The Yes roundabout returns to Birmingham Symphony Hall

Another Yes tour, another line-up. The merry-go-round continues for the prog rock supergroup when they appear at Birmingham's Symphony Hall in November.

This time Geoff Downes is returning for keyboard duties some 30 years after he and fellow Buggles member Trevor Horn joined Yes for the controversial Drama album.

Downes himself is replacing Oliver Wakeman, who in turn was standing in for his father Rick Wakeman when the band last played Symphony Hall two years ago. And at that gig the band's beloved singer Jon Anderson had himself been replaced by Canadian Benoit David who used to be in a Yes tribute band.

Confused? Well it's hardly surprising, given that no fewer than 16 different musicians have played under the Yes banner over four decades, and no fewer than five of those have been keyboardists.

So was Downes – who also plies his trade in Asia along with Yes guitarist Steve Howe - surprised to find himself back in the band after three decades?

"It's been talked about in recent times, going back a few years when they got Benoit in but I was pretty tied up with Asia at that time and it didn't really come to much but I was surprised, yeah, in many ways to be welcomed back into the fold, as it were," Downes replies.

The new Yes line-up came about after bassist Chris Squire got talking to Trevor Horn about a song, Fly From Here, which was written for the Drama album in 1980 but was never completed at the time. Squire asked Horn to produce the song for the new album and help develop it into what is now a 23-minute "suite".

"Trevor suggested I came and played the keyboards on it. So that took shape and then we put forward some more material and then they asked me to do the whole album.

"It was actually the very first song that Trevor and I put together to put in front of Yes when we initially joined them. It got to a half-finished state and was kind of parked because there was other material coming through.

"It was always kind of there, we always felt it was a strong piece of music and I think when we had the opportunity to look at it again it kind of took on a whole new lease of life.

"We had a second part to it that we never really presented at the time and I think that we felt that we could really extend it and have some really strong themes that we felt we worth revisiting in other sections. It became almost bigger than the original idea."

Fly From Here, also the name of the album, is Yes's first release in a decade and also marks the first release that Benoit David has sung on.

Downes says: "Having Benoit do the vocalsas well, really cemented that period of Yes that he's been involved with. I think it enabled him to come through and have an album that he could call his own. I think he appreciated the opportunity to be able to do something that he could really say was his.

"I think as a whole album it runs very well. Each track has got its own place on there. It's not a long album by any stretch but it was conceived with the idea of two 'sides' really, the one side being the long piece and the other side being the other songs."

Although there have been mixed reaction from fans, then new album has been generally very well received by music critics.

"I think the reason why it's been so well received is that it still has a lot of the hallmarks of Yes but I think it breaks a few boundaries and goes in a few different directions," says Downes.

So how accepting are fans of current line-up?

"I think generally speaking they accept it. There will always be the die-hards who say without Jon Anderson it's not Yes. You're always going to get people saying that, although not so much with the keyboard players because Yes have had more keyboard players than any other instrumentalist in the band.

"I certainly think that we give a very good account of it. We've only done one tour so far, the US tour with Styx. But I think people appreciate the fact that the music's there to be played and it's not necessarily reliant on the line-up at any given time."

What can fans expect from the Symphony Hall concert on November 11?

"We're planning on firing off the whole Fly From Here suite and there'll possibly be a few other things dusted down and brought out that haven't been played for a few years, so I think all round it should please some of the Yes fans, if not a good percentage of them.

"I think that if you look at the 80s period with Trevor Rabin that was really quite a different style of music. Although it still had the hallmarks of Yes, it was much more a period piece. I don't think there will be enormous amounts of that because we haven't got anywhere near the same personnel, but having said that there'll be a couple of things from every decade I think.

"If a band's been going for 43 years it's pretty hard to decide what to do. If you dig into the early mid period of Yes and you've got all the Topographic stuff and Going For the One and the big pieces from those albums, it's not possible to do everything but obviously we'll have a good shot.

"When I started going through the material, the old Yes material, you realise what a great output it has been over the years. And despite the facts that there have been different line-ups and different chapters in the band's history, if you look at all the albums within the context of when they were put together, I think that the two albums I've been involved with, Drama and Fly From Here, both sit well within the Yes foundation."

So what about the never-ending "roundabout" of Yes members?

"I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. I think if you go back even to albums like Time And A Word, they're really good albums.

"And that a band like Yes seems to end up sounding like Yes - even if you go to the Trevor Rabin period, it still has the odd time signatures, the big backing vocals - I think it's a unique band really."

* Yes play Birmingham Symphony Hall on Friday, November 11, 2011. Tickets cost £34.50 plus booking fees at www.thsh.co.uk

By Ian Harvey