Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe

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Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
Studio album by Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe

Publication
(s)

1989

Label (s) Arista Records

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

Progressive rock

Title (number)

9

running time

59:05

occupation

production

Jon Anderson and Chris Kimsey

Studio (s)

Air Studio Montserrat and Air Studio London 1988–1989

chronology
- Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe An Evening of Yes Music Plus ...
(Live album 1993)

Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe is the debut album by British progressive rock band Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe , an offshoot of Yes , from 1989.

Emergence

By the time work on the 1987 Yes album Big Generator came to an end, Jon Anderson was very frustrated with his position in the band. In the 1970s he had been used to leading the band, now new member Trevor Rabin (vocals, guitar) had made a name for himself as a band leader and pushed Anderson aside with the support of bassist and founding member Chris Squire , the management and the record company Atlantic Records . His position in the band had been reduced to the role of singer. Rabin had increasingly brought his own, already finished songs to the band without considering Anderson's more open, experimental way of working. In Rabin's more concise songs, the others involved had seen greater commercial potential.

But Anderson, as he stated, did not want to submit to the dictates of the sales figures and left the band for the second time since 1980 after the end of the Big Generator tour (see Paris Sessions ). He founded the Yes offshoot Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe with Bill Bruford , Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman in order to return to classical Yes music, which was characterized by longer pieces.

He then got in touch with his former Yes colleagues Bill Bruford (with Yes until 1972), Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman (both with Yes until 1980) to suggest a concept for a new band, a band under his direction. Bruford, initially in the belief that he should take part in a solo project of Anderson, agreed, since Anderson and later Howe, the musical ideas for a first album already largely had together. The fact that an excellent bassist was available in his ex- King Crimson colleague Tony Levin also contributed to his decision.

In addition to Anderson, Steve Howe brought material for the new band's debut album, some of which had been planned for a second album project by his previous band GTR (the basis for "Birthright" comes from Steve Howe and GTR singer Max Bacon ).

The band spent five weeks in Paris to work on the new material and to get used to it. Then the musicians flew to the Caribbean island of Montserrat to record the album in the AIR studios of Beatles producer George Martin . Some guitar parts were recorded in the London AIR studios. Some of these parts (especially on “Fist of Fire” and “The Meeting”) were deleted afterwards by technicians Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, without Steve Howe's knowledge. He publicly vented his annoyance about this and the overall guitar sound in a few interviews. Anderson's offer to leave the album unreleased, however, he declined, so that Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe could be released.

The album, much closer to the Yes sound of the seventies, and due to the longer pieces, the instrumental passages and the moderate progressive rock orientation roughly comparable to Yes' Going for the One , sold around 750,000 times. Then the four musicians started with the support of Tony Levin (or Jeff Berlin ), bass , Julian Colbeck , keyboards and Milton McDonald, guitar and vocals, on a successful world tour that lasted from July 29, 1989 to March 23, 1990 and comprised 74 concerts . A planned follow-up album under the title Dialogue never came about because ABWH and Yes merged and eight released an album called Union (1991).

Track list

  1. Themes (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford) - 5:58
    • Sound
    • Second attention
    • Soul warrior
  2. Fist of Fire (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford) - 3:27
  3. Brother of Mine - 10:18
    • The Big Dream (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • Nothing can Come Between Us (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • Long Lost Brother of Mine (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford / Geoff Downes )
  4. Birthright (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford / Max Bacon ) - 6:02
  5. The Meeting (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford) - 4:21
  6. Quartet - 9:22
    • I Wanna Learn (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • She Gives Me Love (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford / Dowling)
    • Who Was the First (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • I'm Alive (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
  7. Teakbois (The Life And Times Of Bobby Dread) (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford) - 7:39
  8. Order of the Universe - 9:02
    • Order Theme (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • Rock Gives Courage (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford / Rhett Lawrence)
    • It's So Hard to Grow (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
    • The Universe (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford)
  9. Let's Pretend (Anderson / Howe / Wakeman / Bruford / Vangelis ) - 2:56

Remarks:

Bill Bruford is named as co-writer of the songs only for financial reasons, he had nothing to do with the creation of the pieces. In fact, he was paid for his work and, by naming his name as a songwriter, shared in the profit of the record.

  • On Fist of Fire , a guitar figure that could be heard in the background for the entire duration of the song was deleted. The original recording can be heard on the Yes box set In a Word: Yes .
  • Long Lost Brother of Mine was created in collaboration between Steve Howes and Geoff Downes , who is responsible for the end of the piece and the chorus. It was initially called Never Stop Learning (under this title it can be heard on Steve Howe's rarity album Homebrew ), then was renamed Lost in America and was intended for the Asia album Astra . Lost In America is documented on the 2001 Wetton / Downes sampler . In addition, it was also to be used in the Albert Brooks film Lost in America ( Upside Down in America , 1985). The original text was from John Wetton and Geoffrey Downes. Howe later reworked the lyrics and named the piece (Have you) forgotten Love . The Steve Howe idea At The Full Moon , which can be heard on Steve Howe's rarity album Homebrew, also belongs to the genesis of Brother Of Mine . Jon Anderson placed At The Full Moon at the beginning of Brother of Mine (now under the title: The Big Dream ) and finally wrote the intro to the entire song.
  • An original version of Birthright is called Red And White . She can also be heard on Homebrew . The version This World's Big Enough , which Max Bacon sang for a second GTR album in the winter of 1987, is even older .
  • The meeting came up with ideas from Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. A piece called Nina on Wakeman's The Family album (1987) is the original version of The Meeting . A part that Steve Howe recorded on the lute for this song was subsequently deleted by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero without his knowledge.
  • Part of I Wanna Learn from Quartet goes back to a song called More About You , which can also be heard on Homebrew . Another part of I Wanna Learn goes to the song The Go Between back, the on Howes Album Hombrew 2 is found
  • Some parts of Order Of The Universe come from the song Barren Land (also on Howe's homebrew album). The original idea for Barren Land dates back to 1982 and part of it became the Asia title Lying to yourself (on EP Aurora , 1986). Steve Howe had also planned to turn it into a song for the Asia album Astra .
  • A song called Children of Light was recorded but did not make it onto the album. Anderson had written it back in the late seventies. In the 1980s it had been planned for a Jon & Vangelis album, but it hadn't materialized. The song finally appeared on the Yes album Keys to Ascension 2 in 1996 , with a new ending called Lifeline by Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman.

