Introduction

By 1981, progressive rock had become a dirty phrase. Most such acts, like Genesis, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and others, had shifted towards shorter, more compact songs, and steered away from the ten to twenty-minute epics of the 1970s.

When former Yes manager, Brian Lane, guided guitarist Steve Howe (who had played with Yes from 1970 to the band's breakup in early 1981) towards bassist/vocalist, John Wetton (ex-Family, King Crimson, Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, UK and Wishbone Ash), it was with the thought of forming a new band that could adapt to the new musical climate of the 1980s whilst still maintaining the musicality and sophistication of the 1970s. Wetton. and Howe decided that a project together was worth pursuing, and under the guidance of legendary A&R man John Kalodner, it was time to form a proper band. Initially, the idea Lane had was for a lineup of Wetton, ex- Emerson, Lake & Palmer drummer Carl Palmer, and former Yes keyboard wizard, Rick Wakeman. They would combine with guitarist/vocalist Trevor Rabin, who had enjoyed success with the band, Rabbitt, in his homeland of South Africa, but left the country due to its Apartheid policy, relocating first to the UK and then the US. Wakeman later said, 'Because the record company (Geffen Records) were happy to sign us without hearing us play or even talk about the style of music we wanted to do, I refused to sign the contract on a matter of principle'. Thus, Lane moved on to a combo of Wetton and Howe. Wetton stated the importance of Kalodner in the Dave Gallant book The Heat Goes On:

Kalodner was key to this whole thing. He groomed me for the job, starting in 1976 when I played with Roxy Music at Santa Monica Civic Center. He was working for Atlantic then as head of A&R/West Coast. I'd just come off stage; I was just getting changed out of my stage jeans into my regular jeans and this voice behind me said, 'Would you have lunch with me tomorrow?'. I turned and saw John Kalodner standing in front of me. Then I saw the card he had in his hand. (it) said Atlantic Records. I said, "Why do you want to have lunch with me?" He said, 'Just courtesy. You're on Atlantic and I'm the Atlantic person'. When we sat down, he said, 'What are you doing? Get something together because you're worth a lot more than this. Playing backup to Bryan Ferry is not your destiny'. He gave me the best pep talk of all time. From then on, I would get calls every couple of days. He'd send me tapes to listen to. He kept grooming me towards this position. Eventually, in 1981, that was the time to do it. He'd moved to Geffen, and with this new-found position, he wanted to start up with a bang, and I was the guy he was going to do it with. That was it. I started writing songs that would become (the first Asia album). I could not believe how quickly it happened. From demo form, these songs went to Kalodner, and suddenly Brian Lane was there, Steve Howe was there, and everything fell into place so quickly.

Howe recalled in the same book:

Yes disbanded somewhere around January 1981. A few months went by, and then the phone rang one day and Brian Lane said he'd been speaking with John Wetton, who wasn't doing anything. We met in a small and poky rehearsal room. and we spent a day in there, and John really blew me away completely, playing the most incredible bass stuff. I thought, 'Well, forget (Chris) Squire and the rest'. As it happened, the group would go in a different direction, but I didn't know that at the time. We started looking at some songs - maybe we spent a few days in there. They were the embryos of songs, like 'Cutting It Fine', 'Without You' and 'Here Comes The Feeling.' Basically, we were knocking around some songs and deciding whether we could play together, who would be in the band and what kind of music we would play.

An attempt to recruit ex-Jeff Beck drummer Simon Phillips into the band failed, but Simon was there for a bit. Phillips later said: 'I bailed because I wasn't totally into the music'. Carl Palmer then entered the picture and discussed how he came into the band in the Gallant book:

I got a phone call asking me if I would like to come and play in a band that had Steve Howe in it. Well, I'd known Steve for a long time, and I'd also known the manager (Lane) for a long time. I came and played; there was John Wetton, Steve Howe and myself - no keyboard player. I wasn't too happy with that because I feel that with the amount of technology available today, not to have a keyboard player is a bad idea. So I suggested we have a keyboard player, and Steve Howe, having played with Geoff Downes in the last configuration of Yes, suggested we try him. It seemed good to me, so the four of us played and we decided to be a band after about a week, because it felt good.

