Anderson, Jon
Entry updated 25 October 2021. Tagged: Music, People.
Working name of John Roy Anderson (1944- ), British musician best known as the lead singer of the band Yes. Anderson's solo albums return frequently to sf subjects. His first solo release, Olias of Sunhillow (1976) is a concept-album telling the story of an alien race's escape from planetary apocalypse in a spacecraft called "Moorglade" piloted by the titular character. The album combines Moog synthesizer and Anderson's soprano crooning to atmospheric effect, and some of the lyrics are in an invented alien language. Subsequent albums include many songs that reference outer space, but almost always refracted through a mystical and hippy-animistic prism whereby "stars" have a transcendent and, indeed, astrological significance; although the song "Hurry Home (Song From The Pleiades)", from In The City of the Angels (1988) urges mankind to interstellar voyages, and a rather frantic version of John Adams' "Shaker Loops" (in Change We Must, 1994) adds lyrics about crop circles that express UFO cultist sentiments. [AR]
John Roy Anderson
born Accrington, Lancashire: 25 October 1944
previous versions of this entry