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Steve Howe comments on Queen's Innuendo Pulling Strings Review Robert Berry Interview Steve Howe Interview on NFTE Site Wired for Sound: A Guitar Odyssey |
This was taken from Steve Howe's "Guitar Rondo" site:
"I was in Geneva working with Paul Sutin and we had a day off or something, something else was happening. So I got in the car and drove to Montreux and I was just wandering around and thought I'd stop and have lunch. So I was in this restaurant that was a little bit below the pavement. I was sitting there and then this huge guy walked by called Martin who'd worked for Yes, Martin Groves, and he saw me there and I saw him and we kind of lept up and he says, 'Well, look, the guys [Queen] are in the studio,' and he was only down the road, 'Why don't you come in?' I was going to come by and see if anything was going on because Queen took over Mountain Studios which was originally a studio build built to record Montreux jazz, a terrific studio. So they invited me down.
"Well, I walked in and Freddie, Brian, and Roger Taylor were sitting there messing around writing stuff and they were friendly, 'Come in, sit down, and listen to the album which we're just making.' So they started playing me all these tracks like 'I'm Going Slightly Mad' and 'I Can't Live Without You' which has been in my mind ever since, I still play it, it's such a powerful paradoxical description of life. And then they played me 'Innuendo' and I go, yeah, heavy metal flamingo! And then Brian says, 'Look, I'd like you play on this,' and I said you're joking, it sounds great, leave it like it is, and he said, 'No no no, I want you to play on it, I want to you to play really fast, I want you to run around the guitar a lot.' So within a couple of hours I tested some of his Gibsons, Chet Atkins classical solid body guitars, and found one that I helped balance the strings because he wasn't sure how to balance the volume between the different strings which is the important thing to do on those guitars. So I got up and running, we did a few takes, we edited it a little bit, we fixed up a few things, then we went and had dinner. So we went back to the studio and they said we really really like this and I said fine, let's go with it. So I left very happy. I'd worked with people who were diehard Queen people, and a funny thing happened a little while later, I was on a ferry going to Holland and on this ferry which takes a long time, five hours, were the Queen fan club, all going to Rotterdam to a Queen event, and a couple of them saw me and they came racing over and they said, 'You're Steve Howe! You're on "Innuendo"!' And they all came out of the room, sitting around talking and things...and my memories of Queen will always be emotional because they were a great band and it was just great, it really was a thrill to be part of that, and thanks for asking me."
Follow up: Here's a "First Impressions" review I posted to amy about a week ago:
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Just going to scribble some impressions of _Pulling Strings_ as I give it a first listen. This won't be anything like a "Tentative Review"! Hope it doesn't distract too much from the flamewars :^) Be warned
that I'm rather biased in Howe's favor, so ymmv.
"Sweet Thunder" - something a bit different, a bit jazzy ****
"Diary of a Man Who Vanished" - similar to lots of Steve's countryish tunes, quite nice. ****
"Excerpts from 'Close to the Edge" - Much rather listen to "Close to the Edge" **
"Exceprts from 'Beginnings'" - not very interesting. **
"Pleasure Stole the Night" - all of the warmth and charm of the Beginnings version is lost. **
"Sketches in the Sun" - a favorite of mine, I give the _NNA_ version five stars, this one: ****
"Rare Birds" - There he goes, singing again - but sometimes he doesn't do too bad with fundamentally weak vocal equipment. Not bad. ***
"Windy and Warm" - a Howeish sounding country sort of tune (but not written by Howe). Pretty nice ***
"Classical Gas" - I enjoyed this on last year's Yes tour. He plays it here with a backing track. Nice and rich, but not as energetic as one might hope for. ***
"Excerpts from 'Turn of the Century'" - nice guitar work (of course) but there's that singing again. **
"Misty" - very brief, getting some trippy sounds out of the Steinberger 6-string. ***
"Excerpts from 'All's A Chord'" - also very brief, more bad singing. **
"Running the Human Race" - On the Fender Dual Pro Steel with a backing track, making some good sounds on a fair tune. ***
"Every Time You Look Over Your Shoulder" - Good, but not spectacular Steinberger 12 string and some singing that isn't completely hideous. ***
"Theme from 'The Gates of Delium'/Soon" - Most of these "Excerpts..." type things don't work for me, but this is beautiful, although the singing of soon diminishes it a bit (next time, bring JA along!) ***+1/2
"Blinded By Science" - Steinberger 6 with a backing track and weak singing. Think the studio version's a bit better. ***
"My White Bicycle" - pretty hot Steinberger 6 playing, with tolerable vocals. ****
Overall, three stars ***. First two tracks were great, but a bit of a bumpy ride after that. Hurt by lots of weak singing, and overall, the guitar work is merely excellent, with only a moderate dose of the stuff that puts Howe into the legendary category. Not a must have by any means, unless you're a drooling Howe fan like me. (By way of comparison, I'd rate _Not Necessarily Acoustic_ a solid *****, _Quantum Guitar_ I give ****+1/2.) But I'm glad to have it and will keep it. The first two tracks will probably make it to a Howe compilation CDR that I'll do for myself someday.
Now to bust open the Hillage CDs!
There is an interesting interview with Robert Berry at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/9250/berryi.html. He talks about many topics, one of them being his work on the Yes tribute album. Here is an excerpt:
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Music Street Journal:What have been some of your favorite moments on these discs overall?
Robert Berry:I must say that there have been three highlights for me (seems to be my lucky number). The first was when I finished Roundabout. I sent the track to Steve Howe who had agreed to put on the finale` guitar parts. He had faxed me back a note that said he thought the track kicked the original all about. Now I had played the original in Hush and that bass line was one of the things that got me into progressive music so I was very pleased. Having played with Steve in GTR I also knew that he didn`t hand out a lot of compliments so this, along with really enjoying the final version myself, was quite an honor.
I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't received the latest issue (#215) of Notes from the Edge yet. It's not listed as the current issue on their website either. Yet, here it is in their back-issue section already: http://www.nfte.org/back-issues/0215.
It contains a lengthy interview with Steve Howe talking about the new album.
Check it out!
The Learning Channel (cable) showed "Wired for Sound -- A Guitar Odyssey" yesterday evening. It was something of a Gibson infomercial, with about the last half of the hour devoted to the Les Paul. They interviewed a whole range of guitarists, Les Paul himself, Chet Atkins, Don Felder, Peter Frampton, Jon Entwistle, Randy Bachman, Dave Matthews, guitarists from Live and Hootie and the Blowfish, and Steve Howe. One of the "unusual suspects," imho.
Steve talked about learning Chuck Berry riffs as an up-and-coming guitarist, and also about taking his arsenal on tour with Yes. I was bopping in and out of the kitchen during the commercial breaks, and I am afraid to admit it took me a few bars to recognize a certain harmonic-heavy opening riff at the end of an early break: "Roundabout" from "Yessongs."