Chris Squire - Fish Out of Water
On November 7, 1975, "Fish Out of Water", the only solo album by musician and bassist Chris Squire, was released.
The year 1975 saw progressive rock giants Yes at one of the most ambitious and intense high points in their history. After a string of masterpieces that forever changed the face of modern music, from the breakthrough of 1971's "The Yes Album" and "Fragile," through the structural peak of 1972's "Close to the Edge" and the triple live album "Yessongs," to the turbulent fusion journey of "Relayer" in late 1974, the five members of the band decided to take a rare break from joint activity. As part of this strategic decision, it was determined that each of the band members, vocalist Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Alan White and Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz, would release an individual solo album that would express their independent musical world before the band reunited.
For Chris Squire, the rhythmic and melodic backbone of Yes and the only musician to have played on every studio album since Time and a Word, the move to a solo career was not a given. The album's chosen title, "Fish Out of Water", corresponded in sharp British humor to his mythological nickname, Fish, which was born first from his astrological sign, Pisces, and later following an amusing incident in a hotel in Oslo on the band's early tour in which he accidentally flooded his room with water during an especially long shower, a nickname also immortalized in his famous solo section on Fragile. Beyond the amusing play on words, the name reflected Squire's exposed sense of making music outside the protective greenhouse of his parent band for the first time in his adult life.
To realize the broad symphonic vision that was racing through his head, Squire entered his new home studio in Virginia Water, New Pipers, in Surrey, in the spring and summer of 1975, and later the legendary Morgan Studios in London, together with the talented recording engineer Gregg Jackman. In a surprising and brilliant decision, Squire chose to record an entire album without any lead guitars at all, except for his own subtle guitar touches in the background, and to put his iconic bass guitar, a 1964 Rickenbacker 4001 model with double stereo wiring, at center stage, which produced a treble, cutting, and metallic sound that sounded like a mesmerizing cross between an electric cello and a lead guitar, take center stage.
Alongside him, Squire recruited a dream team of virtuosos who gave the album a breathtaking orchestral volume. The drum station was filled by his old friend from the early glory days of "Yes" and the one who left for "King Crimson", the phenomenal drummer Bill Bruford, whose precise, jazzy and unpredictable drumming created a truly telepathic chemistry with Squire's bass. The keyboards, piano and orchestral arrangements were entrusted to Squire's close partner from their psychedelic youth band "The Syn" from the sixties, composer and arranger Andrew Pryce Jackman, the father of the recording engineer. The celebration was also joined by former "Yes" keyboardist Patrick Moraz on bass synthesizer and organ, brass master Mel Collins from the bands "King Crimson" and "Camel" on saxophones, virtuoso flutist from the Canterbury scene Jimmy Hastings, Hammond player Julian Colbeck, as well as a full symphony orchestra conducted by Jackman and organist Barry Rose who played the massive pipe organ of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
The album opens with a pair of pieces linked together in a sweeping cinematic sequence, beginning with the opening track **"Hold Out Your Hand." From the first second that Squire's melodic, racing bass line bursts forth alongside Bruford's majestic church organ and tight drums, it becomes clear that this is a masterpiece of symphonic progressive rock. Squire's high, angelic tenor singing, doubled with rich harmonic layers that recall his days as a boy in the London church choir, drives the song with an explosive power that immediately made it one of the highlights of Yes' 1976 tour.
Without a single second's pause, the song glides elegantly into "You by My Side", a warm, romantic and moving orchestral ballad inspired by Squire's then-wife, Nicky, who also appeared alongside him in the album's inner sleeve photos. Here, the rhythmic aggression gives way to Jackman's lyrical piano, Jimmy Hastings's soaring and magical flute, and enveloping strings that build masterful emotional gradations and demonstrate Squire's ability to write pop-prog melodies that are as accessible and heartfelt as his partner Jon Anderson.
The first side of the record reaches its dramatic climax in the eleven-and-a-half-minute epic "Silently Falling." The piece opens with a wintry, brooding atmosphere with piano and Squire's soft voice, before developing into an instrumental powerhouse in which Squire's flanged bass, Patrick Moraz's synths, and Mel Collins' blazing saxophone collide in an electric storm over Bruford's shifting, complex rhythms, until the moving, celestial clarity that seals the piece.
The album's second side opens with "Lucky Seven", a brilliant seven-eighth-note track that lives up to its name and showcases Squire's funky, light-hearted, and sophisticated jazz-fusion side. Over a mesmerizing, winding bass groove and Bruford's incredibly virtuosic drumming, heard here at the height of his artistic freedom, Jackman's electric piano and Collins' soprano saxophone weave a nocturnal, addictive atmosphere. Legendary Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd was so enamored with the track that he released a special single version for the American market.
The album closes with the monumental fifteen-minute piece "Safe (Canon Song)", an ambitious cathedral of sounds built around an evolving musical canon motif. Over fifteen minutes of immense symphonic tension-building, Squire and Jackman combine powerful progressive rock with a full-throttle string and brass orchestra, in a thrilling duel against Squire's roaring Rickenbacker bass, until the final, uplifting crescendo that leaves the listener breathless and conveys a philosophical message of inner security, optimism, and peace.
The elegant album cover, photographed and designed by Laurence Bernes, showed Squire in a tailored white suit in the pouring rain amidst a gray cityscape, a visual aptly illustrating the album's title and the British bassist's noble image. Upon its release in November 1975 on Atlantic Records, "Fish Out of Water" was met with critical and fan acclaim, peaking at number 25 on the UK Albums Chart and number 69 on the US Billboard Chart, and was unanimously hailed as the most successful, cohesive and beloved of the five solo albums released by the members of "Yes" at the time.
Amazingly, despite later collaborations on projects like "XYZ" with Jimmy Page, the "Conspiracy" ensemble with Billy Sherwood, the celebratory 2007 choir album "Chris Squire's Swiss Choir" and the 2012 duo "Squackett" with former "Genesis" guitarist Steve Hackett, "Fish Out of Water" remained Squire's only true solo album until his painful death from leukemia in June 2015. In the test of time, fifty years after its release, this album continues to shine as one of the pinnacles of 1970s symphonic rock, an eternal monument to the genius of the man who proved to the world that the bass guitar could lead an entire orchestra and sing with a power that penetrates straight to the soul.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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