Jon Anderson of YES

Jon Anderson, lead vocalist/lyricist for the British art rock group Yes, has witnessed the progession of the collective vision that the four principal members, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Anderson have shared for over 30 years.

Back in 1971, Yes challenged the Top 40 radio version of what pop and rock music was about by delivering hit singles from their two classic rock albums “Fragile” and “Close To The Edge”.

Today, classic trax radio features songs from both albums in heavy rotation around the clock. A younger generation of pop and rock groups are attributing Yes as a major influence and the group has found legions of fans among the 18 to 25-year olds.

According to Anderson, while the group realized they were breaking new ground in pop culture in the early ’70’s, they did not foresee their music remaining popular 25 years after their first gold albums. “When we first started making our music,”he said,”we just believed in ourselves. We really believed there was a future for the style of music we were creating. While we honestly didn’t think much in terms of getting into the ’80’s or ’90’s, when we were working in the ’70’s we certainly were driven to make music that was long lasting.”

According to Anderson, some of the fans who followed Yes in the early ’70’s had a bit more of a vision, in terms of the group’s longevity, for Yes then he did at the time. “I had people approach me on the street at that time,”he said,”and they would say,’Hey, “Close To The Edge” is great! They’ll still be playing the music on that album in the year 2000.’ And I’d say,’I don’t think so.'(he laughs). But the fact remains that we’re going to tour into the year 2000 and I want to do the music off of “Close To The Edge”. It’s still a great piece of music.”

Yes is currently touring in support of their new album “Open Your Eyes”, which is due in stores on November 25.

The title track “Open Your Eyes” is the first single off the album.

“Chris wrote the title cut about three years ago and it was going to be on his solo album,”Anderson. “Chris and Billy (Sherwood current Yes guitarist/keyboardist) started writing material for this album early this year. So I sort of joined in and wrote half a dozen songs with them. Then Left Bank Management helped to pull us together and I went into the studio and began working on the sessions which eventually became the new album. It’s an album of songs rather than musical concepts,”Anderson continued. We’d just done two albums where the band really had the chance to flex and that’s great. So we’d gotten that out of our systems and the idea of this album came really fast and furious.”

On the current North American Yes tour, which stops at the AJ Palumbo Theater on Sunday, the lineup is Jon Anderson (vocals,acoustic guitar, percussion), Steve Howe (guitar,vocals), Billy Sherwood(guitar,keyboards,vocals), Chris Squire(bass,vocals) and Alan White(drums,percussion) and Ivan Khorshev on keyboards. Anderson believes the current tour has a mission. “There’s that sense of us honoring our own musical history,”he said. “A lot of pride and integrity went into making our music and in a way we’re trying to reinterpret that with the tour and the new record. We’ve established this unbeatable British group where the complexities of the energies involved are reflected in the music.”