because the Mother Earth is the Garden of Eden. I know it would be great if every country could build their country into a beautiful Garden of Eden, and shake off the energies of war and stuff, which I think we all want.
In a May 2024
interview, Castellano talked about how he, Ascolese and
Clark did a lot of the demos for the album together. Castellano
played guitar on the demos. Graziano is the main guitarist on the
album, but they kept at least one of Castellano's guitar solos
from those demos. Jon's daughter, Deborah
has done photos for the release and is credited with artwork, with
the album layout by Claudia Morini. She also did photos for the
album's promotional campaign. Reacting to some online criticism of
the cover, Deborah Anderson said in a comment on
Facebook: "Crafting this album cover was born from a
wonderful day of play between a father and his daughter and then a
decision to create artwork from it. Like it or not, its just art,
an expression of love between two creative people."
In the Aug 2024
talkshoplive interview, Anderson talked about the individual
tracks. Starting with "True Messenger", he said: "[Dunlap] just
sent this music and I sang the song virtually the same right on
top of what he sent me. It was just the instant creation. The way
I normally do it is, if I like the music, basically, I'll put the
microphone on and scat sing it […] make up stuff along the way.
But these things that popped out, as you can see by the lyrics […]
Eventually you kind of get into the idea that we're in a way,
everything eventually is a magic, magical motion. […] It's as
though, in our understanding of God, or the gods or the angels,
it's a real thing. It's something that's out there in the normal
world of experiences. I always say that why we're here is to find
the divine energy. And it's there. It's that sometimes you have to
slow yourself down in some meditation or creativity. And that
helps you to balance out with the divine energy that surrounds us
all, surrounds us all in this world. That's what I'm singing about
anyway." In the Prog interview, Anderson said, "I said [to
the Geeks] it needed a really powerful guitar solo at the end. Can
they throw one in? Rather than let the song fade away, suddenly,
he brings in North African strings and this astonishing solo."
Describing "Shine On", Anderson said: "Richie sent
me the first demo and then I danced through it and sang through
it." In a Jul 2024 interview, Anderson had described the creation
of the song: "[Castellano] had sent the idea to me after I sent
him a couple of ideas for other pieces of music [...] he said,
"I've got this song happening, throw some lyrics in there." I said
OK and I got into the universal love, you know [...] what are we
here for: universal love, isn't it? [...] So I'll sing it [...]
[It was] a lot of fun to record [...] we would use Zoom, because
I'm [...] on the west coast [...] and he's on the east coast in
the New Jersey area [...] we were able to listen to each other's
music and ideas and then do it live, Zoom [...] it kind of felt
like I was in Yes in the '70s because it's the same sort of...
throwing things up in the air and trying things out". In a Nov
2024 interview, he said, "I think Richie sent me the basic
concept and the chorus, and I filled it in with ideas."
About "Counties and Countries", Anderson said to
talkshoplive, "I wrote that on guitar, 12 years ago, and then I
found a little section that could add to it. And then when I
started working with Richie, I just sent him the guitar version,
which was [...] me on guitar, but I'm singing this song [...] And
within five or six days, he sent me a demo and I went, oh my God,
this is so beautiful." Later in the interview, he explained
further: "There's gonna come a time when the [...] people who live
on the planet have got to make the Garden of Eden again. They've
got to make this amazing nature that surrounds us all blossom and
be taken care of [...] Rather than making bombs." In the Prog
magazine interview, Anderson said the point of the lyrics are, "we
are here for one reason and oen reason alone, and that's to find
the connection to the divine within. The idea of waking up to your
higher self eventually and being prepared to be received into the
divine energy that we all deserve. [...] [W]hy we're here, it's
clear that it is to wake up and dream: if we could transform this
world into a Garden of Eden for everybody, not just for the rich."
He described being inspired by seeing thousands of trees while
driving around New York state, and then continued, "The words 'only
for you' are the key; 'only for you to be received by you',
by your higher self." He also described how, "I just sent him
[Castellano] the [original demo of the] song with a bridge idea
and he sent it back with a full orchestral sound [...] It was a
big shock to me that Richie could develop it with the keyboard
players [i.e., Clark and Ascolese] into a full-blown piece
like that." As mentioned above, in an Apr 2023 interview, Anderson
had said: "I did write a song for Yes about 20 years ago that we
never recorded, "Counties and Countries." I sent it to Richie and
he did a beautiful rendition of it." Anderson subsequently also
said on Patreon that he had offered "Counties and Countries" to
ARW. In 2013, Michael Lewis
(Inventioning)
worked on the piece for Anderson, recording a full demo (~4 min)
with Bridgette Lewis (Inventioning) on
lead vocals. The song then was planned for a Jon Anderson
project called Ever that never appeared (see below for
more).
"Build Me an Ocean", said Anderson, "came from a friend who I, I only met him once [sic] in Los Angeles. We were doing some work on a project and I just met this guy and he said, I wanna send you some music. I said, OK. The second thing that he sent [...] [the lyrics] just came out [of Anderson] [...] We actually created a song complete in one go. It took half an hour. But then it took a while to produce". He also talked about "Build Me an Ocean" in the Jul 2024 interview: "a lot of songs that I write come very naturally, like spontaneous [...] That piece of music was sent to me by a really nice guy, Jimmy Haun. And he just sent me this music and I sang it within an hour [...] and then sent it back to him and said, well, this is what I think it is. It's all about build me a river for souls to deliver life [...] It's a metaphor for the idea that we are spiritual beings and the soul is all interconnected with nature".
Anderson said "Still a Friend" was a "Spontaneous
lyric." He continued, "I thought a lot about the song when I
listened to it on the tour just now [...] All I could think of was
Steve [Howe], and Chris [Squire], and Alan White, and all these
people I've worked with over the years. I'm still a friend!" In
Patreon calls, Anderson had called this song "Still a Friend of
Mine".
In the Prog interview, Anderson discusses
the gospel-style section at the end of "Make It Right": "That was
definitely Richie and the band[.] They had an idea for that part
at the end of the song. I just suggested they repeat it a few more
times. It sounds very like Paul Simon and [...] Graceland
[...] I took a bit of persuading to keep that in, but now I think
it's great."
Anderson described "Realization Part 2": "[I]t's in three parts and eventually all one. And I just remembered the idea that somehow there was a lot of questions and then the answer was that it's what you put in, you get out of it. [...] what you put in something is what you get out of it. [...] Again [...] I'm harping on the idea that, if heaven is here, it would be wonderful." Graziano in a YouTube comment explained that "Make It Right" is the part 1 to this song, but the Prog interview has a different take, with Anderson explaining, "Richie just said, 'What are you going to call it?' And I said, 'Realization' and he said, 'No, that doesn't work. Realization Part Two.' Simple."
The talkshoplive interview included a lengthy discussion of "Once Upon a Dream": "It was one of the songs that actually made itself. It's as though we started on a rhythmic chant idea [...] I actually wrote with [...] Jonathan Elias [...] and this was like the centre part of this will be the last song. We've done all of the other songs. And it became the one that me and my wife, especially my wife Jane, loves. [...] It's just something that happened very organically." The interviewer then asked how long the composition took: "I'd say over a period of the final month [...] I remember starting it off and then we've tidied up a couple of other pieces of music and came back to it again, to get on with it and then we kept going back to it. Is it finished? No, it's not finished yet. We had a very spacey middle section, which reminded me of the middle of "Close to the Edge" where everything was very surreal. And eventually I found a pathway to sing, and that's when Richie found the next level, which was to bring in the introductory vocal [...] in the end section. And all of a sudden he"s playing this most beautiful guitar solo." Referencing the "tiki" section of the song, Anderson explained further: "It was a spontaneous sound [...] And I thought, where am I going with this? And then I left it alone and then went back to it and I thought, well, we've got to get into the next part. Richie came up with the next part, and then I came up with another part, and it was like building a castle, sort of thing, sand castle." In the Prog magazine interview, Anderson said, "Richie started to develop it, and he Yes-ified it! He definitely stretched it out, and I would ask him whether it needed to be so long, and he'd answer, 'Wait until I do what I want to do.' And then a day later, it came back with, amongst many things, the voices coming back from the beginning section. [...] when I started singing it, I just felt so, so happy, because who would have thought that what started off as a very simple idea would become [...] a beautiful, emotional push towards some of the lyrics that I threw in towards the end that were really off-the-top-of-my-head? They just came to me". Castellano said to Prog that "Jon and Jonathan Elias's demo is actually intact in the song as: 'It's enough to stick around looking for it/It's enough to challenge it/Look around.' But when I heard this, I asked, 'Can I go huge with this?'"
"Thank God" was written for Anderson's wife Jane
around the time of The Ladder. It was recorded for the
unreleased Jon Anderson/Phil Keaggy/Robin Crow album. In the
talkshoplive interview, Anderson said, "it was totally [about]
Jane [...] I was working [...] on an album up in Canada, at that
time, with Yes [i.e., The Ladder]. And me and Jane
went to a small, beautiful studio near Nashville that was run by a
guy called Robin Crow. And over a period of the Christmas and New
Year, we wrote an album, and one of the songs was this song. And
it's the only song that will ever come out of that period of
time."
Anderson has said different things on doing another album with the Geeks (see discussion above), initially saying not, but since then, in Oct 2024 interview with YesShift, when asked about doing a second album with them, Anderson played a snippet of music and then said, "I wrote that 10 years ago and it's on my cassette machine." He then sang the start of a song, beginning with the line "Bring on the day", before explaining, "That'll be the first song." He continued, "I've got a cassette full of song ideas and I'll send some to Richie, and he will send a few back [...] Probably we'll start thinking about recording something new anyway, for fun of it, probably next month. But we've just got to wait till next year, I think." In another interview that month with SOAL Night Live, he again talked about a second album with the Geeks.
The 2023 tour was billed as 'Yes Epics & Classics featuring Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks': there were 12 eastern US dates Apr/May 2023. 28 Apr, 29 Apr and 16 May all sold out. The band had started rehearsing in Dec 2021. In a late Mar 2023 interview, Anderson said, "We've been working, Zooming each other for the last month, every Tuesday. Basically going through all the songs we're gonna do and, now, I've got them all lined up on my computer and I come in every day and sing them all". They had 6 days of in-person rehearsals before the tour started. The opening night set in 2023 was: intro music: "Firebird Suite", "Yours is No Disgrace", "Perpetual Change", "Close to the Edge", "Heart of the Sunrise", "Starship Trooper", "Awaken" (Anderson also on harp), intermission, "And You and I", "I've Seen All Good People", "Ritual" (Castellano also on drums), "Rhythm of Love" (Castellano on guitar), "Owner of a Lonely Heart" (Castellano on guitar), "Roundabout". "Rhythm of Love" was dropped on all subsequent nights. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was dropped from 1 date later in the tour. "Ritual" was replaced by "The Gates of Delirium" at later shows; the band switched between the two. Castellano posted to Facebook a video of the Geeks using "Leave It" as a vocal warm-up exercise on tour. At some later shows, Rob Schmoll, Anderson's tech, guested in spots on acoustic guitar, including "And You and I" and "I've Seen All Good People". The Band Geeks' Ann Marie Nacchio guested on additional vocals for the final 2 songs at the 16 Apr Newark show. Sound mix was by Steve La Cerra. Ezra Donellan was the lighting designer. Byrne also did the video backdrops for the tour. The shows were recorded. In a gear walk-through video, Castellano hinted at a possible live release from the tour. Prior promo had also suggested "The Gates of
Delirium" might be played. That piece was mentioned in a Prog
article (in issue 128, Mar 2022) by Anderson as well. In an Aug
2022 article, Anderson said he contacted Castellano in Nov
2021, and ideas for the set included "The Gates of Delirium" and
"Mind Drive". In the Apr
2023 interview, Anderson also mentioned "The Gates of
Delirium" and "Mind Drive". He continued:
People wonder if we’re going to do “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” I don’t know. [Laughs.] I’d rather do “Roundabout” and “Perpetual Change” and songs I remember helping to create. The important thing is to perform them as though they were written this year. They are still… I wouldn’t say different, but still very fresh in the musical sense.The Band Geeks, led by Castellano, have covered several Yes pieces previously, available on YouTube. In Jul 2022, Castellano said on YouTube, "we're [...] preparing for the Jon Anderson shows in 2023. So, we've been rehearsing, pretty steadily, since [...] January [2022]". Early May 2022, Tim Franklin said on Facebook, "Jon is rehearsing with band geeks." It appears plans may date back to 2019. In a Jul 2019 interview, Anderson said, "this came to me yesterday[.] I've always wanted to go on tour and do seven classic [Yes] epics, which would be 'Close to the Edge,' tracks one and four of Topographic Oceans, 'The Gates of Delirium,' 'Awaken,' and [...] 'Mind Drive.' [...] I'd love to do them with visuals, and do them in surround sound, and really do an incredible version of everything. And I think I've found the band the other day, this fantastic band in New York, they play Yes music just like Yes music, it's unbelievable to hear them."
1000 Hands Website; Facebook; Twitter
Anderson released 1000 Hands:
Chapter One with producer Michael Franklin (worked with Rick Wakeman, Patrick Moraz, Bobby
Kimball, Gloria Gaynor), a development of his 1990s
Uzlot sessions with Brian Chatton (ex-Warriors,
ex-Jackson Heights). Details
in Yescography. The album was originally
available solely from a dedicated
website and at tour dates. Anderson said in 2020
interviews that they couldn't get a record deal. (In an
early Jul
2020
interview with Malcolm Wyatt, Anderson explained about
how the album was released: "the record companies weren't
very interested. Even Atlantic Records turned me down.") The
album has now had a general release, on CD, 180g 2LP and
digital, through Blue Élan Records. There was a livestreamed
promo event on 2 Aug 2020 (archived
on YouTube). This consisted of a long interview with
Anderson plus pre-recorded performances with members of his
touring band: Joe Cosas, Tim Franklin
(Michael Franklin's brother), Jocelyn Hsu, Tommy
Calton, Rayford Griffin, William "Billy" Meether and Zach
Tenorio.
Anderson and Franklin have been working on a
follow-up, Chapter Two, with guests to include Rick Wakeman
and Trevor
Rabin, but this has been substantially delayed.
Anderson wrote 10 Feb 2020 online about being "Back in
Solar Studio last week... busy with so much new music". In
the Jul 2020 Wyatt interview, he said, "we've been working
on half a dozen or so songs already, and more follow every
week. I've an idea for one large piece that could work,
but it takes time to sort that out. [...] we'll be able to
release part two next summer maybe." In the Aug 2020
livestream, he said the album would be out in 2021. He
explained, "There were more songs created when we were
doing Chapter One." He then mentioned a cover of John
Lennon's "Nobody Told Me", which he was working on during
the original 1990 Uzlot sessions. In an Aug
2020 interview (released Oct 2020), he said they
would probably put it on Chapter Two. In another Aug
2020 interview, Anderson said, "We [himself and
Franklin] are connected to do chapter two and we have
already done half a dozen songs. We are going to do some
more in the new year [2021], and release that next
Christmas [2021]." The Jon
Anderson and 1000 Hands Facebook account reported "a
few days of 1000 Hands sessions" in Oct 2021. Early May
2022, Tim Franklin said in Facebook, "Chapter 2 of 1000
hands is nearing completion." Anderson said in a Jul
2022 interview that they were: actually right in the middle of completing ‘Chapter Two,’ with Michael Franklin producing. So we never stopped thinking about carrying on with the idea of bringing in very, very interesting musicians like we did on the first project. There’s so much incredible talent around and Michael knows so many musicians who he gets to play on the songs I send him. So we’re about half-way through the production and it should be ready for next year [2023], we hope (laughing).
He had also said to a fan in Jul 2022 that
he had been hoping for an autumn 2022 release. He said to
a fan in Oct 2022 that he hoped the album would be out by
Apr 2023 (in time for his tour with the
Band Geeks). A 2023 release did not come, however.
Anderson has also said that Chapter Two will also
be released in a 2CD set with Chapter One. On 19 Nov 2022, M Franklin said on
Facebook: "Back at work on 1000 Hands Chapter 2,
Hoping for a release early in the new year [2023]. A few
notes from Joe Bonamassa, Bruce Hornsby, Abe
Laborial Jr, Rick Wakeman, Trevor Rabin, Ian Anderson and
others. Piles of new songs, trying to figure out what's
the right ingredients for the stew." In a Dec
2022 interview, Franklin said they were hoping to
finish the album by Xmas 2022 and for a release date of 16
Apr 2023. He also said that Wakeman had already recorded a
part; and he implied that they are using a composition by
Hornsby. He also said that he heard Bonamassa playing
"Heart of the Sunrise" and then reached out to him via a
mutual contact about playing on the album; Bonamassa plays
on 1 track. Franklin continued, "Chapter Two is a
little bit more of a continuum than separate songs. […]
There's a thread through the whole thing." And: "There's
an overture […] a small overture. [...] There's some
quotes from Chapter One on Chapter Two."
He also said that, "I've got more than enough songs for Chapter
Two", and, "I'm working on one [song] right now
that's not even on Chapter Two that's a monster
[…] song. […] I heard it and said, 'Oh my god, I've gotta
work on this.' So, I have two songs that are lengthy,
that are not on Chapter Two, that are pretty much
finished, but that will be maybe Chapter Three."
