The Psychedelic Experience-- source for the liner notes to The Remembering (High the Memory)?

“For Anderson, here lies the ‘Topographic Ocean’: a vast expanse of experiences, ideas, beliefs, and even previous lives, which generally lie beneath the naked eye, but which all flow eventually into a common river of consciousness. It is in this state-- when we can see, hear, and witness the lost stories of other civilizations and individuals-- that we can learn from the past and move to a better future...” -- Randall Holm, professor of Biblical studies, on “The Remembering” in the essay “Pulling Back the Darkness: Starbound with Jon Anderson.”

"Like a drop flowing back to the ocean and finally merging with it, they too attempt to become one with the whole of life and experience themselves as the Pure Intelligence that activates the universe. ...For those who take the journey, an awe-inspiring eternal and infinite reality opens up for exploration; experiences so far beyond the normal that they defy definition and description.
What they portray is an underlying field of living consciousness which contains the entire material universe. All galaxies, stars, planets, and what exists on them, exist within this unbroken field of consciousness. Like the myriad forms of sea life in an ocean, so to do all the varieties of living forms of this universe exist within consciousness. The ultimate experience for a living human being is to merge their individual consciousness with this Absolute Consciousness and so experience themselves as the ocean of life rather than an individual drop which exists within life. It is this experience which gives you permanent access to the ecstatic states.” (Michael Domeyko Rowland writing on yogic mysticism, Ecstatic States with Ram Dass, 1996 documentary.)

Last year (2015) I was wandering around listening to my iPod’s Topographic Oceans folder on shuffle mode when all the sudden it shifted to an excerpt of a lecture by Ram Dass called “Karma and Reincarnation.” Ram Dass was a Harvard professor who was fired amidst scandal that erupted during research (with Timothy Leary) into psychedelic drugs that had spun out of control-- a polite way of saying the research had become a party; for details read Don Lattin’s book The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. What I heard in the lecture electrified me. As Ram Dass began reading a Buddhist monk’s description of reincarnation, I swore I was hearing the source material for Yes’ liner notes describing the song “The Remembering (High the Memory).”

I always felt this song was vaguely about reincarnation. Most Yes material around this time was “vaguely” about something because of Jon Anderson (and Steve Howe’s) highly subjective spiritual imagery and the stream of consciousness lyrics that permeated their work, especially on their 1973 double album and my personal favorite TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS. The liner notes explained a bit about each of the four songs that made up the album based on four classifications of Vedic (Hindu) scriptures. I felt that the notes for “The Remembering” seemed like they were about reincarnation (unfortunately, even they were vague) especially when paired with a lyric from that song: “Like a dreamer all our lives are only lost begotten changes/ We relive in Seagull’s pages.” Richard Bach’s 1970 book Jonathon Livingston Seagull had become hugely popular by the end of 1972 just as the idea for TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS was being hatched in early 1973. It told a fable about seagulls that served as an introduction to Westerners regarding reincarnation as a process for spiritual growth. (For more details, see wiki’s section on the book.)

Here is the actual album liner notes for “The Remembering (High the Memory)”: 2nd Movement: Suritis. The Remembering. All our thoughts, impressions, knowledge, fears, have been developing for millions of years. What we can relate to is our own past, our own life, our own history. Here, it is especially Rick’s keyboards which bring alive the ebb and flow and depth of our mind’s eye: the topographic ocean. Hopefully we should appreciate that given points in time are not so significant as the nature of what is impressed on the mind, and how it is retained and used.”

One website (since deleted) dedicated to the album states that the correct Sanskrit word should have been: “Smiriti (not 'Suritis')
('The knowledge which is kept in memory': Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vedanta and the Sutras).”
For even more scholarly info on this word and classification of Vedic scriptures, check out the wiki page Smriti which also echoes that the central definition of these scriptures is “tradition that is remembered.”

After hearing the excerpt from the lecture “Karma and Reincarnation” I came home and started googling the entire reading to see what source it was from. It turned out it was a book Ram Dass had co-written under his Harvard professor name Richard Alpert (a trip to India in 1967 led to yogic revelations and the spiritual name Ram Dass), co-authored by fellow scholars Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner, and titled The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, first published in 1964. I don’t know how well the book sold, but it’s fame must have grown in the counterculture when it was revealed to be the source for part of John Lennon’s lyrics (“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream”) for the compelling psychedelic song, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the finale of the 1966 Beatles album REVOLVER, and a clear indication that the spiritual wing of the counterculture was about to permeate the mainstream via popular music. (As in interesting aside, Jon Anderson, in a brand new April 2016 interview, when asked about the inception of progressive rock, responded: “I tend to think it was ‘Tomorrow Never Knows...’ when I heard that it was pretty mind blowing, and The Beatles pushed that energy through Eleanor Rigby... thing like this just came through like bolts of lightening to me.”) Lennon had even talked about wanting to have Buddhist monks chanting for the arrangement, before the psychedelic arrangement using tape loops was devised at McCartney’s suggestion after he heard Stockhausen’s “Gesang der Jünglinge” . (See “Tomorrow Never Knows” arrangement recreated live in concert HERE & NOW.) (A second interesting aside, I started reading the recently published Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab, which takes place in 1969 when Bowie becomes a roommate and lover of the author, Mary Finnigan. As they began to discuss their common interest in Buddhism, she mentions having read and enjoyed The Psychedelic Experience.) The gist of the book, according to wiki, was to use the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a scripture meant to guide one through the process of dying and rebirth (reincarnation), as a metaphor for the experience of transcending the ego that happens to some while taking hallucinogenic drugs. This is something that Ram Dass has become known for-- taking scripture and myth and interpreting it in terms of psychology and mysticism. It is my opinion that this is what Yes is doing in the liner notes (and lyrics) for “The Remembering (High the Memory),” taking the idea of “memory” and applying it to consciousness in its spiritual journey over millions of years of physical and spiritual evolution, rather than explaining a set of Vedic scriptures that depicted the legends of Indian history. Timothy Leary believed the experience of taking psychedelic mushrooms was a recapitulation of the entire evolutionary process, while Yes liner notes state: “All our thoughts, impressions, knowledge, fears, have been developing for millions of years.” Compare this approach to the definition of the “remembered” in Yogananda’s footnote: the epic literature of myths and legends of Vedic culture in India as depicted in the epic literature of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. That’s a very different reading of the notion of “remembering.”

Historically speaking, The Psychedelic Experience would make a perfectly logical source for Yes’ liner notes regardless of who actually wrote them, as Yes and their social group were very much immersed in the psychedelic and spiritual counterculture that spilled out of the late 1960s and into the early days of Yes’ music. Steve Howe’s most prominent pre-Yes group, Tomorrow, were certainly a psychedelic band, and echoes of Chris Squire’s psychedelic period could be heard in the first track of Yes’s first album, “Beyond and Before.”

Here is what Ram Dass said in the lecture I heard on my Ipod:

“ ‘One of the most vivid traditions in which reincarnation is dealt with and brings it very much home to us here is that of the Tibetan tradition. Lama Govinda (Anagarika Govinda) has written, ‘It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died, since nobody has apparently returned from death, how can anybody know what death is? The Tibetan will answer, there is not one person, indeed not one living being that has not returned from death. In fact we have all died many deaths before we came into this incarnation. And what we call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two sides of a coin. Or like a door which we call entrance from outside and exit from inside. It’s much more astonishing that not everybody remembers his or her previous death. And because of this lack of remembering most persons do not believe there was a previous death. But likewise most people don’t remember their birth and yet they don’t doubt that they were recently born. They forget that active memory is only a small part of our normal consciousness, and that our subconscious memory registers and preserves every past impression and experience which our waking mind fails to recall. There are those who by virtue of concentration and other yogic practices are able to bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and thereby to draw upon the unrestricted treasury of subconscious memory wherein are stored the records not only our past lives, but the records of the past of the race, of the past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe. But if through some trick of nature the gates of an individual subconscious were suddenly to spring open, the unprepared mind would be overwhelmed and crushed. Therefore the gates of the subconscious are guarded by all initiates and hidden behind the veil of mysteries and symbols.’ And it was this that (Carl) Jung kept wrestling with his ‘collective unconscious’, which was a very close way that a Westerner was getting to the idea of reincarnation.”

