MOORGLADE RISING
Anderson’s first solo record, is to get the star treatment… and could its long-awaited sequel finally see light of day?
The next reissue from Jon Anderson will be his celebrated and much-loved debut solo album, Olias Of Sunhillow, released in 1976. The new edition will be presented as a two-disc Digipak. The CD will be fully remastered from the original stereo master tapes, with a separate DVD containing a high-resolution version of the stereo remaster, and a new 5.1 upmix. It’s set for release at the end of January 2021 and the accompanying booklet will contain fully restored artwork, including the full Olias story and lyrics, which have sometimes been missing or poorly reproduced in previous CD reissues, as well as new sleevenotes chronicling the background and making of the album.
Esoteric Recordings’ Mark
Powell has been overseeing the project and working closely with Jon Anderson. “In fact, it was Jon who originally contacted me to see if it was possible to do Olias Of Sunhillow,” explains Powell.
In 2018, Esoteric released a deluxe reissue of Chris Squire’s Fish Out Of Water with a stereo mix by Jakko Jakszyk, and Powell, who created the label in 2007, was very interested in taking up Anderson’s invitation to produce something similarly ambitious and lavish. However, Powell reveals that when it comes to exploring the archives of major labels, things don’t always go as hoped for. Having obtained the licence, he set about trying to track down the multitrack reels, only to discover they were missing. “We did a lot of research at Warner Brothers in California and in the UK but unfortunately the multitrack tapes just couldn’t be found. The good news is that the stereo masters were available. So in addition to remastering these, I suggested that we’d try a different approach. Jon was very encouraging about that.”
Had the 24-track tapes from the sessions been available, there may still have been obstacles to overcome, Powell says. “From discussions with Jon, the way it was actually recorded in the first place might have made things a bit more complicated anyway.” This was due to Jon’s practice of working at his home on domestic reel-to-reel four-track machines for the early part of the recording process.
“When he got a 24-track machine,” adds Powell, “he put some of the stuff he’d already recorded onto the 24-track machine and started the whole process again. So even if we’d found the multitrack reels we might’ve faced some limitations about what could be done when it came to remixing them into surround sound.”
By using the latest software it’s been possible to upmix from the stereo masters and create a surround sound audio picture for the listener. The results have been encouraging, says Powell. “After putting in the stereo file, the software figures out, roughly, where things could be in the 5.1 spectrum and allows you to move some elements around and places things to some degree. You can then enhance vocals and other things. Ben Wiseman has done a fantastic job on the 5.1 mix considering the limitations we had.”
Although Anderson hasn’t personally been involved in the remixing and remastering, he’s thrilled that the album is being restored, says Powell. “He said, ‘Well, do what you can do on it. I’m just thrilled that someone’s giving it some love and care.’”
It’s been 44 years since Olias Of Sunhillow was released and there’s been talk from the Anderson camp of a follow-up album for several years. Sometimes known as The Songs Of Zamran, Anderson readily admits that progress on the work has been frustratingly slow.
“I’m working on the second part of this thing and it’s been actually driving me crazy trying to figure out how to present it properly because it can’t be the same as Olias. Sure, it has to have the same energy but up on the next level. It’s taking me a long time because whenever I do the spoken word of the story of Zamran, it sounds awkward, it doesn’t sound correct. Sometimes, I’ll sing the words of the story and the lyrics and it sounds okay for 10 minutes but then I’ll say, ‘Nah.’”
However, a new approach to this problem has come from an unexpected source, he says. “Just last week I was watching the movie Gladiator, which I really like. It’s great filmmaking on so many levels. Anyway, there was this part where the actors were speaking and the music was in the background, and all of a sudden I thought, ‘That’s it! I’ve got to find some actors to narrate the story! I don’t know any but I’m hoping that over the coming months I might bump into some and get them to try it out.”
Jon Anderson
Hall [in 1980], that was really fun. It was really good hearing a band doing Stravinsky that way.”
