And then Bruford resigned!
The Syn drummer-turned-Yes-snapper, Martyn ‘Max’ Adelman remembers that fateful day.
“Iwas in the room when Bill Bruford resigned!” As pronouncements go, it’s quite something. Yet for photographer (and sometime drummer) Martyn Adelman, that’s exactly what happened. And it seems there was little of the expected rock’n’roll brouhaha to accompany such a potentially explosive statement.
“Bill was a drummer’s drummer and a grown-up,” Adelman continues. “And I think he’d had enough of the constant in-fighting that could go on in Yes. But it was all handled in a very adult fashion. There didn’t seem to be any recriminations going on.
“Bill had made annotations of his work and was sharing them with Alan White. I never spoke to Bill personally but I think he wanted out. And Alan was a good solid drummer, very different to Bill, but excellent with Yes. It was an exchange of ideas and an adult changeover. Very rare in rock’n’roll.”
Adelman had met Chris Squire when he’d journeyed to Boosey & Hawkes music store in London with his friend Peter Knight, who would go on to join Steeleye Span.
“He was looking for sheet music, and Chris was working there. That’s where I met him,” Adelman tells Prog. “It was certainly clear he was going to make it in the music business. He was so determined and had that air about him.”
Adelman moved from a band with Knight to joining The Selfs and later The Syn alongside Squire, although at the time the latter band bore little resemblance to the prog juggernaut that Yes would become.
“We played a lot of blues and soul covers,” Adelman recalls. “But after I left, I could hear in the music Chris was writing that things were starting to head in that direction.”
Having quit The Syn to become a photographer, a move inspired by his then-girlfriend’s father, Adelman still played a part in the band’s development, suggesting a college friend, Peter Banks, join them on guitar. Banks and Squire went on to play in Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, which segued into Yes.
In the early 70s, Adelman found himself back in the studio with his old friends to shoot some of the portrait photos that appear on the back cover of Close To The Edge, his first significant job as a snapper.
“I had a good time with Chris,” he remembers. “I didn’t really get to know Jon at all. But seeing Chris, surrounded by money, and people rushing around at his beck and call certainly made an impression on me.”
Adelman would go on to work for such prestigious magazines as The Face and Blitz but in 2004 found himself involved in a Syn reunion, alongside Banks and Squire, but his time was short-lived, and stepping down, he was replaced by future King Crimson drummer Jeremy Stacey.
“It was a bit intimidating, I wasn’t a professional drummer,” he smiles. “But it was fun. A big challenge. There’s a little bit of me that sometimes wonder what might have happened if I’d kept on drumming. But photography’s served me well.” JE