Jon Anderson Is Playing Seventies Yes Classics Again — With a Band He Found on YouTube
IN THE SUMMER of 2018, Richie Castellano and his buddies posted a remarkable cover of the 1972 Yes epic “Close to the Edge” to their YouTube channel and watched it rack up over half a million views. “I’m blown away by these comments,” he wrote in response to the outpouring of love by prog fans. “This isn’t a bunch of music snobs showing off. This is genuine love for Yes and their music. We are hardcore Yes fans and this video is not about conquering a song or doing it better than anyone. It’s about the joy of indulging our inner teenagers and being lucky enough to get the opportunity to play our favorite music.”
Castellano has been a multi-instrumentalist in Blue Öyster Cult for the past two decades, and videos like“Close to the Edge” were just a fun way for him to spend time between commitments to the group. But one of the half million people to see the video was Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, right around the time he was in need of a new band. “They were quite amazing, and they looked happy and fun,” Anderson tells Rolling Stone. “I phoned up Richie the bass player and said, ‘Let’s go on tour.’ And he said, ‘What?
The tour wasn’t able to take place until 2023 due to Covid and Anderson’s other obligations, but it was worth the wait. Under the banner “Yes — Epics & Classics Featuring Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks,” they delivered a night of Seventies prog masterpieces like “Heart of the Sunrise,” “Yours Is No Disgrace,” and “Awaken” played to absolute perfection. And when it wrapped up, they funneled their energy into a new album, True, that they plan on releasing later this year.
“I can’t even wrap my head around all this,” says Castellano. “I used to go watch Jon in concert and scream at him. Getting to do something like this is just a dream. It’s also been opportunity as a Yes fan to go, ‘OK, we’ve been handed the keys to the kingdom. We have Jon Anderson singing for us. How do we want this to go?’”