A Conversation with Chris Squire – HuffPost 6.29.12
Mike Ragogna: Hello Chris Squire, how are you?
Chris Squire: I’m good thank you.
MR: Thank you for calling in. Chris, what’s your side of this whole Squackett story?
CS: What side of the story would you like?
MR: Why, your side, of course! How did you guys come together as Squackett.
CS: Some of this Steve has told you. But when I first got together with Steve was when he came to help me out on a project he was doing at the Swiss Choir. It was a bunch of Christmas carols I wanted to record with a punk-rocky feel to it. I’d recorded the bass drums and keyboards. I was looking to have, I thought in the beginning, various guitar players to come play on the various tracks. It turns out that when I made the calls to these guys who were happy to do it, they were busy with projects. The drummer suggested that I called Steve Hackett and I hadn’t heard much about what he was doing. I heard he had a vibrant solo career and was doing different kinds of records, classical to acoustic, all sorts of different things as well as his own solo band that he’d go out with. I gave him a call and he said he’d be happy to work on a couple of tracks and he did and did a fabulous job. I asked Steve if he would do the rest of the tracks on the album, and fortunately, he had the time to do it.
I owed him a favor and said if there’s anything you want me to come play on, I’d be happy to. He said he did have some songs and works in progress, and I was learning more about his music and the songs he was writing. He gave me a CD with some of his demos and ideas and I went back to him and said I like these files and it just organically developed into a situation where we were working together and we decided we may as well do a joint project, hence the birth of Squackett. I brought in some material I was working on and he played on that, and, eventually, by the time we got to the last couple of sets, we were inventing them together and writing lyrics together, coming up with vocal melodies and singing together, which was a big surprise because when I started working with him, I didn’t know he sang. He was a real good singer and it was a bonus that when we sang together, our voices made a really good blend. So on our album, a lot of the lead vocals are done that way. That’s Squackett for you.
MR: I noticed the voices blended in the same way yours and Jon Anderson’s blend. I was very surprised by that.
CS: Yes, we make good noise together.
MR: (laughs) What was the creative process like, for instance, for “A Life Within a Day” and “Tall Ships”?
CS: Those two tracks we kind of wrote together organically from the ground up. Steve had a musical idea he’d been working on with Roger, the third man in this project, a long time keyboard player who also handled the production and the mixing. Steve had been working on the instrumental side. We started thinking about vocal melodies and rearranging the track a bit and eventually rewriting the lyrics and singing it. You mentioned “Tall Ships.” That came from a day when I was playing on this Yamaha bass that I’d been given to see if I like and I just sort of played a few riffs on it and Roger recorded it when I was messing around and next time I came in the studio, he’d strung the bass part together in the computer and that was the birth of “Tall Ships.” Steve and Roger came up with a chorus and we wrote some lyrics, and I ended up singing lead vocal on that one. It was a pretty fun and low-pressure process.
MR: Roger as in Roger King?
CS: Yes.
MR: Chris, you’re the only member of Yes to have appeared on all of the albums?
CS: Yes.
MR: What are your thoughts looking back on the Yes years.
CS: Well, they’ve been a lot more than we ever anticipated when we formed the band in 1968. I thought if we could have had a six-year career, which is really visibly what The Beatles had from ’63 to ’69, that that would be a tremendous achievement, and yet, Yes is now in its 44th year of existence and I’ve been through all of the Yes changes, more by default than by design. I’ve just sort of been there and other people have gone off and done other projects. 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.
MR: Strangely, even after all these years, Bill Bruford always comes to mind as Yes’ drummer.
CS: Bruford played on the first five albums and on some live stuff and rejoined for the reunion tour in the nineties.
MR: Which had almost every member?
CS: It had eight people, not everyone. There was a live album out with that format put out by Larry, the promoter of that reunion tour. It’s an orchestral version of Yes. It’s got a real big sound to it.
MR: You mentioned The Beatles. They were a big influence on you?
CS: Of course. I was fifteen in 1963 and I looked at that and thought, “That looks like a real good job and I think I’ll go for that.”
MR: When you look at music right now, what are your thoughts?
CS: Things always change in many ways, and in other ways, they don’t. It’s the same process, people write songs and of course, production values have changed with technological innovation. I’m in a good place with it all. I like working with modern sounds in the studio as much as I’m happy to work with a basic rock ‘n’ roll format. I’m pretty much involved in what’s going on today as I was yesterday.
MR: When you look at your solo album Fish Out Of Water…
CS: Actually, it’s my only solo album. I’ve been trying to make a follow-up for years, but the material always gets diverted for other projects, as in Yes, and a few of the songs on Squackett. But the chances of that happening again in that way is unlikely because a lot of the flavor and the orchestral arrangements on Fish Out of Water were done by my dear friend Andrew Jackman and he is no longer with us. He was an important part of that project in terms of the orchestral arrangements. I think I’ll not attempt to do a Fish Out Of Water 2. I might stumble upon another way to do it at some point.
MR: You knew where I was going…
CS: I get that a lot.
MR: You’ve also worked on a lot of other solo projects, like with Rick Wakeman, Alan White… It’s been a challenge, as you said, but you do record on many other projects. Oh, you also were part of Conspiracy.
CS: There are offers for us to do a third Conspiracy album. At the moment, my hands are a little full because of the worldwide promotion of Yes’ album, which continues through the end of Summer in the US and with the Squackett album coming out at the end of May, I’ve got quite a lot going on at the moment.
MR: For your live shows, is Squackett going to throw in some songs from your other configurations like Genesis, Yes and solo material?
CS: Well, if we do live shows, and we’re looking at that, Steve and I have talked about it, of course. We have the material on the Squackett album but to fill out the rest of the show I would like to do some live Fish Out of Water stuff, which has never been done. I did a video with Billy Sherwood a few years back doing a couple of the tracks. I’d like to be able to do more as part of the Squackett show. Steve has a wealth of material from the various albums to fill out the Squackett show. I don’t think we’ll be doing anything with Genesis…maybe we’ll throw something in.
MR: Chris, what advice might you have for new artists?
CS: Advice… Stick to your beliefs, I guess, whatever genre you’re in. You have to believe you have a chance at making some kind of impact in your chosen area and stick to it, really, and persist.
MR: Is that what you would have told the young Chris Squire?
CS: That’s pretty much what I did. 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.
MR: What does the future look like for Chris Squire beyond Squackett?
CS: I’m not really looking at anything new to do. Yes has a new vocalist in Jon Davison who has turned out to be really fantastic. So we will definitely be looking at doing a new Yes album next year I’m sure with new material with Jon Davison’s involvement. Very loosely, that’s the next part of the Yes story.
MR: And Squackett 2?
CS: Yes, I’m sure as this album does well, there will be pressure from the record company to do another project and I don’t see why that wouldn’t happen because Steve and I enjoy the creative process together and I’m sure we’ll be happy to work on some material in the future.
MR: And how many yes albums have there been over these last 44 years?
CS: I believe it’s over 20 studio albums now. Apart from that, there’s the compilation of the live albums. There are quite a few Yes albums that have been released over the years.
MR: Chris, thanks, and all the best with Squakett and everything in the future. I really appreciate your time.
CS: Thank you.
Transcribed by Brian O’Neal