Take a renowned guitar player, give him some “extra” free time, and see what finally happens after thirty years. Trevor Rabin, guitarist for Yes from 1983 – 1995, culled together some ideas for songs he’d had lying around over the years and created one heck of a solo album that not only includes his fluidity on the six-string but his vocals as well; something the South African born musician hasn’t done in thirty-four years. Lucky for us, we’re getting a strong dose of Rabin with Rio, a ten-song kaleidoscope of musical textures, tones, and enlightening lyrics. And Rabin is quite pleased with the outcome.
“I wanted to get into many different areas,” Rabin said in a press release about his latest record. “Of course, there are ‘prog things’, but overall there are a lot of styles going on.” Truer words have not been spoken. His signature Yes-isms are all over Rio but Rabin also sprinkles the record, which came out October 6th, with some interesting frolics into country & western, folk, and catchy pop. Love, life, and hope thematically show up, bumping into those prog signature guitar lines like perfect harmony. The debut single, “Big Mistakes” is a prime example. You can tap your toes but you can also swirl around in those outer space melodies.
However, with the new track “Oklahoma,” Rabin conjures up a different vision and attempts to put peace and healing into a horrific act of violence: the 1995 bomb that destroyed many lives in Oklahoma City. “In 1995, I wrote the germ of a lyric inspired by the devastating bombing in Oklahoma,” Rabin explained recently. “It traumatized the entire nation and will always be a dark day for the country. Thirty plus years later I believed the time was right and ok to tackle the song I had written. It’s dedicated to family and friends who lost loved ones.”
Not unfamiliar with songs that appeal to fans, before his multi-million dollar debut in Yes with 90125, Rabin was a bit of a big deal in his home country of South Africa while in the band Rabbitt. An early seventies rock band with a bit of flair, they hit the hometown charts with “Charlie” in 1976 before dissolving two years later following their time in the bright lights of stardom. Rabin would record a solo album during this time before heading to London, working behind the scenes with artists such as Manfred Mann and recording his third solo album, Wolf, with Kinks frontman Ray Davies as a co-producer. Moving to Los Angeles, he eventually hooked up with Chris Squire and Alan White of Yes and recorded four studio albums with the king of the prog rock bands. 90125 contained the mega-hit “Owner Of A Lonely Heart,” a song he already had the beginnings of long before he met the Yes rhythm section. The song hit #1. Rabin would join together with Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in 2016 to tour as ARW.
But in all that in-between time, Rabin found a niche in the soundtrack business, creating scores for such movies as National Treasure, Con Air, Remember The Titans and Armageddon, as well as numerous TV shows. He would focus on this full-time for many years before time allowed him to put his attention back on solo material that included his vocals. And Rio was born.
I spoke with Rabin recently about his new songs, recording an album after a mega-hit, his artwork and coming to America to find success.
How long has Los Angeles been your home now?
Oh way too long (laughs). I think longer than you’ve been here (laughs).
What was so attractive about LA?
I didn’t actually know because I was living in London. I’d been there for three years and one thing led to the next. I was producing Manfred Mann at the time and John Kalodner, who was the Geffen A&R guy, met me and asked to hear some stuff I played him some stuff and he said, “We want to sign you to a development deal on Geffen Records.” And David Geffen came out and signed me in a couple of days and next thing we were on a plane to LA and I haven’t left (laughs).
And Geffen was a really, really big deal back then so that must have been a thrill for you.
Oh, it was amazing. You know, he had just formed this company and signed, I think, Donna Summer, Elton John and John Lennon. Unfortunately, I was on the deal for six months or so and then we didn’t see eye to eye, just creatively as to where I should go next, and I was dropped like a lead balloon. But the good news is, he paid for me to get to LA and everything and for a year before I’d been writing and writing so I landed there basically writing what became Yes’ 90125 album.
When Geffen dropped me, I sent cassettes out at the time and got called back from a couple of companies, one of which was RCA, and a gentleman by the name of Ron Fair who became, ironically, years later the head of Geffen Records. But at the time he was an A&R guy at RCA and he was the first guy to say to me, “Oh, this song, ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart,’ is a smash.” But I didn’t sign with him because Atlantic said to me, “We really like the stuff and we’ve sent it to Chris Squire and Alan White, who are trying to get a band together.” And I thought to myself, well, that’s a pretty damn good rhythm section so we hooked up.
And now you have a new solo record and you’re singing again. How much did you already have prepared going into the studio for Rio vs how much was spontaneous once you got in there?
