40 Year Itch: The Sun Will Lead Us

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   On December 5, 1974, English prog rockers Yes released Relayer in the US, their seventh album and the only one with Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz who replaced the departed Rick Wakeman. What's most striking to me about this underrated album  is that drummer Alan White has enough confidence in himself and his position in the band that he's perfectly willing to knock over a huge rack of car parts right in the middle off the side-long "Gates of Delirium", creating a loud crash that could have ruined the take. Then, on Side Two, his drumming at the beginning of the crazed "Sound Chaser" is nothing short of remarkable. That's true for all the artists of course.

   Relayer hit #4 in the UK and #5 in the US. In 1975, the members of Yes would release solo albums before reuniting in Montreux to record Going for the One.

40 Year Itch : Shining, Flying, Purple Wolfhound

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Why would you buy a live album from a group that always seemed to be trying to achieve studio perfection?
Yessongs sounds ike it was recorded from outside the auditorium...like where the trucks were parked. Yet there is greatness here...but it's certainly not in the sound quality. It's how Alan White managed to learn all the drum parts in an incredibly short amount of time. Here's his story in Alan's own words;

Alan White in 1973

In his third year as a session and touring drummer Alan White shared an apartment with Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer recording engineer Eddy Offord. One night Offord invited White to stop by a sewing shop on the West End of London where he met the members of Yes.


Alan: They were actually rehearsing for Close To The Edge and they were playing and (drummer) Bill Bruford had to leave because he was going to dinner with somebody.And Eddy said "Well Alan can play the drums.Why don't you play the song (Siberian Khatru) so everybody can go through it?" So it's basically bar of 8, bar of 7 intro and I was quite used to that because of the band I was playing in so I just got into it and played it and they all kind of went "He knows how to do this stuff".

Skip ahead two to three week later: Bill Bruford has left the band to join King Crimson. Alan is finishing up a European tour with Joe Cocker when he gets a phone call.

Alan:(Jon Anderson said) "We want you to join the band. We know you can do this. Just listen to the music", and he said "This is the set list."
  He said "We've got a gig on Monday in Dallas, Texas" and I said "Are you joking? I can't learn all this stuff in that time."
   He said "We just have to go for it" so that's what I did.

Alan smack in the middle of Yes, 1973


By this time Yes had already recorded five albums including two classics, The Yes Album and Close to the Edge. Alan had his work cut out for him.



Alan: It's not like riding a bicycle like some songs.When you play songs like ( the 19 minute) "Close to the Edge" or "Tempus Fugit" from Drama, those songs are just a whole thing you have to go through. Lots of mood changes and different tempos. You just have to, over the years, get it into your head.

It always seemed a bit unfair to Alan that Yes recorded its three disc live album (Yessongs) and concert film on his first tour. But as he approaches 40 years with the band, he says he doesn't spend much time looking back.


Alan: Yes has always been a great vehicle for me to study and move forward. This is the kind of band that doesn't look at the horizon. They always try to see over it and try to create something new. And that, to me, presents a kind of challenge that I like to take on. I always like something new to go for.

6 Songs with Alan White #6 YES "Owner of a Lonely Heart" 1983

Released in 1983, the single "Owner of a Lonely Heart" is the only #1 hit for Yes in the U.S. It came from the album 90125 which marked the return of Jon Anderson to the band (guitarist Steve Howe was still off on other projects), and featured the production of The Buggles's ("Video Killed The Radio Star") Trevor Horn, who would later form Art of Noise. South African guitarist Trevor Rabin was the newest addition to the band.

Alan: We had Trevor Rabin come into the band and he had a slightly more commercial songwriting style. But we added all those background rhythms and bass parts and keyboard parts and that made it into something else.So (90125) was a combination of being more commercial but still coming up with something different.

Yes recorded the Grammy winning instrumental "Cinema" in one take. But the album barely topped 40 minutes and as sessions drew to an end, the band needed one more song.

Alan: And Trevor Rabin came up to me and said "I've got this song
and it might work. I don't know."
So I went around to his apartment that night and i listened to it and I was like "No, we can do that. Why don't we try it tomorrow?"
And we tried it, and it started to gel, and it sounded really, really good
and Trevor Horn said we needed to do it properly.

To get what would become known as the Art of Noise sound, Horn wanted to isolate Alan's drums not just from the rest of the band, but each drum from the rest of the drum kit. That came as a surprise to Alan.


