Earthworks I
With Yes out of the way, Earthworks continues full steam with an eighteen date trip to Germany, again, rounded off with an excellent Jazz Café in London, well-attended by a strong contingent of local friends up from Surrey.
Django Bates’ career, meanwhile, has been taking off, and increasingly it is becoming apparent that Earthworks is not offering enough to hold him, and it isn’t.
No matter how seductive, the rigidity of the digital drums militates against the suppleness and flexibility required for jazz performance, and the band has reverted to being a rock group with some jazz musicians in it.
The Jazz Café feels like the end. There is a last, stiff, uncomfortable date in September, but the Jazz Café is the spiritual end of the first edition of Earthworks.
The rest of the year is fleshed out with workshops and clinics in Poland and America, an awkward Orchestral Yes CD recorded in London, and ends with an utterly humiliating morning appearance on ABC TV’s Cathy Lee and Regis Show in New York, with Bill, Steve Howe and a forgotten bass player attempting to play “Roundabout” to promote “The Symphonic Music of Yes” to 9 million American housewives. Phone calls from more legitimate members of the band suggest the other musicians are not amused.
A life-line appears, once again, in the shape of Robert Fripp, talking, very conditionally, about a new King Crimson. This is something Bill feels he needs, and the urgency of his December letter to Fripp, flattering, and accepting of all conditions, communicates that need to his old partner. Accordingly, a K.C. of some description will meet in the New Year at Bill’s house.