Last year I picked up a copy of Jon Anderson’s first solo LP, Olias of Sunhillow, at the Horsham record fair. It is a gorgeous artefact, with its intricate cover art and an illustrated booklet inside explaining the story of the album. Considering it was nearly 50 years old, both record and artwork were in pretty good condition.

Despite being a fan of Yes, I had never actually heard this record before. Back in 1976 there was no Spotify or YouTube. If you didn’t buy a record when it came out you were unlikely to hear it, and this one passed my by, and I never thought to seek it out subsequently.

To be honest, I think I had been put off by the sheer weirdness of the concept. I love Jon Anderson but he can be a bit away with the fairies. When you read about the concept you get pre-conceptions about what the music might be like. It is about a planet called Sunhillow which is threatened by a volcanic eruption. A magician called Olias wants to rescue the four tribes (Nagrunium, Asatranius, Oractaniom and Nordranious – really!) who, incidentally, each represent a different aspect of music consciousness, in a space ark called the Moorglade Mover.

To quote from the Wikipedia article:

“Olias fashions the Moorglade Mover by persuading Sunhillow’s trees and fish to sacrifice their lives and substance to form it, while Qoquaq travels across Sunhillow using trance singing to bring together the mutually suspicious tribes to unite and board the ship. With the population on board and in a collective trance, the ship leaves Sunhillow just before the planet explodes into millions of silent teardrops.”

What I did not realise before, was that Anderson made every noise on the record, playing keyboards, guitars, bass, sitar, percussion and so on. Apparently some of the keyboards sounded so much like Vangelis that Vangelis’ record company told him off for playing on it.

This month I picked up another Jon Anderson album for £2 in a shop in Dorking, Animation from 1980. It is a much more straightforward record. A bit more grounded, more mainstream pop/rock, certainly less conceptual. The thing is, and this is where other Yes fans will want to string me up by the thumbs, I found it a lot easier to get into on a first listen. Maybe I will find Olias of Sunhillow a better long-term prospect if I play it enough, but for now I actually prefer the more conventional one – and not just because it is yet another record I have with Simon Phillips on drums.

(Honestly, I never set out to collect Simon Phillips records, but I have ended up with quite a few: several Mike Oldfield LPs, a couple of Gordon Giltraps, a Trevor Rabin solo album, Mike Rutherford’s Smallcreep’s Day, and a couple of Toyah CDs and DVDs.)

I have another Yes-adjacent opinion that some will consider to be heresy, but others will probably agree with: on balance, solo albums and side projects by Genesis and ex-Genesis members are better than solo albums and side projects by Yes and ex-Yes members.

On the Yes side there are Chris Squire’s Fish out of Water, umpteen Steve Howe albums, the Jon Anderson and Jon & Vangelis stuff, Patrick Moraz’s under-rated albums, Asia, Bill Bruford’s various projects and, of course Rick Wakeman’s huge discography. Some of that is great, some is average and some just does nothing for me.

The same could be said of Genesis-related music, but overall I think it is just better, and certainly a lot of it is more accessible. I now have some solo work by Tony Banks, Rutherford, Hackett, Collins and Gabriel, plus some Brand-X and I am likely to play them more often than Asia, Steve Howe and Jon Anderson. Actually, the ex-Yes record I return to most is the Patrick Moraz album Out in the Sun.

Anyway, just my opinion. I’ll get my coat.