This page last updated: 17 Sep 2023
 

YES and projects with several Yesmen	Jon Anderson	Chris Squire	Steve Howe	Alan White
Geoff Downes	Trevor Horn	Tony Kaye	Peter Banks	Patrick Moraz
Bill Bruford	Rick Wakeman	Trevor Rabin	Billy Sherwood	Igor Khoroshev Oliver Wakeman
Benoît David Jon Davison	Asia	CIRCA:	Anderson & Wakeman	Others associated with the band

XYZ
In an interview for Rolling Stone published Nov 2012, Jimmy Page (ex-Led Zeppelin) said that he has multi-track recordings from the 1981 XYZ sessions with Chris Squire and Alan White and that he would like to see these released at some point. Squire's response to this came in a Jan 2013 interview:

Interviewer: Jimmy Page recently brought up [...] the XYZ sessions [...] even suggesting the idea of releasing some of it. Are you on board with that?

Squire: I wouldn’t have a problem. It was fairly unfinished when we left it; it was pretty much in a demo form, mainly. So it would require some more work. There were only four tunes that were involved in that, so if there is an idea for a serious release of it, there would have to be a little bit more done on it.

[...]

Most of the material was songs I had written actually, although Jimmy did contribute. [...] Yeah, we might try and revive it in the future. We’d have to get together, of course, and welcome it, but that wouldn’t be something I’d be opposed to.

While Squire refers to "four tunes" here and that's what has been bootlegged, there have been past indications that there was further material beyond those four. A Feb 2013 interview then has this exchange:

Interviewer: [Page] said that there are some multi-track recordings that exist that he’d love to see come out. Would the two of you have to do some additional work to make that happen?

Squire: Probably, yeah. There are bass tracks and drum tracks and guitar tracks, but there wasn’t much in the way of overdubs. I did quite a few vocals and harmonies, but they were somewhat rough. It was intended just really to be demos that we were making anyway. So that’s where it got to really. I know you can probably access that stuff — it’s out there on the web and you can find it, but they are just really rough mixes. How they got out there I’m not really sure, but that’s the way those things happen. So yes, if we seriously did anything with those, they’d need a little bit more work on them.

A Dec 2013 interview had another exchange on the topic. The interviewer asks whether Page has been in contact about releasing the material. Squire replies, "No! [...] we haven’t gotten in touch about it." He continues, "And you have to remember that that stuff would have to be finished off a bit more, because what we did together was really demo-ish with rough edges. I think it would need a bit more actual work."

In a Jul 2015 interview, after Squire's death, Page was asked about wanting to release the XYZ tapes:

Absolutely, but I haven’t worked on it. It’s a series of multi-tracks, it was something that I was wanting to do after all of the Led Zeppelin stuff was out, I wanted to contact Chris and Alan. It’s really sad that we’ve lost him. The music was really good. It’s the first thing that I did after we lost John Bonham. I had a studio at the time, and they wanted to get together, and I thought this was like laying down the gauntlet… I’m not curling up under a rock and hiding [after Led Zeppelin’s breakup]. And these guys are really, really good so I had to be really good too. It was really an interesting blend, and really good music.

I saw Jimmy Page recently in Seattle [...] we had a chat and he mentioned he was thinking about digging out the tapes and remixing the XYZ music, finishing some of the tracks. [...] I don’t know when that might happen but we wr[o]te some great music together with Chris so I’d be very interested in pursuing that project.

White: a few years ago I was at a function [...] celebrating the life of Jimmy Page. I was talking to Jimmy for a while [...] Jimmy said, “I want to dig those tapes up and finish them off and release an album.” I said, “Just call me.” I think he put the project on hold though when he got back to England.

Interviewer: Wow. It would be pretty amazing if you finally finished it and put it out.

White: Well, I need to get in touch with Jimmy and be like, “Let’s finish those tapes off.” Maybe we can get Robert [Plant] to sing on them or something. That would be quite amazing.

Unfortunately, we’ve lost Chris now. It was something that I always hoped to do, as some sort of project, to get hold of him and Alan. It’s not even worth talking about, because it’s all speculation. I haven’t had a chance to really listen to the stuff and see just exactly what we do have, and what we don’t have. I don’t have any mixdowns of it. If I did, I’m not quite sure where they are now.

I sit down with him [Gallo], we talk, we record it, then he goes and transcribes it.

We're about half way through that and have been working on it for about a year.

We have to schedule time, he lives in Los Angeles and I live in Phoenix in Arizona. We have to find time to do it, sometimes I'll go to him, sometimes he comes to me.

[...] Hopefully within a year we'll be able to wrap it up and get it out there. We haven't signed a deal yet, we'll get it written first

Any news, additions or corrections, please e-mail Henry Potts. Thanks.