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Interview with Chris Squire by Brian Draper - part 2

 
 
Brian: I am not sure. It is either the US or the UK but I think it is a mix of both.
Chris : OK, I'll definitely ask the question and I'll try and find out for you - or whether the deal has even been done yet. I'll look into it and if you give me a call back in a few days I'll let you know the answer to that, or if there is one.
Brian : That will be great I'll do that, because I don't know if you are aware that at the moment the more recent Yes releases are only available in Australia on import.
Chris : The Rhino stuff or what?
Brian: The Word is Live CD and the Tsongas DVD.
Chris : It hasn't been released in Australia yet?
Brian : We can only get it on an import deal.
Chris : Ok, I am not aware of that but that is something that is also good for me to understand and I'll go and take it up with somebody, whoever the powers may be.
Brian : Thank you that would be appreciated. You alluded to before that there were vague plans for Yes next year. What is the state of play with that?
Chris : At the moment we are not really sure. Jon is doing the solo jaunt around Europe and I think that he is in Iceland tonight. And we have to see how that pans out. I mean, Yes have a couple of different options about what to do next year. I think that it was good that we took this year off, especially good for me that I got involved with different characters and different people in producing something that I ended up being very happy with. And I know Steve Howe has been doing various solo ventures and you know Alan has his band in Seattle. So we have been taking a bit of time away from each other because lets not forget that between 1997 and 2004 we were a very hard working unit all over the place, which seemed to go down very well, but I think we needed to at least to have last year or this year 2005 off and that may extend into next year but we are in negotiation right now.
 
 
Brian : One of the perspectives that I am interested with Yes is the times that you have been in Australia. 1973 of course was when Yes came down for the first time, do you have any memories of when you were down here for the Close to the Edge tour?
Chris : Very very vague memories from those days. I remember that by that time in England we had colour TV and it was very funny to go down there and find that you had black and white. It was amusing that you were playing English sitcoms like Coronation Street on the TV. It was like going back in time a bit. But I recognised at that point too that Australia was obviously a great combination of Britain and also the US as well. A country that was developing with those two influences but obviously with its own character which would dominate at the end of the day. But of course since then we went back there in your major cities I really was impressed by being in Sydney and the feel of the way the city was. And it was good. The jaunt over to Western Australia as well which Yes never had done in the first place was interesting to see the way life was. So I enjoyed it
Brian : The gap between the tours of such a long time was very frustrating to Yes fans in Australia. Do you have any insights as to why it took so long between the two tours?
Chris : I have no idea really why. I suppose we were on various courses and with various different managements and various directions. You know maybe things could have been handled better but as they say in America, twenty twenty is hindsight vision. It's like whatever happened, happened. We should have paid more visits to Australia during that period but we didn't, so we can only look to the future.  
Brian : Do you think that when Yes do tour again that Australia is likely to be considered?
Chris : Yeah, of course it will be considered. It was good to go back there as we did and kind of experience it a bit. Obviously it would have been much better if Yes had some kind of guidance to have maybe shown more of a presence there between the years when we weren't present. It's a shame we didn't spend more time down there but we have to spend more time down there in the future.
  
 
 
 
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