Geoff Downes remains one of the busiest professional musicians around today, playing keyboards with progressive giants Yes, and Asia, together with occasional stints with his original band Buggles, with producer Trevor Horn.
In 1980. Horn and Downes joined Yes to record the Drama album. Yes split a year later, and Downes co-founded Asia with Yes guitarist Steve Howe, leaving the band in 1986, and re-joining in 1990. In 2006 Geoff Downes re-united the original Asia line-up, and in 2011 he re-joined Yes, and currently provides keyboards for both bands.
Yes released their latest album, The Quest, last month, and Keys Review’s Andy Hughes enjoyed a chat with Geoff, at his rural Pembrokeshire home, to talk about his ‘light bulb’ moment, and his favourite keyboard sound.
Your work rate is off the scale Geoff, how do you fit in working with two full-time progressive bands and a futuristic pop group?
It does seem to have accelerated over the last few years with Yes and Asia, as well as shows with Buggles, at least until the lockdown called a halt to everything.
But even through lockdown we have managed to keep working, and Yes have managed to record an album and get it out there, so we can see what the public think of it, and hopefully we can get back on the road and play some of it to our fans.
It shows a level of resourcefulness from the band to manage to write and record an album during a time of strict contact limitation.
I think that people have simply accelerated the changes in working practices that were starting to occur even before the pandemic. I think the days of bands being locked together in a studio for months on end to produce an album are not as much the standard way of working as they always were. A lot of people are working singly or in small sections of bands, and recording files and sending them to other band members to work on, who then send them back. We as a band have embraced that method to get the new album recorded and out into the world.
Do you think that bands recording in studios will cease to be the way albums are made?
No, I don’t think it will ever stop completely. The way bands create music does lend itself to being together in a room and working towards a finished song or collection of songs. There is something really special about being together and working on a piece of music where everyone puts in ideas and tries things out and the huge sense of achievement you get when you arrive with something that everyone has created together.
I think there are pluses and minuses to both methods of working. When the restrictions eased, I was able to get together with (Yes guitarist) Steve Howe and we worked on getting some of the acoustic sounds on the album sorted out. That’s why the acoustic piano and Hammond organ are more present on this album than in some of the previous ones.
The Hammond and piano work of Tony Kaye on the Time And A Word album were what got me into Yes in the first place. It’s not a retro thing though, putting more of those particular instruments n this new album, it’s simply that their sound suited the material and direction we were taking as a band.
Your parents were both musicians, did you find it easy to become a musician yourself?
I was encouraged growing up, but I didn’t need any pushing at all, I loved being involved with music, even things like turning the pages of music for my dad when he played the organ for the church services.
In my early teens, I discovered bands like Caravan and Procul Harum who were using keyboards as featured instruments, not simply as something that sat in the corner. And when I saw Keith Emmerson play with The Nice at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1968, that was my ‘light bulb’ moment. He played keyboards, but he was a complete showman, his keyboards were front and centre, and he was such an inspiration to me as a technical player. I’m so glad I got to know Keith, and we became good friends.
Did you have training as a musician?
I did, I went to Leeds College Of Music, and it was great because they didn’t simply focus on the greats of centuries ago like Bach and Mozart. They exposed me to modern keyboard players like Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. I started to learn about writing music, and that was the start of my current career.
What was the first keyboard you owned?
I had a Vox Jaguar when I was about fourteen, but the first really significant keyboard I owned was a Hammond which my mum bought for my sixteenth birthday. That was a wonderful instrument, and I got a Fender Rhodes after that, I just kept adding keyboards in as I found different sounds I wanted for the college bands I was playing in when I was growing up.
Is there any sound that you wish you could have, that is not available?
I think you can get more or less anything these days. What you find is that sounds not available in one keyboard can be available in another, hence the need for a series of keyboards. With Yes, I usually take eleven or so keyboards on the road with me, set up to provide the individual sounds I am going to need for the various sounds that have been created in the course of the band’s career, and its albums.
Are you a virtuoso keyboard player?
I would describe myself as ‘orchestral’ I think. I always undertake to ensure that the keyboard sounds produced on Yes albums are faithfully reproduced on stage because that is what the fans expect to hear. It’s about finding how to reproduce those sounds as effectively as possible, enhancing modern developments in keyboard technology, and then working with the other instruments and vocals in the band to create the overall sound.
Do you think the visuals are important?
Absolutely essential as far as Yes is concerned. The band has always been about visual splendour, think of Chris Squire and his enormous bass rig, changing out basses every other song, and bringing out triple-neck basses, it was all about putting on a show. Similarly, Rick Wakeman with banks of keyboards around him. Of course, each one was there to produce a distinct sound or series of sounds, interacting with the other keyboards, but it made for a wonderful sight.
Now, with modern computerised software, I could turn up at a Yes show and do everything from a couple of laptops, but that would never do justice to the legacy and appeal of the band. I would look like something out of Kraftwerk! That’s not what Yes fans want to see, and that’s not what the legacy of Yes is about. I am happy to carry on with the way things have always been, and use combinations of leeboards to produce sounds from the past albums, and right up to the current release.
How are you on practise?
When you play music as complex as the music of Yes and Asia, practise is absolutely essential. You have to be sure that you’ve got all the music memorised, and fluid, because Yes and Asia fans know the music inside out, and any omissions or errors would be noticed.
Is it difficult to transport your keyboards on tour?
No, because I have three virtually identical rigs, one in the UK in my home studio which I can take out for UK dates, and one each on the east and west coasts of the U.S. When tours for Yes and Asia can follow each other pretty quickly, its essential to have equipment ready to move without having to traverse the entire continent. Thanks to modern technology, I can bring any new sounds and samples with me on a laptop and simply transfer them to the stage setups before a tour starts.
Which keyboard do you usually write on?
It’s usually piano, because that tends to lend itself to composition for a lot of musicians, and I am one of them. That said, if you work on electronic keyboards with software-based sounds, that does open up an entirely new spectrum of sounds and atmospheres, and they can be really inspirational and take you off in a number of directions that would bot be available with a piano. For some reason, there is something reliable and solid about working out song ideas on a piano.
Is there one keyboard sound that moves you more than any other?
I’d have to say the Hammond. There is such a power to it, and such dynamics. It needs a whole new technique to play properly, because you have pedals and stops to operate, and you need to be aware of how to use those to get the most out of the sounds you can create with it. Jon Lord from Deep Purple was the absolute master of the Hammond, a fantastic musician, and his music is a wonderful way to explore the range and expression you can create with a Hammond.
What’s your view as a keyboard player, on lessons as opposed to self-teaching?
I think there are no rules to be honest. I did study technique, and that is really helpful in preventing you getting into bad playing habits that can affect you further on in your playing career.
But if you are going to be a creative musician, and create your own music, or have input into the music for a band you are in, then you need to break away from formality and strike out on your own, and find your own path and work out what you can do yourself.
I was at college with people who were marvellous sight-readers. They could sit down with a really complex score and read and understand it like it was a newspaper. But they were interpreters, and would always be interpreters. Nothing wrong with that, but to repeat the point, if you are in a rock band and you want to create music for you and your band, then you need to explore ideas for yourself, and not restrict yourself to the music written by other people.
I think some training for a keyboard player is probably better than, say for a guitarist. If you look at Yes, Rick Wakeman went to the Royal Academy, which helped him learn the techniques for keyboards, Steve Howe is a self-taught guitarist.
So really, I think some training is good thing, but you should not let it hamper you from exploring your own music if that’s the way you want to go as a keyboard player.
ANDY HUGHES
