Silent inspiration: Steve Howe on how he may have inspired The Beatles
The Beatles were never tied down to a specific style of music during their time together. If every one of the Fab Four got onboard, it was fair game to use in the studio, which left the door open for everything from Indian music to bits and pieces of sophisticated genres like classical music to make their way into the fold. Before the band had started working on their own expansive songs, Steve Howe said that they might have taken inspiration from one of his early classics.
It’s not like both groups were that far away from each other. By the time Howe had started working on his masterpieces, The Beatles were already hard at work turning their live sound into a studio-only creation. Now that they had more toys to play with and didn’t have to commit to tours anymore, they had a lot of time to sit and a lot of time to listen.
So what did they listen to? Everything. Though they still fell back on their favourites like Chuck Berry, every member of the band came through with different influences all the time. While Ringo Starr was always more than happy playing the drums, the melodic pieces from the rest of the group on albums like Sgt Peppers completely restructured what they would sound like for the next few years.
A few doors over, Howe made music with the psychedelic outfit Tomorrow. Years before Yes had formed, Howe’s first act was still fairly progressive for their time, going with music with varying musical soundscapes rather than the thousand-mile guitar solos that populated every one of his songs going forward.
Even though their brand of psychedelia had to compete with other major bands on the British scene, like Pink Floyd, Howe remembered hearing rumours that the Fab Four may have been listening to what they were doing and using it as the template for Sgt Peppers. Considering where Paul McCartney took them, it wouldn’t necessarily be out of the question, either.
Since the whole point was to make an imaginary group, Macca’s brand of psychedelia feels more like a pop-flavoured take on what acts like Tomorrow may have been doing, albeit with the kind of melodic charm carried over from The Beach Boys. If you ask Howe, it was always going to be more than just one band that took The Beatles in a different direction.
When asked about whether The Beatles copied anything, Howe replied, “It’s been said that [we influenced them], and there may be some kind of evidence. I can’t quite piece it together. I’d be flattered to think that, but I think that everybody was influenced by everybody else. You couldn’t avoid it. The influences were strong and powerful.”
Just like every great psychedelic artist, Howe would find himself moving on from what the Summer of Love had to offer alongside the Fab Four. Considering the band would later take rock music even further on albums like Abbey Road with its medley of different tunes, there’s a good chance that Howe was influenced right back by them, turning Yes albums into long exercises where almost every song was fragments like that were interconnected.
Then again, rock and rollers don’t get their influence from just one outfit. It’s always a combination of many artists that get you in the door, and somewhere along the line, you get to hit on something that sounds like you.