The more I listen to or read that paragraph, the more it seems to reflect the liner notes for “The Remembering.” For example, from the liner notes: “ All our thoughts, impressions, knowledge, fears, have been developing for millions of years... Here, it is especially Rick’s keyboards which bring alive the ebb and flow and depth of our mind’s eye: the topographic ocean.” From the Ram Dass reading from The Psychedelic Experience: “They forget that active memory is only a small part of our normal consciousness, and that our subconscious memory registers and preserves every past impression and experience which our waking mind fails to recall. There are those who in virtue of concentration and other yogic practices are able to bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and thereby to draw upon the unrestricted treasury of subconscious memory wherein are stored the records not only our past lives, but the records of the past of the race, of the past of humanity, and of all prehuman forms of life, if not of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe.” It is as if the album liner notes are the simplistic version, while the Buddhist teacher’s interpretation is the fleshed out view of the “topographic ocean”-- the depth of our potential remembering of our many reincarnations and even the memory of all material evolution.

I recently found a website by Deborah Rudd (since deleted) about archetypes in literature, and she explains the symbolism of the ocean like this: “Sea/ocean: the mother of all life; spiritual mystery; death and/or rebirth; timelessness and eternity.” How much closer can you get to the notion of a topographic ocean as depicted in the liner notes and song “The Remembering (High the Memory)”, and of the spiritual concept of the potential memory of all our previous lives and of the evolution of life itself! Another vivid example of this comes from the root inspiration of TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, Autobiography of a Yogi. In the chapter, “The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar” Paramhansa Yogananda’s guru reappears to him after his death and explains to him the afterlife ramifications of our consciousness’ survival of death vis a vis our past lives, our future lives, and the inbetween stages of spiritual evolution in other planes of existence (astral planes, causal planes, or “heaven” in western terminology.) If that chapter doesn’t blow your mind, nothing will.

Again, from the liner notes: “What we can relate to is our own past, our own life, our own history.” And from the reading, “But if through some trick of nature the gates of an individual subconscious were suddenly to spring open, the unprepared mind would be overwhelmed and crushed. Therefore the gates of the subconscious are guarded by all initiates and hidden behind the veil of mysteries and symbols.” The liner notes deal with what most of us work with, “our own past... our own history,” while the Ram Dass reading also explains the reason why most of us must restrict ourselves to the memories of this one lifetime.

Of course, it’s hard to ascertain exactly what inspired the liner notes without knowing who if anyone helped Jon Anderson write them. Could it possibly have been Donald Lehmkuhl? Described as a “guru” to Jon Anderson in one of the book about Yes, he wrote lengthy poems for the Yes US tour programs in 1974 (TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS) and 1975 (RELAYER), as well as a short poem for the RELAYER album cover. He also did writing for Roger Dean’s art books and published poems and a novel of his own. The poem for the TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS tour program, which is untitled but starts with “See Earth Unearthly,” is in many ways a recapitulation of the idea that we have within us the evolution of all life and consciousness (a key concept of Timothy Leary’s explanation of the psychedelic experience). The sentence, “You and Earth and history are one” appears twice in the poem, and that one sentence could conceivably sum up the point being made in the Ram Dass reading, that “the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe” is already within us as the depth of our memory, in Yes symbolism, the topographic ocean. The Lehmkuhl poem also contains a key aspect of the counterculture, that of elevating the very notion of having a loving consciousness as something that supersedes organized religion. (Indeed, Jesus himself may have been getting at this same idea when he said it was more important to be actively loving than it was to follow written religious rules punctiliously and legalistically, which is explained in Luke 14:5 through the story of an ox trapped in a well. (Also see the 2004 dramatic film SAVED! directed by Brian Dannelly for a more contemporary example of this concept related to gay rights.)

Another possibility is that the liner notes were partially written by artist and occult writer Vera Stanley Alder. One article about the composing of Tales from Topographic Oceans says that Anderson was running back and forth to talk with Alder about the album’s concepts. The first book about Yes by Dan Hedges states that Vera Stanley Alder’s book The Finding of the Third Eye was an influence on Tales. And of course, Alder’s book The Initiation of the World was a source for Jon’s first solo album, Olias of Sunhillow (1976).

A word about the question, “Why a counterculture?” I’ve said twice already that Topographic Oceans was the product of a counterculture, so I should say a word about this phrase. The post-WWll culture was based around family and the authority of institutions because of the huge loss of life, the shattering of families, as well as the lingering memory of the Great Depression. After that, the stability of a family, a decent wage from a working class or white collar job, a chance for a college education for one’s children, and the simple pleasures of life seemed like the pot at the end of the rainbow (or perhaps better described as the reward for going through hell). What happened, however, was that the children of these parents, living in the placid, affluent suburbs, and getting a well-rounded liberal arts education in college, became good critical thinkers. They also had their imaginations fired from getting high on marijuana and psychedelics and began their own rebellion against the mainstream conformity that permeated the 1950s. Instead of being animated by war, they became excited about fighting injustice in the world-- racial injustice, sexism, heterosexism, economic inequality, and the blind acceptance of political and religious institutions. “Question authority” was a common slogan of the time, especially by psychedelic researcher Timothy Leary. They also began to reach out to other cultural paradigms for inspiration. Two of these ideas-- questioning mainstream religious beliefs and looking for inspiration in Asia, became the crux of the spiritual wing of the counterculture. Yes’ TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS was perhaps the most complex artistic statement to come out of this movement. Precedents to the work had suitably long, cosmic titles and appropriately trippy and philosophical album covers, for example The Moody Blues’ IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD (1968) and The Incredible String Band’s THE 5000 SPIRITS OR THE LAYERS OF THE ONION (1967). If you look at the combined themes on these two albums-- obscure lyrics, touches of sitar, a wealth of new sounds from mellotrons and obscure ethnic instruments, as well as increasingly complex musical structures, it’s easy to see how Yes’s work was simply upping the ante on a strand of popular music that had begun 5 years previously. And by the way, Ray Thomas (flute, lead vocals) says that his popular psychedelic song for The Moody Blues, “Legend of a Mind,” -- a classic 1968 example of pre-prog-- was inspired by The Psychedelic Experience, which would have spread the book’s influence even further because of the huge influence this band had upon the more spiritual wing of popular music fans.

The Incredible String Band and The Moody Blues seminal albums (1967, 1968) embracing the religious counterculture and musical experimentation.

Here is a couple of pertinent quotes from the documentary Beyond Life with Timothy Leary from Moody Blues members about “Legend of a Mind”:
Justin Hayward: “We wrote about things that were happening at the time around us. We went though a lot of religious and psychedelic experiences ourselves... And that was part our own lives, that particular song.”
Ray Thomas (writer of “Legend of a Mind”): “We’d heard about Timothy Leary and there was a lot of rumor coming back to the UK. Everybody was getting into meditation and reading books like Tibetan Book of the Dead. “

Here is a fascinating link/page about psychedelia: the mysticism of the late 1960s and The Moody Blues song “Legend of a Mind,” Click Here & Now

To be quite honest, the more I have gotten into writing this blog, the more I think TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS was the best possible title for an album with this kind of metaphysical scope, given the symbolism of the ocean as the richness of one’s journey through many lives. And specifically, the music and lyrics of “The Remembering (High the Memory)” gets at this idea the best. Jon Anderson was right to highlight Wakeman’s keyboard passages in the liner notes as best depicting this concept. In a roughly twenty-one minute song, the arrangement settles down four separate times to allow Wakeman to create some hushed, breathtaking moments of mellotron and synthesizer amidst what is already the mellowest epic that Yes ever wrote. You could also add the song’s luxurious spacey ending as a fifth time for Wakeman to really drive home this ambient aspect of the composition which gives it a really contemplative feel. If you add up the time of all these passages, “The Remembering” contains about 5 minutes and 35 seconds of luscious spaciness-- over 1/4 of the entire song. Rather astonishing for a band that came of age during the heyday of guitar riffs and fiery solos.