I would have to say, that most of it was completely spontaneous, although the germs of the ideas were all over the house. My wife used to say, “You’re like an alcoholic except instead of bottles being found in every drawer there’s manuscript paper with notes jotted down.” (laughs) You know, I used to do that a lot for film, obviously, and I’d have ideas for melodies but for this album, a lot of those pieces of paper became quite useful. I had ideas on tape and stuff. But it’s weird, you spend your life doing the first album you do and if you’re lucky enough for it to be successful, then you do it, go on the road, hopefully, and then immediately the record company is going, “We need the next album.”
So you’ve spent your life doing the first album and you’ve got six months to do the next album. There’s always a lot of pressure with that. Fortunately for me, I hadn’t done a vocal rock album since 1989, I think it was. But it didn’t seem like that much time had gone by because I got into film in 1994 and was lucky enough to get films almost immediately without having to go through any apprenticeships. So I was very familiar with working with the orchestra and arranging and the stuff that goes along with that so that was something I knew I could do; technically I had the know-how. And film seemed like a great place. The problem is, now I look back thirty years and the first movie I did feels like yesterday. But there’s fifty movies and hundreds of TV shows and I realized, my goodness, time went so quickly. The good news is, when I started this album it was so fresh to me I could really approach it like it’s a first album. So it was really an inspiring project to do.
What part of this album do you feel like you gave the most attention to? Where do you think you spend most of your time?
Well, I think if we were to go song by song, I think each one was like kind of a universe unto itself. I would concentrate fully on one song and then if it wasn’t happening, I’d just come back to it. One of the things I knew was I didn’t want to do a record deal or get anything or any input. I just wanted to get in the studio, roll my sleeves up and do this record. And consequently, in my earlier years, at seventeen, eighteen odd years old, I used to do session work from morning till night every day and it’s very non-specialized in South Africa so you would be doing a country song then a rock song and then an orchestral session. So when I started this album I thought, I just want to go all over the place. In fact, my working title for the album was Demographic Nightmare (laughs). So I knew that I was going into all kinds of different areas but it’s got to flow and it’s got to feel like an album as opposed to a whole lot of disjointed things. I spent a lot of time sequencing the album and then the justification in my mind was my voice and my guitar style, whatever that is, will glue it all together. And I’m kind of happy at the end of the day.
In “Goodbye,” you are almost twanging with that country Duane Eddy/Roy Clark type vibe going on. Was that how that song was originally conceived?
You know, it’s quite funny. I wrote that song initially on piano and then when I went into the studio, as I mentioned doing sessions in South Africa where everything is so varied, but country is huge in South Africa. And I’ve always loved those great players, as you say Roy Clark and even Vince Gill, who’s a lovely guitar player, and I’ve always been very, very comfortable in that area. So it was definitely a genre and style I wanted to integrate. Also, the chorus goes into a completely new world almost, intentionally, but there’s still the old twangy banjo that goes through it (laughs).
For the song “Oklahoma,” what came first: the sound, the melody or the vision that it conjures up?
I always had the idea of the theme in the back of my mind. But the lyric and everything, I wrote the essence of the first verse soon after the event happened and I just thought, I’ve got to store that away and at some point write a song; I don’t want to do it now. I thought it a bit crass to do a song when there’s been this tragedy. So I just thought, I’m never going to do that. But it’s a long time since so I think all the people directly related to those who were killed or injured will never get over it so I just thought it was time to kind of almost document it.
You give drummer Vinnie Colaiuta a lot of credit for “Push.” How did he make that a better song?
When I first wrote the song I did a drum machine. I spent a long time doing the drum machine just so I had something to play to. Then I sent it to Vinnie, and it was during COVID so I had to send it, whereas the last time I’d worked with Vinnie he came to my studio and did a couple of tracks here and we became good friends. But during COVID, he had to do it at his studio. So I sent him the files and he said, “Oh no, I’m going to have a ball with this!” (laughs) And he sent me two or three takes and I said, “Vinnie, any one of those were unbelievably perfect.” It was as if he’d been playing it all his life and he’s so perfect in it and such a burst of energy that I ended up redoing a lot of the instrumentation. And it just made the song more exciting.
What is the oldest track?
“Paradise” would be the oldest thing, although it all was kind of realized when I started the album, I guess around eighteen months ago. But that was one of the germs I had years ago. Then the song “These Tears,” I had that idea for that song a long time ago. That’s all about a toxic relationship, almost an addiction. Instead of heroin it’s a partner.
Were they guitar pieces or bits of lyrics?
“These Tears” was mostly a lyrical thought and “Paradise” was I wanted it to be a happy-sounding song but I wanted the lyrics to be really depressing almost.
