Chris Squire
Christopher Russell Edward Squire was an English musician, singer and songwriter best known as the bassist and backing vocalist of the progressive rock band Yes. He was the longest-serving original member, having remained in the band until his death. In 2017, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Yes.
Squire was widely regarded as the dominant bassist among the English progressive rock bands, influencing peers and later generations of bassists with his incisive sound and elaborately contoured, melodic bass lines. His name was associated with his trademark instrument, the Rickenbacker 4001. From 1991 to 2000, Rickenbacker produced a limited-edition signature model bass in his name, the 4001CS.
Early life
Squire was born on 4 March 1948 in the north-west London suburb of Kingsbury, to Peter and Joanne Squire. He grew up there and in the nearby Queensbury and Wembley areas. His father was a cab driver and his mother a secretary for an estate agent. As a youngster Squire took a liking to records by Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald that belonged to his father, though his main interest was church music. At the age of six, he joined the church choir at St. Andrew's in Kingsbury as a treble along with Andrew Pryce Jackman, a friend who lived nearby. The choir got to perform at St. Paul's Cathedral. Their choirmaster Barry Rose was an early influence on Squire. "He made me realise that working at it was the way to become best at something". Squire also sang in the choir at his next school, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, then located in Hampstead. He played the harmonica on his way home from school.Squire did not consider a music career until the age of sixteen when the Beat music boom in the early 1960s and the emergence of the Beatles inspired him to "be in a group that don't use music stands". A schoolfriend recommended that Squire take up the bass after pointing out his tall frame and large hands, thinking they were ideal for playing the instrument. Squire then purchased his first bass, a Futurama, which he described as "very cheap, but good enough to learn on". In 1964, on the last day before the summer holidays, Squire's headmaster suspended him and a friend for having their hair too long and they were given two shillings and sixpence to have it cut. Instead, they went home and never returned. After his mother took him to a recruitment agency and enquired for work related to music, Squire landed work selling guitars at a Boosey & Hawkes shop in Regent Street. He used the staff discount offer to purchase a new bass, a Rickenbacker 4001, in 1965.
Career
Early career
Squire's first band was the Syn, a rock and rhythm and blues band that featured Jackman on keyboards and Martin Adelman on drums. Their first public performance took place at The Graveyard, a youth club in the hall of St. Andrew's. In 1965, following several personnel changes, Squire, Jackman and Adelman teamed with singer Steve Nardelli, guitarist John Painter, and Icelandic drummer Gunnar Jökull Hákonarson to form a new group, the Syn. The group performed Tamla Motown covers before they changed direction towards psychedelic rock. After several months, Painter was replaced by guitarist Peter Banks. The new line-up gained a following large enough to secure a weekly residency at the Marquee Club in Soho, which was followed by a recording contract with Deram Records. The band once opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the venue, "So I saw what was possible, and I just had this innate faith that I was going to make it." Together they released two singles before they disbanded.Squire was fond of using LSD in the 1960s; a visit to the UFO Club on the drug on Friday which lasted through Saturday, and recovery on Sunday, became a regular event until a 1967 incident where he had a bad trip on a friend's home-made LSD. When the police asked him to reveal who gave it to him, Squire pretended to be disoriented and made up a story that involved an unknown Australian he met at a Wimpy restaurant beforehand. He recalled, "It was the last time I ever took it, having ended up in hospital in Fulham for a couple of days not knowing who I was, or what I was, or who anybody else was." After his discharge from hospital, Squire spent several months in his girlfriend's apartment, afraid to leave, only managing to visit the corner shop. He spent each day practising his bass playing which resulted in his distinct style, citing bassists John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Paul McCartney, Larry Graham, James Jamerson, and Bill Wyman as early influences.
