"We would go out and he really never wanted anybody to know that he was a musician": The troubled life and lonely death of Peter Banks, the man once called "the architect of prog"

Peter Banks onstage in 1973.

High Barnet, on the suburban cusp of North London and Hertfordshire, seems like an incongruous place for one of prog rock’s founding fathers to have spent his last days. But it was here, in March 2013, between the affluent high street and green woodlands, that Yes co-founder and original guitarist Peter Banks died. 

Banks wasn’t quite a recluse, but he had long ago removed himself from public life and returned to the house he grew up in. For several years this pioneering musician had surrounded himself with just a handful of friends and associates, many of whom had no idea of his past.