What were the primary guitars that you used on Rio?
Most of it is an old 1964 Fender Stratocaster that I’ve used always and then I had a signature model Alvarez Pantera that I used quite a lot. Then for acoustic guitars, I have a Martin guitar and for a gut string guitar I have an old Alvarez, which was also given to me when I was endorsing Alvarez, and I’ve never changed. I didn’t know what the price was but I’ve since learned it sold for around $800 or $900, so it’s not a particularly dear guitar but it’s one I absolutely love so that’s one I used. Then the song you mentioned, “Goodbye,” that I used a B-bender on a Telecaster.
When you first started learning to play guitar, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?
I’d been playing piano, all the kids in my family from five years old you learned piano and you had lessons twice a week and an hour of practice every day, where you can’t go play with your friends, that kind of thing. That was my start. In fact, my dad used to joke, “Trevor could read music before he read English.” (laughs) That’s how I grew up but how I taught myself guitar was from piano exercise books. So it was a very unorthodox way of learning the guitar. I think the difficult thing was just getting the calluses so the strings don’t hurt as much (laughs).
When you were doing the ARW tour, did you pull out the old guitars that you used back then when you were in Yes or did you just modify your rig some for those particular songs?
No, I used the same guitars as I’ve always used, from way before Yes; other than the Alvarez. I guess I’m talking about the Fender Stratocaster, which I’ve had since I was nineteen, twenty years old, and that’s my main guitar. I think the big change in equipment was I used a digital multi-system called the Fractal. You know, there were so many sound changes in all the songs that I did with Yes, and generally my right foot was like a typewriter; I was always hitting things and changing sounds. And with the Fractal you can set up multiple different sounds, as many as you like. A song for example can have five different presets so it became extremely convenient and it can get very close digitally to the sound you would normally get just going through a Marshall and cranking it up or whatever the sound you might need.
You seem to have a great rapport with bass players.
You know, it’s funny because on my third solo album, I had, once again, an incredible rhythm section in Simon Phillips and Jack Bruce and Jack was extraordinary. That was so inspiring and when the idea came up to work with Chris and Alan, I thought, oh, that’s something I really want to do. So working with very, very strong rhythm sections was always a pivotal thing for me, and certainly, that was the case with Chris and Alan.
But you know, I never really heard Chris other than being onstage with him, other than on records obviously, but he was a very inspiring guy to work with, completely into what he was doing. One of the first things he said to me when we first met was, “Oh so you’ve worked with Jack.” And I said, “Yeah, I have.” And he said, “He’s one of my favorites.” But he said it so nonchalantly, like no big deal (laughs). Him and John Entwistle were Chris’s favorite bass players.
When you joined Yes, the first album you did with them was huge. How did you feel going into Big Generator?
You know, it’s a little bit like what I talked about earlier doing your first album, and we spent months – me, Chris, Alan, and Tony Kaye – rehearsing, for nine months before we started the album, and that time was so crucial to knitting the band together as a unit, to the point where you didn’t even have to say anything, you knew where someone was going six bars down the road. You had this kind of telepathy almost. With 90125, Jon Anderson heard the stuff but he joined right at the end. The album was pretty much done and then he came in and sang. That’s how that album was constructed.
So, consequently when we started Big Generator, it was a difficult album to do because Jon hadn’t been part of the band for most of the construction and the band knitting together. So it was a little more of a difficult album because it was, how are we going to work together? But at the end of the day, we went through a couple of producers, and then once they were gone, it was kind of, alright, you mix it – they were talking to me – and I was like, oh great (laughs). But I actually had a lot of fun with it because there are some great moments on the album and there are a couple of things that maybe shouldn’t have gone on the album. But it was also a difficult album, a pretty trying album, but we were happy with I’d say 80% of it by the end of the day.
Of all the Yes songs you had to play live, which one gave you the most fits to get it right, at least in your mind of how you wanted it to be?
I’d have to say on the last album I did there was this song, “Endless Dream,” and that took a lot of work to work that live. But I think it was one of our best moments.
Of all the records you’ve recorded during your career, which one do you think you were at your most adventurous creatively on guitar?
I think this is going to sound like a cliché cause I’m sure everyone you’ve ever interviewed said, “Oh, it’s the one I’ve just done by far.” (laughs) But I’d have to say that the four albums that come to mind, this one definitely because I just felt so fresh and new; then Can’t Look Away, a previous solo album; 90125 and then the last Yes album, Talk. I’d say those four. It’s hard to choose because they’re all my kids, if you know what I mean.
Rabbitt was a pretty hot band for you. Looking back, when do you think the band was at its best?
