CIRCUS Magazine
October 26, 1976
Peter Crescenti


The Sunhillow Saga
Jon Anderson Delivers Fourth Yes Solo Album

[photograph of Jon in chair]
caption:  Jon Anderson: "I've never really felt as though I had such a good voice, though people do enjoy the singing I do."

_Through the mist of a million
years of high energy three riders
skimmed the surface of the plain
of Tallowcross and raced towards
a dream.
Olias was to build the ship the
Moorglade Mover/Ranyart was to
guide the moments begotten light/
Qoquaq a leader, a fashioner of
peoples of Sunhillow._

Who are these cosmic travel-
ers? Are they bit characters
from Tolkein's whimsical
Hobbit world, or maybe a
new team of super-heroes in the ever-
expanding universe of Marvel Comics?
In reality, Olias, Ranyant, and
Qoquaq are the stars of Jon Ander-
son's musical fairytale, _Olias of Sun-
hillow_ (Atlantic). The Yes vocalist's
first solo album chronicles the
mission of the super-trio to Sunhillow
to rescue that world's four tribes
before their planet explodes into
interstellar debris. If the poetics
seemed drenched in Tolkeinesque
hues and the concept seems Mar-
velesque in its imagery and scope, it's
because both were influential forces
in Anderson's conception of his saga.

Anderson readily admits, "Tolkein's
strongly influenced so many people
over the years with the idea of fan-
tasy and reality being a good kind of
balance."

  As long as a decade ago, Jon was
immersing himself in the Marvel
creations of author Stan Lee and
artist Jack Kirby. About five years
ago, he devoted much of his leisure
time to digesting scores of science
fiction and fantasy novels and
stories, becoming particularly en-
veloped in the adventurous worlds
created by J.R.R. Tolkein in his
"Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The
most immediate inspiration for _Sun-
hillow_, Anderson says, is the Vera
Stanley Alder novel, "The Initiation
of the World."

  The particular vibe that triggered
Sunhillow, though, struck the singer
back in 1972, when Yes recorded
their fourth and probably finest
record, _Fragile_. The front cover
painting of that LP, wonderously
illustrated by Roger Dean, depicted
a kind of space ark approaching a
seemingly healthy and tranquill plan-
et. The back cover, shockingly, por-
trayed the world discarding chunks
of itself into space, as the ark
(Anderson has christened it the
"Moorglade Mover") hovered away
from the chaos, presumably filled
with the rescued inhabitants of that
ill-fated sphere. From these illustra-
tions, Anderson drew the basic
skeleton plot of _Olias of Sunhillow_.

  FOUR-CORNERED PLOT: The
planet's four tribes, the Nagrunium,
Asatranius, Oractaniom, and Nord-
ranious, are each represented by a
different aspect of music in the
story. "There were four definite
places in the studio where everything
fit," Jon recalls. "In one corner, I'd
have drums. The range of drums was
from Moroccan, Jamaican, American
Indian, tabla, English brass band
bass drum, and various other kinds
of Asian drums, and a couple of
zebra-skinned African drums. In
another corner I had a Koto, a sitar,
a Greek guitar .... Then I had a
keyboard set-up. I always wanted to
get into a situation where I could
actually play three or four key-
boards. I had a set of five key-
boards." A fourth corner jangled
with Anderson's collection of inter-
national bells. The story finally ends
with the"Moorglade Mover" nestling
on Asguard to dispatch its passen-
gers, while the three super-beings
climb to that world's highest peak
and merge with the Universe.

  The tale with such godly ramifi-
cations was not an overnight cre-
ation, nor was it done in seven days
Anderson labored six long months
over his fantasy. "At times I'd spend
a full day playing the same piece of
music," he unabashedly admits, "try-
ing to put down the first track well.
One of the tracks, called 'Qoquaq en
Transic,' is a very free thing. I'd
already recorded it about six months
earlier on a very simple tape, and
found a certain kind of feeling in it.
I liked the recording I had, but
quality-wise it wasn't good enough
for the album. So I had to reproduce
that feeling, and when I tried to
reproduce it I had to go back to that
point in time when it was first pre-
sented. It took me a long time, but in
the end, when I sat back and listened
to the playback, I just couldn't stop
laughing because it was there."