Now of course, what happened in concert with “The Remembering” was another story altogether. Yes was performing the entire double album in Britain before the album was even released. In the US, the timing situation wasn’t much better. As a result, many fans who had begun with them at “Roundabout’s” 1972 breakthrough were really just catching up and primed for a rowdy YESSONGS-styled show. “The Remembering” in particular, because of its spaciness, was zoning out a certain percentage of the audience. After about five weeks into the US tour it was dropped from the setlist, and revived only a couple times (in 1976) over the last 42 years. In my opinion, with the right visual presentation using pictures and film, this song could be an amazing concert piece once again, as it certainly was aurally based on the audience tapes from the TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS tour, despite the subdued audience reaction. In fact, for a mellow number like this, a quiet audience response is what you should expect, just as surely as the rowdy numbers will produce hysteria. Artists sometimes think when they get a subdued response that this means people don’t like a song as much as the others, when it’s really just an extension of the mood of the song.

The Psychedelic Experience Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Ph.D, Ralph Metzner Ph.D, Richard Alpert Ph.D.

Over the years, Jon Anderson has continued to write on the theme of reincarnation. The amazing “Angkor Wat” from the UNION album (1991) is about the reincarnation of souls from the Cambodian genocide into the heart of the sacred temples of Angkor Wat. He also worked on a theatrical musical based on the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss. In 1992 he was asked in the new age magazine Children of the Moon, “What are your beliefs about reincarnation,” Jon responded, “Very strong. I spoke to my mother the other day, she died at Easter, and she’s been touch with me through my meditations. And my Divine Mother, my Spiritual Mother (Jon’s first meditation teacher)... they’ve been laughing at me a lot. ...I have a very strong understanding now; I wrote a musical (reference to the book by Dr. Brian Weiss) so I learned a lot about it. ...I have no fear of death and that’s the thing to get rid of. That, and the fear of God.” Of course, this explanation has more to do with his belief that the consciousness of a person survives death, but he didn’t deny that he believed in reincarnation, and characterized his belief as “very strong.”

Lastly, in 1994, Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin collaborated on a beautiful song, one of Yeswest’s finest, “Where Will You Be,” that addressed reincarnation directly: “Where will you be when you’re not here/ How many lives in this earth time?” And later near the end of the song:
“No need to fear this love of life,
We are the truth of every earth life.
No need to fear this life at all,
We are the sun and everlasting life.
Where will you be hearing this song?
How many lives in this earth time?
You are my soul and this you are.”

It’s pretty difficult to bring this blog to a close. “The Remembering” was the first song I heard from TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS (at a friend’s house while smoking dope), but it was the last song from the work that I came to love. Being a fan of utter weirdness and the roller coaster ride that is progressive rock arranging, “The Ancient” was my immediate favorite track. But as I got more into my own personal practice of yoga and meditation, “The Remembering” seemed like the track that despite its subtlety granted the biggest rewards. The attitude of your average rock fan is that this song is “boring” because it’s so mellow, and it was the one track that Yes dropped from the Topographic Oceans tour after a couple of months. Everyone lost in that bargain. In 1976 there was an attempt to revive it, but it only lasted a few days in the setlist before being replaced by the more bombastic “Ritual.” To this day, “The Remembering” remains one of the deepest cuts in Yes’ catalogue that is long overdo for a revival on stage. Get the right light show for it, and it could be a stunning stage song. Aside from this, it’s a mistake to think that a song that gets a more subdued crowd response isn’t appreciated. Often a subdued response is the perfectly logical reaction you should should expect from a more introspective number.

And then again, you just can’t discount plain old nostalgia in my motivation for wanted to see this song on stage again. Biblical Studies professor Randall Holm, who I started this blog with, stated it this way: "I suspect that the study of music for any dilettante like myself is as autobiographical as it is anything else. Music not only evokes memories of particular moments; it also enhances those moments with an interdimensional quality as it transports us back to another time and place. Arguably, this is no more powerful than through the music of our adolescence-- music that has undeniable spiritual import as it often transcends any reasonable logic."

 How To Find Your Lost Blogs on Facebook's Now-Defunct NOTES program. 

Recovering your Notes

Here is a process that people are using to find their previously-published Notes:

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This brings up your activity log of all your notes. You can then click on each one to view

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check Notes. 
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Recovering your Notes

Here is a process that people are using to find their previously-published Notes:

• Click the far right top arrow pointing down
• Click Settings and Privacy
• Click Settings
• On Left click Your Facebook Information
• The first item is “Access your Information.” Click View on the right
• Scroll down to where it says Your Information. Under that click where it says Your Activity Across Facebook.
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This brings up your activity log of all your notes. You can then click on each one to view

Good Vibrations: Vegetarian Fish in the Topographic Oceans

Good Vibrations: Vegetarian Fish in the Topographic Oceans. (A history)

Roger Dean's photo of Steve Howe standing by a billboard of his masterwork, Tales from Topographic Oceans

“While the restaurant was going strong... all of Hollywood came to the Source Restaurant to dine with Father Yod and his children. The actors who... were regulars-- Charles Bronson, Steve McQeen, Warren Beatty... Goldie Hawn was a regular. Ravi Shankar and John Lennon dined there when they were in Los Angeles. The band Yes showed up in separate limos. Woody Allen showed the Source to the world when he filmed his breakup with Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall on the restaurant’s patio after ordering a plate of mashed yeast. Tally up the reminiscences of the Source Family members, and they’ll list enough celebrities to fill up three Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album covers, all the famous people who came to eat with them when they were young, beautiful, and overflowing with universal love.” (Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changes the Way we Eat by Jonathan Kauffman, 2018, page 55)

The brand new historical overview of the health food movement was released in 2018; Yes mentioned on page 55.

Intro

...on August 15, 1976, at a Yes concert no less, I announced to my girlfriend I was going vegetarian. I had been working at a health food store for a few months and felt it was about time. “However, I’ll still eat fish occasionally,” I announced without a hint of hypocrisy. (A taste of Indian pakoras and Farley Mowat’s Sea of Slaughter film cured that.) This started a life-long obsession with diet, nutrition, and environmental ethics. It collided with Yes when I began to search out articles on my favorite band and found an obscure magazine called Vegetarian World that had a 1976 issue about pop artists that included everyone from Jeff Beck to Peter Frampton to Captain and Tennille to Yes. Over the years I’ve kept my ears open for any chatter on the subject that could trace out these dietary experiments, the results of which became this blog. It’s arranged as a timeline for the sake of tracing the history as revealed in interviews by the press and over the radio.

There are basically four parts to the blog. Part 1 deals cultural activism in general in Western pop music. Part 2 explains the history of vegetarianism in Yes. Part 3 deals with the rest of the pop music world’s engagement with the topic after the fall of the classic rock era in the new wave 1980s. A short 4th section proposes a possible compilation album that Yes could release, called Ecology, highlighting their cultural activism on the topic of the environment.