The band started with basically a three-piece: Neil Cloud, Ronnie Robot, and myself. From the age of fourteen we played together so when Rabbitt broke, everyone said, Oh overnight success. But we were twenty-one at the time, I think, and we’d been playing together for years. So the exciting thing about Rabbitt was, it’s kind of what I talked about Chris and Alan, just such a tight unit and between the three of us, it was a very tight unit. But I think the best we ever played was when we had a nine-month residency at a club. Once we started doing big tours and playing big places and the band was breaking and platinum albums and everything, it was still a band but I think we were at our best at that club.
Who was the first real rock star you ever met?
Oh boy, it was actually a person that no one would have heard of but he was a rock star in South Africa. So I guess that doesn’t count (laughs). But his name was Julian Laxton and he just passed away. He was a phenomenal mind musically. I would probably say meeting Chick Corea was … oh no, let me change that. We worked at AIR Studios during Yes. I’d met a number of people before, obviously, but meeting Paul McCartney was something pretty special. It was quite extraordinary. We were in his studio and I was at the commissary and Paul walked in. I had said hello to him before in the studio. In fact, he walked into our studio and said, “I heard you guys need a drum machine.” I was like, oh my God, that’s Paul. So in the commissary, he said, “Can I join you?” And it was like, what am I going to say? No, I’m actually busy here and I need to be alone! (laughs)
So he sat down and I think he was having herb tea or something, I was just having some toast and coffee, but I remember so clearly him saying to me,” I’ve got to ask you a question.” And I didn’t even know if he knew who I was; he just knew I was someone working in his studio. And he said to me, “So what made you think,” or “How did you,” I can’t remember, I’m paraphrasing, but “How did you come up with ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’?” And I thought that’s just unbelievable that he would ask that. And my response to him was kind of stupid but I couldn’t help myself. I said, “I’m sorry, Paul, if you want that question answered, I have about six weeks of questions I’m entitled to ask you before we even get to that.” (laughs) He was fantastic but my point obviously was, you asking ME about a song? You, Paul McCartney, who’ve written the greatest songs, and hundreds of them? I have way more questions than you (laughs). I was absolutely stunned and I didn’t even mention it to anyone. I told my wife and I think my brother but I didn’t even tell anyone because I thought no one is going to believe that so I didn’t bother (laughs).
Do you know where your ancestral roots are?
Yes, Irish Catholic on my mother’s side and Lithuanian and Jewish on my father’s side. As a birthday gift, I was given that thing where you send your saliva in and they give it back to you but I just haven’t ever done it. My niece has done it and it came back probably a little different than mine because her mother is different but I can’t imagine anything because it’s always such a surprise, right (laughs).
You did the artwork for Rio. When did you start painting and how has it evolved to what you do now?
That’s an interesting question. My mother is an artist and I’ve always dabbled in oils and acrylics, which I love doing. And when the possibility of getting into digital art came about I thought, wow, this is going to be a lot less messy! (laughs). We’re going to not have to paint the room and change the carpets every six months. So I just started doing it and it was not my recommendation by any means. Somehow it came up with Thomas, the head of the record company, and myself and he said, “Oh yeah, you do art?” And I said, “I love it. If I’m not doing music I’m doing that.” He said, “I’d love to see some stuff.” I said okay and I sent him some stuff. He said, “Oh my goodness, this would make a great cover.” And I said, “Listen, I’m biased here and that’s fine with me and I’d be delighted to do that but I want you to know that in a week’s time if you change your mind and you say, ‘You know, this art sucks,’ you’re not going to offend the artist. It doesn’t bother me.” (laughs)
Does that particular painting have a name?
Well, ultimately I’ve called it Rio but no, it didn’t have a name until I named the album.
How old is this painting?
It’s around a year and a half old.
What inspired it?
You know, I just find myself starting images and shapes and that’s really where that came from. Then I spent ages on the shading and obviously the color combinations. I’ve got a lot like that and a lot of abstract stuff but I also do portraits and some landscapes as well. But none of that is on the album (laughs).
What do you have planned for the rest of the year into next year?
Well, the rest of the year I’m going to Paris with my son to see the rugby. Every four years we do that. It was Japan four years ago. I used to play rugby so I am a fanatical rugby lover. But yeah, we just started to think about what to do with the album. It feels like I finished it yesterday and now I’m playing catch up doing what we’re doing right now. But ultimately, I’d love to start the next album as soon as possible. There is so much more in the tank that I haven’t explored which I’d like to do.
Portrait by Hristo Shindov; live photo by Leslie Michele Derrough
