STARSHIP TROOPERS
The Man With The Cape
^ Ran across that link recently, thought it was cool. There’s a great backstory though.
Here it comes…Khan.
What is there to say about prog? Oh, I dunno. Just EVERYTHING!!
Whether this is a true story, a dream, a memory (which would make it a true story), here’s how it began.
Tommy James, Gary Puckett, & John Lennon. (Why John Lennon? Because Mark David Chapman, the guy that shot him, and is now released from prison, flipped a coin: Heads, Lennon…Tails, Rundgren. He was initially arrested wearing a Hermit of Mink Hollow T-shirt. Now if THAT doesn’t’ scare you, good.
I was working my way through high school and girls (I suppose Gary Puckett got me started). Ya see, my Mom (and my Dad) sang in a choir (and therefore, so did I and my bro). After my Dad passed, when I was about thirteen, it was up to Mom to raise 2 boys by herself. Stay with me. Mom didn’t like “my” music because the singers could not carry a tune!! My quest was to find a band that had a kickass singer. Well, Gary Puckett, right? Uh, no, she didn’t like him, I mean she did say he was better than most. Hey Mom, how about Tommy James? “Ahh, that’s not really singing”. Yea, but, hey reader give “Cellophane Symphony” by Tommy James a listen. There is a 10 minute opening number on that called, you guessed it, Cellophane Symphony. Tommy James had left the reservation (and I was going with him). By the way, that’s the album that followed “Crimson & Clover”. Back in those days, bands (if they wanted a living) had to crank out 2 albums a year. Let’s keep moving. Back to John Lennon…think and listen to “Instant Karma”. Why? The drummer, Alan White, RIP. More on that later. But I’m going from Pop to kinda sorta prog.
Here's the dream, the memory. Just Mom and I are driving back to Pittsburgh (this may have been when we dropped my bro, Steve off at Penn State) through the Blue Ridge mountains. As usual, we are not saying much, I’ve got long hair and well, we never talked that much, EXCEPT oh how I wanted her to like one of my SINGERS!! And out in the middle of nowhere, driving through back roads, barely getting a radio signal, out of some static, I hear “I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I’m on my way”! There is a pause and I’m thinking is that Crosby Stills Nash & Young? Static and “I’ve Seen All Good People Turn their heads each day so satisfied I’m on my way!” I hear some delicate guitar, and then I hear…the voice, the SINGER!! “Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life, make the white queen run so fast, she hasn’t got time to make you wise”. “Mom!! Are you hearing this singer?” Ahhh, not bad, at least he can carry a tune. And there ya have it, people pleasing my Mom and I have found myself a band. Turns out their name is YES (can you think of a more positive word?) and that lead singer is Jon Anderson. It’s around 1971 and I am back in Tulsa for college and headed to Honest John’s Rock Shop. Can you believe he had the YES Album in stock?! In Tulsa?? Oklahoma?? That band is a british band and a prog band…in Tulsa?? Let’s keep moving.
So I’ve got the YES album vinyl in my dorm room. And I put on side 1. Holy SHIT!! The opening number “Yours is no Disgrace” is sooo high energy! And about TEN minutes? Followed by a 3 minute guitar solo (The Clap) followed by…Remember what you clicked on to get in here? That’s RIGHT!! STARSHIP TROOPER!! WOW! This was NOT boy meets girl boy loses girl anymore. This was let’s explore music! Together! And truth be told, I have just one ear that I can hear in. And when I got under the headphones, I could tell these guys had done so much of this in STEREO!! Bad for me…but good for YOU!! It’s ok, I had a mono button on my receiver. But, to this day, all my music comes into my head in mono. So here is my point. I ‘discovered’ YES. I had discovered prog. But keep in mind, back then, there was NO internet. Think about that. No streaming, nothing. Just vinyl. Let’s turn the vinyl over to side 2. You guessed it, the opening is “All Good People”. So let me put it this way. You listen to side 1 and by the end of it, Starship Trooper, you have explored strange new worlds. The last section of Starship Trooper is called Wurm. You literally bounce back and forth between the future and prehistoric times. Try it. You’ll like it. Side 2, All Good People, such a message. Boy, I went from outer space to let’s get real about each other and WHY we are here. And the grand finale of the album..Perpetual Change. Think about that title. What do you think it’s about? Well, Jon asks you. “Who’ll see Perpetual Change? YOU’ll see Perpetual Change”. And off they go for quite a ride.
So yea, it’s a great album. But what came next..uh…well, it goes like this. I found out that the band had TWO previous albums!! This is how it happens, right? You discover a band and you want more. It was obvious that they were trying to find their way with the 2 previous albums that came out around ’68 and didn’t make it to the US until the YES album came out. The fans wanted more. AND, turns out, the band was evolving! EVERYTHING is about evolution and boy did YES evolve. The first way they evolved was they got rid of their first guitar player after those first two albums. And for the YES album, they hired Steve Howe (who subsequently won guitar player of the year FIVE times). HE was very instrumental for their new sound. But Jon want BIGGER sound, orchestral, if you will. So the next thing, they got rid of Tony Kaye, the keyboard player and hired RICK WAKEMAN (the Caped Crusader) for their next album, Fragile (think Roundabout). Fragile was more “accessible” and had a couple radio friendly hits. Roundabout had to be butchered down to 4 minutes, but the album track is over 8 minutes. So now you have the classic lineup as it were. (Fun fact: there have been OVER 30 musicians in an out of the band over the past 50 years or so). You can explore Fragile, a great album, but if you want to understand Prog, you gotta get to the next album, Close to the Edge!! Side 1 is ONE song, Close to the Edge. Side 2 is just 2 10 minute songs. Now THOSE are NOT going to make it to radio, eh? Who cares, because by then YES had become quite a phenomenon. And I wanted to see them LIVE!! Which brings us to the NEXT album, YESSONGS – a (get this) TRIPLE vinyl album with killer artwork by Roger Dean! Back story, they hired Roger Dean to do the artwork for Fragile, Close to the Edge, Yessongs and EVERY album thereafter! Look him up!! So prog was MORE than just music, it was also FASCINATING (thank you, Mr. Spock) artwork!!
During the YESSONGS tour, YES got rid of their drummer, Bill Bruford. Actually, he quit, saying he couldn’t understand Jon’s lyrics. Join the club, dude, nobody can. I met Jon once and asked the swami “what do your lyrics MEAN??” He smiled back at me and blew my mind with the response “whatever you want them to mean”. Anyway, Bruford gone, Alan White (remember John Lennon’s Instant Karma?) joins the band mid tour and added more rock than roll, which is exactly what Jon wanted. Which brings us to the bass player and co-founder of the band, Chris Squire, RIP. Chris had been on EVERY YES album…and played with Alan White for forty years.