Jon Anderson, of YES, chats to Mick Burgess ahead of Newcastle City Hall gig

THE tour is a celebration of 50 years of Yes. How do you plan to mark such a milestone in your career?

I think we just want to play as good as we can and put on a great show. That was the whole reason for putting Yes together in the first place.

You will be playing at the City Hall in Newcastle on June 12. What are your memories of playing up here?

It's an amazing place to play and we always love doing shows in Newcastle. When we first played there it was with The Who, Small Faces when Rod Stewart was with them and Arthur Brown with his flaming hat. I remember it vividly, as Pete Townsend told me that he was going to do an album about a blind, deaf and dumb guy called Tommy. I thought he was mad and then six months later this unbelievable album came out and the rest is history.

Alongside you on the tour is Rick Wakeman, who is the definitive keyboard player in Yes and guitarist Trevor Rabin who played on the modern era Yes albums including the huge hit 90125. You played in both versions. Are you the link that brought them together?

Most people think of Rick from the classic `70`s era of Yes whereas Trevor brought the band a more modern sound in the 80's and was a huge success and I was in both versions so it's great to be able to bring us all together to play again. Rick had never played with Trevor before until the Union tour in 1991 and they got on so well but life moves on, so when Trevor said he wanted to stop doing film scores for a while and he wanted to tour I got in touch with Rick and he said yes straight away.

At what point did you start working with Rick and Trevor again?

It was a few years back and it was such a great feeling to be playing together after so long. We had the best time together and it feels good to be doing it again. Trevor has been doing music for a Broadway show as well as film soundtracks and I've been working on an album called 1000 Hands that I started 28 years ago and Rick has always been busy with his thing so getting us all together took some time but here we are and it`s sounding great.

You originally billed the band as Anderson Rabin Wakeman or ARW for short but then you added the YES name. Is this your way of staking your claim to the name?

I owned the name with Chris Squire and Alan White. Chris's wife said that when he leaves us maybe we could use the name. We said that the year we got into the Hall of Fame we'd be out there as Yes in front on one million people around the world so why didn't we use the name. We used the addition of featuring Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman to differentiate us from the other Yes.

Did you have any problems with the version of Yes featuring Steve Howe and Alan White?

They've been really cool about it. It`s never been a problem. I had a conversation with the other guys and just said to them to let people know who's in the band as I keep getting phone calls about me playing somewhere but I'm not in your band, so please tell people who's in the band so they don`t expect to see me.

As it's the 50th anniversary of Yes, was there ever any chance that both sides could have reconciled their differences and toured together?

If that happens, you'll be the first person I'll call. You never know what will happen.

Have you started writing new material with Rick and Trevor?

We have about an hours’ worth of new music written and we want to make a new album and just do something radically different. Trevor said he'd like to use a full orchestra and choir for it, like a film score. That would be the dream. We've actually done some recording that we'll use for the beginning of the show. There's no song titles as yet but you will find out in time.

For 2018 is your main focus on the Yes tour and album or do you have time to fit in any other projects?

I've been working on recordings of the great Yes music using midi files to produce Yes with some teenagers singing all of the songs and we`re going to call it 21st Century Yes and we'll be doing visuals for it as well. I'm working on half a dozen projects, so I`m keeping very busy.

• Yes featuring Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman perform at Newcastle City Hall on Tuesday June 12.
• Contact the box office on 08448 11 21 21 for tickets. (Calls cost 7ppm plus your phone company’s access charge) or book online via www.theatreroyal.co.uk