Yes is recording their third album in less than five years, keyboardist Geoff Downes confirms. Before this recent creative outburst, they’d only released three studio projects since 2000.
“We’ve been working on an album for the past six months,” Downes tells Classic Rock. Bandmate “Steve [Howe] is at the helm and I think it will be out later in the year.”
It was initially unclear if Yes would return to the studio following 2014’s Heaven and Earth, the last Yes album released before the death of stalwart bassist Chris Squire in 2015. Then Howe produced two new LPs in quick succession, 2021’s The Quest and 2023’s Mirror in the Sky. Both were Top 30 U.K. hits.
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Long-time drummer Alan White also died in 2022, but they’ve kept up a regular touring schedule with Squire’s hand-picked replacement bassist Billy Sherwood and veteran second drummer Jay Schellen. The new albums arrived amid sweeping anniversary reissues of 1971’s Fragile and 1994’s Talk. A similar package focusing on 1972’s Close to the Edge was issued earlier this month.
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In between, Downes has relaunched Asia, a band once fronted by the late John Wetton that also featured Howe on guitar. He and surviving drummer Carl Palmer have both apparently declined to take part, leaving Downes as the only remaining original member. The reworked lineup headlined U.S. dates last summer and returns to the road in April to play entire-album shows in the U.K.
“For me, the last thing I wanted was to put Asia music into a locker and say I’ll never do that again,” Downes argues, “and now we’ve got the opportunity to get back out there again and play those first three albums, which were so significant.”
He admits that some fans don’t support the new lineup, describing them as “a type of keyboard warrior who noisily disagrees.” But Downes says he’s pressing on: “Everybody’s got a voice, and some of the comments are quite amusing, but I’m long enough in the tooth to brush off that sort of thing and just keep moving. The haters won’t stop us from doing what we do.”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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