Part 1

One of the most challenging things that can happen is when people unite around a central critique of accepted cultural practices. The most common examples involve human rights advances. Today most people would think a country was backward if they didn’t allow women to vote, but two hundred years ago women were considered as little more than the property of men. Advocating for women’s suffrage 150 years ago was radical. Advocating for women to use birth control was considered “pornographic” in 1910. This is what vegetarianism was like in the Western world in 1969 when Yes began dabbling in alternative diets-- a dangerous heresy.

When these movement become associated with art, it is described as cultural activism. (From google: Cultural activism is a mashup of artistic expression and activism grounded in the need for social justice and political change. These performances and direct actions focus on creating social change by working outside of structured organizing. ) The folk singer Woody Guthrie was considered a pioneer of cultural activism in America. Artists like Bob Dylan and Donovan identified with him in the early part of their careers, and the early 60s folk music revival (Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, etc.) was associated with many issues, especially the civil rights movement. They might be stated subtly as in Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” or aggressively as in Phil Ochs’ “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” This approach was then brought into rock by some artists that had previous connections to folk, like Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, especially on their album Volunteers (1969). John Lennon’s early solo career was also marked by a period of cultural activism, such as 1969’s “Give Peace a Chance” and 1971’s “Power to the People.” By the early 1970s it was considered de rigueur for rock bands to have plenty of songs focusing on lyrics beyond the boy-and-girl themes that dominated mainstream pop in the 1960s. The most common themes were the peace movement and the emerging ecology movement. In fact, Greenpeace was widely considered to be one of the first hippie political organizations having been given a big initial push by a 1970 benefit concert featuring Joni Mitchell, the just-exploding stardom of James Taylor, and left wing hero Phil Ochs. The purpose was to bring awareness to US nuclear testing on the island of Amchitka, Alaska. In 2009, a recording of this concert was released on a double CD, again to benefit Greenpeace.

The bands in the hippie movement, which embraced the protest movement but had other interests including an emerging interest with Eastern philosophy, tended to dabble in lyrics on many topics, from relationships to politics to spirituality to psychedelia. Yes stepped right into this social milieu right out of the gate and began writing songs about war (“Harold Land” 1969), psychedelia (“Beyond and Before” 1969), romance (“Sweetness” 1969), and the personal spiritual quest for meaning (“The Prophet” 1970). Even the anthemic “Time and a Word” (1970) picked up on the hippie tradition of speaking openly about a concept like a new age of universal love as an idea that could stand on its own without the context of the church.

Vegetarianism emerged in the underground at this same time. It had ancient roots in the West through the Pythagoreans (Greece) and in the East through religious philosophies teaching ahimsa (nonviolence), specifically Jainism and Hinduism and some branches of Buddhism. But it only cropped up in the West sporadically via health hygiene and religious movements, until around 1970 when the hippie counterculture adopted the diet and it suddenly became a noticeable minority that all institutions had to deal with. The reasons given for vegetarianism were political, health, and ethical, and spiritual.

POLITICAL:
1. The political wing of youth culture were interested in vegetarianism for a variety of reasons. One of the most influential books, Diet for a Small Planet (Frances Moore Lappe, 1971), proposed that vegetarianism was a way to address world hunger, the idea being that eating low on food chain would avoid wasting grain used for raising animals for slaughter.
2. Closely related was the idea that eating a “peasant diet” put one in solidarity with the poor.

ECOLOGICAL:
3. People who practiced ecological vegetarianism were interested in organic agriculture and decreasing the use of pesticides both for human health and the health of the soil.
4. Another issue was the excessive amount of animal waste created by raising large numbers of animals, polluting farm fields, waterways, and even air quality depending on how it was disposed.
5. And lastly, the overconsumption of fish was beginning to deplete the ocean ecosystems. (Sadly, this depletion has dramatically accelerated since the 1970s).

HUMANITARIAN
6. Nonviolence to animals. This came in large part from the youth cultures involvement with Eastern philosophy which had a very strong focus on environmental ethics which linked up to the exploding ecology movement. Vegetarianism was commonplace in these subcultures.

HEALTH
7. Health issues. There were several nutritional paradigms that promoted vegetarianism from a health standpoint, such as Ayurveda, Macrobiotics, Natural Hygiene, and the teachings of Seventh Day Adventist writer Ellen G. White which had been experimenting with meatless meals for most of the 20th century.

SPIRITUAL
8. Vegetarianism was believed to be better for a contemplative life and also for society at large, i.e. “good vibrations.” See the “GOOD VIBRATIONS” section below for this explanation.

Books from the 1970s that signaled the coming food revolution: Diet for a Small Planet, Cooking for Consciousness, and The Tassajara Bread Book

Part 2

So, here it is-- Yes and vegetarianism, a brief history.

1969. The earliest known reference to Yes’ interest in health foods and vegetarianism is 1969. Steve Howe, in an interview from 1973 in SEED (The Journal of Organic Living), said that the band met some people in Denmark who lived on strict vegetarian food (the word “vegan” wasn’t even in play yet), mostly brown rice, vegetables, tahini, and tamari. Because of poverty, Steve decided to try it and found he liked it. He went on and off the diet for a few years until he decided to go fully vegetarian. 1969 puts Yes’ interest in vegetarianism almost exactly amidst a wave of vegetarianism that swept American and Europe and was strongly associated with both the spiritual and political wings of the counterculture. According to the book Vegetarian America: A History, there were three waves of interest in vegetarianism, the third starting in 1970 and was parallel to waves in Europe and Britain, all for the same reasons related to the counterculture. This trend was linked to a kind of global politics related to resource and income inequality, as well as concerns related to an interest in Eastern philosophy. It propelled the diet into youth culture throughout the Western world.

1970-71. According to a different account by Steve Howe in an interview at a Yes convention, it was Eddie Offord that turned the band on to what Steve called “hippiedom vegetarianism.” Offord engineered their 1970 album Time And a Word and was co-producer on all their albums from 1971 (The Yes Album) to 1974 (Relayer). So I guess he played the role that Pete Sinfield did in King Crimson (see 1973, below). For Steve, the idea was very much connected to environmentalism and organic agriculture; the band even stipulated in contracts that promoters provide organic meals. The documentary Health Wealthy and Wise (1985) explains the emergence of vegetarianism via an interview with Los Angeles restaurant owner Winton Winslow: “It used to be, seven or eight years ago, the only vegetarians per se were young kids. They’d come out of the peace movement of the 60s into the vegetarian thing of the 70s... you would have seen a bunch of people in gowns and they were on a religious trip of some kind and they were vegetarians.”

1972. Probably the earliest known reference to vegetarianism was uncovered when the PROGENY boxed set was released in 2015, featuring a series of seven concerts used to produce the Yessongs album. At the Knoxville, Tennessee concert (November 15, 1972), Jon Anderson stops midstream during his introduction to “Heart of the Sunrise” and says, “Support your local vegetarian snack bar.” Steve yells almost out of the range of a microphone, “Yeah, that’s heavy!” Jon continues, “There’s a nice little snack bar down the road and not too many people get to it, it’s a beautiful place, they serve fresh apple juice and orange juice and fresh things. It’s fantastic; they’re really nice people. A lot better than your Burger King places and all that SHIT!”

I can personally attest that finding vegetarian food in the 1970s could be quite an effort. The restaurants were often small and went in and out of business quickly, and some were just a snack bar in a health food store. The health food stores were very small as well, although we Midwesterners heard stories about big health food stores in southern California where the trend was much more advanced. The earliest vegetarian rock artists I know of, Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks, went vegetarian in the 1960s and said the only thing they could eat while out on tour was pizza (see Dave Davies excellent autobiography KINK). Given this situation, Jon Anderson doing a plug for a vegetarian snack bar probably isn’t so strange. Food availability for vegetarians, especially travelling, was a huge problem back then. Today we are in the midst of an explosion of vegan food chains and options in mainstream restaurants. Even Burger King has had a veggie burger since 2002 (the BK veggie), so yes, they were listening! This fast food innovation has proved so successful, Burger King is plotting to take it worldwide after successfully launching six different vegetarian sandwiches in India! (Click HERE & NOW for the scoop!)