On 6 Dec 2022, Gabe
Treiyer (worked with Steve Rothery,
Bobby Kimball) announced
on Facebook that he would "be recording some guitars
for the next Jon Anderson's album!!!" In Jan 2023,
Franklin said Victor Wooten (Béla Fleck
and the Flecktones) plays bass on 1 track. In an Apr
2023 interview, Anderson said of the album, "We're
working on it. I reckon that it's going to be ready next
year [2024]. I've been writing some songs." On 4 Apr 2023,
Franklin said on Facebook that the "Estimated release
date" for the album was Oct 2023, which again didn't
happen, and that Billy Cobham also returned for Chapter
Two. In a Sep
2023 interview, Franklin implied the album was not
yet finalised. In a mid-Sep 2023 Patreon appearance,
Anderson said the album was still coming along. In Sep
2023, Jimmy
Haun (Arc of Life, worked with Yes)
talked of material he had written with Anderson ending up
on Chapter Two (details below).
In a Jan 2024 Facebook post, Franklin said he was
currently mixing a Jon Anderson project with Bernie
Grundman, which I would guess was Chapter Two, but
could have been something else. Later in the first quarter
of 2024, Franklin said on Facebook, "No release date for
Chapter 2 at present, Jon is touring this year with The
Band Geeks [see below] and they will have an album to
support that tour. The more time I have with Chapter 2,
the better it will be, more guests and more thoughts about
production." In this Feb
2019 interview and another
article that month, Anderson had said Chapter
Two would probably be worked on winter 2019/20 for a
2020 release. In the first interview, he said it will be
based on "some songs that I wrote at that time" (i.e.,
the same time as the original Uzlot sessions). In
the second article, he said, "we have a lot of songs left
over". In a Mar
2018 interview, Anderson described how working on
the project, they had enough material for two albums, and
he talked of the second coming out, "next year [2020]
maybe the year after [2021]". In a Jul
2019 interview, Anderson said of Chapter Two:
"We're working on it now, I actually recently sang some
parts live from a new song that we have. We have about
half a dozen songs and another few more coming in the next
six months. So probably a release after touring in spring
or summer of next year [2020]." An Aug
2019 interview reported that Anderson "plans on
adding another three [songs] in September and then
finishing up the record next summer." In another Aug
2019 interview, Anderson said, "I was working on it
[Chapter Two] just before the tour. I've got four
songs that we've got ready and Michael Franklin was doing
some production on it. Then I found another song which is
linked together with another one. When I get home, I'll
probably send Michael about 10 more!" The album will
include "songs that I was writing around that [Uzlot]
period [...] the idea of chapter two should be maybe a
couple more 'vocalizationing' projects [i.e. like
"Ramalama" and "WDMCF"] which I have [...] I know I've got
a couple of large scale pieces that I've always wanted to
get into production and I'll throw them at Michael and
say, 'Sort that out!'" In an Aug
2020 interview, Anderson said he had no plans "at
the moment" to write more with Chatton. He then talked of
having "two or three" Uzlot songs being worked on,
including "Welcome Touch", plus "four or five" more
(presumably not from Uzlot). In a Nov
2020 interview, he said they had "about nine songs"
from the Uzlot sessions: with 5 used on Chapter
One, that would leave 4 remaining. Chatton told a
fan in Oct 2022 that there should be 1-2 Uzlot
songs on Chapter Two. In another Nov
2020 interview, asked if he was working on Chapter
Two, Anderson replied, "I am, all the time. And
Chapter Three. And Chapter Four (laughs). Well, I've had
six months off, and all I want to do is get all my songs
together and kind of finish them. Most of the time, I'd be
on tour after a year. Now, I've got the chance to finish
all this work." In a Feb
2021 interview, he said, "we've got four more
tracks. We've done five more [new tracks] for the Chapter
Two, if it ever comes together." A Prog
magazine (#153, Sep 2024) interview with Anderson
described Chapter Two as "might still be some way
off", but reports Anderson remains in touch with Franklin.
Anderson said: "He came up with some more ideas. I sent
him some more ideas. I even started singing in Chinese to
develop one. It's true. Believe me, I sounded terrible." |
I'm not going to release another album — I had an album called 1000 Hands — Chapter One [...] that I thought was going to be a Grammy Award-winning album — obviously not [...] you start thinking, 'I'm not going to aim for that ever again.'In a Sep 2019 interview, Anderson said: "I’ve been going back and exploring Bulgarian singers. I talked to Michael Franklin about doing some chorale work and how it would be great to get some choirs to join in an ensemble fashion. We could get them to come in and do that kind of harmonic thing rather than just come in and sing. We could do something special with a chorale and expand the idea over the next couple of years and that would be the next chapter".
Instead, I'm just going to release all the music I've made over the last few years in various formats — downloads, singles, videos and so on.
The album was arranged by Franklin and Anderson, and recorded and mixed by Matt Brown. Brown also drums, while other notable performers include Tim Franklin (Michael's brother; bass), Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, worked with Pink Floyd, Jan Akkerman; drums), Jerry Goodman (violin) and Steady Joseph (percussion). Videos were initially released for "Now", "Ramalama" (seemingly by Deborah Anderson), "Activate", "Makes Me Happy" (shot with Deborah and Jane Anderson, produced by Deborah), "Now Variations", "I Found Myself", "WDMCF" and "1,000 Hands (Come Up)" (by Michael Byrne). A video of an extended version (8:33) of "WDMCF" was uploaded to YouTube on 30 Aug 2019. A video of a new mix of 1,0000 Hands (Come Up)" (8:33) was uploaded to YouTube on 19 Nov 2019. All these videos were removed in the first half of 2020. There is an alternative version of the "Makes Me Happy" video still online.
Anderson told the story in an interview
released Mar 2018, but seemingly recorded Oct 2017:
"[Franklin] got in touch with me about a year ago [so, 2016]. He
asked me about this project I started 27 years ago, 28 years ago
[...] the tapes got put in my garage and I forgot about them,
because I was on tour with, with Yes and recording other albums
and things like that. [...] So, Michael [...] we got together in
California where I live and he said, er, 'Why don't you come over
to Orlando and do some work on the tapes and make the music
happen.' [...] 27 years later, we're finishing it". In the Jul
2020 interview, Anderson said, "I would listen to the tapes
from time to time and think, 'This could have been a great album.
One day I'll finish it'." In the Yorkshire Post Jul
2020 interview, Anderson said: "life happened and they never
got finished. Brian tried to turn them into more commercial songs
– that didn't quite work; I went on tour." In a third Jul
2020 interview, with God is in the TV, Anderson said: "This
producer guy tried to work with Brian and mix some of the songs a
year later, around 1991, but it didn't sound very good to me, so I
just thought "Oh well, I'll just let go of it for now," but he's
this guy who lives in Orlando and he's surrounded by musicians
everywhere because of Disneyworld, Universal Studios [...] so I
mentioned to him that I'd like to..." This was M Franklin, first
working on the material in 1991. In a Dec 2022
interview, Franklin said Chatton first brought him in to
orchestrate 4 songs. In an Aug
2020 interview, Anderson said, "[Chatton] had an idea of how
he wanted to hear the tracks and he actually spent time and money
working on it. He sent me the mixes and I said: 'Actually Brian,
it's a little bit too overproduced. Love you man! But let's leave
it for now.'" The early '90s sessions are the Uzlot
sessions and all the Anderson/Chatton co-writes are rooted in this
period. In a 6
Feb 2019 Facebook post, Anderson described the Uzlot
sessions as having music written by Chatton, but vocal melodies
and lyrics by himself, and the sessions as starting with himself,
Chatton (keys), Heffner (keys), Gary Barlow (producer/engineer).
Further sessions took place with Hamm (bass), Squire (bass), White
(drums), Heffner (keys) and others, and at least 8 songs were
recorded. All of Squire's and White's contributions are from this
period. In the third Jul
2020 interview, Anderson said these original sessions lasted
"about three months". Anderson and Chatton remained in touch about
the project after those original sessions. A piece by Anderson and
Chatton entitled "Welcome Touch"
is available on Chatton's
MySpace page (dated 2007), but it is unclear when it was
recorded; the song also dates to the original Uzlot
sessions, although it is unknown whether that recording was from
then. Artist Ed Unitsky did a video for "Welcome Touch", which was
previously available
on Facebook. On ProgressiveEars.com in Jan 2017, Chatton
said, "The Uzlot project is still unfinished. We have 7 songs in
the pipeline and as soon as Jon has the time, it will be mastered
and released."
M Franklin and Anderson re-engaged. In some versions
of the story, Franklin approached Anderson about releasing the
album. In the Yorkshire Post interview, Anderson described
how work re-started when Franklin said he had "some capital" to
complete the record. In the God in the TV interview, Anderson says
he approached Franklin. They had to bake the earlier 24-track
tapes, and new sessions began. The modern recordings were done at
Solar Studios, Orlando, FL. Anderson went on in his Mar
2018-published interview to say they were "finishing the album
over the next month", although there were additional sessions in
Mar/Apr 2018, including shooting for four accompanying videos. In
a May
2018 interview, Anderson said some songs may be released to
YouTube beforehand. In another
later that month, he said he had just completed work on the album.
In a third May
2018 interview, Anderson explained: "I had tapes lying
around in my garage that I'd been working on for years and I got
this great producer and said that I really wanted people who I'd
met with throughout my life to play on it [...] and it sounds like
it was made last week. Some of the recordings go back years but we
have upgraded them and improved them over the years but the songs
still sounded great. I've written 3 or 4 new songs to go with it".
An Aug 2018 report had that the album was due in Sep 2018, to be
released in three parts. In an interview
conducted late Aug 2018, Anderson just said the album would
be out "next month". In an interview
conducted late Jul 2018, Anderson said he was "going to
Orlando to finish mixing next week". He described the project
there thus: "I started a piece of music 28 years ago in Big Bear,
which is southeast of L.A. I was just getting away from the world
for three months, and I decided to do an album[.] But it never got
finished because life is like that. Now, 28 years later, I'm just
finishing five of the songs, plus five new songs and an album
called 1,000 Hands." Talking more, he said, "there's one
or two obvious good radio songs. Whether they'll go viral or
whatever, who cares. You know, it's what it is. But all you want
is for people to hear what you do. I even do some dance EDM music
on one track on the album. One track on it is very EDM. Because
I've been doing some of that [over the] last year." An early Sep
2018 interview has Anderson as having just finished mixing,
and again reference to 5 songs being from 28 years ago and some
EDM being on the album. On
Facebook, Franklin described Grundman as mastering the album
on 31 Aug 2018. Anderson, M Franklin, bassist T Franklin and
drummer Brown were back in the studio in Sep 2018 for video
shoots; Michael described "9 videos in progress" on Facebook. On 7
Feb, Deborah Anderson a picture with her father captioned, "When
your dad asks you to create a music video for the first single off
his latest album in one day using a green screen to transport him
all over the world, this is what happens".
In the Yorkshire Post interview (Jul 2020),
Anderson said of the finished album: "In its complete idea it is
exactly what I was thinking at that time [when he first started
the Uzlot sessions] The lyrics haven't changed in two
thirds of the songs, we've been able to add some of the creme de
la creme of music on it". Anderson has said the first of the
recent sessions was with Cobham on "Come Up" (although in other
accounts, it wasn't the first session), while Corea also recorded
parts for that song a year later. Ponty's contributions are also
recent. Oct 2017 sessions for the album were with Anderson, M
Franklin, T Franklin, Brown, Snapp, Scanlon, Galotta, Calton,
Steinhardt, Chalk. Other performers mentioned include Jocelyn
Hsu (Violectric, Tallahassee Symphony
Orchestra; violin, backing vocals). In a joint interview
with Jon and Ian Anderson for the Aug 2018 issue of Record
Collector, Ian Anderson described his contribution, which
were done recently, with Ian recording it in his home office, as
being for "a long, epic song [...] very much in the progressive
rock tradition". Corea was recording in Mar 2018. Travers posted
to Facebook about meeting Anderson on 23 Apr 2018 at
Orlando, FL sessions with Franklin: he is guesting on a song. He
described the music thus: "mostly Jon Anderson sounding. Lots of
instrumentation, strings, horns, harp, keyboards, guitar in and
out, and a lot of wonderful choral performances. This one is very
special." Violinist Michelle
Jones (Violectric,
worked with Sarah Brightman, Art Garfunkel) also posted
to Facebook about doing a recording session (possibly just
for the video) with Anderson on 23 Apr.
A Mar
2019 interview confirms that Howe's contribution was recent
(but recorded remotely). In another Mar
2019 interview, Anderson said:
I just felt that I was gonna ask if he would play on the last song which was "Now and Again" and he played this beautiful guitar work on it and... 'Cos we met up at the Hall Of Fame and everything, and I kept looking at him saying, "We're gonna sing together! We're gonna work together again!" [...] So he sent this recording back and I just wanted to sing with him so I sang on it, added some lyric and... In fact, the lyric is about me and him. And it was great to [...] sing with him again. We connected again, shall we say.
In another interview later that same month, Anderson explained, "I just called him up and he said he'd love to play on it[.] I haven't sang with him in many, many years. It felt really comfortable and cathartic to do that. We're brothers. Sometimes you don't understand or misunderstand your brother and want to do different things. I think that is called a family."
Drums: Asher Blum, Harry Bricklin, Jack Kelly, Max MakoverLinnea McKinney also seems to have performed on vocals. Which students performed which parts rotated from show to show. The press release described "a set of Yes Classics, deep cuts, mash ups, and solo works, all with lush arrangements featuring choral singing, [&] horns". In a Jul 2021 interview, Anderson said: "What I suggested for this tour, why don't we some mash-ups? Y'know, we could do "Kashnu" [?"Khatru" or "Kashmir"?] going into "Yours is No Disgrace". Or, y'know, the song I really like is, for the groove, is "Need You Tonight" by INXS. We can do that into "Long Distance Runaround"." He also said, "We'll probably record every show," hinting at a live release. In another Jul 2021 interview, Anderson talked further about mash-ups, including Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" going into "Don't Kill the Whale". The 3 Aug set was: set 1—intro music: "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", "Heart of the Sunrise", "Sun is Calling" (Anderson solo)/"Yours is No Disgrace", "I've Seen All Good People", "Lose Yourself" (originally by Eminem), "Lose Yourself" (reprise)/"State of Independence", "Sweet Dreams", "WDMCF", "Mood for a Day" (Bricklin solo, but has been played by Vora at other shows), "Wonderous Stories" (with a grown-up, possibly Anderson's tour manager, on guitar), "Need You Tonight/Another One Bites the Dust/Long Distance Runaround", "The Fish"; set 2—"Kashmir/Don't Kill the Whale" (with Anderson on bass), "Leave It", "Screw", "Clap" (guitar duet), "America" (with an arrangement following the Simon & Garfunkel original more than Yes's version), "Makes Me Happy", "South Side of the Sky", "Let's Dance/Starship Trooper"; encore—"Owner of a Lonely Heart", "Roundabout". The set varied somewhat across dates, e.g. "Heart of the Sunrise" moved to be later in the set. At at least some dates, the Rock Academy did a half-hour supporting set without Anderson, including King Crimson's "Three of a Perfect Pair".
Bass: Gabriela "Gabby" Gonzalez, Ben Teolis, Finn Suárez Vora
Guitar: Ben Bricklin, Jake Dittus, Aiden Hammel, Andrei Orasanu, Tess Turner, Vora
Keys: Luke Baron, Charlotte Hamilton, Vora
Saxophone: Jesse Beato
Horns: Oscar Resti
Vocals: Justice Balabuszko, Gonzalez, Isabelle Gottfried, Charlotte Hamilton, Tess Lobell, Jackson Speller, Addie Teolis, Ben Teolis, Naomi Yanos
Jon has asked me to set up some auditions as he would love to have you all singing on Joyfullness. Jon's criteria is that you should sing light and clear and in time not rock singing. You can send me a brief demo at mick-byrne@hotmail.co.uk and please title the email Demo Opus Joyfullness, this will help me organise them within my inbox."Hopefulness" was released first in Jun 2019 on a Google drive, entitled "Piano Lesson (2020)", and announced via Facebook. It was also available on Anderson's SoundCloud under the name "The Hopeless Opus". The other three came on separate days, 6-11 Jul. The original YouTube uploads for the first two parts were replaced in Mar 2020; I'm uncertain if the music has changed. On 6 Sep 2022, "Opus Opus - You are Everyone" came to YouTube, which is a development of "Opus No. 1 (Hopefulness)", now with vocals. 4 Nov 2022 brought an updated version of "Opus No. 2 (Joyfulness)" (18:36), also now with vocals, and with orchestra by Bill Kilpatrick and a video by Byrne. In a late Mar 2023 interview, Anderson said, "I've just done some surround sound mixes of "Opus Opus", which I'm very, very excited about." In the Jul 2023 issue of Prog (#141, out Jun), Anderson said, "I also have another project called Opus, Opus, which is driving me crazy trying to mix it in surround sound. This will be a musical event with visuals projected in a dome, so I'm talking to a couple of venues about that." He has released material to his Patreons, including a 19:04 version of "Joyfulness" on 8 Dec 2023 after releasing subparts from Sep 2023. A 19:31 "Joyfulness" was then released 25 Feb 2024 on YouTube.
I was able to concentrate [during pandemic lockdown] on finishing the large scale epic that I started last year [2019]. I've spent three months on that. It's not finished completely – you can listen to the music because I did that last year in the space of one week. If you search for Jon Anderson's Joyfulness, it'll come up on YouTube. It's four movements, but then I decided that I liked the idea so much that maybe I should write songs and lyrics all the way through the whole thing. So it's four 19 minute pieces. For me it's become my focus for the next year [2021]. I still want to add choral and orchestra to it along the way.In the Aug 2020 livestreamed event, Anderson talked about Byrne's visuals, saying, "It's inspired me to write songs now within this music." In Dec 2021, Anderson's Patreon included an Opus extract with vocals.
