XYZ interview with Alan White

[Scott Swanson <swandwn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was cruising the web this evening and I found an interview with Yes'
Alan White, which was conducted in 1993 by Mike Tiano of the Yes mailing
list.  Anyway, there are a few questions on the XYZ project so I've
clipped them and included them below.  Hope you enjoy.

Later,

Scott
(swandwn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

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  Q:  One of the less known periods in your career was your involvement
  with XYZ. Yourself, Chris and Jimmy Page. How did you and Chris link up
  with him? 

  AW:  I met Jimmy quite a few times because he lived pretty close to
  Chris, he lived in the same area. We used to meet at parties in London
  and all that kind of stuff and basically Chris called me on day and
  said,"  Jimmy wants to go and play in the studio kind of thing", so we
  all just turned up one day and started playing and it started sounding
  pretty good. We got the engineer in there and they started putting down
  the XYZ tapes as it were..  Quite a lot of it was stuff that I'd been
  writing with Chris and we had, I think it was like four, five, six
  songs. I don't know if that's out in the black market yet. 

  Q:  I don't think so...I've never heard of them--

  AW:  I think the only two cassettes that exist is, that outside of the
  master tapes, is I've got one and Chris has got one, but Chris says he
  can't find his now, but I do have a copy of it at home. 

  Q:  Do you think that the band had real potential?  

  AW:  Oh, it was sounding pretty good, there was some interesting music.
  It was really different, it was like Zeppelin meets Yes kind of stuff,
  it was real odd. 

  Q:  Was it always a trio or was Robert Plant ever involved at any point?

  AW:  It was a trio, and Jimmy kept calling Robert saying how great is
  was and he should get involved but Robert thought (the music) was too
  complicated. He came and listened to it and I think he thought it was
  too complicated; or else there could have been the kind of a Yes
  Zeppelin band at that time. I think that kind of either frightened a lot
  of people off at that time or it was a too-good-to-be-true kind of
  thing. But the management thing got involved and they really screwed it
  up and it just all went haywire, that's what really dissipated the whole
  thing. 

  Q:  So it was the management, or was the band behind it as well? 

  AW:  Pretty much the management, but I think Robert was very iffy about
  it, he thought the music was too complicated, he was more of a rock 'n'
  roll wailer kind of thing. We were doing things in (taps out five
  beats)...there's one thing that we did that was kind of a lick that I
  wrote at home one day it was like almost like a military type thing put
  in a odd time signature that built up into this really orchestrated kind
  of piece of music...and it was all in 7/4 time so I think when Robert
  heard 7/4 it was like, "What am I getting myself into here?"  So... 

  Q:  That's not rock 'n' roll. 

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