Yes
In September 1967, Squire joined Mabel Greer's Toyshop, a psychedelic group that included Peter Banks, singer Clive Bayley and drummer Bob Hagger. They played at the Marquee club where Jack Barrie, owner of the La Chasse drinking club a few doors down, saw them perform. "The musicianship ... was very good but it was obvious they weren't going anywhere", he recalled. One evening at La Chasse, Barrie introduced Squire to Jon Anderson, a worker at the bar who had not found success as the lead singer of The Gun or as a solo artist. The two found they shared common musical interests including Simon & Garfunkel, The Association and vocal harmonies. In the following days they developed "Sweetness", a track later recorded for the first Yes album.As the band developed, Anderson and Squire brought in drummer Bill Bruford, keyboardist Tony Kaye and Banks for rehearsals. The five agreed to drop the name Mabel Greer's Toyshop; they settled on the name Yes, originally Banks's idea. The band played their first show as Yes at a youth camp in East Mersea, Essex on 3 August 1968. Squire spoke about the band's formation: "I couldn't get session work because most musicians hated my style. They wanted me to play something a lot more basic. We started Yes as a vehicle to develop everyone's individual styles." Squire developed a bass solo named "A Bass Odyssey".
In August 1969, Yes released their self-titled debut album. Martyn Adelman, who had played drums with Squire's first group, did the album photos. Squire received writing credits on four of the album's eight tracks—"Beyond & Before", "Looking Around", "Harold Land", and "Sweetness".
After Bruford left the band and was replaced by Alan White in July 1972, Squire altered his playing to suit the change in the band's rhythm section. He felt he was "playing too much, though I was never really sure. With Bill, the things that I did felt right... With Alan, I found that I was able to play a bit less than before and still get my playing across."
Squire described his playing on "The Remembering " from Tales from Topographic Oceans as "one of the nicest things I think I've ever played".
Squire was the only member to play on each of the 21 studio albums released by Yes from 1969 to 2014. He was seen as one of the main forces behind the band's music, as well as being "perhaps the most enigmatic" group member. Heaven & Earth was his final studio album.
While most of the band's lyrics were written by Anderson, Squire co-wrote much of their music with guitarist Steve Howe. In addition, Squire and Howe would supply backing vocals in harmony with Anderson on songs such as "South Side of the Sky" and "Close to the Edge".
During the band's formative years Squire was frequently known for his lateness, a habit that Bruford often complained about. Because of this, Squire would frequently drive at unsafe speeds to get to gigs on time, once causing an accident on the way to a gig in West Germany after he fell asleep at the wheel, although nobody was injured. A posthumous commemorative brown plaque was titled in such a way as to make reference to his habitual lateness, namely "'The Late' Chris Squire".
As Squire, along with Alan White and Steve Howe, co-owned the "Yes" name at the time, the 1989 ABWH line-up without him could not record under that name.
Following Squire's death on 27 June 2015, the band's show on 7 August of the same year marked the first Yes concert ever performed without him. Former member Billy Sherwood replaced Squire during their 2015 North American tour with Toto from August to September 2015, as well as their performances in November 2015, as announced when the band first revealed Squire's disease in May 2015.
Other projects
Squire concentrated overwhelmingly on Yes' music over the years, producing little solo work. His first solo record was 1975's Fish Out of Water, featuring Yes alumni Bill Bruford on drums and Patrick Moraz on keyboards and The Syn/The Selfs alumnus Andrew Jackman also on keyboards.In 1981, Squire was a member of the short lived XYZ, short for eX-Yes/Zeppelin together with White and guitarist Jimmy Page. XYZ recorded several demo tracks, but never produced anything formal, though two of the demos provided the basis for two later Yes tracks, "Mind Drive" and "Can You Imagine?" Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant was not ready, despite Page's promises, to get involved with the band so soon after the death of Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. According to Squire, Zeppelin manager Peter Grant objected to the name as the "Y" appeared before the "Z" in the name. The group then "fizzled out".
Squire also played a role in bringing Trevor Rabin into the Cinema band project, which became the 90125 line-up of Yes.
In later years, Squire would join with Yes guitarist Billy Sherwood in a side project called Conspiracy. This band's self-titled debut album in 2000 contained the nuclei of several songs that had appeared on Yes' recent albums. Conspiracy's second album, The Unknown, was released in 2003.
In late 2004, Squire joined a reunion of The Syn. The reformed band released the album Syndestructible in 2005 before breaking up again.
Squire also worked on two solo projects with other former Syn collaborators Gerard Johnson, Jeremy Stacey and Paul Stacey. A Christmas album, Chris Squire's Swiss Choir, was released in 2007. Squire collaborated again with Hackett, formerly of the band Genesis, to make the Squackett album A Life Within a Day, released in 2012.