Review

With a running time of 59:05, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe is one of the first albums in music history to be tailored to the larger capacity of the CD (approx. 74 minutes in total). Apart from the double and triple albums Yessongs , Tales from Topographic Oceans and Yesshows , it is the longest album that a Yes musician had released to date.

The album only partially marks a return to the Yes style of the seventies. Although Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe well with the less violent albums such as Going for the One comparable, there are some stylistic changes, the ten years were not possible before. There are many clear borrowings from Latin Pop and the ethno area, which just took off its first boom in the late 80s. This applies especially to the songs "Teakbois" and "Birthright". The former is dedicated to the reggae singer Bobby Dread , the latter deals with the British government's first atomic bomb tests in 1954 in Woomera, Australia and the fate of the Aborigines . These newly adapted styles promptly aroused criticism from some Yes fans; in fact, taking up different styles (especially country music , European classical music , jazz ) had already been a trademark of the band in the 1970s, so the reorientation was not such a radical step was how it may have worked on some.

Against the background of the legal disputes between Yes and Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, the text of "She Gives Me Love" from "Quartet" is interesting, which contains numerous allusions to melodies, song titles and lyrics by Yes:

She give me love / When love had gone away / When the pressure came so fast / She give me love / Long distance runaround (song title from the album Fragile ) / And in between the pressure / I was summoned

What happened to this song / We once knew so well / Signed promise for moments / Caught within the spell (lines from the song The revaling science of God from the album Tales from Topographic Oceans )

How did we dance on the south side of the sky (song title from the album Fragile ) / We saw the flags flying on the moon / And thru the gates of delirium (song title from the album Relayer ) so fast / Believing in the light was a beginning / Only to believe in you / Only to believe in you

A river, a mountain to be crossed / The sunshine ... (lines from the song South Side of the Sky from the album Fragile ) / Soon, oh soon the light (lines from the song Gates of Delirium from the album Relayer )

She give me love / When I was losing fast / I was awaken ed (song title from the album Going for the One ) by the dream / She was the love for me / The first and last / And all that I remembered / Was the roundabout ( Song title from the album Fragile ) only to believe in you

In and around the lake / In and around the lake / In and around the lake (line from the song Roundabout from the album Fragile )

These allusions, together with the Roger Dean cover and the stage decoration designed by Roger Dean and Martyn Dean, clearly underline the band's claim to be the “only true” Yes.

Single releases

1. "Brother of Mine" (edit) (6:30) / "Vultures (in the City)" (5:49) 1989 Arista, 7 ": AS1-9852

Annotation:

  • "Vultures (in the City)", the B-side of the single "Brother Of Mine", goes back to a Steve Howe song called "Rare Birds"

2. "Order of the Universe" (Short Edit) (4:40) / "Order of the Universe" (Long Edit) (5:59) / "Order of the Universe" (Album version) (9:02) 1989 Arista, CD: ASCD-9869

The European version of the single contained other tracks:

  • "Order of the universe" (Long Edit) (5:59) / "Fist of fire" (3:27) / "Order of the universe" (Short Edit) (4:40) 1989 Arista, CD-single 662 618

The cover said:

"Seven principles of the order of the universe

  1. all things are differentiated apparatus of one infinity
  2. everything changes
  3. all antagonisms are complementary
  4. there is nothing identical
  5. what has a front has a back
  6. the bigger the front the bigger the back
  7. what has a beginning has an end

George Ohsawa "

3rd Quartet (I'm Alive) [Anderson / Bruford / Wakeman / Howe] (3:27) 1989 Arista, CD: ASCD-9898 (Promo)

This is not just an excerpt from the album version of "Quartet", but a remixed and about 80 seconds longer pop version of the piece, produced by Chris Kimsey, Jon Anderson and Michael Hutchinson, mixed by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero. The version can be heard as a video clip in the accompanying video "In The Big Dream".

Band members

With

  • Tony Levin - bass, chapman stick , vocals
  • Matt Clifford - keyboards, programming, orchestration, vocals
  • Milton McDonald - guitar
  • Deborah Anderson - backing vocals
  • Tessa Niles - backing vocals
  • Carol Kenyon - backing vocals
  • Frank Dunnery - backing vocals
  • Chris Kimsey - backing vocals
  • Emerald Community Singers, Montserrat - backing vocals

Cover

The cover was designed by fantasy artist Roger Dean , who designed many of the classic Yes albums in the 1970s. This was supposed to convey the message to the public that Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe were the “only true Yess” - Yes themselves had turned to more modern graphic artists in the 80s (see 90125 , 9012Live: The Solos , Big Generator ). The titles of the cover pictures are "Blue Desert" and "Red Desert".

Trivia

In an ironic response to Yes's pop-rock / AOR -oriented music in the 80s , Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe was given catalog number 90126, which alludes to the title (and catalog number) of the Atlantic album 90125 by Yes (1983).

live

Sources and web links