I was telling the guys about raga, which is a style of Indian music. Mettler: What it boils down to is, if the song itself isn’t good at the core, you can’t take liberties with it like you do to give it a different life.Īnderson: When we do “Long Distance Runaround,” it’s like a dream. They just do it for fun and the love of music. We just did a show in Chicago, and they do it so well. What’s that one song - “Owner of a Horse and Cart,” as Rick Wakeman called it?Īnderson: (chuckles) Yes, yes, Rick Wakeman was always quick with a quip! And the guys in the band play the hell out of it. Mettler: I love the re-arrangements of some of the classic Yes material here. You can’t expect everything to be done even in 1 year.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve never been more productive, but things take time, as we know. I’m making music with dozens of people all over the world as we speak. You just do it on Logic on your Apple laptop. You can connect with people all over the world. Mettler: Does technology these days make it easier to create music? Does it make you feel you can get your ideas down faster?Īnderson: It’s a definite combination of all those things. I’ve written a violin concerto on the Internet called Violin Stories, so I automatically wanted to work with him. I loved the way my voice sounds with his violin. He was also working with Zappa, and my children were hanging with Zappa’s kids in the ’80s.Īnderson: Yeah - oh yeah! Well done! (laughs) It was just last year I was working on some music with a friend through the Internet, as one does these days, and he knew Jean-Luc and got him to play on a track. Jean-Luc was playing violin with them, so we got together and chatted a lot. We were big fans of Mahavishnu I loved Mahavishnu. Mike Mettler: It seems like this album has been a lifetime in the making, but it also seems like you guys have been working together forever. I called Anderson, 71, during an APB tour stop to discuss working with Jean-Luc, our ongoing mutual love of surround sound, and the ever-escalating legacy of Yes. And I love the way my voice sounds with his violin.
You can’t go back you have to go forward, musically. “We’re totally in the same state of mind about music and how you must progress. “He’s a maestro at the violin,” Anderson says. He lets me improvise on the violin, but he also interacts with it like we’re having a dialogue.”Īnderson has been a longtime admirer of Ponty's, having initially crossed paths when the violinist was a member of The Mahavishnu Orchestra when the band opened for Yes at the Houston Astrodome on December 2, 1974. We kept the original sections as is, and we added new sections to incorporate Jon’s vocals. “I love that Jon has added lyrics to some of my classic tunes, because it respects the essence of the compositions while at the same time adds new dimensions to them. “We work together like family,” marvels Ponty, 73 (at left in the above photo, pointing his thumb at Anderson, at right). Their oh-so-apropos debut, Better Late Than Never (Liaison Music), mixes fine, edgy originals with rearranged and revamped covers of classic material like Yes's “Roundabout” and Ponty's “Mirage” - renamed here as “Infinite Mirage,” as it now features Anderson singing new lyrics he wrote just for the song. But that's exactly what happened when two progressive titans, vocalist Jon Anderson and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, came together to form the Anderson Ponty Band, a.k.a. Creative sparks don't always fly when veteran musicians get together to collaborate. Terry Allen & the Panhandle Mystery Band.Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band.King Sunny Ade and the New African Beats.
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