KEYBOARD August 1991 ****************************************** RICK WAKEMAN & TONY KAYE FACE OFF YES By Robert L Doerschuk Interviews by Robert L Doerschuk and Mark Vail ****************************************** [Part 3] TONY KAYE When you listen to the Union album, what are your impressions? Does it sound like two groups sharing space on one CD, or like a single unified product? Well, obviously it's a combination of two things that were recorded separately and then put together. The fact that it worked out and everybody is happily playing together probably indicates that this was really a ground-breaking kind of album. But, of course, six months ago that wasn't so obvious. Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe were recording their own album in Paris, and we were working on ma- terial in Los Angeles, not really knowing what was going on because we didn't have Jon [An- derson] at that point. It seems that once everybody became aware of what was going on, all the musicians felt fine about working together, but couldn't do so until they had finished dealing with some hellacious complications and legal problems. I don't know too much about legal prob- lems. I'd guess that the most complicated thing was for us to join with the record company that really wanted to put out the album. We [i.e., the pre-Union Yes] were on Atco, and they were given an opportunity to do it, but they didn't want to, while Arista was very en- thusiastic, and they had ABWH. So we had to leave a record company we had been with for 25 years to join something new. But it worked out. You and Rick have very different approach- es toward your onstage rigs. While he's sur- rounded himself with keyboards, you've got two Yamaha KX76s. It's basically the same setup I used on the Big Generator tour, in an updated version. Rick has always had his own configurations; he likes to play on different keyboards. But grad- ually, since the 90125 tour and the beginning of MIDI, I started paring down what I was us- ing. I had my little [E-mu] Emulator [the orig- inal model] doing the ñOwner of a Lonely Heartî sounds, with two synths on top: my analog [Oberheim] OB-Xa and the [Yamaha] DX7. That's how it started out, and I loved that concept of getting everything as clean as possible. Two months before Big Generator, Robby Eagle, my technician, and I went into a studio and built my system to the specifi- cations I wanted. Apparently MIDI has had a big impact on how you work. Yes. I'm such a fan of MIDI that it's com- pletely taken over the way that I approach ev- erything I play. It's strange, because one of the reasons that I left the band originally was be- cause I was such a traditionalist in so many ways. I just wanted to play the organ. When I was a piano player, I started playing the organ because I just loved that Hammond sound. When the Mellotron and the Moog came out, I wanted nothing to do with them. I hated those sounds. But the band was pushing forward very rapidly at that point; there was definitely a dis- agreement. And Rick was getting that stuff to- gether, so obviously having him come in was the right progression for the music. What changed your attitude toward music technology? It was MIDI, the concept of layering sounds, the fact that I could create the sounds I wanted to create more easily. Everything had become more sophisticated. I didn't have to turn lots of knobs and have equipment con- stantly going out of tune. So MIDI allowed keyboard players like yourself, who were more concerned with playing than programming, to get as involved in arranging sounds as more program-oriented, Wakeman-type players. That's right. With people making all these sounds available to you, you didn't have to spend hours and hours making them yourself. Suddenly I found that I could create a fabulous Hammond sound in all of its dimensions. Of course, it'll never be exactly the same, but I could create a sound on synthesizers that was like the Hammond. What do you use to create Hammond-like sounds? I use the Korg BX-3. That's underneath the stage and Tidied into my system. It's got a separate volume control, so when I pull up the organ patches I can mix the BX-3 into them. Of course I have a Leslie speaker miked up under the stage, so I've got that sound too. I created those organ sounds in stereo, so they sound fabulous: There's distortion, and the right amount of delays and echoes. What else do you use for your organ sounds? Mostly the Korg EX-8000s. I've got a ton of those. So that, plus some sampled stuff, and the Roland D-550 organ sound, which I like quite a lot, are in stereo, and I can mix the Leslie in mono into that. How is the Leslie miked? There are three mikes: two on the top, one on the bottom. Have you tried any Leslie simulators? Didn't like them. I tried several, but you could never get that air into the sound. The real Leslie with the amplifier built-in and those speakers has that natural distortion when you switch on the fast rotor and ram it up. You can't simulate that. Was there any real Hammond on Union ? Actually, there was a real Hammond and Leslie on "Miracle of Life." The intro is Trevor playing piano, guitar, and keyboard, then I played the organ part. I had my rig set up, but there was a beat-up old Hammond in the studio too. I wasn't sure I wanted to play it. The keys were so stiff compared to what I'd been using; you get used to playing very light, touch-sensitive keyboards, and playing this Hammond was like hammering nails into a piece of wood. I thought I'd never be able to play it. In fact, when I go to an acoustic piano now, I find it difficult too. I guess I've lost all the strength in my fingers from playing those KX76s. There seems to be a lot of good old-fash- ioned Yes-type polyrhythms and metrical ir- regularities in "Miracle of Life." That's the reason we started working on it. We thought it would be a departure from Big Generator or 90125. Trevor wrote it, and it seemed so Yessy. What have you got in your rack? Everything [laughs]. The sampling stuff is actually different from what I had on the Big Generator tour because at that time there was really nothing that was capable of doing what I wanted: quick changes controlled from the master keyboard, assigning notes for the dif- ferent sounds into a hard-disk system, and so on. Of course, Oberheim had developed their playback units, so they said they'd build me a hard-disk system. That's what I used on that tour. It was fine, but E-mu got much more so- phisticated over the years, so now I'm using two Emaxes, and they're fabulous. What are you using for piano sounds? The pianos are Roland MKS-20. 