I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.

I love the feeling of creating pictures in someone's mind just by spelling out the right lyrical combination.

We came off the road of the last tour very inspired to just keep playing, so we went to Canada.

I'd written songs with lots of people, from one spectrum to the other.

I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.

I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic.

So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.

And I found that when I built my own place and just shut the door, the creativity was endless.

Everyone is really getting along with each other and we enjoy each others company and love playing live.

I write on all instruments.

I wasn't really writing with anything commercial in mind I just wanted to create some new music.

I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.

I think that the climate within the band has changed, it's now in a more functional situation.

I also write poems, so that is something that I really enjoy.

So for my studio purposes, I know that I'm in my studio with technicians who've done amazing things to my board and to my power amps and I know what I can deliver out of my studio.

So in one sense you don't have the classic keyboard player in Yes.

I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.

I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.

So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.

I love all Yes music and love to play it live, but I'm most interested in making new music with Yes.

So that studio served its purpose, and still is working very well for other people right now.

So whenever I had some in-between producing time down in my studio I popped a tape in and started working on it. Working a little bit at a time, it actually took almost four years.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

I don't have any assistants, I do it all myself, I don't have any secretaries.

I'm very proud of it as a Yes record amongst many of the other Yes records.

Sometimes I hear a drum groove in my head and I rush down to my studio.

You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.

I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.

It's an album that is a little bit different and probably isn't easy to get out. It's not likely that a major label would have picked it up and said that they had a smash hit record.

And as you said, everyone contributed; certain areas of material came from certain individuals.

So when bands work with me and it's 10 o'clock, usually you'd have to be getting out of the studio, we could go on until 2 in the morning cause it's my place!

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.