Quote

We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked.

I've seen bands split up for five years and do nothing. That sounds great to me, but it just hasn't worked out that way.

In a way, that's always been Yes' history to a large extent! Quite a few occasions when we've had a new band member or change in members, then we've done a new album with new chops and refreshed the musical approach.

I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.

Everybody was on the same page. Nobody has really gone out there on a different musical journey. When we got back together again, we all wanted to do the same kind of music.

From meeting Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, teaming up, rehearsing, playing selected gigs outside of Britain, coming back into Olympic Studios to record the first album, and then going to America, which we crack open like a nut with the debut record - all that happened, literally, within months.

We went into that knowing that we were never going to sell a major record 'cause we didn't sound like these bands, so I just thought this was an opportunity for us to make the kind of records that we wanted and make some money at the same time.

You know how the Beatles broke off - they all did their solo projects and they came back together and they were even stronger!

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

It was an extraordinary connection, the synergy within the band. There was an area of ESP between Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and myself.