What can you say about singer / songwriter Jon Anderson that hasn’t already been said countless times before? Known as the driving force behind Yes, arguably one of the most important bands to emerge out of the British progressive rock scene of the late 60’s, Anderson’s unique sounding alto tenor has easily made him one of the most recognizable voices in rock. In 2008 that voice was almost silenced forever as Jon suffered a severe asthma attack and the ensuing complications from that knocked him out of commission for the better part of a year.

Not willing to wait the extended amount of time necessary for him to recover Yes decided to go on with their planned fortieth anniversary tour and hired a replacement singer from a Yes tribute band. What was even more surprising was the fact that even after Jon had fully recovered he found the door was inexplicably closed for a possible return to the fold. The man who has appeared on every single Yes album except for 1980’s Drama was now an ex-member of the band.

Not one to remain bitter about the situation Jon got back to work on a number of different projects. One of said projects is the album The Living Tree recorded with keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who coincidentally is also a former member of the band having come and gone numerous times, but that’s another story for another day. The album which marks the first time the two have collaborated together is an intimate and relaxed affair that finds the duo uniting simply for the love of making music. Longtime Yes fans might find The Living Tree to be perhaps a bit underwhelming or too subdued for their taste; nevertheless it is a unique offering that kicks off the next stage in their creative partnership. I recently had a chance to catch up with Jon and he spoke in detail about the new album and the creative process behind it. We also discussed a variety of other topics, some of which included, painting, the healing powers of the earth mother, Chief Seattle and oh yeah, Yes as well. Read on to get a revealing glimpse into the wild and wonderful world of Jon Anderson.

Jon: We did a tour of the U.K. four years ago that was very successful. We basically had a lot of fun. Early last year Rick said "Let's do it again", so I said "Ok, but let's write some new songs". New songs are always good for a performance, because although you can play some classic Yes songs and its fun, it's nice to present three or four new songs. So we did that and then we ended up doing a lot more, this was around July of last year. We ended up with enough for an album so we just said let's put it out and that's what we did.

Jon: Not really. We ended up with a very, very good live concert which we'll probably release in the summer. That will really give everyone a good feeling of what our tour was like. We do Yes songs, new songs and a few jokes because Rick likes to tell jokes. It's just a very entertaining evening you know? We figured that because we'd recorded enough songs for an album that we might as well put it out. You never know these days because it's difficult to reach a lot of people unless you have a hit song or a pop song. These are just very good, well crafted songs. Rick's playing is just beautiful, as it always is. He's just a very unique keyboard player. It's very unique to be able to work together, its fun.

Jon: It's a little bit like a comedy show at times. We start off playing music and singing songs that people know for about ten or fifteen minutes and then Rick will start telling jokes and we'll start laughing. The audience relaxes and can enjoy a bunch of songs from Yes that they’re familiar with. As well they're equally excited to hear the new material based on the reception we got. After two hours people come away from the show feeling that they've had a wonderful time, which is how you should feel when you pay money to go and see a show. You just want to have a good time.

Jon: Sure. Gosh, I'll be sixty seven this year and I shouldn't be charging around thinking I'm this thirty or forty year old rock star. I was never into being a rock star anyways. I was happy to be in a band that was successful and I was always trying to push the musical limits within the band to see what we could try. To be able to still get onstage at my age and perform really good music and have fun is a blessing in a way.

Jon: Yeah they were done over a period of about three weeks when I was on tour. Rick sent me mp3's and I'd be singing in hotels and putting it down in my laptop. These days you can put a studio in there and you can make movies with a laptop. You can do virtually anything. It was a very spontaneous feeling, a little bit like when I worked with Vangelis. Rick would send me music and I wouldn't even listen to the whole thing. I would start to play it back and just start singing, so whatever came to me is what I ended up singing. I'd say seventy or eighty percent of the lyrics were there already. I was thinking about the earth mother and how I've been taught by shamans. Here in America where I live I met a wonderful Native American medicine man twenty years ago and I've kept up our friendship. He tells me about Chief Seattle, who said great words about how we are the caretakers of the earth and we are the earth. So if we're screwing around with the earth then we're messing around with ourselves. That's what the lyrics of The Living Tree are trying to say here and there. We've got to love ourselves in a sort of sacred and total way in order to revisit who we truly are, and how we're so connected to mother earth and the nature of the earth. It's hard when you're living in a city, but it's not hard to go out into a park and experience the beauty of nature that surrounds us.

Jon: Possibly. When I was singing I know I was closing my eyes because I was in a hotel room and I was singing away thinking that I was singing to an audience. I was pretending that I was in a small theater or a club, so I had this feeling that I had that kind of closeness.

Jon: Yeah that was the idea because with the keyboards you get a lot of reverb and there's a lot of sounds, so you want to keep the voice sort of centered with, as you said not too much reverb. This way people can not only get the tone of the voice, but the content of the lyrics and what the song is about and how it dances with the music.

