Some musicians experience a breaking point during their career, which may lead to sudden breakups with their longtime bands. Benoit David, the former Yes singer, revealed that he’s one of those musicians as he disclosed his decision to quit Yes in a recent Rolling Stone interview.
David became the lead vocalist of Yes, replacing Jon Anderson, who left due to respiratory problems, in 2008. He went on touring and made a studio album with the band until he had to quit because of similar reasons to Anderson. The musician’s sudden departure from the band caught people off guard.
Years later, in his recent interview, Benoit David explained what he went through with the band when his health issues started. He revealed that the incident occurring on stage in 2011 was ‘the breaking point’ of his career with Yes and gave some details.
The musician’s voice suddenly cracked while singing ‘Heart of the Sunrise.’ Upon that, Chris Squire, the band’s late bassist, messed up his solo on purpose to pick on the vocalist. Apparently, Benoit took that act to heart, and a tension that lasted for a while grew between the two.
According to David, he was affected by the incident, but he didn’t stay angry with Squire since he was ‘the kind of person that gets away with that kind of stuff’ thanks to his ‘warm presence.’ He proceeded to jokingly indicate that Squire’s comment did not affect him that much because it came from a ‘less thorough person.’ He seemingly believes that, unless you set an example of perfection yourself, you cannot expect perfection from others.
The singer recalled those times as follows:
“One night at the end of ‘Heart of the Sunrise,’ I missed that high-pitched note at the end. My voice cracked. The rest of the song went fine though. The next song is ‘I’ve Seen All Good People,’ where we do a little bit of solo from each musician. Chris looked me in the eye, and he did this ugly sound with his bass. He messed it up purposely. He looked me in the eye, saying, ‘Well, I’m going to do like you.’ That hurt. It still hurts.
I really went crazy. I gave him shit like crazy. I’ve never done that with anybody. I haven’t done it to anybody since. He was saying, ‘Put yourself together, man. You’re going to ruin my career!’ I started to understand how things were working. Something broke inside of me.
The tension lasted a little while. But Chris had a really powerful, warm presence. He was the kind of person that gets away with that kind of stuff. Plus, when the less thorough person tells you you’re not thorough, it doesn’t have the same impact than the best guy telling you that. You can ask everybody to be perfect just as soon as you’re able to set the example!”
In addition to this situation, David recalled his last show with them later that year. He admitted that it was not a good memory, as he decided to stop his music career after that. The musician claimed that he could not understand why he couldn’t sing well.
As he thought the problem was how loud the stage was, his bandmates ultimately tried to fix the issue. David explained that when that didn’t help the situation, he felt really self-conscious. Along with this, based on his doctor’s instructions, the vocalist gave up on his position in the band.
He depicted the memory by stating:
“I didn’t sing well. I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand what was happening. It was taking me a lot of effort to perform. I was always telling the guys it was too loud onstage. The conditions were hard, and they never did anything about that. That night, they really did try to fix the situation. I was very self-conscious because of that. That’s why I decided to pull the plug at the end of that show. … I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s career.”
Apparently, the process that led Benoit David to quit Yes and music was not an easy one. Following several incidents on stage, which led him to realize there was a problem, the artist went through personal struggles and doubted himself. Eventually, he had to leave for his own good as well as the band’s.
