In a recent interview with Loudersound, Trevor Rabin revealed that when he was working under a development contract that gave all the strings to David Geffen, he was forced to play with Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, Geoff Downes and John Wetton, who would later play in Asia. Although he did not have a problematic working period with them, he said it was a shock to him at first. He continued:
“Some of those guys weren’t a great fit, but one project involved John Wetton, and I got on quite well with him. That project petered out, but as I was taking a bit longer to produce songs than Geffen hoped, I think they got a bit impatient, and I was pretty much ordered to go and play with another band that were rehearsing in London. This turned out to be with Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, Geoff Downes and John Wetton. I was told that if I didn’t do it, I’d be dropped. I decided to give it a go as I was quite friendly with John and Carl.”
Expressing relief that things didn’t work out afterwards, Rabin added:
“I flew to London apprehensively and we had a few rehearsals, but when I flew back to the USA, I told them I wasn’t doing it. There’s a clip on YouTube of me singing one of the songs that turned up on the first Asia album, and you can tell from the performance that I’m not singing with much zest. So Ed Rosenblatt, the head of finance at Geffen, called me and nonchalantly told me that I was dropped. I felt a kind of release because I felt possessive about all the material I’d written, and I didn’t want it to go to the wrong place.”
The Birth Of Yes With Trevor Rabin
After not being able to work with Asia, Trevor Rabin first hooked up with former Yes musicians Chris Squire, Alan White and Tony Kaye in 1982, it was intended as Cinema, a new group with original material and without the weight of Yes’ legendary history. But when ex-Yes singer Jon Anderson entered the picture, Cinema morphed into Yes. Rabin explained this process in an interview with Forbes, also in November.He said:
“When Chris, me and Alan and Tony were rehearsing for nine months, it was under the name Cinema, So it was a very fresh thing. There were no rules. We didn’t quite know what we were doing. All we had were these demos that I had actually written during a development deal with Geffen Records. And then Geffen dropped me, so I had to look to do something, and I landed up with Chris and Alan and Tony”
Yes and Rabin continued to work together on the albums 90125 (1983), Big Generator (1987), Union (1991), and Talk.(1994)
