Chris Squire – Bass

One of my early heroes but I have never tried to play like him, even though I love the way his mind works. I am a big fan of Neo-Prog but the one thing about the genre that makes my s*** itch is the Squire soundalikes that infest the genre. Squire was the original and everyone else just sounds like a clone – I think the Jaco thing was the same. Everyone loved the sound so tries to duplicate it. Same with Clapton and Hendrix. You can only sound like yourself. As Steve Swallow says, at some point you have to ‘eat your father’, get rid of the influence and find your own voice.

I don’t know the full story of this track but I believe it was during one of those hiatuses in the 1980s when Yes were not doing their thing and everyone was elsewhere (Anderson with Vangelis, Howe with Asia etc) and Squire and White just did something to fill the time. The tune is a Christmas song, ‘Run With The Fox’ and it all of the same devices as Squire’s ‘Fish Out Of Water’ album – orchestras and choirs and whatnot. Great part and not a massive challenge but watch the count as there a couple of stray bars of 2:4 in there to scare the horses.