Steve Howe (post-CTTE) is rubbish

I know that you mean...and yet I can´t agree. I find that "The Ancient" from the "Tales..." album has some of Howes best acoustic work. And everything on "Relayer", specialy "Sound Chaser" is excellent. But, yes, in a way "Fragil", "Close to the Edge" and specially "The Yes Album" has got different riffs and solos...

John Gargo wrote: bluetailfly wrote: "Well thought out and literately argued"??? It was a complete rant from start to finish. This is not a model of a considered argument, but more like a Rush Limbaugh diatribe. Hey, I don't agree with him at all, but at least he was comprehensive with his arguments.  It's obvious that he's passionate about the subject, and its refreshing to read something on this forum besides "Queen sucks, ELP sucks, Kansas sucks" etc. etc. I thought he stated his case and used some good examples to back it up.  Again, I DON'T AGREE WITH HIM, but he did give some reasons as to why he feels the way he does.

Thanks John, I actually DO feel quite strongly about this, especially as I find my respect for these Yes albums that I once totally admired, increasingly ebbing into the ether.  

Bluetailfly, you cant expect people to come on to the forum and set down 10,000-word Aristotelian dialectic theses about trivial subjects such as Steve Howe's performances on post-CTTE albums.  Of course there are going to be holes in an argument claiming that everything he conjured subsequently, was mediocre.  The objective was simply to encourage a bit of conversation in the spirit of the forum, without resorting to the types of exchanges that we are having now. 

From your posts, I can garner that you are fan of Howe's entire career, and you made some good points in support of some of his works.  I am now a bit more interested and will investigate the stuff.  Thats how it works.  I'm not sitting here sticking pins into Steve Howe 1973 dolls. I've got Phil Collins 1976 dolls for that...  

Howe is a genius, one of my all-time favourites. It was Relayer (my first Yes album I heard) that I knew this guy knew how to play like a beast. I was blown away by Sound Chaser.

Snow Dog wrote: I think your talking absolute balls wrath.........and Howe didnt even write Parallels it was Squire ....so there

A view crudely exchanged!! You'll give forums a bad name Snow Dog if you just keep blindly disagreeing.  I think YOU'RE talking balls (and so on...)

And you're right about Parallels of course - I confidently made the comment based on a solitary (and clearly jaded) memory of reading the back of the record sleeve 10 years ago .  I do sincerely apologise, though you will agree that the statement was not central to my hypothesis...

Howe still ruins it.  

Wrath_of_Ninian wrote: alan_pfeifer wrote: I really like Relayer, but moreso for White.  But that's another post.  It can be tough at times to deal with his more techinical playing on some songs, espescially Gates. However, that Guitar line at the "Soon" portion of the song saves it. Yes, White is immense - indeed, the whole band (bar Howe) are immense - its a great album.  Howe does have a couple of good moments on Relayer, like the one you mention, but his sound is still hellish.  Why is he so high up in the mix??  By the way, I think what 'saves' it are Moraz's keyboards and the beauty of Anderson's voice.

I think what had happened was an overblow of egos, mainly starting off at Tales.  Think about it: your'e a guitarist in one of the most successful bands of the time period.  You've just come off a great tour for an album that's been accepted well both criticaly and sales- wise (CTTE).  Who's ego wouldn't be huge after a thing like that?

Second, after Tales, Which Howe and Anderson wrote with minimal input from the band, I think the feeling they had on Tales, which was Anderson, Howe and Company, was still there when they went into record Relayer.  As attitudes tend to linger, so do playing styles (IMO) and Howe may have felt Compelled to up the ante on this album (due to the poor reception Tales had) or maybe he wanted to show that he was up there in skill with some of the heavy hitters of Rock music at the time (Page for example).

So, in the end, it all comes down to opinion, but I still think that Howe on Relayer, while unpleasant at times, helped to shape relayer into the wonderful album it is.

John Gargo wrote: Wrath_of_Ninian wrote: Right, I've just about had enough of Steve Howe.   I used to really like Yes, but I cannot listen to them anymore because of Steve Howe's inane weedling.  I LOVE Close To The Edge, I LOVE Fragile, and I LOVE the Yes Album, but my all time favourite Yes album was always Going For The One.  Unfortunately I've started to get irritated by Howe's playing on it, and now I can barely listen to it without grinding my teeth and drumming my fingers in agitation.  I knew things had started to go wrong on Topographic Oceans - gone were the delicate atmospheric touches, the ghostly sounds, the meaningful attack, the sheer gorgeous melody, and in their place came....inane practice sessions of relentless arpeggios and cramming notes a al Maria Carey on anti-depressants.  Then things, got really bad.  He started to peek through the layers of my second favourite Yes album, Relayer - already suffering from the lack of Wakeman, but beautifully balanced and pitched with no instruments really dominating - the Howe effect started to ruin it for me.  Utterly pointless fret runs replaced any melody, whilst the SOUND of his guitar is just bloody awful.  My First Guitar Amp.  Ear-melting shrill and totally at odds to the brilliant ambience created by Moraz and Squire. THEN, oh God, I NEVER thought it could happen - I started in small doses, noticing his inanity on Going For The One - his guitar runs, his pointless overworked licks, his sheer audacity in standing outside the immense vision of the rest of the band.  His 'slide' contribution to the title track is ear-grating enough, but his doddering open to Turn Of The Century is contemptable.  Indeed, I'm convinced Jon Anderson just gets bored and comes in half way through it.  Listen to it, you'll see what I mean.  I think Parallels was actually Howe's composition, and listen to the solo in it.  Its utterly awful, bending fruitlessly out of tune without any discernible relation to his own backing.  Thank God he was curtailed for the epic Awaken.  Somebody take that volume pedal off him. In short, I hope this is contentious as the recent topics have been a little glib, but Howe represents everything that is WRONG with prog guitarists. His contributions to CTTE and Fragile were perfect, but after this time, he got totally carried away with his own technique-driven weedling, and in the process, the greatness of subsequent Yes albums was vastly reduced.    He should've spent a bit more time listening to Franco Mussida..... That was a good read... thanks for that.  I don't agree with you at all, but I always find it interesting to read opinions, particularly ones as well thought-out and literately argued as this one.

