Pieces disliked by own creators

I like "Onion" but I have to admit that Rick is not totally wrong. I can understand why he disliks TFTO, too. But I'd disagree with him in that case.

Apart from writing most the keyboard parts you mean? His main role, and unmissable strength, within Yes was in stitching together all the disjointed melodies written by Howe & Anderson (and Squire & White) to form coherent pieces of music and in writing the passages of modulations and segues that made that happen. While Anderson and Howe take most of credit for creating the various melodies, it was Wakeman's knowledge of composition and arrangement that made each one work together. How he does that is masterful, though it does tend to leave a very unmistakable Wakeman-signature on every note he plays. While we regard each of the four "movements" as single pieces of music, they aren't - each one is a collage of separate melodies - IMO no one in Yes (Wakeman aside) was really capable of writing a sustained and continuous 20 minute piece of music, and it's no accident that later 20+ minute epics, either on Yes or solo albums, are as rare as rocking horse poop - all Yes epics are musical collages of disparate bits. [just listen to The Ancient if you're unsure of that - for example what those few bars of ukulele are is doing there is anyone's guess - while that is probably the least "Wakeman" track what little fluidity it has is attributable to Wakeman]. TFTO without Wakeman's input would be dreadful, as would Relayer without Moraz.

Hi,

We're waiting for Stravinsky to tell us that The Rite of Spring, is crap.

AND

We're waiting for Beethoven to tell us that he hates his 9th, and it was a mess and not his!

OR

We will be waiting forever for Mozart to tell us that he learned about music in the bars, while drunk!

... back to our normal programming! ...

Holger Czukay (and maybe others in Can) dislike Future Days.

In a letter that I have somewhere, Holger specified that he did not care for his first two solo albums a whole lot. I think it was mostly because they were so crazy and fun, and did not have the total free form of playing that he wanted. Who knows.

The two main members of Kraftwerk hate the band's first three albums.

Like NEU and some of the others in those days, when you listen to these they have some wonderful textures, but "musicians" love to tear these things down, and say ... he spent 5 minutes turning that knob to make it sound like music!

I guess there is a feeling somewhere, but since we are too damn mechanical, we can't find it on the fingers?

Rober Fripp - Lizard

At least he was honest and specified why he thought it was not a good album ... the nature of it was not cohesive in its design and conception. Maybe the proper title should have been "Cameleon"

Roger Waters - ATM

RW likes to say those kinds of things when the interviews are boring him silly. And specially to progressive folks, that honor a part of his life that he was broke and could not even buy a house, or get his favorite sports car, and another girl for the garage!

Rick Wakeman - TFTO

Like it or not, he was one of the composers and his giving to the piece was excellent, and even when Transatlantic played Part 1, it stood out ... but in the end, RW is just a street kid that made it big with a little education, and he thinks his opinions are better than what we all say because he was a part of it. 

I once told him, that he just likes the academic stories, not the newly created orations and stories for a piece of music, and that is why he rehashes all the ... bombs out there!

Dean wrote: Artists not liking their own work is normal, it drives them to do better.

Yes, No and Maybe. What drives me better, or you (I think) is that little something that you hear in your dream and while you are driving sucking a smoke, or sitting in the beach and ignoring the sea ... and you want to put that together.

Better is an illusion, and an idea, and has very little to do with anything else, other than the counting of how many scales and chords you know now, when in the old days, you only knew 3 and it STILL helped you put together a piece of music. 

I think that we lose out to the "experience", the childish-ness that goes with wanting to do something ... and now we don't do something ... we compose it!

Sometimes I think we have lost our minds in the whole thing ... reminds me of the Rivette film "La Belle Noiseusse", because it was 4 hours long and people walked out, and could not appreciate a SINGLE STROKE of the paint on the canvas, right in front of you ... and how it felt and how it splashed your imagination.

We've lost the ability to appreciate things, and history, to commerciality, and we continually perpetuate the mechanical, instead of the person.

Dean, your work is as good today, as it was yesterday!