Turn of the Century by Yes

In this classic song by YES, Roan loses his lover to an illness.  Before she died he had been working on a clay sculpture of her.  After she dies he continues to work frantically on the sculpture to bring her back to life . . . 

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tb2a7EeyGc

Notice all the keyboards keyboardist Rick Wakeman has with him.  When this video was made we could midi (connect one synsthesizer to another) but we didn't have good portable keyboard samplers yet.  Today we just load all of our sounds into one keyboard sampler and keep a separate controller on stage for quick adjustments.  It is much easier today for road trips.  :)

Notice the guitar Steve Howe is using.  It is a Gretsch Country Gentleman made famous first by country western artist Chet Atkins, then later George Harrison among the rockers.  I still have one that I bought when I was in high school. All of the components including the tuning keys, the frets and even the pick ups are gold plated.  The freting was unlike any guitar I ever played.  The only limitation was the shortness of the neck made it difficult to fret extremely high notes when playing a lead rift. 

This song has a theme around art.  Interestingly, YES lead singer Jon Anderson was a close friend of the famous artist Marc Chagall. //www.chagallpaintings.org/biography.html  //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall In fact, they were roomates in Southern France for several years and Jon says Marc was a type of mentor.  After Chagall died, Jon began working with Vangelis //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vangelis who became his mentor for many years and they recorded several albums together.