The Catskill Chronicle

By Jason Dole

with photos by Leni Santoro

And…we’re off! Bethel Woods jump-started its 2010 series of pavilion concerts last Friday with a double header by Yes and Peter Frampton. Folks couldn’t ask for a better day, either. Bethel Woods was beautiful, as always. The weather was sunny and warm, but not sweltering. Peter Frampton rocked the crowd into the twilight hours, and Yes took us off into the starry night with their usual ethereal magic. Here’s the rundown from my humble point of view:

Thank You, Mr. Frampton

Does membership have its privileges? You bet. Bethel Woods members who entered the gate at 6 p.m. (30 minutes before everyone else) got a real treat. Peter Frampton’s sound check was a rollicking mini-set that seemed to go on forever. Yet it was just a sample of what was to come.

In my preview for this show, I pretty much ignored Peter Frampton. I was so excited about Yes finally playing in my own back yard, Frampton was eclipsed in my expectations. But somewhere in the backdoor lockup of my prog-riddled brain, a small voice told me “you know, that guy is probably going to surprise the hell out of you.” And he did, too. He

When he came back for his real set, Frampton proved himself not just a master of the guitar, but also solid arrangements full of rock-n-roll fun. He’s also good at audience interaction. Frampton’s banter included quips about whether he could say “Hello, Woodstock” rather than “Hello, Bethel.” He also berated one  front-section concert-goer for paying more attention to his cell phone than the  band, and he managed to get a proper cheer from the crowd when he mentioned his new album, Thank You Mister Churchill. “He could be a stand-up comedian,” said one fan who couldn’t stop talking about the non-musical portion of Frampton’s set. “”He did the talk box with his guitar and said things like ‘I’m going to the dentist, then to the store…'”

Frampton impressed me with a set in which the songs you don’t know are every bit as enjoyable as the “hits.” He went Dylan on us by playing a completely different arrangement of “Show Me the Way.” Then he did something Bob Dylan would never do and played the same song again but in its more familiar arrangement. He also broke out his talk-box cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.” Later, he rounded out his Father’s Day weekend performance by bringing out his son to sing a song with dad.

Did It Sound Like Yes?

Then it was time for Yes to hit the stage. If you’re not into the band, I can save you some reading time here and tell you this is a positive review written by a fan. In a post-show survey from Bethel Woods, I gave the show 4 out of 5 stars. In short, the song selection more than made up for a few rough spots here and there (relating to performance, sound mix, and energy).

Yeah, I’m a fan. I grew up in a Yes-loving household in Sullivan County, so it was a special night for my family at Bethel Woods. Yes was coming to us for a change! My parents and their friends were there, my sister and I were there. As my sister said after the show, it was just like the first time we all saw them as a family nearly 20 years ago.

After the show, my father got got a call from my uncle, who did not attend. His brother called him and got talking about the fact that Jon Anderson wasn’t there. Finally, he asked my father, “all I want to know is, did it sound like Yes?” Of course it did! My whole family agreed.

My folks should know, this was their eighth or ninth Yes concert (they can’t quite remember, and there was a ABWH show in there, too). It was my fourth. As Yes fans, we can testify that the magic was there, the sound was there. Chris Squire’s vocals did as much as his bass to preserve that sound. We all agreed that Steve Howe’s guitar became that “special ingredient” that really made it sound like Yes. And, as sad as it was at times that Jon Anderson wasn’t there, everyone in my circle liked the lead vocals.

As the current lead singer of Yes, Benoit David has a tough job on several levels. He has a high pitch, but since he’s using a bit more of his head voice, he can’t always “punch it” the same way as Anderson might have. A couple of times, it sounded like he was doing a character rather than singing the songs. More often, he was able to walk the tightrope between sounding “classic” while also making things his own. While his phrasing of the words bore an uncanny resemblance to Anderson, I really liked what he did with his musical phrasing. He kept things fresh, and was a very personable performer. He donned a Bethel Woods “Love Peace Music” shirt for the second half of the show and fulfilled another former duty of Jon Anderson – spreading good vibes from the stage.

Yes Is No Disgrace

I think someone in Yes must have read last week’s column, where I speculated that they’d open with “Siberian Khatru” and play a fairly predictable set. From the beginning, this was a very different set list than the one they toured with in February. After the familiar, stirring strains of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite,” Yes took the stage and launched into their single from 1980’s Drama, “Tempus Fugit.” They sure showed me.

Well, they almost showed me. I was really looking forward hearing “Fugit,” but it didn’t quite click live. The tempo lagged and the changes were rough. I was a bit dismayed. All the individual components seemed to be there, but the band wasn’t gelling. It was a problem that popped up a couple of times in the first half of the show, and my mother (herself a musician) agreed that there was a bit of lag in the transition of different sections of some songs.

Now, at this point I should have remembered my Yes history. When I saw them the last time in 1997 (yeah, I missed the 2004 tour, and I still kick myself for it…), the band opened with a by-the-numbers version of “Rhythm of Love” in which Steve Howe hardly seemed to play a note. I was dismayed, but only for a minute or two. The band knocked the next song (“Siberian Khatru”) out of the park. Steve Howe blew Billy Sherwood off the stage. The lesson here is, sometimes it takes Yes a song or two to get going. (A second lesson is, if you have Steve Howe in a band, don’t put anyone else on lead guitar.)

So, that’s what happened at Friday’s show. “Tempus Fugit” lacked oomph, and the sluggishness lingered as the band begun its second number, “Yours Is No Disgrace.” But then, Steve Howe and Chris Squire (bass, of course) began ripping it up. They started jamming together on “Yours Is No Disgrace” like it was 1972, and there was no looking back.