Around this time, it was a decision whether to add another musician and become a quintet, which led to meetings with Trevor Rabin and ex-The Move/Electric Light Orchestra/Wizzard member, Roy Wood, as well as former Journey singer Robert Fleischmann. None would work out, but ironically enough, Rabin would replace Howe in Yes in the near future, and he did do some demo work with Asia before departing. Wetton told Gallant:

When we first started, we wanted two singers. I was after that Everly Brothers touch. But we tried so many people and we had about three or four songs, most of which were my songs. I'd teach the guy to sing it and then at the end of the day, we'd go to the pub and talk about what had happened that afternoon. Everyone would say, 'Well, when you taught him the song, he didn't sing it as well as you did.' The problem was that we were never really going to find anybody.

Wetton elaborated on the subject of Rabin in the Gallant book:

Geoff and I knew all the time we didn't want any more people in the band. That was it. We had the four; it didn't need to be any more. We had the songwriting covered. We knew what the sound was going to be. But still, we got bombarded by people auditioning for the band. Trevor Rabin was one of the better ones. In fact, he was probably the best one.

A band name that was considered at the time was MI5 - after the branch of the British Secret Service - but with Rabin gone (he did actually rehearse with the band: 'Here Comes The Feeling', and 'Starry Eyes', which would later become 'Only Time Will Tell'), they ditched the idea of MI5. Wetton credited the name to Lane in an interview with Kerrang! magazine: 'We were sitting around the office with dictionaries, and Brian said, "Nobody has ever used the name Asia, have they?". We said, "Go away, Brian", and then the light bulbs went on! It's a good, strong name. And a name is very important. If we had been called The Architects, it would've been taken in a completely different way, even if the music was the same'.

Asia was signed to Geffen Records with huge expectations and began working on the debut album, Asia, with producer Mike Stone, who had helmed hugely successful albums by Queen, Journey and April Wine. In fact, Stone had just produced Escape for Journey in 1981, which topped the US charts and sold over nine million copies, with four smash US singles coming from it. Palmer talked at the time to MTV about getting Stone involved: 'We managed to get tied in with Geffen Records. David (Geffen) heard what we were trying to do. He loved the idea - the musical concept that we had - and he immediately said, "OK, let's do something". We decided to have an objective view within the group, i.e. a producer who was an English chap named Mike Stone'.

Kalodner was the one who brought Stone on board. In an interview with Dave Gallant, Kalodner stated: 'I originally asked Jimmy Iovine to produce the record, which he did not want to do. He said, "Why don't you use Mike Stone?"'.

Wetton was onboard with that decision: 'Journey, Kiss, Queen - you name it, Mike was doing it. Mike and I got on like a house on fire. We had exactly the same vision for the sound of the band. It was the harmony vocals on the chorus, the way that the vocal would be presented, in your face. Lots of keyboard layers and stuff. It was just exactly right'. A key ingredient that Wetton brought up was this: 'I figured that in order to survive in the 1980s, you have to stop being a band of the 1970s. You have to condense more and be more direct: cut the soloing. So you play for four minutes instead of the eight you used to play'.

What Mike Stone was able to do with the band was get the balance right from the combination of talent, and - as Wetton alluded to - bring in the accents on choruses and layer the instruments. The accent here was on the cohesive, collective sound, and not individual performances, which was more difficult to achieve than it sounds because these four musicians, legendary for their musicianship, were now being asked to rein that in. Stone did a masterful job in not only achieving that, but in creating an identifiable approach, which became the 'Asia sound'. You can clearly hear Stone's production of Escape - which was Journey's boldest sounding album to date - an accent on a group feel and one identifiable sound. The choruses and arrangements were worked out and carefully coordinated in an approach that was very close to what Asia would do.

Palmer mentioned: 'We have tried to create a sound...