You can actually go and listen to the blueprint on my YouTube channel [...] they're called "Hopefulness," "Joyfulness," "Thankfulness," and "Gratefulness." It's music I did in the space of one week, and then I ended up going on the tour with 1000 Hands [...] I came back afterwards [after the tour, late 2019], listened to all this music, and went, "Actually, it works, all together."Anderson has done some further work with Byrne: he sang on "Dancin' and Jumpin'", a song released to Soundcloud May 2018 by Irish band Papercut, with Byrne (keys, drums) and Liam "Hippie" Johnston (guitars). There is now a video on YouTube, credit to Jon Anderson/Michael Byrne. Anderson and Byrne also have a second collaboration, "Andromeda", on Soundcloud, then on YouTube, then (26 Sep 2021) in remastered form on YouTube. Byrne explained on Facebook in May 2018, "He found me on Youtube, rang me up, got talking and here we are." Byrne has also uploaded their collaboration "Whispers of Forgiveness". Around the same time as the four "Opus" pieces, Byrne uploaded several other videos to YouTube. He did new visuals for "Surfing with God" (see below), "Sing to Me" (associated with Zamran), and a video for "Come Up" from 1000 Hands. There's also a cover of Radiohead's "Rain Down" by Anderson. In Jun 2021, Byrne uploaded a 4:00 piece entitled "The Gateway", credited to himself and Anderson, writing "A small segment of a larger piece i am working on. So many thanks to Jon for his pure inspiration." In Jun 2022, there was a new video credited to the pair consisting of "Andromeda" (as above), "Gateway" (as above), "Stars are Ascending You" (seems to be new) and "Dancin and Jumpin" (as before). A standalone video for "Stars are Ascending You" credited to Anderson/Byrne was uploaded to YouTube on 20 Aug 2022. Anderson uploaded "Amharic Groove" with Jamie Dunlap to Facebook on 16 Aug. "You Are the Oneness of Being" came 25 Aug 2022, with a video by Byrne. The description for it refers to "MYSTERIES OF ZAMRAN AND THE INNITIATION OF THIS BEAUTIFUL WORLD IS UPON US RIGHT NOW…", so it may be connected to the Zamran project. Uploaded 25 Oct 2022 was "State of Consciousness" with music by Jan Castor and a video by Byrne. "Let Go Let God" by Anderson and Thomas Thomas was previously released on Facebook in 2020, but then came to YouTube with a Byrne video from Oct 2022, but has since been made private. Apr 2023 brought "We Are We Are" with music by Byrne and vocals by Anderson, credited to Jon & Micky! In Aug 2023, Anderson released "Realization Morning Temple" (10:09) on Facebook, with a video by Byrne.
They're each about 20-25 minutes long, and now I've spent the last three months writing lyrics and songs and melodies within the framework of what you hear. It's all about Mother Earth
The choral was created and sent to me by my friend Neil Campbell… many moons ago…Anderson/Stolt Facebook; Twitter
As I Dreamed listening to the voices … I realized what a better life it is to Know the Divine energy that surrounds us all all…so I sang over and over "What better life is to know you, to love you, to feel you,"... it just seems logic to me to feel this love and devotion to the Divine Love that loves us all eternally….. "we are everyone"….. we are loved.
I actually worked the [...] last couple of days. I worked with bringing out the hard drives and and trying to do proper mixes for us to review. Because of course when he was here in in Uppsala [with the Paul Green Rock Academy] [...], we talked about it and [...] said, 'Well, we must finish this album.' So I thought, 'Well, we must, we really must finish this album,' you know. So, I brought up the the hard drives and listen to it and I have a pretty good idea of what sections or what songs, I think, would be great [...] There's one little song he wrote together with his son [Damion], y'know, that I absolutely love. Great song. Very melodic. Very poppy, but great.Stolt previously talked about the work in a Jan 2021 interview:
I'm thinking, it's a kind of a song that you think you hear on on the radio, it could be a hit song [...] Not a dance song, nothing like that. It's more like a... I don't know what to say, what to call it, but it's just like a very radio friendly song [...] Maybe three and a half, four minutes.
So I mean, that's great stuff. There's progressive stuff and more developed, y'know, orchestral things. So we've been working on lots of stuff, but I think now is the time to, to pin it down [...] and decide what can be recorded and [...] y'know, track the drums and bass and all that. A lot of the guitar work is done already [...] and some keyboard works, but I'm sure we're going to add things. [...] I'm trying my best to to make it happen
a couple of weeks ago [...] I started digging into the files again [...] I have kind of a symphonic piece that’s probably like 15 or 20 minutes that’s just instrumental. And I was aiming at doing it orchestrated with a real orchestra, but that was 10 years ago or even more [laughs][ ]and nothing happened really. [...] I just felt like, well, this is probably something that Jon could sing. Because he’ll sometimes say, Oh, send me anything…send me some music and I’ll sing over it! Maybe I should just compile the best of the songs that we’ve done up to this point, because there’s probably seven or eight songs that I think are really strong. And one or two of the songs he wrote together with his son. So I think there’s great material already. And then I was just thinking that maybe if I take this symphonic piece and let him sing whatever he wants to sing on it, that makes an album!In an Oct 2020 interview with Yes Music Podcast, when Stolt was asked about a second album, he replied: "right now, when you're calling, I was actually mapping out a few things I was about to send to Jon, probably later tonight or tomorrow. [...] There's about half an album, I would say. It says now it's [...] 65 minutes, but I think at least 30 minutes of these are really great". Asked to describe the material, he said, "It's a bit mysterious, it's got really good melodies. It's got some [...] spots where it's more drawn out, improvising [...] It's got a little bit of everything. [...] We were finding our way on the first album. I think this, in general, sounds more convincing. [...] It just feels like, as we know each other better now [...] it seems to me, what I have now is just demos, so it's Jon's vocals and my drum programming and lots of orchestral stuff. But I'm thinking that when this is actually played by a band, and possibly with some real strings and stuff like that, I think it's going to be great." In a Feb 2020 interview, asked about his activities for the year, Stolt said, "I'm also finding time to finish the second album together with Jon Anderson we're sort of halfways."
[...] I haven’t spoken to Jon in a couple of weeks or a month or something like that. So, I have no idea where he’s at with that, but I’m thinking that maybe I just send it over to see. [...] It’s strange time for all of us. It’s about a couple of different things, we have other projects, but it’s also about survival. So we need to find ways to get the money in. Transatlantic for me is a good way of that, and The Flower Kings [...] sometimes I have to give priority, you know, and which I kind of regret sometimes, but it’s reality. [...] Sometimes I’m too much of a dreamer. So I just think about all these projects with other people that I want to do and it just goes on and on and on. Sometimes you spend a lot of time on projects that don’t generate a lot of money.
Next album is in the works - we make nice progress. Very happy about it - Jon's voice is now back in top shape (at 72 !!) - We work on a super-monster-epic-track. - Hey- it's prog & we owe it to you - and us.He also responded to comments. Asked if the same performers would be on the album as the first, he replied, "Most likely - with one or two new additions - can't give away anything yet". Queried about having more instrumental passages, he said, "absolutely possible - Jon himself suggested that too - and my singing too in between - (even if there was plenty of my voice as backing vocal on Invention - I personally envision a few more naked scaled down-to-earth sections too". In a Dec 2017 interview, he said, "On the recording side we started album number 2 with Anderson/Stolt". And, on his 2018 plans, "We're doing a beautiful limited edition of the 1st Anderson/Stolt album [see below] - plus working on the second album. [...] On top of my wish list is to take the Anderson/ Stolt music to the stage - with a grand visuals show too." However, in a Jan 2018 interview, Anderson said, "We are writing the next album now - expecting to release in 2020". In an interview conducted late Aug 2018, Anderson said, "I started working with Roine again a few months ago. Next year [2019] we'll be preparing another album together, hopefully for 2020." Stolt told a fan on the 2019 Cruise to the Edge to expect the second album in early 2020.
Yep - we're both excited - All going well - and much smoother/faster these days - very promising times ....
Out 21 Jul 2023 was a 180g
transparent
orange 2LP release on InsideOut that Stolt has
remastered and partly remixed and extended, including a
longer mix of the "Invention", with an additional 2 minutes
consisting of a keyboard solo by Brislin. Stolt described
the release in a promotional
video, saying the remixing was done in 2017. In the
aforementioned Aug 2023 interview, he said, "Among other
things, I have added a keyboard solo by Tom Brislin, which
for some reason was removed on the original disc. I think
Jon thought there was a worse flow with the solo there. Then
I cleaned out a lot of percussion and choirs and other
things." He talked more about the remix in the Aug
2023 interview with Yesshift, explaining he had begun
a Surround Sound mix of the album shortly after the album's
original release, but the plan for that "didn't really
happen". However, this meant he did 24/96kHz stereo mixes in
2017. Tracks—side A:
|
#ad |
We talked about next summer [2017] doing some special event. It's very hard to know. The more I listen to the album [...] the more I think this would sound beautiful with a full orchestra and a choir and a lot of musicians and some incredible graphics [...] Because originally most of the songs were written for an idea for an installation that we are constantly re-inventing ourselvesIn a Jun 2016 interview, Anderson said, "we'll probably perform [it] next spring [2017]. We'll see how many people enjoy the album, and how many people want to see us perform in Sweden [...] Maybe we'll do some shows in America next summer. We don't know yet." And in a Jul 2016 interview: "We talked about [tour plans], but want to see the public reaction to Invention of Knowledge. Also, I would love to perform the album with a choir. We will see what develops." Asked about touring in an Aug 2016 interview (seemingly conducted in Jul or earlier), Anderson said, "That's up to, really, how it sells, of course. If it reaches a lot of people [...] we think, next summer [2017], we'll probably do some concerts [...] we also have some new music we've been writing, so we might just re-record some new stuff, and then release that next summer along with the album again and then probably do a couple of shows, with some special shows in Sweden maybe." In the interview conducted Jun 2017, Anderson said, "I think if we get this new album together, we'll probably get a band together and go on the road. You hope that way, don't you? [...] We'll see what happens." That would be in 2018 or later.
Inventioning and prior work with Michael Lewis
I worked with a friend of mine [...] guitarist Michael Lewis[.] We’ve written two or three songs together, and he’s friends with Jean-Luc [Ponty]. I suggested we put some violin on one of our tracks, and Michael got Jean-Luc to add some to one of our songs. So now we have this connection, and last year [2013] we talked about putting a band together with Jean-Luc, so I got in touch with some guys [...] all of a sudden we have a band. We’re just trying to figure out the step. We’ve written about five pieces of music together through the Internet. That’s what the Internet is for — it’s like a modern studio. We should be up and running for a tour next year [2015].
M Lewis began working with Anderson in Jan 2007 and was working
extensively on projects for Anderson from early 2013. He spent much of 2013 working on Anderson's
planned release Ever
(see below), which never appeared, including cutting a
demo of "Counties and Countries" (a song that was later used on
True).
He described in Mar 2014 "a large pile of music that has yet to be
released. In fact, we were on the verge of releasing another solo
project for Jon that I was heavily involved in when we made the
decision to [form the new band]." He explained more in an Aug 2014 press
release:
While producing ‘Some People,’ a song I had co-written with Jon, I asked Jean-Luc Ponty to cut a violin track on it — which led to an offer from Jean-Luc’s management for Jon and me to do a U.S. and world tour with Jean-Luc. I first raised the concept of the band with Jon while hanging out at his hotel during one of his visits to Seattle in 2012. But he was reluctant to get back into a band situation at that time.
When YES was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year [i.e., Oct 2013], I again approached Jon about touring with me and my group of Nashville players who had played on the recordings I had produced for us. This time, Jon felt he was ready to tour with a band again. I arranged for Jon to meet Jean-Luc’s manager. Afterwards Jon told me ‘We are a band!’ And Inventioning was born.
M Lewis, who had been financing Inventioning, was surprised by
Anderson's decision to part ways with him. Asked about his
exclusion, he said on Facebook in Aug 2014, "We're all wondering.
Not really sure... guess it didn't work out. Might ask Jon?" He
later told me, "I was not surprised by the news of the
Anderson-Ponty band because I knew they had ostracized me from the
group and planned to continue on without me. I was surprised that
Jon didn't try to work things out with me so that we could
continue to work together. In all the years we had been working
together, it's not like we had never had a disagreement before and
we had overcome all our obstacles before. Why not now and what was
the unforgivable sin? I don't have the answer to that question."
Lewis announced plans to the continue Inventioning as a separate
project to the Anderson Ponty Band, based on material co-written
with Anderson that they had been developing and with the musical
team who had been working on those songs. Inventioning said they
planned to release an album, Affirmation; a prior digital
single, "Walking
Talking", has come out, with lead vocals by Anderson. A
sample from the song can be heard on the band's
ReverbNation page, along with a cover of Yes's "Onward"
(also released as a single) and further pieces. In total, the
album was planned to include 4 songs with vocals from Anderson,
one of which ("Some People") also has violin from Ponty. The new
Inventioning line up was announced as M Lewis (guitar, keys),
Bridgette Lewis (Michael's daughter, One Street Over; lead
vocals, or backing vocals when Anderson has sung lead), Brian Fullen (worked
with Shania Twain, Peter Frampton; drums) and Adam Nitti (worked
with Shane Theriot, Peter Erskine, Dave Weckl, Scott Henderson;
bass). More recently, album plans appear to have evolved
and the band has looked to crowdfunding.
Inventioning released the first song they worked on, "Some
People" (YouTube),
on 21 Oct 21, with M Lewis (acoustic and electric guitars, keys),
Ponty (electric violin; recorded in 2012), Anderson (lead and
background vocals; recorded parts in 2007 and in 2013), B Lewis
(lead and background vocals), Fullen (drums), Adam Nitti (bass)
and Oliver
Wakeman (additional keys (piano, Moog); recorded in Nov
2014). B Lewis sings lead on the verses, with Anderson singing
lead on the choruses. The piece was written by M Lewis/Anderson.
The song was produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by M Lewis,
with additional vocal production by B Lewis, and additional
engineering by B Lewis and Jordan Lewis. Work began on the piece
in Oct 2007 and continued through to an original mix being
produced in 2014, while further recording and mixing has since
been done for the piece. Affirmation
was released Oct 2021 as an EP of "Some People", "Walking Talking"
and "Onward".
Further solo projects
A follow-up to Survival and Other Stories, to include a
new version of the digital release "Open" (see
below), had been completed, but awaited a label; nothing has
been heard about this in recent years. A sequel to "Open", called
"Ever", was expected digitally, but a report in Jan 2013 had that
Anderson was planning to re-record the piece in a different style
to the work to date. He said in a Feb
2013 interview that he is focusing on "finishing a lot of
work in the studio" in 2013, but also that he is "not going to
make any more albums", instead releasing new music "probably
through apps".
In the Mar
2014 radio interview, Anderson also talked about writing a
piano concerto. In the Apr
2014 interview, he said more: "I'm actually working on a
piano concerto at the moment. For some crazy reason. I went to see
this concert about a month ago, Rachmaninoff's Third [...] the guy
that performed was so good, and I met him [Robert Thies] afterwards,
and I told him I was writing something and he said he'd like to
help. [...] So I'm working on presenting him with some music".
I put an advert on my Facebook saying, “Musicians wanted, send a minute of your music and if I like it, I’ll get back to you.” And I got about a hundred people over a period of a year or so. And I got back to about 20 of them, 25 of them.
And I’m still in touch with them because they were really talented and they understood that they could create music. And I would sing something that I would never sing with anybody else because it’s them, because they are this music. And met so many wonderful people over the years via the internet.
Survival and Other Stories
compiled material from across many of these online collaborations.
The album (as OPIOCD1) was initially only available on sale at Anderson
Wakeman live dates in the UK in Oct/Nov 2010. Anderson's
former PR company said 500 "demo copies" were available on the
tour and these appear to have sold out. The album was then
released by Gonzo (HST079CD)
in 2011. In a mid-Apr 2011 Facebook message, Anderson said the
general release would be "with some remixing here and there".
Anderson's PR had said in mid-Jan 2011 that, "The final album to
be released will include additional material." However, the track
listing is unchanged, there are no additional pieces and it
appears there were no changes from the first release.
Anderson has previously talked of Survival and Other Stories being only the first of
a series of albums made in the same way. In an Apr
2011 interview, Anderson said:
"Open" and "Ever"
"Open" is a 21-minute piece with 4 movements by Anderson,
released digitally Oct 2011. A follow-up of comparable length had
been expected, called "Ever". A new version of "Open" was expected
to be included on a solo album (see above),
while "Ever" was expected to be released digitally. Work on the
piece was occurring c. Nov 2012. In an interview
published Nov 2012, Anderson said: "I'm trying to put
together a long form piece; I've been working on it. I'm
redesigning it today; I was working on it earlier." I would guess
this is a reference to "Ever". However, a report in Jan 2013 had
that Anderson is planning to re-record the piece in a different
style. In a Feb
2013 interview, he said: "I'm halfway through my second
piece". In an interview
from around May 2013, Anderson said, "I'm actually working
on a second one now [...] called "Ever" and I might have said
there would be no orchestra this time, but I just put an orchestra
on it this morning! It's kind of betwixt one and the other right
now." Michael Lewis (Inventioning)
was working on "Ever" in 2013, including working on a version of
"Counties and Countries" (a song later released on True)
for the release. Promo for the Anderson Ponty Band tour
in Jul 2015 said that Anderson "continues to record new music" for
"Ever".