Jon: I don't know because I'm singing everyday with this project that I'm working on. Everyday I'm singing in my studio. When you're on tour with a band, it's an aggressive situation. You're singing hard and strong every night and it's an aggressive energy because it's volume crazy. Over the last couple of tours I got pretty sick and as a result I was lucky that I got out of nearly dying, so I feel very thankful for life. I sing every day for the joy of it rather than "Oh I have to go on tour". I'm singing because I'm joyfully thankful to be alive. I'm in love with my wife and I'm in love with life. I suppose I don't push my voice as much. Again I'm just excited to sing every day.

Jon: I think more or less it was the idea that after I got sick I spent a lot of time in my garden. I couldn't sing for six months because they had to do operations, so I painted a lot. On reflection I just spent a lot of time by myself in the garden recuperating. The birds and bees and all that surrounds you were just... mesmerizing. Some of the lyrical content about nurturing the earth mother and being caretakers of the earth mother came through very easily. I'm just singing what I naturally and truly feel, because I always have. This isn't something that came out of being close to death.

Jon: Oh for sure. I would do fifteen minutes in the sun, just sitting there meditating and letting the sun give me that vitamin d [laughs].

Jon: I think it happened like it did for a lot of people in the 60's. The revolution that love is powerful and love is all you need. The Beatles, Bob Dylan and the music of the 60's is what really revolutionized the young people of that time. In a way it was the search to understand god and how god is within us. My new mantra is from Gandhi who said "God has no religion" and I love that. Chief Seattle probably said the same thing. It's something that we keep forgetting. We're raising our state of mind and raising our state of consciousness in amongst the craziness of life. We're not embattled in giant wars, but small wars and slowly but surely the internet is releasing us from the corruption that surrounds us. It's part of this ongoing awakening. That's what happened in the 60's. We were supposed to wake up towards the 21st century. We were supposed to wake up and dream. So I still have that inner feeling that I was part of something that was very revolutionary and is still there, like we've just seen happen with Egypt. Revolution happens, for the better.

In 1987 there was a harmonic convergence which was this alignment of all the planets and according to the Mayan calendar there was supposed to be a changing of the world. It wasn't doom and gloom; it was just changing the world. The Berlin wall came down sixteen months later. Now it's as if we're going to go through another upheaval in 2012 and 2024. These are the dates of awakening. The great awakening to the knowledge that we are all connected and that we should all relax a bit [laughs].

Jon: Yes for sure. I suppose being a singer, it's natural that I sing about things that I'm going through and survival is a very, very personal experience, so the music is based on some of the things that I went through. It's a very strong, emotional album. My wife saved my life twice. She helped produce the album. I had been working with many musicians around the world via the internet and I still have lots and lots of songs from over the last four or five years. She just helped pick out the ones that really resonated to the healing process.

Jon: Yeah I had already worked on a lot of the songs and then more songs came up. I was working with musicians that I'd basically never met except on the internet. So you're working with music that inspires you and the songs just pour out. It's very different from sitting in a room with two or three people trying to make music. This is just music that happened. I put a message up on my website and I got a lot of people sending me music. The neat thing was they were sending me new music because they wanted to work with me. That is an inspiration in itself. You don't know who they are or how old they are. You know where they're from because you find out their identity when you start talking to them. I got two songs from an Australian guy and a couple of songs from the guy who actually does the music for South Park. There are a couple of guys from France, one in England and one in New York.

Jon: It's great because there are so many talented people out there. I was just working with some young musicians from The Modern Music Academy of San Luis Obispo which is about ten miles from where I live. I'm there with about a dozen young people and they get up one by one and we all sing together and get into a groove and stuff and it's just wonderful. It's amazing how talented the young people are. They know it's an uphill battle trying to get their music out there, but in some way it's an easier battle because they can put their music up on their own website. Whereas when you deal with a record company you have to deal with a judge and jury, so more power to young people. The internet was fascinating to me on every level when I started maybe ten years ago, and there are people who are far ahead of me. There's a guy who fascinated me just the other day, his name is Chris Milk. He just did a video for The Arcade Fire that's just perfect. You should check it out.

Jon: You know, I had no idea who he was. He asked me what I was thinking and I just told him to find a lovely, big tree, electrify it, imagine that it's inter-dimensional and throw in some Einstein-ism's. He added the birds flying out with the music which I thought was brilliant.

Jon: No. I was thinking about that yesterday because Rick and I and Trevor (Rabin) might make some music together and tour. It's all in the talking stages but if we did something I might ask Roger for something. He did Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe so I'd probably ask him. When I work with Rick and other people that were in Yes, it feels like Yes music no matter what. You can't get away from that, so there's no harm in dressing it up that way. With Rick and I we were just making an album, we weren't trying to do this big promotional sort of thing. We just figured we had enough material for an album, we'll make and album and put it out for Christmas and see if people like it. People do seem to like it, but it's a slow process and people are still finding out about it and hopefully they'll listen to it and enjoy it.

