In the summer of 2018, Richie Castellano and his buddies posted a remarkable cover of the 1972 Yes epic “Close to the Edge” to their YouTube channel and watched it rack up over half a million views. “I’m blown away by these comments,” he wrote in response to the outpouring of love by prog fans. “This isn’t a bunch of music snobs showing off. This is genuine love for Yes and their music. We are hardcore Yes fans and this video is not about conquering a song or doing it better than anyone. It’s about the joy of indulging our inner teenagers and being lucky enough to get the opportunity to play our favorite music.”
Castellano has been a multi-instrumentalist in Blue Öyster Cult for the past two decades, and videos like “Close to the Edge” were just a fun way for him to spend time between commitments to the group. But one of the half million people to see the video was Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, right around the time he was in need of a new band. “They were quite amazing, and they looked happy and fun,” Anderson tells Rolling Stone. “I phoned up Richie the bass player and said, ‘Let’s go on tour.’ And he said, ‘What?'”
The tour wasn’t able to take place until 2023 due to Covid and Anderson’s other obligations, but it was worth the wait. Under the banner “Yes — Epics & Classics Featuring Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks,” they delivered a night of Seventies prog masterpieces like “Heart of the Sunrise,” “Yours Is No Disgrace,” and “Awaken” played to absolute perfection. And when it wrapped up, they funneled their energy into a new album, True, that they plan on releasing later this year.
“I can’t even wrap my head around all this,” says Castellano. “I used to go watch Jon in concert and scream at him. Getting to do something like this is just a dream. It’s also been opportunity as a Yes fan to go, ‘OK, we’ve been handed the keys to the kingdom. We have Jon Anderson singing for us. How do we want this to go?'”Editor’s picks
Castellano learned about the kingdom of Yes at age 14 when his uncle Phil handed him a copy of Fragile. “He challenged me to learn ‘Heart of the Sunrise,'” he says. “And so I tried it and then I realized, ‘Oh, this is way beyond me musically. I don’t understand what’s happening here.’ Once I learned how to do it, I was converted. I was a fan.”
He first saw Yes when the Talk tour came to the Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, on Sept. 7, 1994. “As a young guitar player, Trevor Rabin just melted my face,” he says. “I probably saw them seven or eight times after that. I converted all my friends.”
Castellano got a job with Blue Öyster Cult as a sound engineer when he was done with his schooling, which led to occasional opportunities to guest with them at gigs. When bassist Danny Miranda let the band in 2004, they offered Castellano his spot. Three years later, when journeyman bassist Rudy Sarzo joined the group, Castellano took on a new rule as a keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, and backing vocalist.
Sarzo has played with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot to Whitesnake, Geoff Tate’s Queensrÿche, and the Guess Who. Castellano was in awe of him. They were in the back of the tour van one day when Sarzo asked him if he had his own YouTube channel. He didn’t. “He said, ‘You’re making a big mistake,'” says Castellano. ‘A guy your age, if you don’t have a YouTube channel, you don’t exist.’ I’ll never forget that.”
With Sarzo’s help, Castellano started his own YouTube channel and began posting videos, including his one-man take on Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” that went viral. He also started a podcast with his musical buddies he called Band Geek. It didn’t long for him to realize that people had far more interest in hearing them play music than just talk about it. “We phased the podcast out,” says Castellano. “And we became Band Geek the band.”Related Content
Working alongside a rotating crew of musicians, Castellano tackled songs like “Here I Go Again,” “In the Cage,” “Working for the Weekend,” and “Heaven and Hell.” Whenever they did a Yes song, soprano vocalist Ann Marie Nacchio joined them.
Jon Anderson’s webmaster came across their “Close to the Edge” and put them on the phone together. “I was completely a babbling idiot on the phone,” says Castellano. “Because how often does your hero call you? The person you’ve been idolizing since childhood. He went, ‘You sound like Seventies Yes. Everything is just perfect.’ I was just floating while he was talking. At the end, he said, ‘We should do something.'”
At the time, Yes were divided into two warring camps. Guitarist Steve Howe led Yes with drummer Alan White and Drama-era keyboardist Geoff Downes, while Anderson fronted the spinoff group Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, and Rick Wakeman. For reasons that have never been fully articulated, the Anderson/Rabin/Wakeman incarnation of the group dissolved in 2018. “That band was fun,” Anderson says. “There’s a story there, but I won’t tell it now.”