Anderson said in a Sep 2011 article: "if people really like it
["Open"], I'll put it out with other songs next spring or
something like that[.] That's what I was thinking."
Publicist/backing vocalist Billy James described on Yesfans.com in
Oct 2011: "in the spring [2012] release OPEN (with possibly a
different mix) with other tracks that fit the theme on CD." He
continued in Nov 2011: "on the CD planned for Spring release a
diff mix of OPEN and other tracks like Sing To Me and Surfing With
God". However, orchestrator Stefan
Podell said on Facebook in Nov 2011 that he was not aware of
any plans for a CD release. In a Jun
2012 interview, Anderson said: "I might release it
later this year [2012] with another... er, I've got five or six
songs that I'd like to get out there and put it out as an album
before Christmas. I'll have to wait and see. Actually, I want to
do a vinyl." And then in the aforementioned May 2013 interview,
asked whether he might release "Open" and "Ever" on a CD or
whether he is just doing digital releases, Anderson replied:
I think I’m just going to work toward Internet releases and using the app [see here] right now. But there’s a record company that’s releasing all the classic Yes stuff, Audio Fidelity, and they’re a very, very nice company and if they wanted to release some of my work I’d be very happy to work with them. I’ve even thought about vinyl as well, for fun.
None of this has happened and no further news on "Ever" or a new
release for or version of "Open" has been heard more recently.
In a late Sep 2011 article, Anderson said he was "just finishing"
the piece "Open"; he was reportedly still mixing on 14 Oct. The
Sep 2011 interview with Anderson described the making of the
piece:
I haven't stopped creating Yes
music in my heart. One of the things I realised was that all the
solo albums that I ever did had nothing to do with Yes; I didn't
want to 'pretend' to be Yes, because I don't want to do that.
But now I feel like that it is
part of my DNA, and I can't stop wanting to create large-scale
pieces of music that obviously have a very strong connection
with Yes, because that's what I did with the band. I helped to
create these larger pieces of music.
Asked whether he means to form an alternative group, Anderson
replies, "It won't be a band. It's just a collection of musicians
that want to do it." He then goes on to describe what appears to
be the same project: "the orchestration on the new piece is done
by a guy who lives five miles away [presumably this is a reference
to Podell] and the guitar work is being done by a guy who lives in
LA. Then the kids who live in New York and Philadelphia [part of
the Paul Green School of Rock Music] they do drums, keyboards and
piano".
A Jun 2018 article for the 2018/9 School of Rock entry described
a "year-round program" to include "a recording project with Yes
frontman Jon Anderson". I don't know what happened with that. In a
Dec 2020 interview, Anderson said he was working with students at
the Paul Green Rock
Academy, a related body. He said in a Feb
2021 interview:
I started working with my good friend Paul Green [...] We did some Zooming with the kids, and I said, "Send me anything you've got because I'll work with it." This girl sent me a lovely piano song, and I wrote some lyrics and melody for it and sent it back. This guy sent me some drums, and I did some vocalizations.
Tim Morse
was also working with Anderson. Awaken is a 2022 release
by the Yes tribute band Parallels that was led by Morse. It
contains the track "Opening Sketches" (6:33) performed by Morse
and drummer Jim Hefter that presents sketches of Morse's
collaboration with Anderson: see main
page for details. "Opening Sketches" is a different
arrangement by Morse and Anderson of the piece Anderson released
as "Open" ("Opening" was its working title). (A prior mastering of
the track was available on Morse's 14-track album Miscellanea,
only available with a purchase from his website.)
Work with
Jonathan Elias, Jimmy Haun and Michael Sherwood
Anderson has been working with Jonathan
Elias and Jimmy
Haun (CIRCA:,
ex-Yoso,
ex-Chris Squire Experiment, subsequently Arc of Life),
both together and separately. All three and the late Michael
Sherwood (ex-Conspiracy; Billy's
elder brother) were working on album project, which came
to a premature halt in 2013. Anderson, Elias, Haun and Sherwood
worked together on the ABWH tracks on Union, which were
produced by Elias, who also co-wrote and played some keys, while
Haun played most of the guitar parts and Sherwood contributed
backing vocals. Haun and Sherwood were childhood friends and
worked on numerous projects together, and both worked regularly
with Elias after Union. Sherwood passed away in 2019.
Elias and Haun both worked on Anderson's
2021 Sunlight album of production music.
Anderson's album True with the Band Geeks includes two songs co-written
with Haun and two with Elias. (I wonder whether this represents
re-using of material from the aborted 2013 album or something
else?) On 21 Sep 2023, Haun had posted
to Facebook a collaboration with Anderson called "Building",
writing, "Excited to be working with Jon Anderson again on some
new and old stuff we've written together. This is one of his
favorites that he wanted to drop first. It's a soulful and
spiritual track." The song had been released on the Jon
Anderson YouTube channel about a week before (but has since
been taken down), credited to "Jon Anderson & Jimmy"; vocals
are by Anderson, while Haun played all the instruments. In answer
to a question on Facebook, Haun said the plan was for songs to be
included on 1000 Hands: Chapter Two.
However, "Building" became "Build Me an Ocean" on True. In
a Jun 2023 Patreon call, Anderson played a song he did with Haun
that he said would be part of Zamran
(I don't know if it was this same piece or not).
In his 6 Mar 2024 Patreon call, Anderson talked of having a lot
of unreleased work with Elias. On 23 Dec 2018, the Jon Anderson
YouTube channel uploaded a piece entitled "Born Again"
credited to "Jon Anderson with Jonathan Elias and Rahat Fateh Ali
Khan". There is a 2013 version
online by Elias with Khan, and without Anderson. On 17 Sep 2020
came another piece, "The Given
Love", credited to Jon Anderson and Jonathan
Elias; Anderson wrote, "I wrote this with music from my good
friend Jonathan Elias". This piece can be traced to an abortive
Anderson solo album with Elias, Haun and M Sherwood.
In a Feb 2021 interview with SOAL Night Live, Haun talked about the old project, beginning, "It's so fucking great. The music is so good." He described how Anderson said it got "a little too proggy for him [...] He was getting into something different at that point [...] He loved this band Battles [...] He was like, 'Can we do something like Battles?' [...] Jon didn't want to go down that road [progressive rock] again." (Anderson went on to guest on a 2019 Battles album: see below.) Haun continued, "I have these recordings and [...] God, I would love to, one day, be able to show people this stuff [...] Jon was very much a part of everything, and he was loving it, loving it, loving it. And then all of a sudden, it was like he changed his mind. And he wanted to do reggae and stuff. [...] But the music is there. So, I dunno, maybe one day he'll be like 'Let's just do it.'"
The project, produced by Elias and featuring music written by
Anderson/Elias and by Anderson/Haun, was expected around spring
2013, but then stalled. Around the end of 2013, Sherwood said on
Facebook: "I did five tracks with Jon A and then it stopped
suddenly. Holidays, live gigs whatever.. Anxious to see what
happens with those pieces. They were sounding pretty great.
Hopefully we'll pick up where we left off." On 8 Jan 2014, he
said, "The JA thing came to a screeching halt, but I remain
optimistic about the work we did. We shall see. Perhaps we'll even
pick it up where we left off. I did at least five things." On 16
Jan, he said:
re: the JA project [...] here are some working titles to chew on.... The Given Love, The Remembering Gate, Children Yet To Come, Songs of Solomon and some nine minute orchestral thing which I think was called The Given Love part 2...They were all sounding so good. Also some Anderson collabs with Mr. Haun were taking place. I'll ask around and see what's next. Quite a bit of work was done. Then came the holidays....M S
In an Aug 2017 Facebook post, Sherwood referred to 9 pieces that
"just languish in the ether".
In an interview
conducted Nov 2011, Anderson described working with Elias:
"Yesterday I was singing on a new piece with Jonathan Elias and
we're writing some songs." He said more in a May
2012 interview: "I was writing a couple of songs yesterday
with an old friend, Jonathan Elias. [...] we're actually writing a
project together." An interview with Anderson in the Jul 2012
issue of Prog magazine refers to a 20-minute piece with
Elias. In Sep 2012, Haun and Sherwood broke the news on Facebook
that they have both been working on the project as well, including
sessions from late Aug through to 6 Sep. Haun had these comments
on 8 Sep:
"We've been working on it a few months now [...] I didn't want to say anything till all the ducks got in line! Jon is absolutely on fire and there is other surprises popping up as well too......."
"Jon just spent 2 weeks with us in the studio and is gone now for 5 weeks to tour. So we have tons of material now from him to work with. It's mostly the JA-JE stuff right now (which I was blown away with!!!) but when he gets back we dive into the stuff he and I wrote."
Sherwood said this the same day:
It's really taking shape . it's wonderful. Jon sounds better than ever.. Jonathan Elias is an awesome talent. A friend and champion of Mr. Anderson for years.. [...] All keyboards will be played by Jonathan and myself, as well as orchestral arrangements. . We're making a very fine record. Truly a labor of love.
Haun (7 Sep) said Elias "has written some astounding orchestral
pieces for this [...] You are gonna get inspired music that is not
trying to be pop or mainstream (Which I felt Union was). It is
Classic. In the sense of Traditional YES and modern music and say,
Stravinsky!!!. To me, quality and real organic stuff!!!" Sherwood
(7 Sep) said: "It's actually a combination of JA, JH and JE
tracks. I'm working the edges.. In charge of color and extra
texture . Perhaps some vocal action again. Strings French horns
etc." And he also mentioned: "I'm in the middle of a 9 minute
french horn arrangement." On 1 Jan 2013, Sherwood said, "Right now
I'm knee deep in the new Jon Anderson solo project. (Keys and BG
Vox)".
In an 8
Nov 2012 interview, Anderson said:
Anderson: I'm [...] working with a good friend of mine, Jonathan Elias [...] he's a great composer. We've written some really beautiful songs together. We're just putting that album together as we speak, over the next couple of months. We’ve been working on it on and off, most of the year [2012]. Spending a week here a week there, because he's a very busy guy too. It sounds really, really good. I'm very excited about the album. It'll be my first studio album in maybe, gosh, 15 years I think.
Interviewer: What do you mean by that; “first studio album?”
Anderson: Well, where I go and work and record in a studio with other musicians and that kind of thing.
Live
solo shows and DVDs
Orchestral shows
Anderson
has talked about "his DVD projects currently underway (including
performances with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra of Cleveland
and the Tribute To Freedom Concert in Slovakia)." Anderson performed with the 100-piece Contemporary Youth Orchestra
plus a 60-piece choir in a sold out show entitled 'State of
Independence' in May 2010 in Cleveland, OH, following a week's
rehearsal together; set: first piece, "Starship Trooper", "Long
Distance Runaround", "Music is God", "Show Me", "Give Love Each
Day/Earth & Peace", "Big Buddha" (a.k.a. "This is (Buddha Song)"), "Owner of a
Lonely Heart", "Children Yet to Come" (4
movements: "Children Yet to Come", "Earth Singing", "Breathing",
"Love is All"; world premiere); intermission; "And You and I"
(abbreviated), "I've Seen All Good People", "Change We Must",
"State of Independence", "Roundabout", "Soon"; encore: "Starship
Trooper", "State of Independence", outro jam. Anderson played
acoustic guitar as well as singing. Stefan Podell (worked
on Survival and
Other Stories) was one of the arrangers
of "Children Yet to Come" and he also co-wrote and arranged the
opening piece. (There is an ASCAP entry for a piece entitled
"Opening" by Anderson/Kardush-Podell, which may be this piece.
Another report has this piece as an extract of "Open" (see below).) The show was filmed in HD
for broadcast on HDNet, who have now become AXS TV (see promo
video here). The broadcast set omitted a few pieces:
"Starship Trooper", "Long Distance Runaround", "Music is God",
"Show Me", "Earth and Peace", "Big Buddah", "Owner of a Lonely
Heart", "And You and I", "I've Seen All Good People", "Change We
Must", "Roundabout", "Soon", "State of Independence". In a 13 Jul
2010 Facebook message, Anderson said, "the Cleveland DVD is
looking reaaly good....just finished mixing 12 songs...hope to get
them to you asap..."
The CYO gave copies of a (non-HD, 480p resolution) double DVD
(Region 1) of the show to those donating to the CYO in late 2012.
This was then put on sale more generally on 2 Jan 2013 entitled
"State of Independence: Jon Anderson and the Contemporary Youth
Orchestra" (Artistic Prophet Studios), also with a documentary
with artist Steven Kelso on his work with Anderson, including a
video tour of his work for Songs of Zamran
and about the organisation of the concert. This release appears to
have been put together by or with Kelso. This was a small-scale
release, on DVD-Rs rather than mass produced DVDs, and there have
been complaints about the quality of the audio. However, this DVD
and artwork by Kelso celebrating his collaboration with Anderson
have now been removed from sale. This appears to be following a
complaint from Anderson about the legitimacy of the release.
Anyone with more details about this, please e-mail me.
In Dec 2019, Anderson uploaded to YouTube
audio for "Music is the God of Love", performed with the CYO
on 24 May 2010.
Anderson appeared at the Tribute to Freedom Concert in Bratislava, Slovak Rep., in Aug 2009. Anderson performed a solo set (in no particular order): "Yours is no Disgrace", "Long Distance Runaround", "Roundabout", "Your Move", "Starship Trooper" (excerpt). He then performed with a band led by Peter Machajdík (keys); set (in no particular order): "Count Your Blessings", "Nous Sommes du Soleil", "Music is God", "I'll Find my Way Home", "Polonaise", "State of Independence", "And You and I" (abbreviated arrangement), "Close to the Edge" and "Sadness of Flowing" (excerpt; from Machajdík's album, Namah); encore: "Owner of a Lonely Heart", "Soon". The band included Machajdík (keys), Miki Skuta (ex-Capella Istropolitana; piano), Juraj Burian (ex-Klobása; guitar), Oskar Rózsa (Marian Varga; bass), Martin Valihora (ex-IMT Smile, ex-Midi, ex-Prúdy; drums), Eugen Prochac (cello), Jozef Luptak (cello), Jan Slavik, Marian Varga and Prazsky Vyber II. Three tracks ("Count Your Blessings", "I'll Find My Way Home", "Close to the Edge") were broadcast on the Slovak national TV channel in Nov 2009. In a Jun 2011 interview, Anderson said they have made a DVD of this show and that, "It's going to come out this summer [2011], I think." It has yet to appear. In an Aug 2009 interview, Machajdík quotes Anderson as saying he wants to continue working with this line-up of musicians, who he said played at least as well as Yes, and he would like to do a tour with them in 2010. While that didn't happen, a second show along similar lines took place in Aug 2012 in London. Anderson and Machajdík were planning further collaborations (see below).
Zamran and other Olias-related projectsIn an interview with Prog magazine (#153, Sep 2024), Anderson talked about Zamran: "it's over three hours long. I'm very lucky to be working with an Irish videomaker, Michael Byrne [see above], who might take into something with a multimedia slant. [...] [Zamran] has worked out to be a long piece of music with long-form musical and lyrical ideas. It's about the Earth Mother and how we can wake up and dream better [...] It was Zamran and now it's all part of another project, Opus Opus [see above]. It's all crashing together." In an Oct 2024 interview about Olias of Sunhillow, Anderson described how for years people would ask him if he was doing a follow-up to that album:I've been working on a follow-up to Olias of Sunhillow. And I've studied ideas and written down ideas and I've got four hours of music. And it's driving me crazy! I want to try and put it together in a totally different manner, along with other stories that I put music to. It's become a collection of ideas and how you can put it together again and... who knows? I'll just keep my fingers crossed that, over the next couple of years, I will be able to present Zamran, which is the son of Olias, and it'll happen when it happens.
I said, '[...] I don't think I want to go through that stuff again!' And here I am going through that stuff again, with the son of Olias, I'm actually creating that. And I've found the pathway now, it took me four or five years to discover the path, and by listening to Olias, I realised all I've got to do really – not all I've got to do – but what I've got to do is uh lose that sense of that album, soundwise and tonal wise and everything, just take it into the next step, and it'll be a four-part project, probably lasting four hours, five hours or something like that, over a period of a couple years. So I've now found the path to Zaman. I'm going to call it The path to Zaman.Work on the project dates back to 2000 and the original conception appears to have been for Anderson to record the album solo, as with the original Olias. However, subsequently, various previously separate projects seem to have been re-directed into Zamran, including various online collaborations and Dream Dancing (a planned album with Fritze Heede). How these different sources of material will be used is unknown; there is clearly more than one album's worth of material. Various previews and samples of music have come to and gone from social media over the years.
[...]
I'm jumping right into to it at this moment. [...] I reckon by next summer, I'll have everything ready for the Chapter One, coming out, sometime, I'm not going to say when, but I think I know what the first part of it is
here I am, [...] with the son of Olias. I'm actually creating that. And I found the pathway now. It took me four or five years to discover the path and, by listening to Olias [the original album], I realised all I've got to do really – not all I've got to do – but what I've got to do is not lose that, that sense of that album, sound wise and tonal wise and everything, just take it into the next step. And it will be a four-part project, probably lasting four hours, five hours, something like that, over a period of a couple years. So I've now found the path to Zamran. I'm going to call it The Path to Zamran.Anderson gave an extensive update on the project in a late Jul 2022 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock:
[...]