  MOOG REFLECTIONS: Another
reason the production took half a
year stems from Anderson's very
definite philosophy concerning the
potentialities of the moog synthe-
sizer. Jon believes that the very
sounds you coax out of a moog are
'you,' so he worked feverishly to
make sure the machine accurately
reflected his musical personality.

  "Basically it was a question of
working on the moog, because it's a
very open-ended instrument. You can
root and root and you'll find virtually
any sound your ear wants to hear."

  _Olias of Sunhillow_ wafts along like
the soundtrack of an ether-induced
stupor, never punctuated by a solo
or even a lone instrument playing.
The record is a gluttonous orgy of
overdubs and lost sounds, with much
of the symphonic-like blanket tex-
tures produced by Anderson's col-
lection of moogs, mellotrons, and,
other keyboards. Ambitiously, Ander-
son also used scores of other instru-
ments to create his dream-like,
papier mache wall of sound„exotic
things like a Koto, a Chinese stringed
instrument, and a huge collection of
bells.

  "I had a couple of dreams of what
sound the album was going to be.
Dreams are very strange things. It's
so logical that you're alive. You sleep,
so you're alive. You dream you're
alive. Understand?

  "I started collecting instruments
to use on the album about a year and
a half before I actually started
recording it," continues Anderson,
who recorded at his home 24 track
studio. "I started picking up bells
here, a guitar there, a mandolin,
sitar, Koto, numerous flutes and
things, which I haven't really worked
that well on yet. I'm still learning.
At the moment, I carry a Chinese
bamboo flute around with me, which
is fantastic for learning how to
breathe.

  Still, for Anderson, the most im-
portant instrument of all was his
own voice, which he used not only
for shaping Iyrics, but also purely
for its naked sound. Jon first began
exploring that basic aspect of the
voice on the _Fragile_ LP, in his "We
Have Heaven," which weaves layers
and layers of vocals into intricate
choral passages.

  SHIFTING VOCAL PATTERNS:
"That was my first attempt to work
with vocal patterns. I'm interested
because (my voice) has been my
main instrument, and having never
really felt that I was such a good
singer, I've used the idea of the voice
in a different way at times, and tried
to formulate the energy in a different
way.

  "My voice has developed over the
years, and I do look forward now to
finding opposites„so I'll sing very
clearly at times, and then very
intricately with a lot of other vocals
and sounds. I think I'm gonna try to
get both ends of the scale, driving my
energies towards working out some
sequences of vocals.

  Anderson hopes to continue incor-
porating his ever-evolving vocal style
into Yes' music, and although he has
become proficient on several instru-
ments, he has decided to submerge
that new aspect of his musical per-
sonality in favor of group unity.

  "My role in Yes is more as a kind
of director," Jon explains. "I don't
feel I'm in any position, at the
moment, to take a solo with the band
playing. I've always been the singer
and that's my solo."

  Anderson doesn't figure to record
another solo record for a couple of
years, and he hopes that by then his
musical and technical knowledge will
have increased enough so that he can
avoid spending an exorbitant amount
of time hidden in the studio. In so
doing, he will also avoid creating
potential conflicts among Yes' mem-
bers.

  "When I was involved in the al-
bum, I was wondering if it was ever
gonna come out. When you still
haven't finished after four months
you think, 'Why isn't this piece of
music coming to me,' and it can get
on top of you. You have to say, 'I
don't want to let anybody down.' I
didn't want to waste the band's time.

  "I finished my album just a bit
later than everybody else. It didn't
upset the routine of the band so
much, but it did put a bit of pressure
on. In a sense, I tend to lead in what's
going on, and when I came out of
doing my _Sunhillow_ album, I realized
how important my position in the
band is„as everybody else's position
is„and that I shouldn't forget that."