Whenever one speaks to Jon Anderson he’s always working on a range of new ideas and has lots of different projects on the go. Maybe he’s dusting off something he started working on a few years before or putting the finishing touches to something else that’s in the pipeline such as Go Screw Yourself, or maybe even a reggae-infused ukulele tune written while on holiday five years ago that he thinks might do nicely as a Christmas song this year. His enthusiasm is nothing new though as even when he was working on Song Of Seven he was also recording material for 1982’s Animation. “I was thinking about the next four or five years of my life, musically and it’s what I’m doing now. I’m working on about four albums now especially these last six months being at home. It’s good because you get on with your vision for the next five years or 10 years of your work.”
A glance at his solo discography shows him, then as much as now, keen to collaborate with a diverse range of players: Mike Oldfield, Béla Fleck, and Rick Wakeman all crop up. There was even an attempt to form a new band with Wakeman and Keith Emerson. Anderson recalls: “I was actually staying in Amsterdam at the time and I started thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great: me and two keyboard players?’ You see different colours, different textures.” It didn’t happen, of course. Emerson was keen but he says Wakeman prevaricated. “The energy could have been amazing. Sometimes people just don’t see the potential.” eeing potential is something that Anderson has always been good at. In 1973, after hearing a copy of L’Apocalypse Des Animaux by Vangelis and connecting with the languid soundscapes of Creation Du Monde in particular, Anderson was convinced the ex-Aphrodite’s Child keyboard player would be perfect to replace a departing Rick Wakeman after the Tales From Topographic Oceans tour. “We brought him to London but he didn’t really work in the band. He’s a one-man vehicle, you know?” Although that encounter didn’t work out the pair became firm friends and began an extremely fruitful partnership.
Their first album together, Short Stories, was recorded in London in February 1979, before the split with
Yes. Released at the beginning of 1980, it hit No.4 in the UK Album Chart while I Hear You Now found itself at No.8 in the Top 40, with Song Of Seven bringing his first year outside of Yes to a rather satisfying conclusion
Anderson looked to be in good shape as a solo artist. The following year found Anderson in the company of Vangelis once again to record The Friends Of Mr Cairo, which spawned I’ll Find My Way Home as a single, resulting in a surprise hit requiring the duo to lip-sync in front of a studio audience, swaying from side to side. The video on YouTube shows Anderson grinning and being the effortless showman, clearly very comfortable. Vangelis, by comparison, looks rather awkward. Anderson laughs at the memory of it. “The funniest thing was Vangelis said he didn’t want to be
S
Friends Of Mr Cairo. He was actually playing a groove as I happened to walk in and I sang State Of Independence, the whole thing, spontaneously without thinking. The whole shape of the song in one long take.”
As someone who didn’t like being under pressure to write hits and wasn’t certain how things would work out beyond Yes, Anderson was doing okay. More than okay, in fact. When American producer Quincy Jones was given a copy of The Friends Of Mr Cairo he saw it as a perfect vehicle for Donna Summer. The hits, as they say, kept rolling in. From the outside, things looked good. Anderson was in control of his destiny. His third solo album
Animation did well enough and with still more appearances on other artist’s albums and his ongoing partnership with Vangelis, it was something of a surprise to see him return to the Yes camp. “I was actually living in the south of France working on projects and very invested in creating music, but I missed the whole excitement of touring. I’d been on tour with
Animation in America with some really good people but it just felt like hard work, the gigs not the band. It was not what I was interested in doing.”
Feeling like he was back in the 70s when Yes were slogging around the support slots, the experience gave him pause for thought. “I was thinking, ‘What am I doing this for?’”
When Chris Squire invited Anderson up to come and listen to the material he, Alan White, and Trevor Rabin had been working on, he was happy to do so. When, after a short time, Cinema reconvened as the new Yes, Anderson had no hesitation in signing up. “I realised I missed being in Yes when it was really looked after properly, when it was really taken care of and towards the end of the 70s, after Tormato, it wasn’t. It’s funny, of course, because back then, management wanted us to make more commercial