I'm jumping right into it at this moment and, uh, I reckon by next summer [2023?], I'll have everything ready for the chapter one, coming out some time. I'm not going to say when, but I think I know what the first part of it is.
I've just finished five hours of music, about two weeks ago, and it's [...] completely off-the-wall stuff. [...] It's going to be called Zamran: Son of Olias. Now, Zamran is the word I came up with 10 years ago [...]The interviewer responded, "It's in sight then. It exists." To which Anderson replied:
For years, I've used it over and over again, as an idea. I've worked with a dozen people around the world, musically speaking, to help to put it all together and it all came together over the past two years – because like most people, [...] you had to stay away from the COVID and everything. I just worked 20 hours a day on it. I don't know what it is yet. I'm still trying to figure out why it is and all that. [...] I know why I've done it and I know what it's about, but putting it into words that make sense is another story.
It exists [...] It's four and a half hours long. It's getting to be five hours. [Laughs.] [...] I'm actually mixing in surround sound, and not many people have surround sound at home. So it's a shame really, because ... you know, a lot of people have it on their television. So every song, every second of the music is visualized by a friend of mine in Ireland called Micky Byrne, who's done videos for everything. To me, it's just a trip – a very crazy, wonderful, long trip. I'm just trying to decide how to put it into sections.He also said in the interview that he put a piece from Zamran called "Puzzle" on his Facebook page. This doesn't appear to be on Facebook, but presumably is a reference to "Puzzle 3", uploaded to YouTube in Jun 2022. (I'm uncertain if there's any connection to the "Opus Puzzle Pieces" on Patreon.)
I've been creating this music relating to what I call Zamran — the path of Zamran, which is just a word for the evolution of the planet earth, the ancient days before the human experience, any why these incredible structures were created way, way before the human experience. Where did it come from, where did the energy come from, and what did it all mean?He explained further:
The 'Son of Olias' has become the 'Sun of Olias,' because the Sun is the Zamran energy which created the light. We are from the sun, it's our god energy, our force field, and we still haven't figured out how to use it properly and that's why we're stuck with petrol. [...] I was talking to a friend here in my studio just the day before yesterday, and I said, 'Yeah, it's a puzzle. I've got to create a puzzle.'In a Mar 2023 interview, Anderson talked about the word "Zamran" came to him: "I thought about the word Zamran [...] and I had no idea what it meant [...] So I Googled Zamran. It's very interesting what Zamran means. It's a Middle Eastern word for the centre of all things [note: I can't find anything to support this], in [...] relative consciousness thinking. The centre of all things is Zamran. And we are all the centre of all things, our little selves, because we are everyone, you see. [...] We are collectively, around the world, everyone [...] a lot of people are starting to understand that as well. And we will grow and our state of consciousness will wake us up a little bit more to the reality of who we truly are, and why we're here".
[...] that's what it's going to be, a gigantic puzzle. I'm not going to release another album [...]
Instead, I'm just going to release all the music I've made over the last few years in various formats — downloads, singles, videos and so on. There's five hours of it [Zamran], and anybody who can piece it all together in its original form will get an hour with me on Zoom. It's a big puzzle.
I'm up to about two hours of music [...] I still haven't figured out how to project it. I know what it is. I can sense what it should be. Having done about three or four different versions of each song, it still hasn't become clear how to project it, like, "part one of a seven part piece." It's a wonderful, exciting jigsaw puzzle. But some time I've just gotta let go and go on with other stuff. It gets to the point where I'll spend two weeks solidly on Zamran. [...] [It's about] this intensity helping to create some of the structure of the planet Earth. [...] there's a structure within planet Earth made up of crystal streams called Ley Lines. It's an interesting observation that mother Earth is an almighty computer.In an Aug 2020 livestreamed event, Anderson said:
I'm [...] working on music now that I've been promising to finish myself for 15 years for my son [...] He's been asking me for 20 years now, basically, 'Why don't you do Son of Olias, dad?' [...] So I started writing it 15 years ago and it's slowly but surely... Now, it's coming through. And there are times [...] if you just don't feel right about it, you put it to one side again [...] So, this is music that I've had for 15 years because... I'm still building on it. I was actually writing last week some parts, new parts to it and now it seems to be forming itself, without me pressuring the album to be created. Y'know, I know exactly what it's about. It's about [...] the idea that the, er, actual planet, Mother Earth, is made up of this incredible crystal stream energy—they call it ley linesHe continued, "It's something that I do, study these crazy things. So I'm trying to modify and use it, as though the streams, the crystal streams, were created by light beings. [...] I'm getting a bit crazy now, sorry. But light beings have always been around this planet. They're still around. They're in the fourth, fifth dimension. We call them fairies and devic worlds". In another Aug 2020 video, Anderson said he was currently working on the project. He described Damion suggesting he do son of Olias 15 years ago. He continued, "It's all about the creation of the planet Earth [...] It was something that I started doing, then doing, then stopping, then doing, then stop, and now I have about 4 hours of ideas. And it's very hard to piece them together, because it's not ready yet, you see? It's like baking a cake [...] it's not ready until it's ready. Be careful, you don't want to burn it." In this Aug 2020 interview, he said, with a grin, that Zamran will "come out in the next 20 years. [shrugs] When I get my head around it!"
Zamran will happen sometime in the upcoming year [2019]. We already have what you would call a version of that album. But it’s like an app. You have this app, and you can go into different levels of songs I’ve written and worked on over the years. Plus there are a bunch of new songs and stories. It’s like the encyclopedia of my brain!
In an Aug
2016 interview, seemingly conducted in Jul or earlier,
Anderson said, "The next big [project] will be next year [2017]
[...] probably next summer, when I release the Zamran project
[...] an all-encompassing project, relating to 6 interrelated
projects that I've been writing over the last 10 years. [laughs]
Doesn't sound real, but it is." In a Jul 2016
interview, Anderson referred to the project, saying,
"Putting it together is part and parcel of all this music I've
been writing over the past 12 years now. And it's just a large
amount of musical ideas that all seem to interweave with each
other. And, er, work. And now it's a question of how do I put it
out there". The idea is the "music is everlasting, music is
forever and music is timeless. That's the whole concept. And it's
a lot to do with the Golden Mean". (I think Anderson means the Golden Ratio.)
In a Mar
2016 interview, Anderson said Conrad was working on
visualisations. He continued, "We've done rough ideas of being
able to create four, four to five hours of music [...] every time
you go to the app... application, you can go on different musical
journeys every time you go there. You don't have to just listen to
the album over and over. You can do that, but also you can listen
to all the al... all the music of all the albums at the same time
like a long journey, every time you go. [...] with visuals, and
computer animation, there's storytelling and, uh, information
about the world and the planet and how things work. [...] Once we
set up the project, it runs the rest of my life and I continue to
add music to it every year. It's an ongoing exploration of musical
ideas, erm... storytelling and information that comes through the
Internet from, yeah, things that I see and read about, I explain
in the project. So people who join the experience and be able to
learn as much as I'm learning every month [...] yesterday,
I was learning about the future of holography and it was incredible,
so I will put this into my project, and people then will spend
time listening to music, reading, looking at art and at the same
time learning what I'm learning".
It's been in the works for now 6 years, 7 years. Um, I'm actually up to 5 hours of music […] There's a guy, a friend of mine in Poland, who's doing some visualisation of it, er, computerisation and we're going to try to put it out as an app that people can go in there and, er, go on as many journeys as they like, mussical journeys, visual journeys, information journeys, like a library of information.In an Apr 2013 interview for YesFANZ, Anderson described the project thus:
its an ongoing procession of ideas and musical events [...] its getting clearer as to how it all shapes and how it comes and how it works. [...] It sort of very, very connected to the origination and development of the Earth Mother and how it works. It is sort of a very powerful idea and the more I worked on it the more I realised that it should be a large scale piece, and I have said this before, but I'm up to about 3 or 4 hours of music at the moment with songs. So I am just waiting until it all fits together like a big jigsaw puzzle and hopefully I will be able to visualise it as well, like an app will probably be the best way of putting the music out because it is a long stream of music over a period of time.The interviewer, Brian Draper, responded by saying, "So a similar approach to the piece you put out last year [2012], Open?" To which Anderson's response was: "Yeah, its something like that but not quite (laughs)." While a Mar 2013 interview had this:
I shouldn’t have said anything about it until I’d finished it, but it’s going to take another couple of years to finish. It’s nearly four hours of music as we speak and I’m just trying to figure out how to present it, you know, because I just don’t want to put it out on the internet on iTunes; I want to put it out as a visual experience. I have a couple of very good, talented filmmakers and there’s music from North Africa, a lot of music from Asia, a lot of music from Europe and some music from South America, so it’s sort of a constant evolvement of music.And also:
There’s some incredible computer animation out there [...] I’m just very interested in working with that medium as well, with the music and songwriting and what the songs mean and how it locates and relates to the earth, and the earth as Mother.Around Oct/Nov 2012, a website for the project appeared using the name Zamran Experience and including a 3:05 sample from the album entitled "Sing to Me" (music credited to Anderson and Jamie Dunlap, design & animation by Chris Nogiec at SevenDragons.org). This describes the project as an "audio-visual on-line concept album by Jon Anderson. A journey filled with music, stories and visuals. A true library of information about worlds of Zamran". The song was also at one point trailed as to appear on Ever (see above). On 12 Jul 2019, the song was put on YouTube, with visuals by Michael Byrne (see above for more about Anderson and Byrne).
I have written with a lot of musicians through the internet, including with a guy in Australia and someone from France and America. It is a slow process. It will happen when it happensAnderson also makes an enigmatic comparison to "Open", saying, "'Open' is a 22-minute work and it explains where I am going musically and how Zamram will enventually appear." Quite what this means is unclear. In a Feb 2013 Facebook post, Anderson said, "I'm writing music as usual, I think I might have Zamran nearly figured out.....songs galore, music everywhere..." On Facebook on 1 Dec 2014, Anderson said: "I keep myself busy working on the Zamran project".
Kelso and Baez held a series of exhibition of
Zamran and "Fiefdom of
Angels" (see below) art. There was also a
small exhibition of art by Kelso at Anderson's show with the
Contemporary Youth Orchestra (see above),
covered by a short
documentary
available here. In that video, Kelso says, "Jon has a lot of
work coming out from many different people, so... er... we've got
the website coming up soon, we have the music, new album".
Back in a Jul 2005 interview, asked what he was currently up to, Anderson replied, inter alia, "working with this dude 'Chris at his Polish Animation company and A Canny dude in Scotland, and Brad in South Bend .....and this guy John Banks who is perfect for my stories etc.........all these guys are very happening in the Art world..a lot of this work is based on the next 'OLIAS' saga..." (Anderson has also been working on other projects with John Banks; see below.) In a Dec 2005 interview for Delicious Agony, Anderson said he was working on "the next 40 minutes of new music, which is the beginning of maybe 6 episodes of the return of, not Olias, but the son of Olias, who's Zamran." In that interview, Anderson describes having written a story outline of about 20 pages. He again talked about working with animators on the project. Anderson put out a call on his website for animators: "Jon Anderson is seeking talented animators to help him with one of his upcoming solo projects, which he describes as a "return to Olias". If you are an animator capable of producing professional-quality 3D and graphics animation, this may be an opportunity to gain international exposure for your work." In the Jan 2005 Rockline interview, Anderson said he was working with six animators on a project, presumably the same one.
The relationship between 'The Big If' and The Songs of Zamran is complex. In a post to his MySpace page in Aug 2006, Anderson said: "All this new work has been evolving for many years under the title, "the Big If". Eventually it will be known as, "The songs of Zamran". (Son of Olias)." However, other comments have suggested that 'The Big If' or elements of it have a separate existence to The Songs of Zamran. Anderson has long talked about a sequel to Olias of Sunhillow, both in the sense that Anderson is playing all the instruments again but also in terms of continuing the story. In a Feb 2005 interview, Anderson said he's been working on the project for two months and that it will take "two or three years to finish it". In an Oct 2005 ProgRockRadio.com interview, Anderson said, "I'm starting next year [2006] with the second installment of that idea, so for the next two or three years I'll be doing sort of the Return of Olias and the Songs of Zamran, which is the son of Olias and the next step in the evolvement of the planet." (In reported remarks to a fan in 2004, Anderson described the Olias project as actually a prequel to Olias of Sunhillow, although that seems incompatible with the repeated references to a son for Olias.) In his Aug 2004 MSN Chat, Anderson said: "I'm working on trying very hard to piece together this large jigsaw puzzle of music that I've been working on for the last 10 years. It will become, hopefully, a DVD or a series of DVDs. It's a lot of music, it will happen. It's Olias' Return." In a late 2003 interview in iO Pages, Anderson said the project would not be finished for three years (so, 2006). He has also said that the album is planned as the first in an ongoing series and, in Jun 2003, "If I do it right, this project will just continue, and it'll be the next ten years or so of my life"; "In my head I can see and understand everything about this project and how the stories should be told, but to put it all down in the proper order is a challenge."
Interviews going back some years refer to this/these project(s). In one from around Oct 2001, Anderson said: "I've been working on this piece of music for a year now [...] I did [...] "Olias of Sunhillow" where I performed all the music, and I'm getting back to that place again." Asked whether this would represent a sequel to Olias..., he continued, "Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out as we speak. It has a lot to do with the mysticism that surrounds us. We're going to go through a period now, because of the Lord of the Rings movie coming out. There will be a lot of interest in the mysticism of life and things like that." In a NftE interview seemingly done in 1999, Anderson said: "I've been working on [a] project for a couple of years and that's going to be the next one. It's going to take me another year to fulfill what it is and figure it out and then I think I want to record everything myself, like the Olias album. I want to go back to that point in time and reinvent that whole idea of a pure solo album and do it that way."
On tour in Mar 2010, Anderson said he is looking into playing the
whole of Olias at some
point in the future. In Apr 2010 on Facebook, Anderson said, "I
also met a guy called Stefan , he wants to perform 'Olias' with a
full orchestra and choir next year [2011], amazing thoughts...I
met him, and he is very talented..." Stefan is a classical pianist
based in South America. At a show in Sep 2010, he hinted at "next
year [2011], or maybe the year after [2012]" playing Olias with live a group of
musicians. In the Jun
2011-published
interview, Anderson said: "I'm actually going to perform it
[Olias of Sunhillow] next
year [2012] with an ensemble, a group of people [...] and an
orchestrator out of San Francisco. They want to do a production of
it and I think, "Go ahead. I'll get up and sing it." And ...
poof!" Stefan has now joined forces with this rock group led by Thomas Deis
as Project
Moorglade to work on live shows with Anderson. In May
2011 on Facebook, Anderson talked about what seems to be a
different possible collaboration along similar lines, working with
classical pianist Stephen
Prutsman (who performs a version of "Sound Chaser" in
recitals). He said:
Stephen Prutsman, quite amazing
work....we have become friends l, he came to our home a month
agao, and suggested OLIAS as a possible concert with Orchestra
and Choir and visuals.., I heard him play songs from Olias...I
was truly excited about the idea
In the Aug
2011 interview, Anderson said: "there's a group of musicians
out of Philadelphia who are working on Olias. And they sent me five of the songs
yesterday, and they're sounding so amazing. They want me to
perform them with them when they finish the whole album. So maybe
late next year [2012] I'll be performing Olias for Christmas!" He then adds:
My dream next year [2012] is to
perform “Awaken” in three different places. In London,
I’ll be doing it with those people who are doing Olias.
I talked about it with a friend of mine Thomas Diaz [Deis] who is one of the guys that's going to be helping with [a] company of people [...] It[']s just a question of finding a good promoter, producer to help put it together because it costs quite a bit of money to put on a show that it might just be a one-off experience and its just a question of putting it together and making a DVD, maybe in 3-D or something with the right visualisations and everything, it could be amazing, so it might take another year or so before it happens but why not?Deis (on electric sitar) was involved with a Jun 2013 live performance of the album, opened by Anderson remotely via Skype and using a recording of him for "To the Runner", at UMass Lowell: see complete show on YouTube.
Anderson has also launched Olias-themed jewellery, available here.
In an Oct
2009
interview, Anderson said:
I have a violin concerto with
my friend, Bill. It's a wonderful story about a street violin
player who finds a big case in a dumpster when he was looking
for food. Inside it has a crystal violin and when he plays it,
it transports him to a different place and time in the world. I
have a few things I'm going to finish up in the next year
[2010]. One is an opera about The Alchemist. Wonderful book.
Over Christmas [2006], the Mormon Tabernacle Choir [link] sang a song of mine from an album called "Change We Must," which I did with the London Chamber Orchestra. The guy that actually conducts and does the orchestration for the choir asked me if I would be interested in writing something, and it turns out I've had this piece of music for about 20 years and it's about singing to the children to come. Singing to the souls of the children in heaven who are gonna come and wake us up and make us realize how beautiful life truly is.In May 2010, Anderson explained that the collaboration did not pan out, but this project, called "For Children Yet to Come", re-emerged. The orchestral/choral piece, as "Children Yet to Come", was premiered live at Anderson's 24 May 2010 orchestral show (see above), consisting of 4 movements: "Children Yet to Come", "Earth Singing", "Breathing", "Love is All" (adagio, about Anderson's two recent near-death experiences and how his wife's love brought him through).
In a Feb 2013 interview, Anderson described how he "always wanted to play and sing in China" and again described the archaeological discovery of instruments, before concluding, "I went to China and I was going to work there, but the guy that was financing it smoked too much marijuana I think (laughs)." A mid-2012 interview with Anderson had this: "Also on tap: The debut of a new album in Asia this summer. "It's a coordination of songs and tranquil ideas that have been hovering around me for the last couple of years[.]""