1973 (May 25). Pete Sinfield releases STILL with “Wholefood Boogie.” King Crimson and Yes have a very intertwined history. After Peter Banks was no longer in the band, Jon Anderson wanted to get Robert Fripp as their guitarist. He said no because YES already had a leader. In 1972, Bill Bruford left YES to join the more instrumentally adventurous King Crimson on their amazing new album, Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, which revived Crimson’s career considerably. Peter Sinfield was the lyricist and “pet hippie,” first for King Crimson, then for ELP. King Crimson also produced a couple of long-term vegetarians themselves, Robert Fripp and Tony Levin. So Sinfield played a kind of similar role in Crimson that Eddie Offord did in Yes.

“Wholefood Boogie,” stylized hilariously as a 1950s-style rave up amidst an album of gentle prog, was one of the earliest health food anthems, just after Melanie’s “I Don’t Eat Animals” (1971) and the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack’s “The Vegetarian” and “Like Animals” (1967). Before that, there were nothing but Asian prayers about the religious observance of ahimsa (nonviolence) and compassion for all living beings! Sinfield’s song, a little more fun than that, takes a specifically macrobiotic take on vegetarianism, eschewing fish and chicken in favor of organically grown whole grains, fruit, seeds, and miso soup. This would later become Steve Howe’s preferred diet (see 1992 below).

Early vegetarian songs were included on the albums: Rex Harrison's Doctor Doolittle (1967) Melanie Leftover Wine (1971) Pete Sinfield Still (1973)

1973 (June 7). YES: THE BAND THAT STAYS HEALTHY PLAYS HEALTY. By Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone magazine.

Cameron Crowe (later the writer and director of Almost Famous, a film about his time as a 15 year old music journalist, the age when he wrote this article) writes an article about YES for Rolling Stone called YES: The Band that Stays Health Plays Healthy. Now, the first thing you have to ask yourself is why he would choose that as an angle and headline to his article. Actually, the clue may have come much later when the Almost Famous film came out in 2000. A fictionalization of his real-life experiences as a teenage rock journalist, one scene has his overly protective mother confronting her daughter as she comes into the house hiding a dreaded rock album, the feared corrupter of youth. “Anita? Want something to eat? ...I made soy cutlets!” Anita responds, “Oh no thanks, I already ate.” Now, this scene is taking place in 1969, which is pretty darn early for people to be frying up soy burgers. But later in the film it comes out that their father died of a heart attack (rather young I would imagine if his kids are still in junior high school and high school). In another scene, the daughter vents her frustration at the mother because she won’t let her play Simon and Garfunkel’s BOOKENDS album: “First it was butter, then it was sugar and white flour, bacon, eggs, baloney, rock and roll, motorcycles, then it was celebrating Christmas on a day in September when you knew it wouldn’t be commercialized! What else are you going to ban?!” Judging from that list, their mom, a college professor of psychology, was an early convert to the idea that heart disease could be prevented and reversed by a plant-based diet. Today, this is not considered a pseudo-scientific health craze. Doctors like Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, and Neal Barnard, and others have demonstrated with research the dramatically effective nature of dietary changes on the reversal of heart disease and other common chronic illnesses like high blood pressure and type II diabetes.

In his Rolling Stone article, Cameron Crowe starts by explaining that roadie Alec Scott’s main job was finding a health food restaurant for the band which he describes as “four-fifths vegetarian.’ From that we can assume everyone but Rick Wakeman. As this was the time that they were beginning to work on their grandest work, the double album Tales from Topographic Oceans, we can conclude that the peak of their experiments with vegetarianism were linked to their most ambitious album, a record Steve Howe called “a lifestyle record.”

1973. The year that Yes wrote, recorded, released, and toured Tales from Topographic Oceans in the UK (the album was released and toured in early 1974 in the US) was probably one of the peak years for vegetarianism in the band. The following are several relevant details:

1973. Roger Dean works on the Tales from Topographic Oceans album cover. Rich in band symbolism, the album cover depicted the band’s astrological symbols in the sky above and, allegedly, the band itself as the five fish at the bottom, featuring four alike salmon fish, and one different ancient fish swimming underneath. Allegedly (in other words, I have no source for this) this was meant to depict the four vegetarians in the band and the one non-vegetarian, Rick Wakeman. Or the four alike band members who were into drugs, spirituality, and experimental music, and the one odd-man-out who got drunk and liked comparatively less experimental and more consonant music.

1973 (December). Yes meets Jim Halley, manager of Whole Food restaurant and grocery store. Halley claims he first saw the band at the Rainbow Theatre for the Topographic Oceans shows. According to Haley, almost the entire band was vegetarian at that time, including the roadies and tech support. They would come to the store every week on Friday and stock up on massive amounts of food. It became so disruptive that he started having the band phone in their orders in advance, and then they started asking him to bring the food out to their studio. From delivering the food, he became friends with the band, and in 1976 they talked him into being their road manager on a tour of gigantic stadiums and festivals across the US. (This info comes from Chris Welch’s book Close to the Edge: The Story of YES.)

1973: Steve Howe does an interview with SEED: The Journal of Organic Living. This interview was revealing about quite a lot of issues. I mentioned above how Jon Anderson stopped midstream during the Progeny boxed set shows and talked about a vegetarian restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to Steve, this was common occurance: “Sometimes when we’re on stage Jon will say ‘don’t go to the hamburger store afterward, go to such and such veggie place to eat’, and you can hear the audience divide between hisses and cheers, and we can work out roughly how they balance out. I really don’t know how controversial we could become.” And as I mentioned at the beginning of this timeline, this is also the article where Steve identified 1969 as the source of his first experiments with meatless living. You can find this entire interview online HERE & NOW.

Steve Howe's 1973 interview in SEED: The Journal of Organic Living

1974. In the midst of the Tales from Topographic Oceans tour (possibly February 16, 1974), Philadelphia DJ Ed Sciaky did what is clearly the most revealing interview about the double album Tales from Topographic Oceans. Right in the middle of the interview, Jon Anderson starts lecturing to Sciaky about meditation as it’s taught in a book by British occult writer Vera Stanley-Alder. Likewise, in the book YES by Dan Hedges, Jon mentions Vera Stanley-Alder’s The Finding of the Third Eye as one of the influences at the time of the creation of Topographic Oceans. That book associates the practice of vegetarianism with having the positive effect of creating a more nonviolent person and society.

The same idea is conveyed by yogi Mukunda Goswami in the 1984 documentary Healthy Wealthy and Wise: “According to God’s laws as taught in the Vedic scriptures of India, one should not cause pain to any living creature, including the animals. These are the principles of ahimsa, nonviolence, and the law of karma, that every action has a reaction. So practicing these principles of compassion creates an atmosphere, not for war, but for peace.” (Watch it on youtube Here & Now.)

1976. Steve Howe is interviewed by Vegetarian World, an obscure magazine published in California, for an article about vegetarian pop stars that included Peter Frampton, Mike Love, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Maurice White, Michael Pinder, and others.

In this interview, we get the first confirmation that the lyric of “The Ancient” was meant to reflect on the philosophy of reverence for life that inspires vegetarianism. “Howe noticed an immediate improvement in his health and digestion when he started eating vegetarian at the urging of their producer. Now the whole group is staunchly veggie on tour with only Patrick and Jon being weak at home partly as a result of family pressures. ...Yes finds a special vision of life in its vegetarianism. Referring to their ethical conviction, songwriter Jon (Anderson) wrote, on TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS: ‘Where does reason stop and killing just take over? Does a lamb cry out before we shoot it dead?’ ” The closest cultural reference I’ve found to this in the arts was in a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem called Queen Mab (1813) where he stated, “ "And man ... no longer now/ He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,/ And horribly devours his mangled flesh." (Shelley had learned about vegetarianism from a friend that had changed to the diet while living in India.)

