so Lodgic ended. And I wasn't sure what I was doing, and I ran into an old friend of mine, Bruce Gowdy, who's a great guitar player/songwriter, and he says to me. 'Let's write some songs, just try to get a publishing deal, y'know, forget the record company/band thing, let's just write some...' So we wrote four songs. Those four songs were “The Revolution Song”, “The Moment is Here”, “Can't Let You Go” and “Fight to Win”. Those four songs, we shopped around Los Angeles and everyone passed. I mean, we [...] were hell bent that it was gonna work, so let's just keep taking meetings. So we took meetings everywhere and everyone passed, until we went to a key figure in our career, both Bruce and mine, um, Sherry Saba[?] was a was an A&R sort of rep for Warner Chappell [...] Sherry heard it [the music] and flipped out. So Sherry took it to her boss, Mike Sandoval, who was the president of Warner Chappell at the time, here in LA, and we took a meeting at the 9000 building on Sunset [...] Literally, it was like a scene from a movie, because Mike Sandoval was a super nice guy and he he kicks in “The Revolution Song” and he literally gets up on his chair and starts just rocking [...] We got a very, very large publishing deal.

The four songs get signed as just publishing, there's no record deal there, but the publishing deal was so big for the time that it sparked the interest of every label. [...] So now, all of a sudden, we've got labels saying, 'Wow, we want to sign you.' So now, we have to do showcases, so we set up, and we start playing for this label and that label, and this one and that one, and we get through the entire situation until the very last showcase, where a guy walks in who, I had no idea [...] that he was where he was, because I wasn't that tuned into the business [...] So Derek Shulman walks into the room [...] lo and behold, he's a huge power player at Polydor [...] And he heard World Trade and said I'm taking it, and [...] that's where my relationship with [...] Derek started. So we got signed to Polydor for a very, very large record deal. And we thought we were going to be taking that to the next level, and actually we were, for a while, in direct competition with ABWH, who was on Arista at the time, and Trevor Rabin's solo album, which had just come out, Can't Look Away. And I get record reports that were like, them on top and us on the bottom, and then next week, we were closer, and then we got above them, and I was like, 'Wow!' I mean these are my heroes and we're above them. Something good is happening here.

Just around that time, Derek calls me and says, 'I'm leaving Polydor. I'm going to become the president of Atco Records.' So he leaves Polydor, which essentially is, again, another version of [...] Lodgic. Regime change. Whenever regimes change, everything shifts and you're either lucky if you survive, or you're one of the ones who get booted. So... I was young and kind of naive and didn't believe the end was as near as Derek was telling me it was at Polydor. I was like, 'No, man, we're cooking, the band's smoking.' At that time is where he introduced me to Squire, who had heard the demos for World Trade, and Derek said, 'World Trade's pretty much done over there at Polydor and this guy could be the lead singer of Yes. You should meet this guy.' So Chris and I met [...] and we started writing material. World Trade was still in existence, over on Polydor, and as that was happening, Chris said to me, 'You're going to be the lead singer of Yes,' and I keep saying, 'No, I'm not [...] I'm into working with you and and writing songs, but I have my band, World Trade' [...] Derek would call me and go, 'Dude [...] they're gonna drop you, trust me.'

I have a definite vivid memory of making that record because that’s right when I met Chris and started hanging out with him. I asked him “Would you please come sing on my record, we’re doing this World Trade album and I’d love you to come and do an overdub just so I’ve got you on this record, man!”

So Chris is actually on that record singing ‘Sense of Freedom’. He sings that background part at the end: “hold on to your sense of freedom” and that’s the thing I remember the most, standing in the studio watching him sing and looking at the guys and going “it’s fucking Chris Squire out there!” I was still in complete awe at that point.

I was sitting watching the show and realized squire was three rows ahead to my right. I saw him get up and head to the aftershow guest area and chased him down lol. I pulled on his jacket from behind him, he turned and said...
“well, hello”. I introduced my self (as I knew he had already heard the world trade demos via Derek Schulman). He looked at me and said...”you’re very tall, it’s good to be tall”. Lol. The rest is history as they say....