One of the recording engineers came in and took away the cymbals and I said "What are you doing?"
He said "No. He wants you just to do it with the drums and then we'll put the cymbals in later."
So I said "O.K." and we tried it like that.
Next thing he comes in and he takes all the tom toms away so I had a bass drum, a snare drum and high hat.
and I was playing that and then he came in and took the high hat away.
I just had the bass drum and snare drum and that's how we started the song.
We filled the rest in later.

As we wrapped up our time with Alan, 1001Songs had to admit how impressed we were with his ability to play so many time signatures at the same time. After all 1001Songs can't even tap the steering wheel in time to any song. At all.

Alan:You've got to have independence between your limbs . Number One:
you've got to get this hand to do one thing while the other one does something else and the same with your legs. Then it becomes a mind thing.
You must be able to play one rhythm but listen to another one at the same time.It might be the Gemini in me. it might be the two people inside me, but it's like you just have to split your head and be able to coordinate your limbs and just feel it as well.

Sounds like it might take a lot of practice

Alan: The answer is just to play odd rhythms like 5/4, 7/4, 9/4 but it make it feel like people can dance to it.

I'll get right on it.
Thanks to Alan White. Yes's newest album Fly From Here will be released July 12 in the US.

6 Songs with Alan White #5 "Siberian Khatru (live) " 1973

In his third year as a session and touring drummer Alan White shared an apartment with Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer recording engineer Eddy Offord. One night Offord invited White to stop by a sewing shop on the West End of London where he met the members of Yes.



Alan: They were actually rehearsing for Close To The Edge and they were playing and (drummer) Bill Bruford had to leave because he was going to dinner with somebody.And Eddy said "Well Alan can play the drums.Why don't you play the song (Siberian Khatru) so everybody can go through it?" So it's basically bar of 8, bar of 7 intro and I was quite used to that because of the band I was playing in so I just got into it and played it and they all kind of went "He knows how to do this stuff".

Skip ahead two to three week later: Bill Bruford has left the band to join King Crimson. Alan is finishing up a European tour with Joe Cocker when he gets a phone call.



Alan:(Jon Anderson said) "We want you to join the band. We know you can do this. Just listen to the music", and he said "This is the set list."
  He said "We've got a gig on Monday in Dallas, Texas" and I said "Are you joking? I can't learn all this stuff in that time."
   He said "We just have to go for it" so that's what I did.

Alan smack in the middle of Yes, 1973


By this time Yes had already recorded five albums including two classics, The Yes Album and Close to the Edge. Alan had his work cut out for him.



Alan: It's not like riding a bicycle like some songs.When you play songs like ( the 19 minute )"Close to the Edge" or "Tempus Fugit" from Drama, those songs are just a whole thing you have to go through. Lots of mood changes and different tempos. You just have to,over the years, get it into your head.

It always seemed a bit unfair to Alan that Yes recorded its three disc live album (Yessongs) and concert film on his first tour. But as he approaches 40 years with the band, he says he doesn't spend much time looking back.




Alan: Yes has always been a great vehicle for me to study and move forward. This is the kind of band that doesn't look at the horizon. They always try to see over it and try to create something new. And that, to me, presents a kind of challenge that I like to take on. I always like something new to go for.

Next: "Owner of a Lonely Heart"

6 Songs with Alan White #4 "My Sweet Lord" 1970

Though it's only been 40 years, there's a lot of confusion about who played what instrument on what track of George Harrison's epic triple album ALL THINGS MUST PASS. The album lists 5 drummers/percussionists for instance... and it's quite the all-star cast: Ringo Starr, Ginger Baker, Phil Collins, Jim Gordon and Alan White. Alan says he played on the title track, the hit "My Sweet Lord, "Isn't It a Pity" and "Wah Wah" (among others) but he understands the confusion,

ALAN: About twenty people turned up every day, and we decided who was going to play what, and which song and what you do and if you weren't needed, you weren't needed.

George would play the songs and we'd all get into it. And then we'd all organize it a bit more and a bit more until we finally had a take.

From a drummer's point of view Harrison's #1 hit ( and the first #1 hit by any ex-Beatle), "My Sweet Lord", doesn't offer much to talk about. It's a pretty basic beat but you don't hear the drums until 1:45 into the song.

ALAN: The drums actually come in earlier than that and on the record they faded them in very slowly. It actually worked but it was all (producer)Phil Spector's idea at that time.

