Chris Squire Quotes

People are used to us being onstage for a while.

There's been talk of YES possibly doing something on Broadway in New York. People have approached me with that idea, and there are discussions about that.

I've been called the journeyman. It's really more by default than it is by design.

'Drama' was put together quickly; there were a lot of intense, 16-hour days. Despite the pressure, it was a lot of fun, and the end result was an album I'm very proud of.

After awhile, you start realizing that change is good for you. It's healthy.

With how huge Yes was, especially in the '70s and '80s, as a touring band and actually playing at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia to 130,000 people, which is the biggest-paying show ever in rock history, you would think we'd done enough for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Most popular records are action-packed to the last semi-quaver.

I guess the idea of doing albums in their entirety, in sequence, appeals to people. I guess it's the memory of being able to hear the music in the way it was originally presented.

I think it was 'Tales of Topographic Oceans' on 8-track that was the funniest thing because it would fade out in the middle of a song and fade back in again, and when the tracks change, it was quite amusing.

'The Yes Album,' of course, was the album that put Yes' name on the worldwide stage.

Not many people know this, but when Yes first started doing club dates back in 1968, '69, we did a few tracks from 'The Magic Garden' album in our set. We just loved the harmonies that the 5th Dimension had as well.

The great thing about Yes is that it has always been flexible.

It's not beyond the possibility that there still could be a YES in 200 years' time ... of course with different members, unless the medical profession comes up with something extraordinary.

Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson have rejoined and gone off again and rejoined, but I've been there the whole time, and even though Alan White is the 'new' drummer, he has been there since 1972, so he also deserves the credit for being around for 20 years.

Of course, Paul McCartney's sound is different from mine, but it's the way you hear things, really.

We did do the whole of the live suite from 'Fly From Here,' and that was very enjoyable to do. In fact, that is actually our longest piece of music, I think, that we'd ever done.

I've always been a great believer that you have to keep producing new things in order to keep life interesting - not only for ourselves, but for the audience as well. That's really always been our principle and way of working.

Everyone enjoys downtime at home, I'm sure, for various reasons, but I find the whole system of being out there and doing shows for people - the more of it you do, in fact the more energizing it is, for me individually.

Yes's whole career was never really planned in any sort of way. It's always sad when a member leaves, but it's exciting when someone new comes in, and that regenerates the freshness of the band.

The other guys and myself have agreed that Billy Sherwood will do an excellent job of covering my parts, and the show as a whole will deliver the same Yes experience that our fans have come to expect over the years.

It's been a long time since we've been out there playing new material, and we have really enjoyed that. Of course we still enjoy playing the Yes standards as well, but it's great to have a bit of a challenge and pull off new material.

Because of all the various people who've come in and out and brought along ideas, I've been on a learning curve throughout all these years. Of course, everyone that's been involved has influenced me as well. And I'm grateful for that.

Touring is a tough business.

The Beatles had a six-year career, from 1963 to 1969, which - to me, in my early 20s - seemed like a phenomenally long time.

Jon Anderson and I, we really liked a lot of classical music, and we wanted to get some orchestral arrangements going on 'Time And A Word.'

I was a big Who fan when I was 15, 16 years old, and I used to go watch them play at the Marquee Club in London as often as I could.

Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things.

The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.

I really believe that the aliens are us from the future. It seems to me a very plausible reason that explains a lot of phenomena as opposed to green men with one eye from outer space.

Yes is what I like doing more than anything else. Somewhere along the way, as people came and went, it fell to me to kind of keep it going and oversee the spirit of the enterprise, as it were.

The way Yes works is when we have a new member come in, as in Jon Davison, it's appropriate that we see what differences we can get out of a new contributing member in order to keep Yes interesting.

'Onward' was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down.

Philly has always been one of our favorite towns to play in, and the fans have been very loyal and very supportive over the years.

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.

We've done very different Yes albums - 11 bars, 13. I think we had something that had 17/4 in it. It's just like anything - the more you do it, the more you have to do it.

We started Yes as a vehicle to develop everyone's individual styles.

The Seventies were just an interesting time for us because we were building the brand of the name but also varying the style of the music on each of the albums we did. Very creative time of us.

I've had to replace parts in the basses when they've gotten old or worn out, so everything isn't absolutely original.

Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people.

I think the first three Rickenbacker basses were imported around 1964. Pete Quaife, the bassist for The Kinks, bought one. Then John Entwistle from The Who bought one. As for the third one, I asked the manager of the store if I could get an employee discount. He said I could, and so I picked up that one.

It's always a little more difficult after taking a few years off, which we did from 2004 through 2008. It's more difficult to get the machine in gear again, but when you become used to it, then it becomes easier.

Over the years, there have been challenges about who can use our name. It's quite simple: A majority of people left in the band at a certain time own the name. It's not like I'm the guy who has the name under my own contract.

I learned to do a few tricks that other people hadn't done before. I developed that trebly bass thing a little further.

Strangely enough, 'I've Seen All Good People' is, I think, the second most played Yes song on American radio after 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart.' And then I think 'Roundabout' is third.