The guitarist hopes the prog-rock group will continue playing album-centric shows, with 'Drama' and 'Fragile' potentially up next.
Yes guitarist Steve Howe is hoping the group's current "triple header" tour, during which the prog-rock vets are playing three of their '70s albums in their entirety, is a harbinger of things to come.
"I've been saying for a long time that it's about time we didn't just go out and play songs," Howe tells Billboard. "Songs are nice. I love the songs, but it's about time we had a bit more concept around it, and doing albums really appealed to me. So they finally listened and got on board, and everybody seems to like it. I mean, after all, we are an album band, for goodness' sake! I hope this is where we've just started, and another time it'll be 'Drama,' 'Fragile' and something else. We could mix the bag, change it around, keep one in, throw two out. I hope it's the way we go forward."
Yes is currently playing 1971's "The Yes Album," 1972's "Close to the Edge" and 1977's "Going For the One" front to back during its shows, with the "Fragile" hit "Roundabout" as an encore. Howe says the three albums were chosen somewhat randomly, although they do fit a criteria Yes set when it decided on the concept. "We wanted an easy time and a hard time -- in other words, we wanted some challenges to rise to make the three-album concept work," Howe explains. "So 'The Yes Album' is kind of the easy stuff because we've played a lot of it pretty regularly. And the challenges were bringing back 'Close to the Edge, which wasn't too tricky, and then doing 'Going For the One' really did give us some challenges because 'Turn of the Century,' 'Going For the One' (the song), 'Parallels,' those are formidable arrangements and (songs) we haven't done for a long time. We seem to have radically upped the game."
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