Although the commitment to vegetarianism petered out for most of the band, the spirit of reverence for life still lived on in Anderson-Squire’s “Don’t Kill the Whale” (1978), Trevor Rabin and Mark Mancina’s “Miracle of Life” (1991, about the destruction of the ocean ecosystems through fishing techniques using drift nets), and Steve Howe’s “Blinded by Science” (1993).

1978, November 11. Jon Anderson interview in Melody Maker magazine. In this interview, Jon mentioned that he started eating meat again because it could be healthy if it was cooked properly. While it is undoubtedly true that baked fish is much better for you than deep fried fish (which is as bad for you as steak), this doesn’t really address environmental and humanitarian issues behind the diet. But it would also be true that it could be hard to find vegetarian alternatives on the road at this time, which could make proper nutrition difficult. For that matter, there also simply wasn’t a great deal known about vegetarian nutrition at the time in the Western world.

1981. The “GOOD VIBRATIONS” theory.

Steve Howe is interviewed by Vegetarian Times magazine. I call this the “good vibrations” woo-woo part of the timeline because it inspired the title of the essay and is, well, one of the more fringe ideas of the vegetarian explosion. In the yoga traditions there is a belief that the “vibrations” of people can affect food. By “vibration” they mean your state of consciousness, whether that be angry, bored, and devotional. As a result, some yoga traditions will tell you only to eat food cooked by people who are into spirituality. Paramahansa Yogananda got at this in his book when he quotes his guru as saying, “I never eat on trains, filled with the heterogeneous vibrations of worldly people” (page 87 of the Autobiography of a Yogi Reprint of the Philosophical Library 1946 First Edition). This statement is looking at the negative side of the concept, but in this interview Steve Howe looks at it from the positive example: “During a time a number of years ago, when Yes happened to be all vegetarian, the group and I dropped into a restaurant in the New Orleans area while on tour. After eating some of the homemade bread, we got very ‘heady.’ Someone came out and told us, ‘oh, you’ve just eaten bread that’s had a mantra done on it!’ We left the restaurant feeling a bit skeptical, thinking, ‘Uh-oh, someone must have put ‘something’ in the food--- peyote, or the like!’ But then we realized it had to have been just the loving and caring energy.” This belief had been with Steve for at least five years because in the 1976 Vegetarian World interview he was asked about restaurants: “They were impressed by the spirituality of American vegetarian restaurants. ‘Some of them even take it to a religious level, singing mantras as they bake.’”
This belief is explained in a 1976 cookbook written by yogis, Cooking for Consciousness: A Handbook for the Spiritually Minded Vegetarian: “We have learned from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that the entire manifest universe is composed of vibrational energy. ...Solids vibrate at the lowest... frequencies, liquids and gases in a little faster, and sound, light, and thoughts... at even higher frequencies. The higher frequencies can interpenetrate the lower frequencies. ....the food we eat is permeated with its own subtle vibrations and those it has picked up from the people who have handled it. ...These subtle vibrations are incorporated into the mind of the person eating the food. Food that is grown, prepared, and eaten with love can uplift the mind as well as nourish the body.”

Even earlier, in Swami Vivekananda’s 1922 book The Religion of Love, states many of the same themes-- that the cook can influence the quality of the food, and that eating in the presence of the worldly or cuel people can affect the food. “This is a rather mysterious theory of the Hindus. The idea is that each man has a certain aura around him, and whatever he touches, a part of his character, as it were, his influence-- is left on that thing.” So this was a pretty standard teaching in yoga.

What I didn’t know was the macrobiotic philosophy, which was huge influence on Howe’s vegetarianism, also promoted this idea. I discovered this very recently in an interview with Jonathan Kauffman, author of Hippie Food.

Other variations on the “good vibrations” theory of spiritual vegetarianism:

1. When an animal is killed, the terror it experiences becomes integral to the meat and is passed on to the consumer. This makes it disadvantageous for contemplative practices.

2. Societies that slaughter animals or abuse them (as in factory farming) become desensitized to suffering and are more violent in general. This was an idea promoted by a book that Jon Anderson sited as influencing Tales from Topographic Ocean, Vera Stanley-Alder’s THE FINDING OF THE THIRD EYE. From the book: “No idealist or advanced person really likes the idea of eating meat. Many believe that it is a barbarism which will gradually disappear with the passing of the ‘Dark Age.’
As a side note in reference to Stanley-Alder’s use of the term “Dark Age,” this is her contrasting term to the concept of a New Age, an idea that started in the early 1900s meant to signify a switch to “higher” spiritual ideals. Yes fans will remember this lyric from “Don’t kill the Whale,” “If time will allow we will judge all who came/ in the wake of our new age/ to stand for the frail/ Don’t kill the whale... dig it! dig it!” As recently as 2017 Yes were still performing this song, and the Whale Wars reality show (2008-2015) was a big hit on TV, depicting the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society intervening in the oceans to stop the whaling industry from slaughtering “our last heaven beast” as Yes had called them. The crew were led by the vegan Captain Paul Watson who founded the organization after splitting off from Greenpeace in 1977 over a disagreement in tactics. I point this out to show that environmental ethics gained credibility in the 1960s, but were ushered into the mainstream in the 1970s in part by pop artists like Yes. This is something that has been a long-lasting contribution to the discussion over environmental ethics, especially coming from a musical genre not known for taking many political stands.

Topographic Oceans & Autobiography of a Yogi (Reprint of the Philosophical Library 1946 First Edition)

1991, July 13. Steve Howe at Yes convention in Philadelphia.

Steve discussed the pivotal moment of change to a vegetarian diet when he went to the Pierre hotel in New York City, ordered chicken and decided right there not to eat meat any more. He went home and threw out all the meat in his fridge and cupboard, and switched to meatless alternatives. He talked about Eddie Offord encouraging them to eat natural food, and how at one point the majority of the band were vegetarian or semi-vegetarian except for Rick Wakeman. Since then, it is reversed so that he is the only strict vegetarian in the band. He also plugged the local (Philadelphia) Essene restaurant and grocery store where he said you could get tofu and seitan, popular foods in Asian cooking. It still exists and is online HERE & NOW.

1991. Rockline radio show did a call-in show with YES to support the Union tour. My friend Mike got in the last question of the show:

Mike: “...I have a question for Steve. ...Who in the band is vegetarian and do you feel it’s the diet of new age?”

Steve: “Well, this is branching into some new areas. I am vegetarian and have been a long time. I think Tony Kaye’s vegetarian but also eats a bit of fish. Was that the question, whose vegetarian in the group?

Mike: “Right.”

Trevor Rabin: “Well this is Trevor, I drink organic brandy.” (laughs all around)

Steve Howe: There’s guys in the road crew that are veggies, and I’m macrobiotic when I can get it, veggie when I can’t , or vegan if there’s...”

Bill Bruford: “...if there’s no organic brandy. Dear Abby, I work in this guitar group...”


Steve Howe: “So, keep it up, spread the word!”

1993. Steve Howe records song, “Blinded by Science”. This songs looks at vegetarianism from a health and ecological standpoint, inspired by macrobiotic teacher Michio Kushi. “WORLD FOOD, WORLD PEACE” the lyrics proclaim.

October 7, 2016. Yes’ releases Tales from Topographic Oceans: The Definitive Edition.
In the liner notes it states: “ ‘Where does reason stop and killing just take over/ Does a lamb cry out before we shoot it dead.’ ‘They’re the key lines on the album..’ says Howe, listening to a playback of the emerging 5.1 remix in Steven Wilson studio as the acoustic section of The Ancient plays.”

