Sunday News
Published: April 6, 2008
by JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent
By the close of 1980, Steve Howe was at a crossroads in his career. He had given the previous decade of his life to Yes, and was one of the most revered guitarist in popular music, but progressive rock was on the way out, and punk was hip. The year before, founding singer Jon Anderson had left Yes. Keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman exited as well. Aiming for a fresh sound, Howe, along with drummer Alan White and bassist Chris Squire, brought in Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, who together formed the synth-pop duo the Buggles.
The result was "Drama," an album considered by many fans to be among the band's worst. Almost 30 years later, Howe still defends the record. "I thought Drama' was a great Yes album," Howe said in a recent interview from a New York hotel room. Howe and the original members of Asia will perform Monday in Harrisburg at Whitaker Center's Sunoco Performance Theater. Howe recalled how, after "Drama," the band simply fell apart.
"Chris and Alan were keen on collaborating with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Trevor and Geoff wanted to do another Buggles record, and I certainly wasn't going to try and recruit new members."
The Jimmy Page thing never happened, but Yes was done. "We just gave it up," Howe said. Growing up in London, Howe played in the In Crowd and Tomorrow, bands that epitomized the psychedelic sound of swinging London in the 1960s. He joined Yes in 1971, helping to forge the 3-year-old group's sound for its third LP, simply titled "The Yes Album."
Among progressive-rock aficionados, the record has remained a favorite: bright and bold, ambitious without being dense, crackling with energy and innovation. Classic tracks "Yours is No Disgrace," "Starship Trooper," "I've Seen All Good People" and "Perpetual Change" cemented the group's reputation as the kings of the prog genre. The album set the standard for the group over the next decade, and while albums such as "Fragile," "Close to the Edge" and "Tales From Topographic Oceans" displayed accelerated ambition and vision, Yes was often criticized for self-indulgence, for overreaching and making rock n' roll into snob music.
Through it all, Howe remained a respected guitarist. Rock, R&B, ragtime, jazz, Renaissance - not only could Howe play them all masterfully, but he found hidden melodic connections between genres that even seasoned musicians often miss. But by the 1980s, that approach, exciting as it was, seemed tired. A few months after Yes dissolved, Howe was approached by former King Crimson bassist John Wetton through a mutual friend. The pair hit it off, and almost immediately began writing songs without having a band to play them.
Howe suggested Downes be brought in. Wetton snagged Emerson, Lake & Palmer drummer Carl Palmer. Then the writing got even better. Signed to a lucrative deal with Geffen Records, the band decided to call itself Asia. Immediately dubbed a prog-rock supergroup by the press, Asia was expected to churn out more of the long, complex, dramatic, spacey jams familiar to fans of Yes, King Crimson and ELP.
Instead, the group's self-titled debut album was one of sleek arena rock: catchy hooks, soaring harmonies, heavy drums and searing guitars all neatly edited and ready for radio. And radio proved ready. "Why did we end up sounding the way we did? That's the hardest question of all to answer," Howe recalled with a laugh.
"I think we were all just looking for something new, and we just kind of fell into it. For me, personally, I had carried the Yes banner for 10 years, and I wanted to carry a new banner." Asia was an unlikely success, and to Howe it proved liberating. On any given night with Yes, he might play classical guitar, a big Gibson through a fuzzbox or a sighing pedal steel, sometimes in the space of one epic song. Asia was different.
"It was certainly a lesson in streamlining for me," Howe said. "I really liked the idea of not having to go around the world with a dozen guitars dangling off the stage." With Howe's eclecticism reduced to its core and the pop songs of Wetton and Downes forming the band's foundation, Asia had found a winning approach. Howe insists the success came from the songs and the group's approach to songwriting, not from their abilities as players. "With any successful band, no matter how talented they might be, it's the music itself that is the foundation."
The gravity of their past successes combined with their concise pop arrangements made the members of Asia seem like more than just some seasoned art-rockers looking to cash in on new wave. The group's debut album topped the Billboard charts for two months and spawned the No. 4 hit "Heat of the Moment" (one of the most recognized riffs of the 1980s) and the top 20 "Only Time Will Tell." Both are still classic-rock staples.
Both songs had accompanying hit videos on the nascent cable network MTV. It was a serendipitous partnership. Asia could not have been successful without MTV, and MTV owed part of its success to Asia. "At the same time we were finding a new sound to call our own, we were finding a new look as well," Howe said. A few years older than anyone else on the network, Asia benefited from the video-directing prowess of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who helped the group find a young audience almost overnight.
"I think those videos have held up well. It was a new way to engage an audience, and we enjoyed it very much," Howe said. It was a package for success that, in retrospect, might have been more influential than the group originally thought. On tour in 1983, Howe got an advance cassette copy of "90125," the new album from a regrouped Yes, featuring South African guitarist Trevor Rabin in Howe's spot, and with singer Jon Anderson back in the fold. The sleek new Yes sounded, well, a lot like Asia.
"I used to poke fun at them for doing it," Howe said. "I thought, Look, they're playing at our game now." The album, of course, was massive for Yes, yielding hits "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Leave It." Success for Asia, however, was short-lived. "Don't Cry," from the band's second LP, "Alpha," signaled the end of Asia's chart run. A third album, "Astra," flopped miserably. "We really just [undid] ourselves," Howe said, referring to the ego clashes and conflicts that dashed any hope of a sustained career.
Howe barely participated in recording Asia's third album, instead jumping ship to join former Genesis six-string noodler Steve Hackett in GTR. He also did session work for the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Queen and Dixie Dregs. Beginning in 1989, Howe participated in a dizzying array of Yes reunions and tours that continued into the new millennium. He also got more prolific on his own. In his first 20 years as a performer, Howe released only two solo albums. Since 1991, he has put forth another baker's dozen, featuring licks of jazz, folk, acoustic and electric guitar.
"It's become a biannual thing, I guess," Howe said, referring to his solo efforts. "Building a home studio and moving out into the country to write has really helped. I just keep finding different avenues to explore." In the midst of all this, Wetton got in touch with Howe in 2006 about an Asia reunion. Wetton and Downes had fronted various ad-hoc Asia lineups over the years with limited success. Howe was keen on gathering the original group, so they did.
Tours in 2006 and 2007 went so well that the group recorded a new album, "Phoenix," due out Tuesday, April 15, on the EMI America label. The title might be a little presumptuous, considering there's little chance the album will generate any hits. But "Phoenix" is far better than the last record this lineup put together. For Howe, for now, that's good enough. The original members of Asia will perform at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 7, at Whitaker
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