1 love those sounds; I can't find anything better. It's just such a natural piano sound. I'm also using the little E-mu Proformance/1 piano module mixed in. Some of the Rhodes sounds that I use on "Lift Me Up" are a combination of those two. How do you go about dividing sounds with Rick? Actually, it's strange, because we rehearsed for two weeks without him. I was the only key- board player for two weeks in Los Angeles because he was doing a tour. So when I got down to Pensacola [for the final stages of the tour rehearsals], it was an odd situation be- cause I didn't know what he was doing. But when we got onstage and started playing the numbers, we didn't have to talk at all about who would do what. Was there any competitive element in hav- ing to make room for him once he showed up in Pensacola? No, not at all. There was no ego involved whatsoever. We never compared sounds. We just kind of traded parts off, and it was fab- ulous. Whenever we played two things to- gether, they seemed to complement each oth- er. I guess it's easier for keyboards than for, say, drums or even guitars. It wasn't like, "I want to play this, and I want to play that." Ob- viously, there are some things I've done over the past ten years that are mine, and some ear- ly Yes stuff was my thing too. And there are certain songs where he has his specific spots, like in "Awaken" [from Going for the One] . But for the middle part, I developed these sounds that I thought would complement what he was doing. So I worked with that in mind for a while, knowing what kinds of things he would be playing. It was very easy. I wish I could say that it was more complicated [laughs] How involved do other members of the band get as you and Rick orchestrate your parts? Trevor and I work together very closely. He's a very talented multi-instrumentalist: He plays everything. He's a great keyboard player too, so we work very closely when it comes to recording, and we help each oth- er with sounds. But everyone does what he wants to do. On Union, and on most previous Yes cuts, there's a strong emphasis on full, high vocal harmonies$ which in effect do what keyboard pads traditionally do in terms of filling out the texture of the sound. Does this affect how you go about creating keyboard parts? Yes. Being aware of that, I consciously steered away from pad sounds, big string sounds, or whatever on 90125 the sounds that the vocals were going to do. We wanted to make everything sound more open. In fact, it was an unusually percussive sound by Yes standards. Yeah, especially because of the new tech- nology that was available then„the Fairlight and the Synclavier, which I suddenly confront- ed in the studio. I tried to make sounds that were either percussive or very dynamic, so that you could bring them out in the mix, as opposed to pad them where vocals were going to be. That was very much the approach to ñOwner of a Lonely Heartî from 90125 and a lot of that stuff. On Big Generator we were trying to do the same thing, getting the key- boardist to do different sounds, not sounds that would normally be played on whatever instrument we were using. Was "Dangerous, " from Union, inspired at all by your keyboard arrangement on "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? There are similarities. And "City of Love" [from 90125] sounds very much like "Shock to the System" [from Union] . But I wasn't in- volved with those two songs, so it's tough for me to comment on them. Does Jon play any keyboards on the album or in the show? He's been experimenting with the Atari MIDI Translator. Jon was going to play it on- stage, but that doesn't seem to have come to- gether. I met the inventor [Jimmy Hotz], and I tried it out myself. It seems to me that ba- sically this is a controller. At the NAMM Show where they were showing it, the demonstrator had a computer and two racks full of stuff; he got some incredible sounds. As an improvi- sational instrument, it's very cool. But I'm not sure how it would work when played in the context of an ensemble doing rigid arrange- ments. Do you often improvise into a MIDI se- quencer? Yes. I had a Mac, but I never reached any degree of virtuosity on it. It's a bit strange to me. Trevor is very into all that stuff; I'm used to playing my keyboard rig directly to tape. I don't even have a huge studio setup at home. I'm still into my simple four-track. Do you take a portable keyboard with you on tour? I have a little Korg. It's battery-powered, not too sophisticated. I trundle through airports with it under my arm, and put it through a portable stereo setup. The whole thing is tiny. On the last tour, though, I did have a portable studio, which was great: a four-track, a couple of Fostex speakers, and a reverb unit. Outside of Yes, what other projects ha ve you been involved with recently? Well, I was working with Cinema and Lee Abrams for a while. He was involved with Patrick [Moraz] and Pete Bardens on key- board instrumental albums, and he wanted another one from me. So I went to work, and had the whole album written, but then I lost interest in it. Why? First of all, it was done with a drum ma- chine, and I get very tired of listening to drum machines. Also, I write very much for songs. I like to give what I write to Trevor or Jon, and they put vocals on top, something that I'm not capable of doing because I don't sing. So I was listening to all these tracks, and they sounded like tracks that needed vocals. All of them. It was like, "This is not really an instrumental album. It's a backing track for a band to play with." So I scrapped it. I would like to do some- thing of my own in the future, but only on a song basis, collaborating with someone. Any- thing else would be unacceptable. *************************************** FOR FURTHER READING Keyboard has published interviews with Rick Wakeman in Mar/Apr. '76, Feb. '79, and Sept. '89. Tony Kaye was featured in our July '84 issue, and his MIDI rig for the Big Gen- erator tour was described in "Concert Equip- ment" in Jan.'88. Photo: [Keyboard.jpg] Wakeman cover, credits not found. Image: [Keyboard2.jpg] Logo, Roger Dean / keyboard globe, ? Photo: [Keyboard3.jpg] Wakeman, Ebet Roberts / Kaye, Joseph Peduto. Photo: [Keyboard4.jpg] Union on stage, credits not found. Photo: [Keyboard5.jpg] Bruford, credits not found. Photo: [Keyboard6.jpg] YES 1973, Jeffrey Mayer.