Chagall
and First Born
Anderson has long been working on a musical about the
artist Chagall, sometimes known as "The Color of Love" or "The
Story of Chagall". Less often, he has also mentioned another piece
he wrote around the same time, circa 1980, called "First
Born" about Daphne Charters' (1910-1991) experiences with fairies,
as described in her 1950s book "A True Fairy Tale". (In the Dec
2020 issue of Prog
magazine, he described how, after leaving Yes in Feb 1980
and before making Song of Seven, he made an album for
Virgin (who rejected it), with one side of the album being
"Chagall" and the other side being the fairy project.)
A Jan
2023 article described the genesis of the Chagall project,
recently:
Color of Love had been percolating in Anderson's mind since he met the legendary painter in the south of France in the late 1970s, a meeting arranged by the pair's mutual friend, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. "I met Chagall on his 90th birthday," Anderson said. "And we just kind of smiled a lot at each other." Anderson visited the artist at his home, where he would play guitar and sing for him, and soon was writing songs about Chagall's extraordinary life, aided by famous French pianist Jacques Loussier, winding up with about 20 minutes of music he envisioned as more of a ballet or dance piece.
Eventually, Anderson wound up in New York explaining his musical to Herman Krawitz at the American Ballet Theatre. "I can see it: All the art that he did, and music and dancing and singing and la da da," Anderson continued, recalling his pitch. "And then I realized behind him [...] was a photo of Chagall. So I said, 'Oh, you've got his photograph there,' and Herman says, 'Yes, I'm managing him.'" From there, the idea eventually evolved from a dance piece into a musical, and then into a multi-media experience utilizing projections of Chagall's paintings.
In his Oct 2024 interview with YesShift, Anderson explained he didn't know about Chagall when he went to the 90th birthday party with Wyman, who lived near to Chagall: "I didn't really know so much about him [Chagall], but within a month, I knew everything about him. And then I started writing songs about him. So, [I] made a musical that was finished maybe 30 years ago, and now, all of a sudden, I bumped into a couple of friends up in the wine country here [...] they just happened to be very interested in musicals, and I said I just happened to have a couple, y'know. So he's working on it at the moment and [...] working on theatre presentation next spring [2025], next summer, something like that, and even found this wonderful, wonderful guy who loves the idea of Chagall. "The Color of Love" is the project. His name's Kelsey Grammar and he's such a character, and a great singer, beautiful singer. So he's helping along the way." In the Mojo interview (published Jan 2024), Anderson said of the Chagall project, "I'm working on it again [...] and we're looking at a possible musical or film, The Story Of Chagall. Kelsey Grammar is interested, and has talked about directing it." In an interview with Prog magazine (#153, Sep 2024), Anderson told a similar story: "I bumped into a friend up in Napa [...] he asked me, 'Is there anything you've done [...] that you'd like to get finished?'" Anderson replied with the Chagall work: "Thankfully, he just happened to be a guy who liked Chagall's work and that's how it evolved as a project for performance. One of his friends is Kelsey Grammar, so he's got involved. [...] but it all takes time. [...] they're talking about doing a rendition of it next spring [2025]. Kelsey started singing a couple of the songs". On the Jon Anderson 1000 Hands Facebook page in Oct 2024 was posted: "Jon Anderson[']s friendship with legendary artist Marc Chagall has become a musical. It will hit the stage in the future. I [I think this is Michael Franklin writing] am very proud to have written and perform some of the music. The show will have music that spans Jon's career. I know once released it will be a must see event."
Anderson has been working on the book of the musical (that is, the spoken dialogue parts) with Quay Hays. Hays contacted then contacted San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Opera and Musical Theater Chair Heather Mathews, who organised a free student workshop by the SFCM entitled "Marc Chagall: The Color of Love", with selections from Anderson's work, on 22 Jan 2023. This is part of the SFCM Opera and Musical Theatre program. Mathews who explained in the Jan 2023 article, which was by SFCM, "I wanted to give students the experience of working on a new musical with a living composer in a very expedited fashion[.] They had the music, they had the book, but they only had five days, and singing over tracks like these is different from singing with an orchestra, so that was new for them as well."
The event webpage gave the credits as follows:
Music and lyrics by Jon Anderson
Created by Jon Anderson and William Quay Hays
Stage Director - Heather Mathews
Music Director - Lauren Mayer
Music Production - Eric Ronick
Cast:
Young Jon Anderson, Young Chagall - Seth Hanson
Chagall, ensemble - Kurt Winterhalter (alumni guest)
Mama, ensemble - Megan Mateosky
Young Bella, ensemble - Monica Slater
Bella, ensemble - Natalia Hulse
Young Vava, ensemble - Grace Craig
Vava, ensemble - Ashley Troester
Programme:
1. Prologue - Chagall's First Song, Jon Anderson
2. Twice Upon a Lifetime, Young Jon Anderson
3. The Nature of My Life, Young Chagall, Mama
4. Is It Love, Young Chagall, Young Bella
5. Mother Russia, Young Chagall, Young Bella, ensemble
6. For Evermore, Chagall, Bella
7. Such is the Man, Vava
8. Take Your Time, Young Vava, Chagall
9. Where Does Music Come From, Jon Anderson
10. Unbroken Spirit, Chagall
While such workshops often just use piano, pre-recorded tapes,
including with Anderson's vocals, were used. Mathews explained,
"[Anderson] has a very unique sound with a lot of electronics and
synthesizers, so a workshop with just piano would not have been
good enough. So we worked with Eric Ronick, who's a composer and
keyboardist who's worked with Panic! At the Disco, and he was very
instrumental in making the mix we used for the show that the
students sang over." Images of Chagall's painting were used in the
show, including two large projections. Projection design was by
Peter Crompton; projection mapping was by Frédèric Boulay.
Anderson's original demo of the album was leaked and has the
following track list, for comparison: Part 1:
Part 2:
The last two songs at the workshop appear to post-date this
earlier version. "Where Does Music Come From" is from 1000
Hands: Chapter One. "Unbroken Spirit" is a song
Anderson did with Jann Castor that was
released on
YouTube. Michael Franklin said
on Facebook (17 Jan 2023), "January 22nd is the release of
"The Color of Love", a musical of the life of artist Marc Chagall.
Performed by Jon Anderson. Tommy Calton and Michael Franklin
contributed to the music behind Jon's vocals. The song "Where Does
Music Come" written by Jon and me is used in it's [sic]
entirety."
In a Mar
2023 interview, Anderson described the performance as an
"abbreviated version" and that "now, we're thinking—fingers
crossed—to be able to go and perform it in a dome in, in Las
Vegas." In an Apr
2023 interview, he said, "we're in the brink of getting it
produced". He then continued:
We actually did a short performance of the project in San Francisco just a month ago. We’re testing the idea of it visually, musically. It was an abbreviated version, but it’s given us a lot of impetus to get on with it and possibly get it into production this year or next year.
An Aug
2020 article described Anderson as working on "Chagall".
Around 2016, he was in contact with Joe Curiale about Curiale
helping with orchestrations to finish the piece. Asked about
"Chagall" in a May 2018 interview for Mannheimer Morgen,
published in German, Anderson explained that the project still
fascinated him and so he wants to work on it further. He said that
he wanted to perform the work with an orchestra, choir and
dancers. In an Oct
2009
interview, he said:
In an Oct 2005 interview with Progressive Rock Radio, he said of "Chagall", "I created a sort of musical interpretation of his life. I should finish it! I know that a demo of the project got [bootlegged] I'm thinking of putting it out as it was originally recorded and finished 18 years ago [...] and then take it on the road as a new version. I'll probably release it next Spring [2006] and then hopefully [in 2007] I'd love to do a one-man show of the idea and that takes a lot of work." In a Dec 2005 interview for Delicious Agony, he talked of working on a "better quality production" of "Chagall" for 2006, but that he was seeking the required permission from Chagall's estate. Prior reports suggested it had undergone significant changes from the version widely bootlegged. In the Dec interview, Anderson talked of "First Born" and then continued, "There's Uzlot. There's about four or five different albums that have never got out there. So over the next couple of years, we're to release them, slowly, so people can build up a sort of library [of his music]." In the Dec 2005 interview with Anil Prasad of Innerviews, Anderson explained:
When I hit 60 I thought "I really gotta get stuff finished." I have the Chagall project which has never been projected onstage. I finished the recording 15 years ago and someone bootlegged it. Now, I'm thinking of putting out the correct version of it in 2006, along with another work I did at the same time which was about the fairy kingdom—the devic world—called First Born. The Fairies of the devic world are the interdimensional light beings that surround us and our world. We live in a world where they say there are eight specific dimensions and we're living in the third dimension, moving into the fourth. The fairies and devic beings are moving from the fourth dimension to the fifth. What's helping us move from the third to the fourth is computer-laser energyIn an interview for Exposé, Anderson had said:
I'm going to put that ["Chagall"] out too. I never wanted it to come out, but it's already out there bootlegged. A very bad copy was stolen from my studio so I'm going to put that out along with [...] a sort of children's fairy tale about a musical kingdom. It's kind of beautiful, funny and a little quirky. I'm going to put that out at the same time.Further projects
I`ve been working on recordings of the great Yes music using midi files to produce Yes with some teenagers singing all of the songs. It sounds unbelievable. The purists won`t like it which is OK but this is to introduce Yes to young people of the 21st century with very cosmic sounds. [...] I`m doing some mixing at the moment. I think we`re going to call it 21st Century Yes and we`ll be doing visuals for it as well. We`ll probably release it on the internet on You Tube or something so people can just find it and watch it.Soon after, on 1 Jul 2017, he likewise made available a song entitled "The Gift" for a project called Nathaniel. This appears to be a collaboration, but further details have not been forthcoming.
I wrote the symphonic piece about 20 years ago. [...] it's all in demo form, it's keyboards and very ready to be performed by a full orchestra when the time comes. And then I wrote a piece for [...] a choir, and singing with an orchestra. That's something else that I was working on. And there are so many different kinds of orchestral pieces. Generally working on keyboards. [...] Even about two months ago, I started writing on a different level that I never tried before, and so I sort of broke through a barrier, musically speaking, in my mind anyway, and that will take another two, three years to evolve correctly, until that time comes when I can get together with the right people to be able to produce it correctly.He then gave the example of how the music on Invention of Knowledge was from songs written 10 years before.
Although the planned context isn't very clear, Anderson has
repeatedly talked of late of writing Yes-style music. In a May
2011 interview, he said: "now I'm writing a piece that's in
that sort of classic Yes style. It'll be ready for the summer and
I'll put it out there on the internet. [...] It should be done
next month when I come off this [solo] tour [which ends 25 May]."
He has also talked about re-visiting older Yes material. A Jul
2011 interview describes how:
Anderson has "over an hour's worth of music from Yes from the old days that I'm revising and looking at," primarily in acoustic versions. "I think modern musicians do that," Anderson explains. "Music is very flexible." A possible outlet for these new treatments of the songs, he adds, may be online and via special apps.A Mar 2010 interview says of Anderson, " has on the go are two operas and three musicals." Indeed, Anderson has referred to multiple different projects in interviews and it can be difficult working out how these all relate. Anderson said in an interview with German magazine Eclipsed in late Nov 2007 that he would be releasing 6 albums on his own label in 2007 that will be available in selected stores or for download ("Ich habe auf eigenem Label 2007 satte sechs Alben veröffentlicht, die man sich in ausgesuchten Laden kaufen oder downloaden kann."). He goes on to describe these as "Ethno-Music" influenced by different world cultures ("Eine Art Ethno-Musik, die von den unterschiedlichsten Ecken dieser Welt und ihren Kulturen geprägt ist."), but that it is not for classical Yes fans ("Es ist nichts, was dem klassischen Yes-Fan gefällt, dafür ist es zu wenig symphonisch."). I presume he is referring to his Opio label on Voiceprint and is including re-releases: Voiceprint re-released 3 Ships and had two more re-releases in early 2008 (see below) followed by a new release (possibly of archival nature) in From Me to You, part of The Lost Tapes collection, in the middle of 2008. However, what further albums Anderson meant is unknown. Further back is this quote from Record Collector (Jan 2002): "Anderson revealed that he has no fewer than five album projects on the back burner". A late 2003 interview with iO Pages suggested that his next solo album would be a piano and vocals album some time in 2004. Anderson was quoted in Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in Oct 2001 as saying that he would be releasing a rock solo album in 2002. However, in Record Collector (Jan 2002), he talked of his "next" solo album as being recorded with the London Chamber Orchestra. I remain unclear on how all these relate to each other. The rock style reported by Gazeta Wyborcza suggests a different project to Record Collector's with the London Chamber Orchestra. However, the rock album of Gazeta Wyborcza could refer to the Anderson/Crow project. The piano and vocals album might possibly tie in with the London Chamber Orchestra album. Anderson's tendency to talk about projects at early stages of development should be kept in mind. A more recent report describes an unfinished Anderson project from some years back of material in a "rock and roll style", including the song "Sweet Religion", which was performed live in 1993 solo shows.
"The Big If" material reportedly has some sort of theme running through what has been written already and future planned material, although the precise nature of that remains unclear. In an interview published in Jan 2004, Anderson described the album as being an hour long song cycle. Anderson has also talked about writing more autobiographical lyrics, like "Tony and Me" about his brother, while an Oct 2003 interview reports a slightly different slant:
His next solo album, Anderson says, will consist of long musical pieces with lyrics based on his observations of and relationship with the natural world.Reports in more recent years haven't mentioned "The Big If", with the focus having moved to Zamran and various collaborations. That was until an Aug 2018 interview (conducted late Jul) had this from Anderson:"I think the lyrics I've been writing have been close to the first albums but more refined," he says. "I think that more than anything, I come from the hippie world of peace, love and forgiveness. [...] I'm working more in the spiritual sense of being."
I’m actually working on a piece yesterday with a friend of mine in Australia and when we started it, it was called ‘The Big If.’ I had this big idea for ‘The Big If.’ If is right in the middle of life, you know, the word ‘life’? And then, I found out there’s a book about it called The Big If and it was just minds thinking the same thing at the same time. We did all of this music and then the guy sadly, had a sort of mental breakdown. He was very confused about this and that. Then we linked up again three months ago! Yesterday, I was composing some music with him.In an interview published at the beginning of Sep 2018, Anderson again referred to "working on something with a friend from Australia".
It's a very simple idea. Hillary gets to become President and [...] on the first night she sleeps in the White House. She has a visistation from all the children in Vietnam that were killed [...] all the children of the wars, and all the children of the [...] terrible, er, destruction of the Native American culture. And they come to visit her, and they sing for her, and dance for her. And she eventually becomes this, er, very evolved women within the space of one night, so she goes and starts speaking to the press the following day and they freak out [laughs] because she starts to change the world.Asked how far along the project is, Anderson explains:
I actually wrote with this guy, Jeremy, and it's been very hard to pin him down. We wrote probably three quarters of the work and then I couldn't find him, he never wrote back to me, he had another life going on [...] I actually sent a near-finished piece to a company in North Carolina because they were interested in working on the project. This was [...] when she was running for President against Obama. And, you know, you go through these things, and try these things out, and if it happens, great, and if it doesn't, hey, it wasn't meant to be. Or it will happen when it happens.It is unclear whether this is Jeremy Cubert who wrote a song used on Survival and Other Stories and The Living Tree with Wakeman. Anderson also referred to a Jeremy doing piano transcriptions for him: see here.
With Andrew Rubin
Andrew Rubin (Facebook;
worked with Tommy Shaw, Contemporary Youth Orchestra) is
a young guitarist who met Anderson around 2009, aged 13. Anderson
has been mentoring Rubin and suggested he wrote a guitar concerto,
citing Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" as an example. The two
co-composed just that and the piece for two guitars and orchestra,
orchestrated by Rubin, was premiered live by Rubin (performing on
one of Anderson's acoustic guitars) and the San Luis Chamber
Orchestra, conducted by Jim Riccardo, on 25 Oct 2015 as part of a
larger programme by the orchestra including two pieces performed
with folk-pop band Shadowlands, Aaron Copland's "Outdoor Overture"
and Robert Schumann's "Symphony No. 1". (Anderson was not present,
touring with the Anderson Ponty Band at the time.) A digital release
through Bandcamp followed 1 Oct 2016. Tracks for Guitar
Concerto by Andrew Rubin and Jon Anderson are:
With Fritz Heede and John S Banks
Anderson was collaborating with composer Fritz Heede (MySpace page) and
artist John S Banks. Banks
has previously worked with Anderson, including visuals for his solo touring, and those visuals appear on
a new DVD from Banks and Heede: "Ritual
Path" (Artek Images,
distr. Koch Entertainment). The
DVD, a sequel to their
"Illuminated Manuscripts" DVD, is about an hour long. It contains 10 tracks of images to music and an
additional 14 environmental loops, all in 5.1 Dolby Surround
Sound. Music is by Heede; Anderson
wrote lyrics for and sings on "Come By (Waterfall
Ascent/Descent)" (dur. 4:08), used for the short film
"Ascent/Descent". An accompanying 14-track soundtrack CD (Aeon
of Horus Music/Magical Eye Records) is out. The other vocalists
on the project are Heede's wife Nijole Sparkis
(singing and co-writing plus loops, on 3 pieces), kaRIN (Collide)
and Molly Pasutti (worked with Spock's
Beard).