Next: Siberian Khatru by Yes

6 Songs with Alan White #3, "Imagine" 1971

"Imagine" has long been considered the greatest peace anthem in rock history, but how many fans realize John Lennon is "imagining" a utopia full of atheists and anarchists? Lennon has called "Imagine" "Working Class Hero" with sugar on it for conservatives. Future Yes drummer Alan White, now a dedicated member of the Plastic Ono Band, can be seen in the above clip hearing Lennon play "Imagine" for the first time. He tells 1001Songs the story behind Imagine


Actually John just sat down and played it on the piano and sang it for everybody. And everybody was just, you know, amazed. Just such a fantastic song with so much meaning--words that still mean so much today.

"Imagine" has one of the simplest kinds of drum rhythms and it's a very simple song but I learned a kind of lesson from that.
It's not really what you play but how you play it and the feeling behind it. Sometimes that makes it what it is and that's what "Imagine" was all about because we only did three takes and then we did backing tracks. And after the third take we all looked at each other and said I guess that was it. everybody in the room knew that was the take for the song.
1001Songs: What was the feeling in the room?
Oh it was one of quietness and looking around and John said "Wonderful."

Alan played drums on six of the Imagine album tracks, among them "Oh Yoko" and "How do You Sleep?", a scathing reply to Paul's "Too Many People" and other perceived sleights, featuring George Harrison on slide guitar.



John gave us all a sheet with the words to "Imagine" and all the songs to the album Imagine and he said "If there's any song you don't feel like you want to play on because of what it's saying, let me know and they were all fantastic so I just played on a bunch of stuff on the album and loved every moment of it.

I didn't realize at the time that I was kind of a part of history. I was just in the studio making another album kind of thing.


This would be Alan's last session with Lennon but he recalls all his Plastic Ono Band recordings with fondness.

Whenever I started doing anything with the band, he used to say "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!"
He was just really nice to me, always like a person who took me under his wing and he'd say "This is my little drummer."


Tomorrow: George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"

6 Songs with Alan White #2 "Instant Karma!" 1970

John Lennon enlisted George Harrison, Billy Preston, Klaus Voorman and future Yes drummer Alan White on "Instant Karma!". Lennon claims he "wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we're putting it out for dinner."

1001Songs asked Alan about those memorable "fall down the stairs" drum fills. Alan explained he was playing a lot of prog rock at the time and experimenting with time signatures.


I was going through a phase in my life when I thought "Wouldn't it be interesting if a drummer is playing a certain groove and when you get to a drum fill you take it out of that meter into another meter and then come back into the song again?"
So that was what that was all about. And when I first tried it in the studio John said "What was that?" and I said "I had this idea to take it out--"
He said "It was fantastic!" He said "Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it!"

TOMORROW: IMAGINE

6 Songs with Alan White: #1 "Cold Turkey" live in Toronto 1969

Best known as the drummer of Yes for more than 30 years, Alan White has also played on some of the greatest recordings in rock history. 1001Songs asked Alan to talk about six of those recordings, beginning with the concert that helped John Lennon decide he didn't need The Beatles anymore.

Alan was only twenty years old when he heard John and Yoko had seen one of his London gigs with his band, Blue Chips.

I got a call the next day saying "I saw you playing last night."
He said "You're really good".
He said "I got a gig for you.Do you want to come and jump into it 'cuz we wont have any time for rehearsals?"
I thought it was a friend of mine just making a joke on me so I put the phone down. I got a call about ten minutes later. He said "No! It's really me." And at that time I almost fell off my chair.


The next day Alan walked into a room and met John and Yoko and bass player Klaus Voorman ( from Manfred Mann. He also designed The Beatles Revolver album)

John said "I forgot to tell you. Eric Clapton's playing guitar and I went (surprised facial expression) "Oh really?"

That day they boarded the plane from London to Toronto.

We went to the back of the plane. There was nobody on the plane
at the back. So two acoustic guitars ( Eric and John). He gave me a set of drumsticks and I played on the back of the seat in front of me and that was the rehearsal for the show.

They landed and got to the Toronto gig with just 45 minutes to spare.

I didn't get any nerves at all about any of that. And I was flung right into this, and it's called "Rising to the Occasion". You just deal with it.
The only thing that perturbed me a little bit is when we got there, Little Richard was on stage, which was incredible, and Gene Vincent was walking around backstage.

The stage crew helped build a drum set for Alan.

John went 1-2-3-4 and that was it.

The set contained a number of rock standards John and Eric knew. "Blue Suede Shoes", "Money" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy". Then Yoko began singing.



That's the other thing I found very strange because we were in the middle of a number and she got in a bag and laid on the floor at John's feet and was screaming into the microphone. I kept thinking it the feedback coming back from the speakers.

Alan is second from the left, between Klaus and Yoko.

Alan on far left, EC, Klaus and John & Yoko



TOMORROW: "Instant Karma"