Jon Anderson Says YES To Rock School All-Stars

By John Voket

Even if you never played a musical instrument or sang an organized note in your life, most every kid at some time or another fantasizes about singing on stage with a famous music star. But based on the amount of cajoling my own mom had to do to get me to practice my guitar, I think this is where most wannabe musicians hang it up.

At the Paul Green School of Rock Music, the academy’s namesake drives his students with the knowledge that your best path to getting a shot at rock stardom, or anything worthwhile in life for that matter, is practice, practice, practice.

“I have never seen a student practice and not excel — nor have I seen any young musician become great on talent alone,” Mr Green writes. “When you look back at the artists you admire, above all else, it is the work they put in and the dues that should stand out. And that’s the most important lesson the legends can teach us.”

Then once you’ve practiced enough, you might be ready to pitch a huge music star to come along on your tour! You can see the results of practice and expert showmanship next Friday, February 16, when The Ridgefield Playhouse hosts Paul Green’s School of Rock All Stars playing the music of Yes – and get this – fronted by Yes lead singer Jon Anderson.

In a recent chat with The Newtown Bee, Mr Green and Mr Anderson revisited their collaboration on a documentary about the School of Rock which traces the humble beginnings of some of the talent the public will see in Ridgefield next week. When time came for the school to record “Heart of the Sunrise,” for the film, they asked Anderson to sing the vocals and much to their delight, he agreed.

That became the foundation of a friendship between Green and Anderson that made it easy to pitch Anderson to collaborate on the current brief tour fronting a band made up of Green’s top teen and young adult student talent. And based on the soundtrack recordings on the Rock School documentary soundtrack, it’s difficult to distinguish the original arrangements from the ones made up of kids who weren’t even born when the bands they are emulating were at their peak.

But this is what drives Green, according to his official mission statement.

The fact that there was a time when the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Doors, the Who, Yes, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Cream and countless other sublime acts all roamed the earth at the same time – and arguably at the height of their careers — is simply astonishing. Perhaps any one of those acts could be the greatest band in the world if they hit stride today.

In 1998, Green opened the School of Rock Music with one simple goal:  To connect the musicians of tomorrow to the classics of yesterday. Each of the acts above was part of a rich tradition, taking from what had come before, and making it their own.

Newtown Bee: How many School of Rock alumni are engaged either academically or professionally in the music business?

Paul Green: Quite a few. We have a number of kids at Berkeley (School of Music in Boston). I have one girl, Sarah Zimmerman, who plays slide guitar as good as anybody – you’ll see her at Ridgefield, she just got a management deal and things are going great. Probably our biggest successes are Eric and Julie Slick, brother and sister, who were among my youngest students and play bass and drums. They are now Adrian Belew’s touring rhythm section.

Newtown Bee: Jon, have you worked with young people before?

Jon Anderson: I did a project with the Cleveland Youth Orchestra two years ago, which was really wonderful. I also do workshops with young people around here where I live. And I got to meet all the Rock School kids when they came to see a Yes show a few years ago, and Paul invited me to the premier of the film in LA, which I said I would do.

And after the movie, we got to do “Heart of the Sunrise,” in front of a crowd at a club show. We had Andy Summers (of the Police) get up and play drums with us, and Alice Cooper got up and sang with us.

NB: Paul says in order to appreciate any music, you have to stand on the shoulders of giants. And he observes that there has never been a time in history like the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when so much of the best music in the world was all being invented for the first time. Jon, what do you recall when you look back on your earliest experiences in the music business?

JA: In a way it was really simple. I was 25 when Yes started, so I thought I was too old to be a pop star. We were actually interested in Buffalo Springfield and a band called Vanilla Fudge. That was one of the first experimental bands, changing the beat of a Supremes’ song like (singing) “...set you free why don’t you baby..” and sort of waking you up making it alright to make changes to a well-known song.

For Yes that was like bees to honey. We started experimenting – even putting a piece of West Side Story, in one of our early arrangements. It was easier to be experimental then too, because many of the record company owners were just big fans. And while we were just like many of the bands trying to make it in London, we were so lucky to get studio time to record, I wanted to sleep there to be sure we wouldn’t lose it.

NB: What are audiences in store for at the show?

PG: We’re doing all electric arrangements — big electric arrangements — two keyboards, multiple guitars so we cover all the overdubbing, and we’re really going to try and present all the material in its original form with all the backing vocals — really recreating the original Yes sound. It’s a two-hour set with Jon on stage about 70 percent of the night. Some of the tunes are rare or instrumental to really gratify some of the hard-core Yes fans in the audience. It’s really going to be amazing once we add Jon into the mix.

JA: When Paul said ‘Let’s do a tour,’ and I asked him what songs we would play, he said well we want to do “Starship Trooper,” the long “Roundabout,” and “No Experience Necessary,” from the second album, and a new song from our last album, “Give Love Each Day,” and I said this is perfect, let’s go. Working with the younger people makes you so proud to know they are interested.

The School of Rock All Stars and Jon Anderson will play the Ridgefield Playhouse Friday, February 16, at 8 pm, and at BB King Blues Club in Manhattan on February 18 and 19 at 8 pm.