Jon: I know that when I'm working I'm totally relaxed. I'm not in a state of panic; it's just a feeling of wanting to create. As I mentioned I'm singing ideas every day or virtually every day so it's as though this outpouring of energy feels like I'm not doing much. I'm just letting it happen. I'm just sitting back and enjoying it I suppose. I'll just start putting lyrics down and throwing ideas in there, it's like painting. The best thing about painting is not quite knowing what you're going to do. You've got something in the back of your mind but it’s got to come through you as naturally as possible, without getting in your own way. It's the same way with music; you don't want to get in your own way. You just do it. I think I have this theory that you can just write really, good music in a day with somebody because you want to work together. You write some music together and you don't judge it. Then you go back to it a day later and its like "Wow we were doing some interesting stuff". I experienced this last week with a friend of mine who is a concert pianist. He came down and we talked about an idea for a musical and I said to him "You start playing and then we'll do another and another. We'll do about nine or ten pieces but we won't stop, we'll just do it." So he did a fast one, then a slow one, then one with more of a JS Bach feeling. At the end of the day we said goodbye and he went back to San Francisco and I forgot about it. I went to listen to it the next day and I was mesmerized by the melodies that were popping into my head and what I was singing about. He has a son who has autism and we talked about how it affects children on so many different levels. We're trying to drag them into our world when really we should be dragging ourselves into their world. That's what we talked about. During the course of singing these lyrics were popping in and popping out, some very magical and mysterious stuff.

Jon: Yeah. That's what they call jazz.

Jon: Yeah. I had this pretty wild experience and I was given a lot of opiates to survive the pain that I was going through on so many different levels. You get very lucid, so you dream and you see stuff. I was seeing these dancing people coming down from the mountain bringing me new music, new songs and stuff. I couldn't stop thinking about it so I got myself a role of paper and ended up doing a twenty five foot long mural. It's very powerful because it's what I was seeing during my recovery. Two or three times a week I'd carry on painting it and I finally finished it after five or six months. It was like a bridge. Artistically I was still creating so it was sort of this bridge for me to be able to survive emotionally, so that I wasn't sitting around feeling sorry for myself.

Jon: The amazing thing is that they're not negative at all. I was just down at the Grammy museum in Los Angeles where I'd been invited to sing and talk to some inner city children. They were mostly I'd say of Chicano or Mexican origin, and god they were so beautiful. They were so bright and their energy was so full of light. I sang them a couple of songs and I could sense that they were thinking "What are these songs?" I cracked a couple of jokes with them and asked them whether or not their teacher was around 'cause I wanted to say shit. They all started cracking up [laughs]. I got them singing and I got a couple of them up onstage where they'd play and I'd sing and we'd do some rap ideas. They wanted me to sing the song that I did with Mike Oldfield that Kanye West sampled (ed note: Jon is referring to the song “In High Places” from Oldfield’s 1983 album Crises). So I told them they had to do the song and then I started doing my bit. After I left I couldn't stop thinking about them and how beautiful they were. They live in a tough, tough world and they know it. But they're still bright and full of light. I remember when I was a kid and I didn't have a lot of money. I used to work on the farm to get money when I was ten or eleven years old. I was happy and I loved playing football. I didn't think that I was poor or I didn't know that I was poor until you get to sixteen, seventeen and you would see people with bigger cars and so on.

There are a lot of young people out there who are very much in love with life and they have great parents, but there's also a lot of heartache and a lot of terrible things going on as well. But I believe that it's all going to be cleaned up by the truth and that the internet will set us free.

Ryan: Without getting into the actual reason behind your departure from Yes, I have to say that for someone like myself who’s obviously on the outside looking in, the band has at times appeared to be pretty dysfunctional. I can only speculate that it could maybe be comparable to being married to the same person for forty years in that there are going to be ups and downs along the way. That being said it certainly looked like their decision to tour without you while you were sick was a financial move, but that doesn’t explain why you didn’t rejoin them once you were healthy enough to do so.

Jon: Well they turned me down. I called them up and told them I felt great and wanted to do it and they said “No we're happy where we are, maybe next year". I thought ok, that's life. You just have to move on and get on with other things. It just wasn't meant to be. I think that bless them they're just guys that are going through what they want to go through and that's life. It's hard at times to think about it but as long as they're honest with the fans and they let the fans know who's in the band, rather than tour as Yes then that's cool. I think they've just started their tour by saying who's in the band which I think is a good thing. Before that I was very, very sad and disappointed. The hardest thing for me was years ago the management kept calling it a 'brand'. To me it really, really had nothing to do with a brand, it was Yes music. We were doing very different music, very important music. When you start calling it a brand that's like ketchup. I didn't like that at all. Looking back on the whole history of the band it was badly mismanaged all the way down the line, but thankfully the music survived. I'm happy they're saying who's in the band now and what they've done is what they have to live with you know?

Jon: Yeah and good luck to them.

Jon: That I'm so lucky to do what I do! [laughs] I'm so thankful to be able to do what I do. That was one of the things that I tried to instill in the band. I would always say that "we are so blessed and so thankful, so let's work hard at what we've got because we have everything". At times it worked and at times some Yes music was great, but I always tried to instill that from the very beginning. "We're so lucky, don't drink yourself stupid and don’t go crazy. Let's create because we're so blessed". Getting to travel the world and all these things, I can't believe how lucky I am.