The Yesset Has It

[Spoiler Alert! If you plan on seeing Yes on this current summer tour and you want the songs to be a surprise, skip this section. I think the set list will stay the same for all the shows with Peter Frampton]

As a co-headliner, Yes had about 100 minutes to do their set. When five of your songs are in the 8-10 minute range and one of them clocks in at 20:00, that’s not a lot of time. Yes made the most of it. The song selections are what really blew me away with this show. In last week’s column, I said that my secret fanboy hopes included Yes playing “Perpetual Change” and “Close to the Edge.” Four songs into the set, I sat gobsmacked as as they did just that.

Friday night’s version of “Perpetual Change” bore more resemblance to the 1972 live Yessongs version than the comparatively clunky album version. This is a good place to give a nod to the man at the back who got very little camera time: Alan White kept things on-track, especially in a song like “Perpetual Change,” where the transitions are a bit tricky. I’d never seen Yes perform more than a few bars of “Perpetual Change” before (they used it as an opening on the ’94 Talk tour). It was worth the wait.

Now, how about that Steve Howe? After “Perpetual Change,” Howe’s bandmates took a break while he played an acoustic solo (not sure the tunes, leave a comment below if you know). I feel lucky that I got to hear it twice. I was on the grounds for his sound check earlier that afternoon. Not only did he run through his solo acoustic set, but he fiddled with parts of tunes that weren’t on that night’s set list, such as “Turn of the Century.” That night, after his acoustic interlude, Howe was rejoined by the band and they launched into “Close to the Edge.” How about that! The guy’s been playing guitar for 50 years he doesn’t even take a break. A couple of tours ago, he was playing in both bands on the bill!

Of course, with the shorter set time, some songs got the axe. My mother was particularly disappointed that there was no “Your Move,” and I was kind of looking forward to “Heart of the Sunrise.” Still, I wouldn’t trade “Perpetual Change” for either of those, and I can’t complain about any show that contains a solid version of “Close to the Edge.” Here’s the set list in full:

Tempus Fugit
Yours Is No Disgrace
And You And I
Perpetual Change
(Steve Howe Acoustic Guitar Solo)
Close To The Edge
Owner Of A Lonely Heart
Roundabout
Encore: Starship Trooper

Close To The Edge, Closing

When the audio collage of chirping birds came up on the monitors, I couldn’t believe it. Going into this show, I expected the aging Yes members might play it safe, but instead they launch into one of the most difficult pieces of rock music this side of Frank Zappa. They totally nailed it. After a performance like that, I won’t tolerate any quibbling over whether or not this band is “really” Yes.

“Close to the Edge” was the highlight of the show.

Oliver Wakeman stepped out of the shadows for a piece that required a lot of keyboard prescience. From this point on (“Roundabout” and “Starship Trooper”) he seemed much more a part of the band. This song also saw Benoit David at his best. His timing, phrasing, melody lines, and performance were all spot-on. The quiet “Get Up / Get Down” section was as good as I’ve ever heard it. Sometimes that part of the song can get a bit boring, but at Bethel Woods it sounded as it should: beautiful, anthemic. After the show, one amazed concertgoer told me, “sometimes I felt like I was in church.” I know this was one of the times she was talking about.

It was a treat to have other band members talking to the audience more, especially Steve Howe and Chris Squire. Although it was trippy to hear Squire announce “I’m supposed to say hello to all the Thunderheads,” referring to the listeners of country music station Thunder 102. (I guess when the only real community radio station in Sullivan County is a country station, you get some of this kind of cross-genre confusion.) After “Close to the Edge,” Steve Howe talked about how the band liked to “stretch out” in the 70s on longer numbers like “Awaken” and stuff from Tales from Topographic Oceans. By comparison, he announced the next track as “a tight little number we did in the ’80s,” and you knew what was coming next.

I felt a little bad for the handful of concertgoers who stuck it out that long just to hear “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Well, maybe not the drunken lady behind me on the lawn who complained loudly through other songs about wanting to hear  “Owner” (though she was slurring too much to even say the title correctly). The 80s hit was a bit out of place next to the giant slabs of prog rock, but served as a fun break. Once again, Steve Howe came to the rescue. Out of the four times I’ve seen Yes, this was the first time he was the only guitar player on stage. He made “Owner of a Lonely Heart” sound like his own song, and turned the obligatory chore of playing the band’s big pop hit into a pretty fresh experience.

And that was about it. From there, it was their big 70s hit (“Roundabout”), and then the closer we all knew was coming. “This is it, the song you’ve all been waiting for,” said Steve Howe, as the band launched into “Starship Trooper.”

When they got to the “Wurm” jam at the end, Chris Squire kicked his bass into overdrive and stalked the front of the stage for some solo showmanship before the Howe/Wakeman interplay. Unfortunately, the big sound he used at the end only served to highlight what had been missing from the rest of the show. Squire is famous for the “trebly” end of his bass playing, but perhaps the rig he’s using these days is a little too thin. Either that, or the sound guys got something wrong, because half the time his classic big bass presence was all but buried in the mix. When I could hear him, though, he sounded great. His confident stage presence, strong voice, and constant smiling let you know that it was his band as much as anyone’s, and he’s very proud of it.

So that was Yes at Bethel Woods, June 18 2010. It was great to see Yes come to Sullivan County, and even better to see all the Yes fans come out of the woodwork and go to Bethel Woods. I’m sure I’ll see a lot of you again when the Moody Blues come to town (July 10).