raritieshard rock
17:23 Saturday, 2 December 2023
In this month's Between A Rock And A Prog Place column (which can be read in full here), BraveWords scribe Greg Prato speaks to former Yes guitarist Trevor Rabin (who recently issued his first solo album with vocals in nearly three-and-a-half decades, Rio) about his memories of the creation of Yes' sole #1 hit, 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart,' as 2023 marks 40 years since its release.
What do you recall about the writing and recording of “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”?
"I had a room where we were living in London and the bathroom had great acoustics. And I just wrote [sings guitar riff]. So, I am sitting on the toilet playing that riff, and I remember thinking, 'Wow. This is really, really cool…or it's nothing.' It's four notes – a power chord and notes. What does it really mean? And then the next day I was on the toilet again and I played it, and I thought, 'This has got something.' And then I wrote the chorus – 'Owner of a lonely heart.' And that was done from almost within two days of starting to play the riff. And then I realized I kind of stumbled onto this riff I wrote – which I think is going to be pretty cool. And that led to me getting a deal with David Geffen – who six months later, dropped me because I saw what I was doing being different to him. And I sent tapes out. I remember getting a response from another record company, RCA, and Ron Fair was the A&R guy. He called me and said, 'This song is a #1 hit.' That's the first person who ever said that to me – until it was a #1 hit. But he was the first guy who recognized it."
"As far as the writing of it, I always wanted it to have shock value and weird things going on. And that was inspired by the fact that when I did the demo, it was done on a four-track TEAC. So, you have to bounce [tracks]. And when you bounce, maybe there are going to be things which ultimately are not mixed very well. So, there were a lot of those [makes noise] things that were mixed too loud. And when it came to doing the record, I thought, 'I want to do exactly the same thing as there. I want to have this 'shock stuff' going on. So, I think the record turned out pretty much the way I felt it should be.
"And Chris [Squire] had written this kind of Motown bass. We were jamming on that kind of Motown part, and he came up with this bass riff. That worked into it really well. It always stuck though – the chorus was never something that was screwed with much. And then I re-wrote the verse just before Jon [Anderson] sang it."