January 2017. Jon Anderson releases “Earth and Peace- Save the Bees” on Youtube. It continues the theme that inspired the name for Greenpeace-- combining peace and ecology. It also shows once again that ecology was the KEY counterculture ethic of the 1960s and 1970s. You can watch a video of the song HERE & NOW!

March 2017. Being interviewed for Yesworld, the official online Yes fan club, Steve Howe said: “There are two main things that have really helped me. One is maintaining a vegetarian diet, which I have done since 1972. And the second is using altered states meditation, which I have done since 1983. Not only to my life but to my music as well. Those have really helped me to de-stress and to keep things in perspective.”

April 2017. Being interview just days before their induction into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, Steve Howe was asked by rock journalist David Fricke: "In that last song, 'Leaves of Green,' there was a line in there; I was listening back this morning on the entire side three ("The Ancient" from Tales from Topographic Oceans), um, 'Where does reason stop and killing just take over." And I was thinking, that was a record that was made in 1973. A line like that is so resonant now, you wonder how far have we come as a planet, and as a society, that we still have to ask ourselves a question like that. And it sort of makes you wonder, do you feel this music, these records, as you perform them, do they still have the power to inform and inspire and actually change people? Because I'm sure that was so much a part of the original impulse."

Steve Howe responds: "Well, Joni Mitchell was singing about spots on the apples in 1970 on 'Big Yellow Taxi,' and we're still spaying fields with pesticides that actually kill people. So... we asked that question in side three in "Leaves of Green" ("Where does reason stop and killing just take over/ Does a lamb cry out before we shoot it dead") because at the time there was a lot of growth of vegetarianism in the group. But when you ask yourself, WHY doesn't it make a difference? The question should be, why doesn't a lot of pressure from artists make sufficient difference? You know, like Band Aid was supposed to do, it was supposed to stop hunger. All these things, we try in earnest to create change, but it's so slow, and sometimes it doesn't change enough."

This exchange is self-explanatory. It also explains the problem with vague lyrics-- even when you are being obvious, people think it means something else! I knew some Christians that thought these lyrics were about the crucifixion of Christ.

June 10, 2017. Rick Wakeman is interviewed in Express about health problems he is having.
The headline mentions that he is battling type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. While vegetarian diets are often oversold as a panacea for all illness, it has most definitely been shown in research to halt and reverse some major chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes (see Dr. Neal Barnard’s lecture on Youtube), high blood pressure, but most importantly the West’s biggest killer, heart disease (see the film Chow Down about Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s research). In fact, the earliest doctor to research low fat vegetarian diets (in the 1980s) effects on heart disease was a yogi, Dr. Dean Ornish. He has worked with President Bill Clinton on his won battles with heart disease.

July 10, 2017. Actor Alec Baldwin, who went vegan to reverse diabetes, interviews Jon Anderson on WNYC’s radio interview series, “Here’s the Thing.” (Listen to the interview HERE & NOW)

Baldwin asks Anderson, “When you would perform live was there any process you had about your voice? Was there some kind of technique you had, in terms of you didn’t smoke and you didn’t eat certain kinds of food.”

Anderson replies: “We went vegetarian very early on, before there were any vegetarian restaurants in America, so we’d find one in New York, maybe, one in Boston, and one in Seattle. And we kind of restricted ourselves from doing the norm which is just going for the burgers and stuff. I was on stage saying, ‘You should all stop eating McDonalds!’” Yet another confirmation of this story from early in Yes’ career.

January 28, 2018. Jonathan Kauffman releases Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-lander, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat. A history of everything I’m talking about!

February 9, 2018!! I knew when Jonathan Kauffman released his 2018 book HIPPIE FOOD that the research into this topic would explode to the nth degree. It’s a goldmine of new information He just did an interview on KQED’s Forum show, February 9, 2018. Kauffman just mentioned that macrobiotic’s founders and theorists promoted the same idea as yogis, that the mood of the cook would transfer to the food so one should keep in a spiritual state of mind. See... you learn something new ever day! I never knew that macrobiotics were on board with this concept. However, I wonder where they derived it from.

February 23, 2018,=. Steve Howe and Geoff Downes are interviewed about the 50th anniversary tour of Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Steve is asked about how he keeps in shape for the tours. He responds, “It’s a natural secret-- my wife and I went for a natural lifestyle pretty early on in the early 1970s, so I think we’ve benefited from that-- understanding the balance of foods. We did have a short period... when all of Yes were vegetarian, and that lasted only about six months and then I carried on and a few others did. But most of the guys went back to more regular food. It’s worth having good food, that’s all I can say.”

The big question after this interview is, when was that six month period? My inclination would have been say 1972 into 1973, because 1972 is when Jon was recorded at a concert in Knoxville, Tennessee (October 15, 1972) talking about a vegetarian snack bar in the city, the name of which is one of the big mysteries I’m trying to unravel. (Listen HERE & NOW to this interview.)

July 21, 2018. Yes’s 50th Anniversary fan celebration raises money for PAWS: The Performing Animal Welfare Society, which is described like this: “PAWS is dedicated to the protection of performing animals, to providing sanctuary to abused, abandoned and retired captive wildlife, to enforcing the best standards of care for all captive wildlife, to the preservation of wild species and their habitat and to promoting public education about captive wildlife issues.” Their facebook page is Here & Now.

August 1, 2018. BRAND NEW INTERVIEW! Juano, aka Jon Davison, is interviewed by Andy Burns at Biff Bam Pop and gets this response from Yes’ lead vocalist about his feelings about “Awaken.” Davison responds, “Of all the songs, ‘Awaken’ is the the one I can associate the most memories with. I was probably 18 or 19 when I was discovering spirituality, meditation, and vegetarianism. I was simultaneously listening to the Going for the One album everyday. I have memories of watching the sunset over the ocean and listening to that majestic piece of music.” Read the full interview HERE & NOW.

August 24, 2018. ARW are being interviewed by Steve Jones (Sex Pistol’s guitarist). Wakeman was talking about when he first joined the band who were rehearsing above a high class brothel and says: “It was full of women downstairs with lovely fur coats and not an awful lot else.” So here’s Rick probably ready to go off on one of his pornographic tangents, but Trevor looks disapprovingly and responds, “They shouldn’t be wearing fur... they shouldn’t be wearing fur.” It was obvious what he meant by that because fur is produced by incredibly cruel methods.

April 6, 2019. STOP THE PRESS! Rick Wakeman announces on the Danny Baker Show that his is 80% vegetarian! This truly shows that the health and healing aspects of vegetarian food are becoming obvious to everyone! Here’s the show: CLICK!

March 1, 2020 legendary performer Rick Wakeman will take to The Mill at Sonning Theatre's stage to perform in support of Animals Asia’s global effort to put an end to the cruel bear bile trade. Guests will also be treated to a two-course vegan and vegetarian dinner, an auction, and a raffle as well as a musical performance from Rick Wakeman. The evening will be hosted by Animals Asia's ambassador Peter Egan.

So, there you have-- the complete history of vegetarianism in Yes. The band were literally at ground zero for the explosion of interest in vegetarianism in the Western world in 1970, and they are still very identified with this type of personal ecological activism that permeated the counterculture. Even today interviewers will ask them about it. And they laid the groundwork; in the 1980s vegetarian pop stars would release many compilation albums about a broad array of animal rights issues.

Part 3. The 1980s.

Clockwise from the top: Animal Liberation (1987), Abuse (1986), Sacrifices on an Altar of Profit and Lies (1988), Tame Yourself (1991), Animal Tracks by Country Joe McDonald (1983), and the single "Don't Kill the Animals" from Animal Liberation.

