“The label said, ‘We find the cover a bit dark, the logo is ugly and, frankly, we don’t hear a single’”: Amazingly, a prog supergroup soundtracked the summer of 1982. The secret of their success? English church music

In 2012 late Asia frontman John Wetton and keyboardist Geoff Downes looked back on the band’s explosive 1982 debut album, reflecting on the series of events that took a supergroup of prog heavy-hitters to the top of the pop charts.

The roots of Asia can be traced back to the mid-70s. After leaving King Crimson in 1974, John Wetton put together a new progressive outfit called UK. Their second album, 1979’s Danger Money, tempered its virtuosity with more commercial touches. Wetton’s songwriting was slowly evolving into the streamlined sound of Asia.

“I was even heading in that direction in Crimson with songs like Easy Money and Starless,” Wetton says. But the process took time: “I had a svengali, John Kalodner,” he explains. “When I presented UK to him he said, ‘You’re close, but no cigar.’”

When UK split up in 1980 Wetton spent three months in Miami with Wishbone Ash; then, in England, he recorded a low-key solo album Caught In The Crossfire, made up of pop-rock songs in a similar vein to Foreigner and Toto. Kalodner was impressed, but thought Wetton needed a band. With perfect timing he met Steve Howe.

“Yes had just imploded at the end of the Drama tour,” explains Geoff Downes. “But Steve and I had worked up a good relationship. So I then got a call asking if I wanted to play keyboards on Steve and John’s new songs.”

Sole Survivor (Live at the Budokan, Tokyo, Japan, 1983) [2022 Remaster] - YouTube

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Downes joined Wetton, Howe and Carl Palmer at London’s Nomis Studios, and the keyboardist – with his background in advertising jingles and The Buggles’ massive hit Video Killed The Radio Star – proved to be the perfect writing partner for the singer/bassist.

“I wasn’t much younger than the rest of them,” Downes says. “But I was the new kid on the block, and had been involved in a different side of the music business. The others had had their fill of epic pieces. They wanted something more direct.”

Wetton and Downes shared a mutual interest in English church music. “My brother is a choirmaster and church organist,” says Wetton. “That’s the music I grew up on.”

“English church music was fundamental to the Asia sound,” adds Downes. “That’s where we got those anthemic chords.”

Asia signed to Geffen, and the album’s recording took place through summer and autumn 1981. The label brought in former Queen engineer Mike Stone to produce; he’d just finished work on Journey’s Escape. “We weren’t exactly Son Of Journey – but in some ways Asia did become a British equivalent,” says Downes.

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Crucially, Asia weren’t an obvious musical amalgam of Yes, Crimson and ELP. “If we’d made the album people expected us to make we’d have sold 150,000 records,” says Wetton. “That’s fine, but we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. It was always going to be a more commercial sound. ”

Out of the mix came an album that, as Wetton puts it, “mixed prog stuff with a backbone of great pop-rock songs.” There was fiddly art-rock (Time Again), a tender ballad (Without You) and three hits-in-waiting (Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell, Sole Survivor). As a nod to the past, Asia commissioned Roger Dean to create the album artwork. “Asia wanted their cover to look as unlike Yes as possible,” Dean said in 2005.

The image wasn’t to everyone’s liking. “The president of the record company took me to one side,” laughs Wetton, “and said, ‘Quite honestly, we find the cover a bit dark, the logo is ugly and, frankly, we don’t hear a single!’”

Incredibly, Heat Of The Moment – with its churchy keyboards and burnished chorus – was the last song recorded. And, as Wetton admits, “If you’d taken that off the album you could have taken two zeros off the record sales.”

Heat Of The Moment emerged reached No.4 on the Billboard pop charts, with the LP hitting No.1 in the Billboard Top 100, and No.11 in the UK. “In spring ’82, if you turned on the radio or MTV it was Heat Of The Moment,” says Wetton. “Everything else was Human League and A Flock Of Seagulls, and then we came in like a ton of bricks.”