Moraz Departure From Yes

One of the reasons I find Jon Anderson so fascinating is this inherent contradiction between his lyrics/physical appearance and his function within the band. By all appearances, he's a live-and-let-live guru type, yet a former bandmate compares him to Stalin. None of that's good or bad, it's just really interesting and very, very human.

I love Relayer and his contributions to it, but it's clear from listening to Moraz live that he had difficulty playing Wakeman's parts without completely changing them. Understandable that the band would take issue with that. It's fair to point out that Wakeman has made similar claims about Moraz's parts -- to paraphrase from memory, he claimed that he "had no idea how to play that music."

Bottom line: YES with Wakeman is better than YES without Wakeman. When he decides he wants back in, you don't say "sorry, we've got someone else sitting in that chair."

 

You can hear some of the Awaken chords on Patrick's solo album, 'Out In The Sun' on the song Time For A Change.
Seems he should have been credited for that one.

I've read (Yesstories) where Patrick refers to the band in 1976 as a festival of egos. That's probably how it always was. He admits he was having trouble getting his ideas across to the others.
In that book Patrick says he was "gently eased out of Yes". Squire says it was agreed upon by Patrick that "he would be happier doing something else".

Patrick is always interesting in an interview. I've read where he said Howe was very sexy on stage back then to where he wished Eddie Offord was less stoned and more serious while recording the Relayer album. No doubt Moraz took his time in the band very seriously and worked hard to come up with compelling parts and music.

 

I don't think he's lying. I think he's exaggerating. He must have received some sort of salary while on the road. He didn't pay his own way. If he didn't receive a nickel he wouldn't have last 18 months, and the lawsuit would have been filed in the 70's.

 

I really love Relayer and Patrick's playing on that and love his solo album, but Wakeman is such an integral part of the early Yes sound. I just hope he wasn't really treated as badly as that inteview suggests, but who knows.

 

I remember watching the Moody Blues/Moraz trial on CourtTV.

My fuzzy memory tells me that Moraz was claiming he had an oral contract that entitled him to be an equal member of the band, but the band was claiming he was a hired musician. As a casual fan, I certainly had the impression from album packaging, etc. that Moraz was a full-blown member of the Moody Blues, but legally, this wasn't the case -- Moraz lost.

 

I find it incredible for someone to work on a huge tour for free, surely he received something to live on?
I do know after working for some 'well known' musicians in Australia they don't like to pay. So maybe his story is true. Just find it a bit hard to believe after a huge tour.

 

There were a couple of lame excuses in Chris Welch's book "Close To The Edge - The Story Of Yes". One came from Chris Squire and the other was by, IIRC, their tour manager. Or someone like that. As it happens, I'm actually in the middle of reading it again but I haven't yet made it back to that part of the book. From memory one of the "explanations" was that Patrick "just wasn't a Yes man", something to do with them all being English, so Moraz was an outsider.

Well, but I don't buy it. It's my belief that they simply wanted Rick back in the band and circumstances allowed it, so: Sorry Patrick, goodbye and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

For the record, I always felt that Moraz was a tremendous asset to the band and that Relayer was one of the best things they ever did, in no small part thanks to him. Nothing against Rick, whom I think was pretty great in his own right. But when forced to pick a favorite.........

 

My impression from interviews with members of King Crimson, among others, is that bands generally did not get paid any salaries for touring--just per diems to cover their meals and hotel. The idea was that the tours were seen (by the record and management companies) as promotional activity for albums. Theoretically, a successful tour would pay off in subsequent album sales (this would furthermore help explain why Bill Bruford gave up 50% of his Close to the Edge album royalties when he left before the tour). Presumably, whatever royalties Moraz got from Relayer would be considered compensation for the Relayer tour. It sounds like he might have been especially screwed for participating in the big 1976 tour but being forced out before the subsequent album was released (technically, the 1976 tour was supporting the solo albums, though they dropped those songs after the first couple of dates). Brian Lane may have argued that he would be compensated via potential sales of "The Story of I"--and legally, Moraz may have had no options, depending on how the contract was written.

I'm not claiming this to be fact--just what I have gleaned over the years about how recording artists were paid in the 1970s. Fripp has complained about it quite often.

 

And with his departure the era of Yes truly being progressive ended.
Things changed with Wakeman back, although the tours were great.

 

I saw them at least once during the 1976 tour, and the venue where I saw them could hold 20,000 max. I think most arenas they played were nearly the same.

 

Here are a couple of the larger venues that Yes played in summer of 1976:

J.F.K. Stadium Philadelphia - 115,000

Tampa Stadium - 75,000


Many of the dates on this tour featured Peter Frampton at the height of Frampton Comes Alive Mania.

 

Wow and just when I thought I heard everything. So all those shows the bands played in the 70's they received zero compensation. What a load of crap from the record and management companies.

