Happy Birthday: Jon Anderson (born John Roy Anderson, 25 October 1944) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the progressive rock band Yes with bassist Chris Squire in 1968 and rose to prominence as their lead vocalist. The band pioneered progressive rock in the 1970s, particularly with their critically-acclaimed albums The Yes Album, Fragile (both 1971) and Close to the Edge (1972) which display Anderson's role in crafting the group's sound as one of the main songwriters and lyricists. Known for his countertenor vocal style, Anderson was a member of Yes across three tenures until 2004.
Born and raised in Accrington in northern England, Anderson gave up manual labour in the early 1960s in favour of singing in The Warriors with his brother. He moved to London and after several unsuccessful singles as a solo artist, co-formed Yes with Squire. Anderson left the band in 1980 due to growing internal friction and continued his solo career, which he had started in 1976 with his debut album, Olias of Sunhillow. He went on to collaborate with other musicians, including Greek keyboardist and composer Vangelis as Jon and Vangelis, Roine Stolt as Anderson/Stolt, Jean-Luc Ponty as the Anderson Ponty Band, and The Band Geeks as Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks, with whom he has toured repeatedly and released two albums in recent years. He has appeared on albums by King Crimson, Toto, Lawrence Gowan, Tangerine Dream, Iron Butterfly, Milton Nascimento, Battles, Mike Oldfield and Kitaro. Anderson was a member of the offshoot Yes groups Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman.
In 2009, Anderson acquired American citizenship. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Yes.
[LOVED his voice and have several of his CDs.... I was a BIG Prog-Rock fan growing up. It was, quite possibly, my first music love - until I completely fell in love with 80's music in many of its forms.]
2 comments:
Prog rock is a concept I'm still struggling to understand. Tom Woods and Brad Birzer are both huge fans and sometimes talk about it on Tom's show. Maybe it helps to be that age and to have been able to see it differentiate itself as a genre, growing up with it in a sense?
(Of course, this is coming from someone whose palate in some genres is so philistine that I have a "Rock/Punk/Grunge" subfolder....and a "90s-00s" folder that encompasses all contemporary pop music, or did. Haven't paid attention to the pop scene in maybe ten years or so now. )
Probably at the time I was leafing through Prog Rock albums in the record store while my older brother did older brother stuff I wouldn't be able to give you any definitions - but I knew it when I heard it. Even after all the intervening years I still really like it, especially Yes and Pink Floyd.
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