Whatever the story is, it ends with Anderson as a man without a band. But the instant he saw Castellano and the Band Geeks play “Close to the Edge,” he saw a path forward. “I told Richie I wanted to go on tour,” says Anderson. “He goes, ‘Jon, are you serious?’ I said to him, ‘Yeah, I want to play ‘Gates of Delirium,’ ‘Close to the Edge,’ ‘Awaken,’ and all the hits of the Seventies. If we have to do anything like ‘Owner [of a Lonely Heart],’ we’ll do it at the end. But generally speaking, I want to do the music of Yes in the Seventies, the best of it.”
It took a while to sort through the logistics, wait out Covid, and find a hole in the Blue Öyster Cult tour schedule. There was also the matter of Castellano, keyboardist Chris Clark, keyboardist Andy Ascolese, guitarist Robert Kipp, and guitarist-bassist Andy Graziano learning every tiny nuance of these wildly complicated songs.
“We did 48 rehearsals for the first tour,” says Castellano. “And that was just to get all the parts right. Jon eventually started watching us via Zoom. He’d be like, ‘Oh, in this part, change this’ or ‘you sing this part with me.’ He’d be singing along even though it was Zoom. It was really awesome.”
For Castellano, the hardest part was figuring out how to play all 22 minutes of “Gates of Delirium.” “There’s this one bass drum and bass guitar pattern with no repeats in it,” he says. “It’s like one long phrase you just have to memorize. If one of your readers knows what the repeat is, please send it to me because I couldn’t find it. I looked at it from every angle. I eventually had to make up these little mnemonic devices and nursery rhymes just to get the part right.”
Most of these songs were in the Yes live repertoire for decades, which only complicated matters. “Over time, songs morph, tempos change, sections get cut out,” says Castellano. “What’s the right version of ‘Close to the Edge’? The way they played it on [the 1973] live album Yessongs? Is it the way they played it in the late Seventies? How about on [the 1996 live album] Keys to Ascension or the [2000] Masterworks tour?’ I eventually just said to the guys, ‘Every way is correct. The way they played it in 2004 is just as valid as the way they played it in 1974.'”
Anderson insisted they use two keyboard players so they could add in the extra textures from the albums that Yes were never able to duplicate live. “During ‘Close to the Edge,’ right before the band comes in after the pipe organ solo [during the beginning of the ‘Seasons of Man’ section], there’s this pipe organ freakout going on under the Moog,” says Castellano. “Yes couldn’t do both of them live, but we can because we have another set of hands.”
The tour was a mere 12 shows concentrated on the East Coast. For Anderson, every night was a revelation. “It felt really exciting,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t believe what’s happening! Everyone is just amazing. Let’s go around the world!'”
Before that could happen, Anderson wanted to record new music with Castellano and the Band Geeks to make this something more than a rehash of the past. But that was tricky since Anderson lives in California, the Band Geeks are centered around New York, and Blue Öyster Cult spends significant time on the road every year.
They wound up with a system where Anderson would send them demos via email, they’d flesh them out as a band, and then compare notes on Zoom. “It was like the Seventies where I would suggest ideas to the guys and because they’re musicians, they’d get on with it,” says Anderson. “I can just play four chords and then I’m done.” (Other songs worked in the reverse order where the Band Geeks would send a piece of original music to Anderson.)
A new tour begins May 30 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This one is significantly longer than the 2023 run, and there’s already talk of adding shows. Anderson spoke to us shortly before rehearsals kicked off, but he said he imagined the set would be very similar to the one last year. He does plan on removing “Gates of Delirium” to make room for two songs from the new record.
“I don’t want to confuse anyone that thought they were going to get Yes music,” Anderson says. “My dream is that we can do another tour next year and do an hour of new music and an hour of Yes music. Maybe we’d mix them all together. I don’t know yet.”
Whatever happens, Anderson says he’s going to stick with the Band Geeks for the foreseeable future. Castellano still has a hard time processing the whole thing. “If you would’ve told me this when we started the Band Geek podcast, that we were going to end up being a band that plays with Jon Anderson, I would’ve said, ‘Fuck you,'” he says. “I have no idea how this morphed into this.”