"Well thought out and literately argued"??? It was a complete rant from start to finish. This is not a model of a considered argument, but more like a Rush Limbaugh diatribe.

I think your talking absolute balls wrath.........and Howe didnt even write Parallels it was Squire ....so there

Well, Wrath, what I mean by "fashionably contentious" is that a lot of people post ludicruously idiotic polls about "worst" band, or "worst" singer and then list prog musicians who are talented and have done amazing work. And then a little war of insults follow, which is ridiculous. Your post seems to fall into that category somewhat, though I see you are at least somewhat articulate.

The main problem with your post is that you say that everything since CTTE is rubbish. I mean, you could have said that his style has tended to a bit more meaningless meandering or some such, but to say that NOTHING he has done since this time reaches what he did before is a laughably inaccurate statement, especially coming from someone who states he liked Howe up to CTTE.

I think the problem is the inane limitations of what constitutes for you a "good" guitar solo: Something that sets a target and "reaches" it, or whatever you're implying by your criticism of Howe. Look, every solo a guitarist does isn't a set piece that has to accomplish the same "emotional" work every time (clearly you're into some sort of "beginning - middle - end" type of guitar solo; and I am to, just not every time).

Howe plays radically differently in a wide range of contexts, and to reduce his playing to all one sound really shows that the problem is more with your hang ups with what consitutes a "good" guitar solo than with the wide range of styles Howe incorporates.

Now, I'll expand on a couple of my earlier comments. In my earlier post I was only trying to give a few highlights that completely undermine your admittedly contentious argument:

For one, Howe's guitar work on "Machine Messiah" really pushed prog rock guitar into a place I really hadn't heard it go before. The torrential guitar that ends the piece is a masterpiece of evocative guitar work, no matter who's playing it. Dismiss it if you will, but I think you've missed out on a fantastic, highly evocative guitar moment.

His acoustic work on "Turn of the Century" especially his solo is astonishing---and oddly it does seem to fit the solo style you seem to so fascistically advocate. Dismissing this work seems oddly contradictory, and I think it points up the possibility that you're really suffering from some other, more personal, problem with Howe's work.

Well, there you have it. I could go on. It would be fun to go on. But I suppose it's time for you to weigh in and make fun of what I've written, so have a go at it.

 I later added this, because I'm really not upset and I don't intend to be rude, but hey it's rock criticsm...

con safo wrote: I think you need to consider the following... OPINION. whats yours is yours, it dosent make your word divine. i personally love howe's work and i'll continue to love it.

Good for you.  Looks like I'm 2-1 down.... 

tuxon wrote: Wrath_of_Ninian wrote: tuxon wrote: I like his needless noodling, it's part of his appeal and style. Technically he's probably one of the most gifted guitarists around. The point you make is quite correct, but I see it the other way around. Where most guitarists go for a more cohesive melodic sound. Howe try's to create that same atmophere in a different way, with more notes and more technical 'difficult' textures. That may not applease all listeners, but I for one enjoy it.   Technically, he's not.  He fluffs loads of notes on his epic fret runs (just listen to Yessongs) and his electric sound is comparable at times to a ban saw grinding a grand piano up whilst a choir of coal miners collectively grate their fingernails down a mile-wide chalk board. In terms of technique (though not quality), the bench mark is probably set by the real weedlers, Vai, Zappa, Van Halen, whilst the blowing your head off technique-meisters were probably Mussida, Hendrix, Page et al.  And Howe's acoustic work is laughable when compared to Jansch, though his attempts are admirable nonetheless.  The main problem is that Howe sets himself targets that he clearly cannot attain, and whilst this is also admirable, Yes would have been better off without such excesses.  What happened to the cool considered grooves of Yours Is No Disgrace, or the scintillating melodies driving the epic CLose To The Edge??? The whole brilliance of Yes is based on the collective power of 5 entities - all their best albums have that trade-off, and that magic.  After Close To The Edge, Howe entered the prog wilderness, where he started seeing guitar-playing as a mathematical equation waiting to be solved.  He probably met Keith Emerson and John McClaughlin in that fog, also wandering about with their fingers permanently poised to press that elusive 'break new ground' button. By the time Yes got into the studio for Relayer, Anderson probably didn't know which way up he was, Howe clearly just cut loose with the biggest pile of self-indulgent rudiment-thick counter weedles.  The music didn't matter anymore.     Blasfemie

At least someone has a sense of humour...!!!