“We get halfway through, just before the solo, and all the power goes off on stage”: The night a furious Ray Davies cut a Yes set short before aiming blows and kicks at Rick Wakeman

In late 1971, Yes and The Kinks hooked up for a short run of shows in New York, but brotherly love between the bands was in short supply

The Kinks‘ Ray Davies couldn’t care less about Yes‘s sobbing, but he did decide it was time for the band to stop all its playing during a 1971 show when the British bands shared billing at the Ritz Theatre in Staten Island, N.Y. 

It was the latter of two shows on November 27, during Yes’s first stateside trek with keyboardist Rick Wakeman, promoting the band’s just-released fourth studio album, Fragile, as well as The Yes Album, which was released nine months prior. It was just one of three shows Yes did with the Kinks on the jaunt, too.

“We looked up to those guys,” former frontman Jon Anderson tells Classic Rock. “it was like the Hollies, The Beatles, The Kinks – real raw rock’n’roll, really good.” But Davies, according to Anderson, was quick to lay down the law when the bands arrived at the theatre. “He said to me, Anderson…’ I said, ‘Yes, what do you want?’ He said, ‘Don’t forget, you’ve got 50 minutes on stage,’ because we were opening. I said, ‘OK Ray, no problem.'”