After a seven-year gap between studio releases, Yes are back with their long-awaited 22nd album, The Quest. Steve Howe and Geoff Downes tell Prog why reinvention is so important to them and why, after 53 years, they still believe that Yes have a lot to offer their fans.

Words: Dave Ling Images: Gottlieb Bros

Yes, L-R: Billy Sherwood, Jon Davison, Steve Howe, Alan White, Geoff Downes.

“We can’t deny that Heaven &Earthwas not well received. It was a linear type of album; it lacked the dynamics of this one.”

Geoff Downes

Among the most fascinating aspects about Yes is the band’s perpetual state of transience. De facto leaders have come and gone as each chapter of their saga unfolds. Following the loss of co-founding bass player Chris Squire in 2015, Steve Howe has emerged as the group’s latest alpha male. Now into a third spell as a player, the guitarist produced and pretty much drove the bus as the post-Squire incarnation of the band laid down their inaugural statement – their 22nd studio album.

Howe’s mission with The Quest was simple. “I wanted to help Yes reinvent itself,” he explains. The 1990s and beyond, as Howe readily admits, “was a bit of a spotty period of Yes. You take the 1970s – need I say more? And you take the 1980s – again, need I say more? But the 90s was a mixed bag. I don’t know how successful I’ve been, but I was trying to build a new model of Yes.”

Cards on table time: this writer has interviewed Howe many times, both as a part of Yes and during his heady days with Asia, and Howe can be a bit of a crotchety old so-and-so. As a musician’s musician he would rather play music than talk about it.