Words and Music by Chris Squire
This is an uncharacteristically pop-sounding song by Progressive Rock group Yes. It was from a low-selling late 70's album called "Tormato." The album has some great tracks on it, but was a bit of a career-ender for them at the time. After this album, Yes as it existed, came to an end. When Yes would re-form soon after, it was without Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, and it would be a number of years before Anderson would re-join the flock - just in time for them to have their first legitimate taste of pop success. But on Tormato, this beautiful song by Chris Squire stood out as being a hint of future ventures.
As great as this song is, it really didn't fit in with what The Awakening was all about. If we were going to cover a Yes song, we would have preferred something like "Long Distance Runaround" or even "Awaken" just for the sheer irony!! (actually... what few people know is, I used to start our concerts in the 1987/88 era with a quick keyboard/vocal rendering of the "high vibration go on to the sun oh let my heart dreaming" section of "Awaken!")
Reunion Records really encouraged us to record this song, as they were obviously concerned about the lack of "adult contemporary" radio material on the album. (D'uh!) I mentioned previously that Andy had met Chris Squire at a Yes concert in late 87', and asked his permission to use the song. From there, we started re-creating the song in our image, sort of!
I was glad to play the grand piano at the studio for this song. In the age of senseless technology, we could have easily used some lame piano sample instead of the real thing. Thankfully, that didn't happen!
I'm pretty sure that Mike and Al are not on this song at all. Mike may have come in to play cymbals and hats, but the bass was definitely played on keyboards. Andy did some acoustic strumming and some nice "jazzier-toned" electric guitars. But other than that, it's keyboards all the way. I am really sad, in retrospect, that I chose to use a French Horn sample for the solo sound. It was Horn that was featured on the original, but it might have been cooler to have had a different solo - probably guitar. So the "cheese-factor" starts to go up during the solo, especially during the little "mordent" half way through and the triplets, which all sound like me trying to show off my classical chop(s). Kind of embarrassing to look back at!
The female vocalist on this song was a good friend of ours, who was in a local band called Rare Design. (We used to call them Rare Disease, but they knew we were just kidding around!) Kelly Houghland was the singer of the band. She had a sound very much like Leslie Phillips at the time, and of course, Leslie (once she grew a spine) eventually changed her name to Sam Phillips and became one of the few mega-stars of Christian music in the 80's to walk away from easy, continued success because of artistic reasons. Kelly and Sam Phillips could have been sisters, in terms of musical sound and motivation.
Kelly had never sung professionally like this before and was obviously nervous about it. She did a great job and really added another dimension to the song. She played a dirty trick on her boyfriend at the end of the day though, which I'm sure they still talk about now and then (they later got married). Dave (the guitar player in Rare Design) could not be at the studio during the afternoon we recorded Kelly, so when he called in later in the day to see how things went, she really played it up that it was a total disaster. She summoned up fake tears to make it sound like it was the last time she'd ever set foot in a studio again. When he found out she was pulling his leg, he was understandably pissed off about it! Wouldn't you be?!!
Anyway... good times and fun memories from a beautiful song that may or may not have been necessary on this album. I still enjoy hearing it (except for the solo), but I often wonder how our album would have sounded without it.
Maybe, in some sense, it served as a pause for reflection between the heaviness of Into Thy Hands and the emotion of Never Say Goodbye.
And I have to wonder, after all these years, did anybody from Yes ever get to hear our recording? That would be fun to know.
Ian - June 18/09
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