 

I think GftO wa an encapsulation of Yes' sound to date at that point, so may be it wasn't truly progressive.

But I think both Drama and 90125 were progressive - the band evolved and sounded different on both, incorporating new sounds and styles as they went. Not necessarily in a way that fans who only liked the classic earlier albums wanted maybe, but still progressive.

After that, I'm not sure there was much more progression, though a number of subsequent albums emulated either the 80's or 70's Yes style.

 

Avery's great misread thread titles; pt.814: "Mozart Departure From Yes".

 

Honestly, I love just about everything from the debut thru GFTO, but Relayer is my favorite Yes album, closely followed by CTTE, Yessongs, and GFTO. Gates of Delirium is an incredible song and Sound Chaser is not far behind. To Be Over is their best ballad, to me. Having said that, I can't say what on earth GFTO would sound like with Moraz...but I bet it would be more interesting than what we got. I love the album, don't get me wrong, but I feel like Moraz could have potentially "diversified" the album a bit. What I mean is, Rick's keyboards usually (not always!) come to prominence during the "mellow" bits on Yes' albums, like the midsection of TOTC. And when he plays it loud and bomastic, he plays very big, churchy chords and arpeggios most of the time. I don't have any problems with these things, or I wouldn't be able to love, say I Get Up I Get Down off of CTTE. However, I feel like Moraz' lightning playing, and aggressive sound in addition to his capacity for airy atmospheric bits gave him more of an "unpredictability" factor for Wakeman, almost like a second, jazzier Steve Howe (just listen to the mid-section of GoD for proof). So given the great songwriting on GFTO, much of which was apparently done by Moraz, it'd be interesting to hear how much more dynamic he may have made the tunes in terms of agression. So it's a bummer he got kicked out.

Also, to the OP: I get it if you don't dig the fusion influence on Relayer, but if you want to point your finger at the guys that influenced them, point squarely at Return to Forever's (awesome) Hymn Of the Seventh Galaxy record. Then punish yourself for not liking Relayer by not listening to it!

 

Yes and no. Back then the focus was on making money via album sales. Tours were looked at as promotional opportunities to support those sales. That's why most concert tickets were so much cheaper back then. There were some exceptions (CSNY, Zeppelin, Wings, etc.) but the business model was completely different compared to now.

Having said that, I wouldn't doubt that many touring artists were ripped off at the time, even if there wasn't that much money to go around on the road.

 

Thanks for the clarification! I respect RTF more than I like them.
I saw them on the No Mystery Tour in 1975 (Di Meola's second tour). They certainly were high energy!

 

I always heard Anderson was controlling and Squire liked to run things

Alan still appears to be treated like a hired musician

I could see where Patrick would get lost and marginalized



Chris and Steve don't want John in charge and must have made bad investments or had very poor contracts

Can't see Ahmet doing that

 

Did Yes open many dates for Peter Frampton "Comes Alive" LP release Tour, they were one of the bands booked to appear.

 

I think it was in the "YesYears" doc where the YES members were talking about Moraz and they mentioned that he was more a "jazzier" in regards to his keyboard playing.

As for Moraz the one off album he made with members of The Nice which became known as "Refugee" is a prog classic.

Rick A.

 

Lawsuit? Now why would he consider dat?
--------------------------------------------------↓

The truth likely lies somewhere in between, but perhaps it isn't a reach to say Moraz is given to a bit of exaggeration at times. OTOH he may have lost that case, but it's hard for any sober minded (read: honest) Moodie fan not to conclude he was a full member of that outfit during his tenure with them. Those were certainly large shoes he had to fill to cover for the mellotronmeister. I mean, it's just as disingenuous to claim he was little more than a "hired hand" (like say, Boshell and Bliss and Marshall have clearly been, as well as the reasons you cited earlier) regardless of whether he technically was a contract player -- well, according to the court verdict anyway.

 

Moraz's problem was too much hair...





...not enough cape.

 

Moraz styles Mozart Handel. The question is, is it real or is it Memorex?

 

Nevertheless, despite the loon pants, the mystical lyrics and the third eye, Anderson emerges from Yes's history as less a wide-eyed hippy than a hard-headed operator, perhaps as a result of a tough childhood spent working as a farmhand. He may be the only rock star in history to have been compared to three different dictators. His nickname within Yes was Napoleon, but departing drummer Bill Bruford went further, noting Anderson's similarity to Hitler and Stalin. When I mention this, he looks momentarily nonplussed - "Stalin?" - before sternly defending himself.

Not sure how to take that, as Stalin was known to knock off his lieutenants left and right. One wrong comment over dinner and you could be a goner. It was basically a miracle deputies like Khrushchev and Molotov survived, when so few others did. Hitler OTOH was very loyal to his, with but a few exceptions. As for Napoleon, how tall was Mr. Anderson?