The 1980s. And speaking of the 1980s, get ready for the explosion in the pop music world on the topic that YES and others had been pioneering a decade earlier.

1982. Robert Wyatt, The Animals Film Soundtrack. Arguably the first full length animal rights documentary, progressive rock artist Robert Wyatt provides a haunting electronic soundtrack to what was essentially a real horror film about the systematic abuse of millions of living beings. I remember going all the way into Chicago to see it, and practically throwing my goose-down jacket into a garbage can on the way out of the theater because the feathers had a creepy way of popping out of the coat!

Robert Wyatt's soundtrack to The Animals Film

1982. Vegetarian World. The first documentary on vegetarianism is made. Watch it on youtube Here & Now; Narrated by William Shatner!

1983: Country Joe McDonald, Animal Tracks. The 1960s psychedelic artist that became forever known for the dark humor of an anti-war anthem in the Woodstock film and soundtrack, released this compilation of tracks from previous 1970s albums. All featured lyrics about environmentalism and the protection of wildlife. It was probably the first album of its kind by a major popular artist. (Also check out his album of musical settings for the anti-war poetry of British-Canadian Robert W. Service, WAR WAR WAR.)

1984. Healthy Wealthy and Wise documentary is produced by ISKCON. Watch it Here & Now on youtube! (Warning: it has many factual innacuracies.)

1986: Abuse, a compilation by Artists for Animals. Art-rock, art-folk, and spoken word by various artist. Superb. You can feel the influence of new wave rock in this album. Style Council’s “Blood Sports” is a chilling indictment, while Madness’ “Animal Farm” is as quirky as their MTV-era hit “Our House.”

1987: Animal Liberation, a compilation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). This album was given a big release party in Chicago and raised the profile of the movement considerably. PETA themselves was only 7 years old, and to suddenly have a record being released with the likes of The Smiths and Howard Jones was quite a consciousness-raising effort. The focus was on electronic music, much of it quite edgy. Highlights include Nina Hagen and Lene Lovich’s “Don’t Kill the Animals,” and The Color Field’s “Cruel Circus.” Even a major pop star like Howard Jones makes an appearance with “Assault and Battery,” a track about slaughterhouses off his second and hugely successful album. He was so committed to the cause he used some air time given to him by MTV to present a cooking class on making vegetarian burritos. Not surprisingly, he had an early interest in prog and was involved in Eastern mysticism, eventually becoming a Buddhist. The UK version of the album contained a live version of “The Smith’s “Meat is Murder”-- an unbelievably brave title track from the band’s second album.

1988: Sacrificed on an Altar of Profit and Lies. A compilation by Artists for Animals. An even more obscure group of artist (at least to us the US), I enjoyed Gone to Earth’s Celtic-flavored “The Boyne Hunt Saboteurs,” The Frank Chicken’s “One Million Hamburgers,” and The Cleaners from Venus’ “All Cats are Grey.”
1989: Liberator: a CD release of music from the two albums by Artists for Animals.
1991: Tame Yourself: a second CD compilation by PETA. More pop-oriented than PETA’s first compilation, this was still an excellent collection with more established names like Michael Stipe, The Indigo Girls, Belinda Carlisle, and The B-52s. I adored The Pretender’s reggae track, “Born for a Purpose,” the Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin’s remix of “Fur,” Fetchin’ Bone’s angry rocker “Slaves.” This album probably represents the pinnacle of the era of animal rights music.

The 1990s and Beyond.
I snuck PETA’s second album in with the 1980s because it really represented that decade’s artists and the vibe of the movement at that time. I have to claim ignorance from this point on in musical history. A lot of the animal rights music being made was attached to the hardcore and straight edge punk scenes, genres that were much more aggressive and to which I rarely listen. The animal rights movement followed this trend and conferences that once were polite affairs of hippie and academic philosophical concerns were now filled with militant speeches about eco-terrorism. Needless to say, this got the CIA’s attention and pretty soon people were going to prison for destroying businesses related to animal abuse. For an example of music from these genres, check out Goldfinger’s “Fuck Ted Nugent” on Youtube Here & Now!

1990. This is the A.L.F, various artists, CD on Mort records.
2003. Liberation: Songs to Benefit PETA.

The Future of Vegetarianism: the 2000s.

To be quite honest, many of the things that people were dreaming about in the 1970s have started to be accepted as mainstream. Marijuana is becoming legalized all over the Western world. Yoga and meditation are in every city and considered beneficial. Woman’s rights and gay rights have achieved some major breakthroughs including same-sex marriage. Even psychedelics are being given a second favorable look for their therapeutic potential after decades of banishment. Vegetarianism is not only catered to in most places, it has a respected place in scientific circles for its ability to reverse many of the chronic illnesses that plague affluent Western countries.

Veganism, a strict version of vegetarianism, has really supplanted vegetarianism as the cutting edge of the philosophy of nonviolence. Vegetarians still outnumber vegans-- a recent 2018 study in the US found that 5% of the population are vegetarian while 3% is vegan. 8% compared to the almost 75% who are vegetarian in the Indian state of Rajasthan doesn’t seem like much, but it is a sizable percentage in a country of mostly European ancestry. Everywhere you go in cyberspace you’ll run into everything from environmental critiques of animal agriculture to vegan bodybuilders. One of the next big documentaries to be released is titled The Game Changer about vegan athletes. That film trailer is Here and Now.
And the pop music world has produced some very long term vegetarians like Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde, Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Bryan Adams, Paul McCartney, and newer ones like Moby and Ted Leo. This picture is of Phil Collen from Def Leppard. He apparently likes vegetarian food and sports too, and talks about it Here & Now.

Phil Collen of Def Leppard. He is vegan and went vegetarian over 30 years ago.

Part 4.
A Final Pipe Dream:

I’ve often believed that YES should release a compilation called Ecology, a double album that would include a variety of material from their catalogue. My suggestions for the album would be:

Side one.
1. Don’t Kill the Whale (1978, Tormato)
2. Abeline (b-side of the single “Don’t Kill the Whale”)
3. Universal Garden (1997, Open Your Eyes). Cosmology-inspired wonder.
4. Evensong/Take the Water to the Mountain (Bruford and Levin’s instrumental track merged with Jon Anderson’s full length unreleased six and a half minute long version of “Take the Water to the Mountain.” The edited 3 minute version appeared on Yes’ Union album from 1991.

Side two.

1. The Sick Rose (Jon Davison and Luca Briccola from the 2014 album Absinthe Tales Of Romantic Visions by Mogador, lyrics based on a poem by William Blake.
2. The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun) (1973, Tales from Topographic Oceans). Sun worshippers gone wild! Don’t edit it-- include the entire song in all its strange glory.
3. Earth and Peace (2017 ecology song by Jon Anderson)

Side three.

1. Blinded by Science (Steve Howe, 1993, The Grand Scheme of Things)
2. Rainbow Warrior (Buggles, 1981, Adventure in Modern Recording)
3. Spring (Song of Innocence) Alan White 1976 Ramshackled album, written by guitarist Pete Kirtley with lyrics based on a William Blake poem. Guests Steve Howe (slide guitar) and Jon Anderson (lead vocals). William Blake (1757-1827) was actually an early activist artist for animal welfare, witness his Auguries of Innocence poem Here & Now! He also influenced scads of artists from David Bedford to Jon Anderson to Jah Wobble to Todd Rundgren to Emerson Lake and Palmer to you name it!
4. Miracle of Life (1991 Union), a great rocker headed up by Trevor Rabin about the destruction of ocean life.

Side four.

1. The Nature of the Sea (Steve Howe 1975 Beginnings)
2. Hidden ambient nature track from Open Your Eyes (1997)

"Close to the Edge" inside gatefold painting by Roger Dean