Jon Anderson celebrates his 75th birthday today (October 25th). His band Yes has an interesting history with him in and out and then 2 versions of the same band. Singer Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes, once known as The Buggles, joined Yes in 1980. They immediately changed the group’s sound and the way it worked. But by 1982, original singer Jon Anderson was ready to return. Horn became their producer and Downes gave way to Anderson and original keyboardist Tony Kaye. Anderson recalls that things were not like they’d been in the past when the group started recording songs like “Leave It.” The track was already totally produced when Jon Anderson came in to sing on it. He explains on the different way he interacted with the band from the 90125 album:
“‘Leave It’ was already produced, I just sang on it. It was great to do on stage, ‘cause we could use tapes, sounds and things to make it sound really good. Definitely a new way of looking at working with a group — it worked the first time, it didn’t work as well on Big Generator, even though we tried it that way, where the band went in to do all the backing tracks and then I came later. It just didn’t work as well.”
