Alan White, who has died aged 72 after a short illness, was one of rock’s most versatile and highly regarded drummers. He will be chiefly remembered for his career with the British progressive rockers Yes, whom he joined in 1972 after the departure of their original drummer, Bill Bruford. Had White’s health not been failing, the band’s forthcoming tour next month would have marked his 50 years with it.
White joined Yes just as they were about to begin touring with their fifth album, Close to the Edge (1972), which comprised three extended tracks and is regarded by many as the pinnacle of Yes’s elaborate, quasi-classical prog-rock.
White had only three days to learn the band’s repertoire before the first concert in Dallas, Texas, but accomplished the feat without a hitch. His muscular approach was in contrast to Bruford’s more jazz-influenced style, and was ideal for the arena-sized venues in which Yes were now playing. His work on tour was preserved on the triple live album Yessongs (1973). The first Yes studio album he played on was Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973).
But what he called “the biggest break I ever had” was the phone call that came out of the blue in 1969 from John Lennon, who had seen him playing in a London club. “I was sure it was somebody playing a joke, so I hung up,” White recalled. “A minute later the phone rang again, and sure enough it really was John Lennon.”
Lennon wanted White to join the band he was assembling for the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival that year. White was whisked to Heathrow airport in a limousine, and in the VIP lounge he met John and Yoko, Eric Clapton and the bass player Klaus Voormann.
They rehearsed their material on the plane and dubbed themselves the Plastic Ono Band. Their performance was preserved on the Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album, which reached No 10 on the US album chart. “John hadn’t performed live for a few years, and I know he really enjoyed Toronto,” said White. “I think after the show he decided that he was really going to leave the Beatles.”
White then played drums and piano on Lennon’s hit single Instant Karma!, which reached the Top 5 in the US and UK in 1970, and on most of the tracks on Lennon’s Imagine album, which topped the UK and US charts the following year. Of Imagine’s totemic title song, White recalled how “I came up with what I thought was an appropriate approach to the song, nothing really complicated, but that’s what it called for.”
The Lennon connection led to White being invited to join the star-studded cast who recorded George Harrison’s post-Beatles triple album All Things Must Pass (1970). This was another historic release, topping the US and UK charts.
Alan was born in Pelton, County Durham, the only child of Raymond and May (nee Thrower). His father did a variety of jobs, including as a bus driver and shopkeeper, and was an amateur musician who played piano in pubs. At the age of six Alan began taking piano lessons, and after his uncle (a drummer with dance bands) noticed the “percussive” way he attacked the keyboard he was given an drumkit for Christmas when he was 12.
He was 13 and still doing a paper round when he joined his first band, the Downbeats, who played cover versions of pop hits in clubs and dancehalls around Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1964 the Downbeats became the Blue Chips and won a contest for amateur bands at the London Palladium, for which the judges were Ringo Starr and the Beatles manager Brian Epstein. This brought them a record contract under which they recorded several singles, but sales were poor, and the group soon broke up.
White studied technical drawing at Bishop Auckland College and planned to become an architect, but he was lured back to music. He was recruited by Billy Fury’s group, the Gamblers, and toured with them in West Germany, before joining the Alan Price Set and finding additional work as a session musician. He then put in a stint with Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and was playing on a European tour with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour when he got the call from Yes.
He was behind the drums with Yes while they went through assorted lineup and stylistic changes, with the other core members being the vocalist Jon Anderson, the guitarist Steve Howe and the bass player Chris Squire; in 2015 White became the longest-serving Yes member when Squire died.
He played on their bestselling album 90125 (1983), which contained the band’s only US No 1 singles hit, Owner of a Lonely Heart, and on the 1977 album Going for the One, which was No 1 in the UK and contained the single Wonderous Stories (1977), which reached no 7 as Yes’s highest placed British single.
In 1976 he had released his solitary solo album, Ramshackled, of which he observed that “I tried to get a lot of different kinds of music on the album because I like playing lots of different kinds of music.”
In 1981 he joined up with Squire and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page to form a group provisionally named XYZ – but the venture amounted to nothing more than a few unreleased demo tracks.
In 1994 he moved to the US – to another Newcastle, in Washington state – with his wife, Gigi (nee Walberg), whom he had married in 1982. There he formed a local band named White, who released an album in 2006, and also performed with the Yes spin-off band, Circa.
In 2017 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Yes, and he played on their most recent album, The Quest (2021).
He is survived by Gigi and their children, Jesse and Cassi.
• Alan White, musician, born 14 June 1949; died 26 May 2022