Heede and Anderson co-wrote an album called Dream Dancing (previously going under the working title of Trance-scendent Dance), with Heede (guitars, piano, sitar, electronics, vocals), Anderson (layered vocal rhythms), Gilbert Levy (ethnic percussion), Suzanne Teng (native flutes), Terry Glenny (violin), Sparkis (choral background singing, vocal arrangements, engineering and possibly some songwriting), Pasutti (choral background singing). Heede described the album to me as "The album will not be traditional trance music (rave) ... it is much more sophisticated. It is groove-based so it will have a natural uninterrupted flow. The songs develop over long arches with Jon sing[ing] a dozen or so layers of pulsing rhythmic chants." The album, with at least four tracks, was announced for 2009 on Voiceprint, billed as by 'Jon Anderson with music by Fritz Heede', with an accompanying DVD in 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound also planned. This is presumably the project(s) Anderson first mentioned in 2004: in his MSN Chat of Aug that year, he talked about 'trance' music, but seemingly in the context of a Yes project (see under Yes news), while in an interview from circa May 2004, he said:
I was talking to a guy an hour ago about a project I've had in my head all summer [...] I'm getting into trance music [...] Not rave but trance. [...] it's going to be very exotic and it's going to be transforming and transcendental. [...] I heard about this great music from India that lasts seven days. I love that, that it would last so long. And I start thinking, that's what I should do!Heede, Anderson and an engineer were expected to be mixing the album in Jan 2008. Previously, in Aug 2007, Heede wrote: "Last may I finished mixing my version of the tra[n]ce album. Jon and I then brought in Jamie Dunlap [worked on "South Park"; link] to work on remix versions with more young "hip" dance grooves. Jamie has done some very exciting re[n]ditions". ASCAP and BMI have registrations for four pieces entitled "Trance Singing 1" to "Trance Singing 4" by Anderson/Heede, which may have been from this project, possibly suggesting it was close to release. However, in Apr 2010, Heede said that the finished album was now being re-structured as a sequel to Olias of Sunhillow. How this relates to other work on the Zamran album is unclear, but see above for details.
With son
Damion
A Jun 2011
interview had this exchange:
Anderson: Me and my son, Damion, we’re writing
songs together as we speak.
Interviewer: [...] Will
the writing that you’re doing with Damion be on the next two
albums [following Survival
& Other Stories].
Anderson: More than
likely, yeah. I think so.
And in a Sep
2011 interview, Anderson says, "I'm working with my son on a
couple of new songs."
With
Alessandro De Rosa
Anderson has talked about an opera based on "The Alchemist",
although work evolved away from that description. The project was
written by Italian composer/arranger/guitarist/promoter Alessandro De Rosa
(worked with Ennio Morricone), who co-wrote "Music is
God" with Anderson. De Rosa describes the piece as a "a symphonic
– theatr[ic]al poem"; he composed the music with Anderson
contributing vocal melodies and lyrics. De Rosa continued on his
webpage, which included a 5 minute sample of the music:
Internet collaborators
In 2006 and 2007, Anderson's websites requested submissions from
people interest in collaborating with him. The first, in Aug 2006,
read, "Jon Anderson is looking for fresh talent! Specifically, he
seeks Symphonic and World Music keyboard players and orchestrators
to contribute to an array of musical projects he is planning." In Jul 2007, Anderson announced on his webpage:
A while back, we posted a message calling on keyboard players to contact us if they were interested in collaborating with Jon. The response was tremendous, and as a result Jon is currently working with a number of excellent musicians on some exciting new musical projects.Jon [...] is now inviting additional "Symphonic and World Music keyboard players and orchestrators" to submit samples of their work for possible collaboration.
Jon has also started work on three large-scale choral projects and a work he calls a "rap opera", so he has expanded his search to talented choral singers and rap producers as well!
In an interview for the May/Jun 2007 issue
of the Classic Rock
Society magazine, Anderson talked about the results of the
first call: "I was lucky that in November last year [2006] I put
an advert on my website, 'Keyboard players wanted.' I finished up
with 15 really good keyboard players and am now working with
somebody in Switzerland, somebody in Italy, somebody in France,
somebody in Canada, 3 or 4 guys in the USA, couple of great guys
in England. One guy called Neil Campbell [link; MySpace
page] and we're writing a large piece of music [...]
He's a beautiful musician and we are working on something all
about inventions. It's very cosmic music. He's actually playing in
Liverpool with a young orchestra and choir; he's just running
through it to see how it sounds."(The work with Campbell has now
been used in Invention of Knowledge: see
above.) Anderson has repeatedly talked about continuing to
work with a large number of people online from around the world.
For example, in this Jun
2012 interview, he said, "Currently, 'm working with a
couple dozen people around the world. Writing music with people
anywhere from North Africa, France, Australia, New Zealand. Some
guys from LA." And in an Aug
2014 interview:
I write music constantly. I opened the door on my website once [...] six, seven years ago. I got in touch with a couple of dozen players and I’m still working with some of them on different projects: musicals, music for children, some symphonic work.Likewise, in the Jul 2015 Prog interview, he says, "Right now I'm diving into different internet projects like crazy. [...] I'm making music with people in Italy, Poland, Romania, France, Holland. I have this constant flow of working relationships." In an Apr 2016 interview for the Daily Double radio show, Anderson likewise said, "I work with people all over the world on the Internet." In a Feb 2019 interview, Anderson described this process of collaborating with people online as "ongoing". He continued, "In the last 20 years [of this process], I've got maybe... Probably around 50 songs that I think are really genuinely interesting and quite wonderfully produced by these wonderful people who live in... one guy lives in Romania, a couple of guys in Italy, three guys in Holland, one guy in Brazil, and so on." In a Jul 2019 interview, Anderson said:
I put an ad on my website: “Musicians Wanted” and got hundreds of replies. I said send me music and I will get back to the people I could. I got back to a dozen or so people… and I’m still in touch with them. We create music on an open level. It’s not business.In an Aug 2020 interview, talking about his online collaborations, Anderson said, "I'm just finishing something that I worked with this wonderful guy in Holland." He continued, "Over a period of 10 years, I've been working on so many different ideas of music [...] At times you wonder... when is it ready to be released to the people that understand what I do, 'cause sometimes you haven't got record companies interested in certain things". In an Apr 2021 interview, Anderson said, "I got hundreds of people sending me one minute of their music, and I liked a lot of it. It was, "Send me a minute of your music, and if I like it, I'll get back to you" sort of thing. I picked out a couple dozen to start with, and that created a network of people, and a lot of them, around this music that I want to release maybe next year [2022] -- probably not this year [2021], but you never know."
[...]
I started working with a lot of different people and I must’ve written about 300 songs. They’re going to come to fruition one day.
When the album [Survival & Other Stories] came together […] the idea was to use all these songs that I've been writing [through online collaborations]. And it's like a dozen of a hundred songs that I've been writing over that first sort of 6 year time period […] I was actually working on a piece this morning from a guy that I met in Canada, who actually lives in London, and he's a reggae master. [laughs] Keeps sending me these wonderful reggae tracks, and I sing them, and we've got a collection of 7 or 8 songs now over the past three years. And one day they'll come out. I don't know how or when […] I know that it's inspiring to me to sing about so many different things and with so many different combinations of musicIn many cases, these collaborations have seemed to involve two aspects: the collaborator doing orchestrations/arrangements of demos by Anderson (and, at least in some cases, Anderson appears to be getting different people to arrange the same material); and Anderson contributing lyrics and vocals to music by the collaborator. One example of this is keyboardist Tommy Zvoncheck (MySpace page; ex-Blue Öyster Cult, ex-Public Image Limited). He has re-issued his independent release ZKG with the addition of two bonus tracks (also available digitally on Amazon.com). One of these, "Rain in Florida", is sung and has lyrics by Anderson, a commentary on the Florida ballot controversy in the 2000 US Presidential election. The song can be heard on Zvoncheck's MySpace videos page. Zvoncheck explained: "Our arrangement was for me to orchestrate and arrange a 3 movement orchestral piece for him. In return, he would collaborate with me on a song and said I could do anything I want with it. I completed the task to Jon's satisfaction."
[Anderson] told me that he had
hundreds of unfinished musical ideas that he wanted a
collaborator to help fully realize. [...] the music came, two
CDs full. And later on, MP3s in
emails. The music was meandering and nebulous
like a cloud forming, but there were lovely melodies and
intriguing chords lurking in there. Much of it was
played on layered-up keyboards.. I had to
listen and listen and listen to pick out the individual notes
and melodies. Music that Jon sent me later included
harp and even vocals. [...]
The final versions include quite a lot of my ideas.
[...] I had complete musical freedom to arrange, orchestrate,
develop, et cetera. I gave them voice,
structure, and harmonic development. But their heart and
soul is still Jon's. [...] The majority of the pieces I created
using Cakewalk Sonar and Synful Orchestra. A couple of the
pieces contain live or electronic percussion [...] and one
guitar concerto, on which I played acoustic guitar. [...]
Jon has told me about many ideas he had for this music: films,
videogames, webcasts, even a ballet! Jon's a man of
many ever--changing ideas. So far I'm not sure what
the future of this music is, but [...] I look forward
to amazing things.
In autumn 2007, Alimar
did orchestrations of two of Anderson's "musical drafts" for what
he
described
as "a large project [Anderson] was working on". They were
then working on a broader collaboration in which Anderson plans to
add lyrics and vocals to Alimar's orchestral-style work, including
Alimar's piece "Eclipse".
In
Dec
2009,
Alimar
uploaded a piece
called "Tribal Love", based on his earlier piece "Tribal
Wave" to which Anderson has added vocals. In Nov 2009, he said:
Anderson was writing with John Young (ex-Asia, ex-John Wetton, ex-Fish). Young said in his MySpace blog in Aug 2007:
Jon Anderson and myself are writing together albeit a somewhat long distance affair as Jon has been in Hawaii whilst I soldier on in darkest Bucks. (Isn't e-mail a wunnerful thing).The first fruit of their collaboration is "Sooner", which Anderson sang on a European solo tour. Young blogged in Nov 2007 that "hopefully other tracks will gradually see the light of day over the coming months." Anderson wrote the lyrics to "Sooner", while the music was a collaboration. Their current studio version of the song can be heard as a streaming audio on Young's MySpace page.
The results are most enjoyable and I hope that it won't be too long before we can share them with the outside world.
Another collaborator is Dan Spollen. He said in
May 2009 that, "For the past few months I've been creating music
with Jon. We have several tracks, most of which are works in
progress and slowly evolving." There is a piece with Anderson
entitled "Vocal EXP" on his MySpace page
and Spollen said, "Jon has some additional melodic layers for this
that will be added eventually." A Yes medley on acoustic guitar by
Spollen was on Anderson's Facebook page (as "Going for the One"
medley). In Oct 2009, he said, "Jon and I are still working on
tunes- one is really coming along well...can't wait to release
it." Further samples
became available and a piece with Spollen appeared on Survival and Other
Stories. More now apepars on Invention of
Knowledge: see above for details.
Ryan Fraley
has also been working with Anderson on orchestrations, while
Anderson guested on two Yes covers by Fraley's band, Wave Mechanics Union, on
their album Further to Fly. Members of Wave Mechanics
Union have produced a big band track for Anderson called "Sweet
Jazz". The piece was written "many years ago" by Anderson, and has
been arranged by Fraley and performed by Wave Mechanics Union with
vocals from Anderson. The recording is for release on an
unspecified future Anderson solo album. In Nov 2009, Fraley said
on Yesfans.com:
I've finished one more
arrangement for Jon since this one (not jazz) and discussed at
least two other possible ideas with him. As for when / where
this jazz tune will be out, I still don't know. Jon seems to
take things one day a time.
In the May
2016 Inside MusiCast interview, the interviewer mentions one
of the Yes covers on Further to Fly and Anderson replied,
"We're doing variations on many Yes songs as well, acoustic
versions of Yes songs, and this is all part of the collection of
music that eventually will come out." (Although I'm not
entirely sure Anderson here is only referring to work with Fraley
or more generally with a range of collaborators.)
Another collaborator is Rich
Goodhart (MySpace; Facebook page); to
Yesfans.com in early Oct 2009, he said:
All I'll tell you is that I'm
collaborating with Jon on some material... some of which may be
a part of Zamran... and I've heard things that are intensely
deep and inspired... lyrically, melodically, compositionally,
spiritually. So much so that I am knocked out by both the power
of his voice still, as well as the depth that he can tap into
when the elements align.
In Nov 2009, he added: "As one of the many collaborators, I have
spoken with Jon directly about his plans, visions, concerns and
uncertainty around releasing some of this vast accumulation of
music. As with most of us in this business at this time it is
nearly impossible to be much sure about anything in regard to
releasing music and how best to do it." Goodhart and Anderson's
"Spirit Grounding" went up on Anderson's Facebook page in Jan
2010. Goodhart's 2CD solo release Shaman Mirror Medicine Tree, available from his website,
included a piece with Anderson entitled "Good Love Coming".
Goodhart said of the track: "When I sent him the track I suggested
the idea of a "We Have Heaven" type of multi-voice chant, and as
far as I am concerned he delivered wonderfully." He's also said:
"It's another acoustic world music instrumentation backing, with
the primary instruments being the west African dousongoni and the
Brazilian berimbau, plus hand drums and percussion." The song also
includes a live cover (with Anderson) of "Moon Ra" from Olias of Sunhillow. Daevid
Allen (Gong; glissando guitar on several tracks),
John Ragusa (flute, additional vocals), Jim Ballard and David
Macejka also guests on the album. Goodhart provides vocals and
performs various instruments, including bouzouki, and did the
cover art. "Spirit Grounding", for which Anderson provided lyrics
and vocal lines, then appeared on Goodhart's next album, the 2CD Forest
River Pathway, released Sep 2017. Also guesting are
Athena Burke (vocals), Roger Mock and David Duhig
(Jade Warrior).
Another collaborator is Dennis Haklar (MySpace),
who was working with Anderson for a few years. His Lizard's
Tale, released 2012, featured Haklar (guitars,
synth) joined by Anderson (vocals), Larry Coryell (worked
with Bill Bruford's Earthworks; electric &
acoustic guitars), Mark
Egan (worked with Pat Metheny, Larry Coryell,
Sting; fretted & fretless bass) and Thierry
Arpino (worked with Jean-Luc Ponty; drums). In
a press release, Haklar described how, "A few years ago I
began to collaborate over the internet with Jon Anderson on
a large-scale work. Charka Music [presumably this
should be Chakra Music], very involved." This
appears to be another Anderson project. |
There have been multiple further collaborators as yet unknown to
the public.
With
Stephen Layton
Anderson was working with keyboardist Stephen Layton
(ex-The Expression, ex-Like Oxygen) on
various projects for several years. Their song "Love and
Understanding" appeared on Survival
and Other Stories (see above)
and they have worked on several other songs. Layton had a
significant role in Anderson's planned Zamran project (see above). Layton
and Mark "Truey" Trueack (Unitopia) made
contact in 2009 and planned a project called The Hope to
feature multiple guest musicians around the world, which led to
Anderson contributing backing vocals to a song called "The Water".
This appeared on Fall in Love with the World (InsideOut)
by the United
Progressive Fraternity (Facebook),
released 2014. Aug 2016 saw a BlueMountain remix of "The Water"
with Layton released
on YouTube. This version was credited to
Trueack/Timms/Williams as writers, with lyrics by Trueack, vocals
by Trueack and Anderson, and all instruments by Layton.
The Hope was initially
expected in 2015, but has evolved considerably since then (and
with Anderson no longer involved). A first part came out, with Jon Davison
guesting, and a second part is due 2023: see on main
page.
In a late
2008 interview for YesFANZ,
Layton talked at length about his work with Anderson. Their
collaboration began with Anderson's rap opera:
I received [...] pretty much
the content of his entire rap opera [...] I was actually shaking
with excitement that day. I thought I’m through, I’ve got the
gig, and I’m Jon’s producer. Because, although he has got people
working on the orchestrations, they were working off my
compositions or expanding my ideas. As the producer I am pretty
much expanding the basic ideas. Much of the opera section is
Jon’s composition. I was supplying the beats for those [...] I
spoke to him over the phone. I said ‘Jon, I think we need the
rap section which is kind of a ghetto feel; it is very black,
very dark. I think that should be very organic, very dirty
sounding, but the opera, I think we should go for a very
contemporary electronic beat, very clean, very pristine.’
‘Great idea, perfect’.
So I added very little to the opera except for Kraftwerky kind
of simple beat. In some places more like Vangelis where I would
add one of those kind of Chariots of Fire ‘duh duh duh’ bass
lines. [...] We worked very intensely, very closely probably for
about three months.
[...] we got to the end of the assigned work and he said ‘We
need six new songs’. He was continuing to elaborate the story.
He’d fax me the storyline and he came up with an idea for a bit
of comic relief in a character in the story [...] we wrote a
song together [...] he is a very funny character, he is one of
those recurring light comic relief.
Jon can work extremely quickly [...] I think that is one of the
reasons we did work so well together. I work very fast. [...] I
could work on maybe three songs a day, send it back to him and
he could do a vocal overnight here in his studio and bounce all
three back to me the next day with maybe five or six overdubs.
This one particular comic character, Jon blew me away because I
don’t think anyone in the world would know that Jon Anderson can
do one hell of a Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong impersonation. You
would not think Jon with that high pitched voice can do that
really deep growly voice. [...]
