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 bookThe 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 hap
