Replay - Technological Musical Magician, Derek Dearden - 640

Produced by Wayne Hall, Joseph Cottrell, Jeffrey Crecelius and Ken Fuller

Unfortunately, this is another week in which Mark and I have been unable to record a new episode. Don't worry though, next week we are interviewing someone who created a huge amount of Yeskit when he worked with the band in the 1970s. We are also taking part in an epic session all about the Steven Wilson remixes of Tales from Topographic Oceans with several of your favourite YMP guests. Those two episodes will (hopefully) be coming up in the next two weeks so look out for those.

This week, on the theme of Yeskit, I'm going to replay the interview we did with the delightful Derek Dearden.

Here's how I introduced the interview in June 2023:

"Unless you have already read my book, Yes The Tormato Story, you may not recognise the name Derek Dearden. However, you have certainly heard the results of his amazing technical wizardry. This is another deep dive episode but it also contains much of interest to any Yes fan. Derek was a delight to speak to when Mark and I interviewed him a few months ago and I’ve been keeping this fascinating interview under wraps so that early readers of the book had a few surprises to discover. If you don’t like spoilers, then consider coming back to this episode at a later date. I won’t be offended.

Quite a bit of this conversation was used in the chapter entitled The Other Drums in my book but even if you have read that, I’m sure you’ll love hearing Derek explaining how it all came about in his own words. To whet your appetite, Derek was employed at Advision as a technician and then went on to found a company very closely associated with Alan White."

• What did Derek Dearden create for Alan White?
• How did it all come about?
• What else did Derek invent?

Let us know if you agree with us!