We got to the end of the project and we still needed three or
four songs and he said ‘Can you give me some….like we need a
love song between this character and that character and it still
needs to have this kind of beat.’ So I sent him some basic chord
structures, he’d write lyrics to them very quickly, ‘they are
just rough but these will do.’ We finished the first draft of
the project early this year [2008].
[...]
I am going to have to get some
clearance from Jon because I have signed confidentiality
agreements on the rap opera so [...] I can’t tell you anything
about the nature of the story. Somewhere in between starting and
finishing Jon realised that it would make a very good film [...]
he seems to be, if not confident, optimistic that he can get
this made into a film. Therefore it would be released as a
soundtrack rather than as a Jon Anderson solo project. [...] I
have probably got maybe three hours of running time just on my
computer because some things we’ve let run long. Because at one
stage he had a view of just putting it on stage and he said
that’s great for choreography. We can extend this section and
that can be used for a dance sequence. [...] So which is why as
what I think of myself, I might be confabulating my role in the
whole thing, as co-producer of the venture, Jon has said that I
will want you here when we finish it. Because in its present
form, it’s the digital equivalent of two kilometres of unedited
tape and none of us are quite sure where to cut and splice
It remains unclear at least in my mind what constitutes a
finished product because if it is to be for a stage musical it
only needs to be presented in a rough format to be scored [...]
He may find that he can’t get the backing for it to go on stage
or as a film soundtrack and he might decide to just get fresh
vocal performances in because he’s sourced his opera singers,
his rappers and he might just bring me in and we’ll tighten the
whole thing up and release it either as a double or single CD.
Or who knows, the third possibility is that it may fizzle out. I
would like to think not
Layton then talks about their subsequent collaborations:
I thought now that is pretty
much the end of that. [...] [Then] there was another email [...]
‘Send me some more of those songs with the beats, [...]’ [...]
At first I didn’t really know quite what to do. I had a few
tracks just lying around which had been discarded by other
singers or weren’t to their liking which I thought had
potential. And he very quickly wrote some, which were some of
the other songs that I had previously [...] on MySpace. There is
probably five or six of those which are in a very rough state.
[...] none of them had I specifically written for him.
And then [...] I wrote ‘Shine Shine Deliverance’. Now this
really grabbed his attention [...] he said ‘You’ve got to
release this’. I don’t know where he thinks my connections are,
[...] I’m certainly in no position to be releasing anything. But
he said, ‘This is a single, we have got to get this out there,
but the ending has got to have a gospel choir.’ [...] I don’t
know quite where he thought I was going to get a gospel choir
from. He obviously was very intent on the idea because I saw on
You Tube that when he had the School of Rock together once he
had the backing track of Shine Shine Deliverance. He had them
singing the backing vocals trying to get them to record it.
[...] I think he obviously saw that it wasn’t really happening
either because it never went any further than that.
We then had a series of discussions about how would we release
this? [...] ‘Are you going to release this as Jon Anderson solo
material?’ He said ‘no, no, no no, I don’t see that in my
future.’ I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. But I said
whatever we call it, it’s your voice and you are the voice of
Yes.
[...]
After that point Jon started
asking me to write Yes type music. He said ‘Can you give me some
lighter, acoustic Yes-flavoured music?’ [...] He said ‘[...]
write your music but write the kind of music you would like to
see Yes doing now. Pick out everything that’s your favourite and
give it to me and I’ll sing.’ Which is what I did with Sacred
Balance, I just picked out everything that I felt my perfect Yes
song would have [...]
But Jon, before he got a chance to finish it, started having
health problems and it’s missing the last vocal section but I’m
hoping that it sees its way onto any potential project. [...]
We’ve been working on three or four tracks which again he asked
me to do them in a Yes style. [...] I kind of reflect on the
Time and a Word period as where I see Jon being now. [...] he
writes much more rhythmically than melodically. His mind thinks
in terms of rhythm first. He places less emphasis on the ebb and
flow of the melody than he does on the impact of the beat of
what he is singing.
[...] In view of producing Jon in the here and now, I see him
more as going back to the simple Jon, the Olias Jon or the Time
and a Word Jon where he communicates simple messages in a simple
fashion. I don’t think anyone else that he is working with is
approaching it like that.
As for progressing to a release of any of this material:
there is my view of it and
there is Jon’s view of it. My view is in the realms of the
known; Jon’s is in the realms of the unknown. Because Jon just
has so many things going on and it causes immense frustration,
well it did to me at first and I got used to it, but there are
people out there who have worked with Jon who really harbour a
good deal of resentment towards him. He has used them for a song
and then ignores them for a month or two. And they’ll let him
know. [...] I think from what I now know of Jon, when he is very
focused on one thing, then that is what he is focused on. When
he is on something else you have just got to let him go on to
whatever else he is doing. When he is not thinking about me he
is not thinking about me and it doesn’t do me any good to email
him and chase him because out of the blue he will get in touch
with me and I will be the centre of his world for the next two
weeks and we will continue working on the material. [...] we
probably have sufficient material right now if his voice was up
to it that we could finalise. But his voice won’t be anywhere
near up to it, I would say probably, and I’m no expert, until
mid 2009. [...] I’m not expecting him to place any priority on
our project.
Personally I’m pretty sure that the first thing that he’ll want
to get finished is the opera project. That’s got, as far as I
know, an immense amount of work to do. He has requested for me
to be present for future work at his studio. There is only so
much we can do via email.
With composer Peter Machajdík
Anderson guested on "Sadness of Flowing" on Peter Machajdík's album Namah (Music Fund
Bratislava/Musica Slovaca,
MAMAH SF 00542131). Details
in Yescography. Read
my interview with Peter Machajdík about the collaboration with
Anderson here.
Machajdík has done some further work with Anderson, orchestrating
some of his songs.
In 2009, Anderson appeared live with a band led by Machajdík (see details above), the show subsequently
broadcast on the Slovak national TV channel. A DVD release has
been expected. In an Aug
2009
interview, Machajdík quotes Anderson as saying he wants to
continue working with this band, who he said played at least as
well as Yes, and he would like to do a tour with them in 2010.
While that didn't happen, there was a show in Aug 2012 in London:
see above. Machajdík also talked about doing
futher work with Anderson: "Budeme spolu robiť niečo s klasickými
nástrojmi, ak budú peniaze, tak aj väčšie obsadenie a dlhšie
kompozície." That is, something with classical instruments and,
finances permitting, larger compositions.
In a Mar
2010
interview, Anderson described a project with a male
collaborator in Slovakia, who I take to be Machajdík:
I’m just working on a musical
dance piece about heraldry. I’ve always loved heraldry,
since I was a kid. [...] I think there should be new
heraldry. I think that cities and countries, places should
use their flags of heraldry and rejuvenate our conscious
knowledge of totem – worldwide totem knowledge - not just
American Indian totems. There is indigenous totem everywhere,
which is knowledge of the eagle, the coyote, the wolf, the bear,
the dragonfly, the ant [...] to rejoice in that and to use it in
a dance mode, using it in an artistic mode, by banners or flags
or things – which is basically heraldry. So, that’s something I
started doing just last month actually.
With Sean
McKee
As a filmmaker, Sean McKee has worked with U2, Rage Against
the Machine, Slash, Chickenfoot and Gail Zappa, while as a
musician, he has worked with Chip Z'Nuff and Ike Willis. He has
worked on a number of projects with Anderson. In a Jan 2019
interview, McKee and Anderson described having recorded a
double album; this will be with accompanying "visual gaming and
virtual reality experiences" according to the interviewer. McKee
and their engineer Ryan Black were to be teaching a class (Musical
Soundscape Design & Mixing in 5.1) at Columbia College Chicago
on mixing in 5.1 Surround Sound, in which students were to
contribute to the mixing of this album, with Anderson inputting
via Skype. In McKee's description of the YouTube clip of the
interview, he expands, saying, "And in a Columbia College first,
the project will be multi-departmental, creating visual, gaming
and virtual reality companions to the album." Anderson described
how they have been working on the album for 5 years, largely
collaborating over the Internet (Anderson said they have only met
"three or four times"). McKee described the album as "written
together", and described it thus: "while there is traditional
music, some of it is moods and soundscapes, kind of like
cinematic, as you'd hear in a movie". A Feb
2019 article additionally hints at "high-profile guests
artists on the album". Citing McKee, it describes the album as
having been "six years in the making", but with "no set release
date". McKee emailed in Jun 2020 to say that they had started work
on a 5.1 mix in 2019, but decided to switch to Dolby's
Atmos system. They were going to start mixing in Mar 2020,
but the COVID-19 pandemic stopped that from happening. They
planned to return this in summer 2020.
In an Aug 2020 interview, Anderson said, "I was actually working on a piece this morning, that is the finale of a large piece that I started with [...] Sean McKee [...] and we've been at it now for 10 years, working on this idea [...] I've been challenging myself to do orchestration".
Previously, a website seemingly from 2013 said, "McKee is currently composing his most ambitious work to date, working with Jon Anderson [...] to create an exotic concept album filled with epic length songs." In late Jan 2016, McKee explained online, "Jon and I have been working on an exotic, longer form concept album made up of epic length songs that is nearing completion". In a Jul 2015 Prog interview, Anderson described writing film music, saying: "It's a very surreal concept film about the truisms of magic. Sean's a visual artist as well as a music-maker." It is unclear if this is the same or a different project.
Anderson and McKee were collaborating on a charity song for COVID-19 pandemic relief, due summer 2020. They wrote the song in May 2020 and have been recording guest singers and players, including Jean-Luc Ponty (Anderson Ponty Band; violin).Other collaborations
In a Feb
2021 interview, Anderson said, "I just recorded [The
Beatles' "A Day in the Life"] with the great Jake Shimabukuro." Shimabukuro is a
Japanese-American ukulele player. The song appears on his album Jake
& Friends (Mascot Label Group), out 12 Nov 2021 on CD
or 2LP.
The album is co-produced by Ray Benson (Asleep at
the Wheel). The Japanese
CD release has a second disc with further collaborations,
including Cyndi Lauper, but mostly with Japanese artists.
Sangeeta Kaur performed two songs by Anderson in her appearance on season 10 of the US public television concert series Front and Center, broadcast 19 Sep 2021 and available here [go to 18:00]. She described how Anderson wrote "Sun and Rain" for her and she is accompanied by a pre-recorded Anderson on backing vocals; this piece was arranged by Steve Bartek (Oingo Boingo, works with Danny Elfman). She then performs a second piece, "Love is All", written by Anderson. Shimabukuro (see previous paragraph) also appeared separately in the episode.
In a Jun
2012 interview, Anderson said, "I just finished doing a
project with a friend in Los Angeles and now we're going to get
into the production. We've written about a dozen new songs and
it[']s a very exciting time." It is unclear which collaborator
this is, however. An interview in the Jul 2012 issue of Prog
magazine refers to several otherwise unidentified projects:
In a Jun
2011 interview, Anderson had said, "I'm working with a sort
of African/North African band of musicians that are very
talented." In this 2013
interview (approximately Aug), Anderson said, "Working with
music from North Africa, a group of people in San Francisco that
play North African music, I've been writing songs with them." The
May
2016 Inside MusiCast interview has more about the former:
I know that it's inspiring to me to sing [...] with so many different combinations of music, even Middle Eastern music. I'm working with a guy […] in San Francisco. And we've written quite a lot of music in the last few years. And I just bumped into a vocal person here who works as a percussionist in a sort of ensemble out of the local university here at Cal Poly, and they have a 20 piece – 12 singers and 12 musicians, doing Middle Eastern music, so I'm going to get together with them and probably produce a project with them for next spring next year [2017].In a Jun 2016 interview, Anderson said, "I'm working with a Middle Eastern ensemble here at the local university [...] because I've been writing Middle Eastern music for a year with a friend from San Francisco." He later added, "I think we're going to perform it next summer [2017], locally, but the record might come out the year after [2018]." And in a Jul 2016 interview: "I have been working here in California with a group of musicians who are doing middle eastern music, and I've been writing songs in that genre with a friend of mine from San Francisco." In a Jul 2016 interview, when asked about plans after ARW, Anderson said, "a couple of years ago[,] I started writing with a friend who lives in San Francisco [...] He loves Middle Eastern music. So I wrote about 5 or 6 ideas with him. And I've no idea where I was going with them [...] [T]he kind of Middle Eastern music that is around, it's very spiritual, very, very connected to Mother Earth". He then referenced the work of the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Anderson continued: "About a month ago, somebody sent me a link and that's an actual Middle Eastern ensemble here in our local polytechnic university, here at Cal Poly [...] there's about 20 of them, there's about 12 singers and, er, about 8 musicians [...] So I got in touch with them [...] they're excited and we'll probably do it next year [2017] some time and I'm going to meet them next week for the second time and just go through the songs, and how it's going to be presented visually".
Tim Wheater (worked with The Eurythmics, Donovan, The Grateful Dead) was reportedly working on a new album with Anderson.
Guest
appearances
Anderson sings "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" on Set Them Free, an expected tribute album to The Police and Sting by Rock Against Trafficking (RAT), who are raising money for International Justice Mission. Gary Miller, who started RAT, has organised the album, which was expected Spring 2018, but has yet to appear. "Roxanne" covered by Glenn Hughes (ex-Deep Purple, ex-Black Sabbath, worked with Geoff Downes, Keith Emerson), produced by Miller, was released Jan 2018 as a single (available on Amazon US; video). There was a second single, "Synchronicity II", with Journey members Neal Schon (guitar), Arnel Pineda (vocals) and Steve Smith (drums); it was produced/arranged by Schon/Miller. The RAT website says, "Sony/Orchard is now supporting distribution efforts as we finalize marketing strategies for Rock Against Trafficking’s full debut album release." Also appearing on the album are Slash and Carlos Santana. An Aug 2014 report described as already recorded Anderson's track, Hughes' track, the Schon/Pineda track, "So Lonely" (Slash and Fergie), "Wrapped Around My Finger" (Heart), "If I Ever Lose My Faith" (Julian Lennon), "Message in a Bottle" (David Cook, ex-American Idol), "Brand New Day" (En Vogue), "Shape of My Heart" (Steve Lukather and Lee Ritenour), "Let Your Soul be Your Pilot" (Paul Carrack) and "Every Breath You Take" (Andy Fraser, ex-Free), with Carlos Santana, Joss Stone and Keb' Mo' still to record their contributions. A 2014 trailer also billed as involved Rob Morrow, Simon Phillips, Sam Aliano (CAB), Jonathan Moffett (worked with Michael Jackson, Madonna, George Michael), Simon Kirke (Bad Company, ex-Free) and Johnny G. |
Re-releases Voiceprint re-released In the City of Angels on 3 May 2024. Other news Anderson has been working on an autobiography entitled "Survival and Other Stories". This was announced as to be released "soon" according to his webpage, but he subsequently said it will come on his Patreon channel. Illustrated by Jim Higgins, chapter 1 (15 pages) was available online. He previously said saying he was "halfway through" the book in this Oct 2015 interview and described contact with publishers. A Sep 2017 interview revealed that "the first part of which, tracing his story to 1980, is all but ready for publication now, with more to follow in two or three years." A Sep 2018 interview announced the title. Further excerpts were included in the deluxe 2020 release of 1000 Hands: Chapter One. In an Aug 2020 livestreamed event, Anderson said he is "writing my memoirs". He said more in an Apr 2021 interview: "I'm halfway through. I finished part one in 1987, and that was a good place to end it, and now I've got another 30 years of stuff to write. I love the book I've written. [...] It became a little too much like business, and I don't like that. So, I'll take time and write the "up until now," shall we say, and we'll see what happens." He said to a fan in Jul 2022 that he is looking for a publisher, but will self-publish otherwise. In a May 2023 update, Higgins said to Yesfans.com that: Cover ideas are still just percolating. That first chapter of about 16 pages was posted on his FB page a few years ago. We’ve got close to 100 pages finished, but to be honest Jon has so many stories, it’s a little mind boggling. I have the “book” currently laid out in a “coffee table” style, but it’s final form is really yet to be determined. I don’t think any kind of publishing is imminent with all he’s got going on In the Mojo interview (published Jan 2024),
Anderson said, "I've been writing a memoir but I only got
as far as '86 when I discovered my [spiritual] teacher.
[...] I have a guy who's helping manage me and I sent him
what I'd written and he said, "Do some more!" But I'm
busy. I used to paint a lot and I haven't done any of that
for a whole year." In an Aug
2024 interview, Anderson said: More than 30 years ago, I started writing about my life up to then. Then I met my spiritual teacher and from then on, I didn't write anything at all. And then I met my wife 30 years ago, 31 years. And I just know that there's something about our relationship that I've got to start putting down on paper because we've had such a wild and wonderful time. And that's really what the first half of the book, if I make a book or autobiography. But I know I've got to find some time and write it down because life just passes you by so fast.
In an
interview with Prog magazine (#153, Sep 2024),
Anderson said, "The publishers asked me to to a second
section from the part that I died in 2008 onwards. I
started stretching it out, but over this period of
touring [with the Band Geeks], it's fallen away a bit.
It's not that I lost interest in it, I just think I
couldn't put it together in my mind." Several short stories by Anderson have been available on his
website (select "Writings"). One, "When Toola Forgot
Her Song", is for children, written by Jon & his wife
Jane, with illustrations by Juan
Carlos Baez (who worked with
Anderson on Zamran), inspired by ceramics by
Jane. Baez has said there may be a physical release at
some point. Anderson was working on a music video for an unidentified project with Carl B Richetti. |
Any news, additions or corrections, please e-mail Henry Potts. Thanks.