Wondrous Stories

In 2008, singer, songwriter and co-founding member (with bass player Chris Squire) of the seminal prog-rock band the punks loved to hate, Yes, Jon Anderson was felled by a near-fatal respiratory illness. That was followed by pancreatitis, which necessitated six operations. Yet five years on, not only is he fighting fit and touring, including a couple of shows with Rick Wakeman, but he's also released another solo album, 2010's Survival & Other Stories, an album with Wakeman, seven live and unreleased demo albums that he added to the ever-expanding now 20-CD box-set The Lost Tapes and, in October 2011, on his 67th birthday, a 21-minute opus, Open, which predicated his sequel of sorts to his debut solo album, 1976's Olias Of Sunhillow, working title Zamran Experience, on which he's been working for some years.

“I know,” Anderson admits, on the line from his home in California, having spent the day in the studio recording vocals on a Native American “circle song” for a friend, “I shouldn't have said anything about it until I'd finished it, but it's going to take another couple of years to finish. It's nearly four hours of music as we speak and I'm just trying to figure out how to present it, you know, because I just don't want to put it out on the internet on iTunes; I want to put it out as a visual experience. I have a couple of very good, talented filmmakers and there's music from North Africa, a lot of music from Asia, a lot of music from Europe and some music from South America, so it's sort of a constant evolvement of music.”

The plan is to follow-up the introductory piece, Open, with the recording – over the Christmas/New Year period – of the first part of the Zamran Experience, expanding in the original story that was the basis of Olias Of Sunhillow, a Tolkein-esque saga about an alien race journeying to a new world after their own has been destroyed. It's obvious why Anderson is keen on including a significant visual element in the release.

“There's some incredible computer animation out there – it blows me away when I see it – and I'm just very interested in working with that medium as well, with the music and songwriting and what the songs mean and how it locates and relates to the earth, and the earth as Mother. That's the important understanding in my heart.”

As well as the ongoing work on Zamran, Anderson has found himself collaborating on an increasing number of musical projects.

“Well, I think the internet has helped on so many levels,” he suggests. “I'd been sick for a couple of years and decided to do some solo shows and making contact with people on the internet, and now I get three or four songs a week from all over the world, and if they're good I'll sing ideas and sing songs. So you finish up doing music that you would never dream of doing, and it's a very exciting time for music for me.

For Australia, it'll just be Jon Anderson, a couple of guitars, a dulcimer, a ukulele, a piano, that extraordinary voice, and, to take the title of one of the great songs of the 1977 Going For The One album, Wondrous Stories.

“I start talking about when I first started with my brother in 1963. We had a band and we went to see The Beatles just before they became famous and we went and played in Liverpool in The Cavern. So we had some incredible experiences through the '60s, so the audience gets to know what I did from when I was very young.”

Jon Anderson will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 28 March - Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 March - Bluesfest, Byron Bay NSW
Wednesday 3 April - Lizotte's Newcastle NSW
Saturday 6 April - Factory Theatre, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 April - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC