In addition to his own bands — Yes, Asia, GTR, the Syndicate, the In Crowd/Tomorrow — Steve Howe has served as a hired gun for a number of other artists, appearing on albums for the sometimes incongruous likes of Queen, Bee Gees, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dixie Dregs, Dream Theater, William Shatner and others.
One of his earliest, meanwhile, was on Lou Reed, the self-titled debut album by the iconoclastic New York rocker fresh out of the Velvet Underground. Both he and Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman found themselves recruited for the album in January 1972 when Yes were woodshedding new ideas at Morgan Studios in London during a break between legs of its world tour supporting its then-current album Fragile. Reed was in another studio at Morgan working on his album.
“We were in two separate buildings, but they were right across the road,” Howe recalls. “So, for Rick and I, it was about the simplest session we ever did. We just walked across the road, into another building.
“Lou was great. He played us two songs, demos; they were very simplistic — voice, maybe a keyboard and a guitar. He said, ‘They’re the two songs we’re doing.’ I think he gave us chord charts, or we made chord charts, ’cause I don’t read music so notation’s no use to me at all. As long as I’ve got a chord chart I can navigate my way through pretty much anything.
“I remember the studio had the old-fashioned kind of booths, separation booths, and the drummer, Clem Cattini, was in the corner. Basically we spent the afternoon doing those songs.”
Howe says he was not particularly a Reed fan at the time, however. “I wasn’t really big on American bands from that era,” he explains. “We liked the Byrds pretty much exclusively. Country Joe & the Fish, Janis Joplin, Lou Reed, blah, blah … it’s sort of like they were too American for us. We were into this other sort of prog/psychedelic music at the time.”
It was very smart ’cause he got us in there and he got us to contribute, which is better than telling us, ‘Here’s what you’re gonna play.’”
— Steve Howe
Which of the Lou Reed album’s 10 tracks Howe appeared on remains a matter of guesswork all these years later, as any published credits for the project have always been general. (Caleb Quaye and Paul Keogh also played on the album.) The moody, atmospheric album-closer “Ocean” — first attempted with the Velvet Underground for 1970’s Loaded — is a likely candidate, with Wakeman’s cascading piano and carefully deployed guitar licks throughout, along with the loping “Lisa Says.”
“It was very smart ’cause he got us in there and he got us to contribute, which is better than telling us, ‘Here’s what you’re gonna play,’” Howe remembers. “All I know in music is to contribute — not copying, not simulating or repeating, but actually contributing. I’m sure it was good for us.
“I think all guest appearances, I almost never turn them down. They always surprise you, and I like surprise — like when I stood in for Stone the Crows [at the Great Western Festival, summer of 1972]; I didn’t know I was gonna do that. Even with Queen [for the title track for Innuendo, 1991], I didn’t know I was going to do that until about two hours before.
“They also wanted spontaneous playing, because they didn’t have a part for me. I could’ve gone in and said, ‘Okay, what do you want me to play?’, but they said, ‘Just play anything. Do what you do.’ So they understood me quite thoroughly, that I wasn’t going to come in and play a ditty, a tune on top of it. They really wanted me to improvise.”
An “almost” on Howe’s guesting resume, meanwhile, came early when he was booled into London’s Olympic Sound Studios during May of 1969 at a session for Ella Fitzgerald’s album Ella, which came out later that year.
“I was in very early years … and was known as a bit of a jazzer, even though I couldn’t play jazz. I went there on a bus — the number. 13 from Holloway to Putney — with my 175,” he says, referring to the Gibson ES-175 electric guitar that has been mainstay throughout his career. “And when I get there, who do I pass in the corridor? Ella Fitzgerald. So I’m like, ‘Wow, Ella … Where’s she going? I just got here.’
“They told me, ‘Okay, well, set your amp up and we’ll do something,’ and lo and behold in the control room there were people like Mick Jagger standing there. I don’t know what they were doing there. I think Ron Wood was there. I think the drummer was one of the most famous drummers in the world; I can’t remember if it was Mick Fleetwood or Charlie Watts. I thought, ‘This is good,’ but I’ve forgotten who it was — obviously you don’t forget Mick Jagger’s in the control room.
“I recorded something, but I don’t know what, or if it was used, and I doubt that anybody in the world knows what it is. But if anybody does, give me a call, please.”
Howe is currently recuperating from “an essential operation” that scuttled Yes’s plans to promote its latest album, Aurora, which came out in April. The group will be returning to the road next May for dates in the U.K. and also plans to tour in Japan and North America.
