Billy Sherwood

I actually first encountered the man through CIRCA (just knowing it "has Yes members in it"), which I thought was mediocre until I saw them live (free tickets) at which point I thought they were terrible. I was not surprised at all to find out he was behind Open Your Eyes.

Edited by King Crimson776 - September 05 2014 at 23:44

Yes and no. On this forum prog is often used as an abbreviation for progressive rock, while I used progressive here as a shorthand for progressive music in general. You can leave out one or the other in reading, it doesn't change my point. :-)

Rednight wrote: Angelo wrote: I never really got into Yes, because I don't like Jon Anderson's voice, but if Open Your Eyes was bad it probably was because the band as a whole made the wrong choices.  Billy Sherwood is a solid musician, regardless of whether or not you consider his works prog or progressive. If someone gets dismissed for not sounding like Yes, maybe the people dismissing him should reconsider. If it sounds like Yes, its Yes - if it sounds like Billy Sherwood, its Billy Sherwood.  Er, ah, what?

Icarium wrote: hes duo album With Chris Squire is quite amamzing really, full of solid prog gems

I never really got into Yes, because I don't like Jon Anderson's voice, but if Open Your Eyes was bad it probably was because the band as a whole made the wrong choices. 

I always thought OYE suffers from being over-produced and commercially motivated. Perhaps it was supposed to be a Squire solo ?? Having said, perhaps I'll revisit the album once again, and re-assess what I think is its weakness. It may have been similar (or weaker) without Sherwood's contribution??

Epignosis wrote: Conspiracy's The Unknown is an excellent album if you don't mind the sound.

i think you forgot about The Ladder, the follow-up. it's shown to be an huge improvement over OYE, so...

Who's Billy Sherwood?

Right now I'm in a phase of rather dislike towards the man. Mainly since I just realised that a fair part of how bad Yes's last album may come to him. However, I guess I haven't been particularly impress with his work since the beginning, for both Yes albums with him are among their weakest, and I can think of no song on those albums that I really love (though their are about 2 songs that I do like). Then there's Conspiracy... also some good songs, but nothing really great. Then, there's the bunch of tribute albums, which I have always been interested in because I find it nice to check out how the lot of prog giants that guest on those albums play the music Sherwood chose to cover. And then there's the Prog Collective (I've only heard the first one, and haven't heard the Fusion Sindicate)... well, I hoped to get some really nice music from that one, but not really, barely one nice song.

     And then it hit me, one of the things that's bothered me so much of the music in which Sherwood is involved are the vocals. Even if he doesn't sing, his vocal melodies and harmonies and so on just sound so annoying and tired. That's what bothers me most of his albums with Yes and Conspiracy, and The Prog Collective. And it wasn't enough that he ruined the vocal melodies with Jon Anderson (one of my favourite singers), but he even managed to ruin Annies Haslam's contribution on the Prog Collective thing... I mean, whatever did he want such a unique and wonderful singer just to make her sound completley generic... I think he even had the bad taste to use some vocoder with her singing.

     And then I just read that Yes involved Billy Sherwood on the last album because they weren't working well with the producer they had chosen, and so he came in to finish the work, since they already knew him and he "knew" how to work with them. And he came mainly to work with the vocals... and it might just be that what makes the album so bland. His work on the vocals aren't as obvious as it were with the Prog Collective, but it might just as well be enough to drag down the album. I mean, the songwriting was rather poor on most of the album anyways, but at least the first and last songs are rather enjoyable, but the vocals sound just wrong (specially on the last song), and I'm thinking that maybe it's not just the interpretation, but the mixing of them that sucked the life out of them.

     The project that I haven't checked out from him is "Circa", which I was interested because of it's Yes collaborations (mainly Tony Kaye), but I was rather ready to let it go because of all that I just said. However, I heard some bits of that project on YouTube, and that one may just as well be a bit better, I would have to hear it more. The vocal lines didn't sound so horrible, as far as I remember, and his bass playing was actually very cool.

     On a last note, the one song from him that I do like a lot, it Yes's "The More we Live, let go", in which as far as I understand he didn't really play, but it was written by him... and that would be my absolute favourite song from him. Also, rather apart from prog and Yes, there's a song from Air Supply that I really like a lot, "The Vanishing Race", and later on I found out that he played on that song, and I think he was involved in it's writing (or perhaps he wrote the whole song? I don't really remember)... however, that song I really like a lot, too.