Review of Yes' Fragile

Released 1971

"Love comes to you and then after, dream on, on to the heart of the sunrise. Sharp-distance, how can the sun with it's arms all around me? Sharp-distance, how can the wind with so many around me I feel lost in the city."

My first three Yes albums were - in order of purchase - The Yes Album, Close to The Edge and 90125. My crashing disappointment with the last of these had the impact of devaluing the other two, coming the consider them as good, but not great.

Thus, by the time I went away to University, Yes could not be considered a favourite band of mine, although I had the first two of these three albums on opposing sides of a C90 cassette. I was, if truth be told, gutted that i had come to see Yes as nothing special. I have previously mentioned elsewhere in this blog that I had been aware of the mystique and grandeur of the Yes name from a very young age, long coveting the gorgeousness of Roger Dean's handiwork, fantasizing that the music that it enveloped was as beautiful and mysterious. Now, three albums in, the pedestal had toppled and my interest had waned.

My opinion was changed by a friend's elder brothers collection of original Yes LPs. This friend had inherited not only his brothers records but his passion for Yes. This was, from memory, a more or less complete collection of Yes' seventies oeuvre, so there was wall to wall Roger Dean, vast opening gate folds and lyric sheets. Prog heaven, in other words. Combine this with the extra kudos afforded by the scuffed edges, mild fading and industrial thickness of the vinyl and I could once more glimpse my pre-pubescent fervor for the mystique of the band.

And so to Fragile itself. I knew in advance that this was seen by fans as one of the pinnacles not just of Yes' career but of the entire prog genre. The artwork was obviously iconic one of those I had been aware of from before the age of ten.

This was the first album featuring Rick Wakeman, and it's his distinctive keyboard work that launches Roundabout and continues to define a key shift in Yes' sound from The Yes Album. I have as much time for Tony Kaye as Rick Wakeman. I've wondered often why the latter is so revered while Tony was all but forgotten until the execrable 80's albums. They have a very different sound but of equal value in my view. However, Roundabout's undoubted infectiousness is down to Rick Wakeman's contribution. I read somewhere that Jon Anderson was inspired to write the lyrics when seeing the mountains of Scotland looming out the mist, not that you would know from his bonkers lyrics: as obtuse as a fish in a Landrover.

What stops Fragile being regarded more highly be me and by many others is the mix of more successfully realised lengthier group songs and the shorter individual tracks. Yes, it's very prog to show off your remarkable virtuosity, but, call me unadventurous, it only succeeds in punctuating the album badly. Just as The Beatles White Album would have been a less successful release if the genius of the track sequencing had been altered, I believe Fragile could have been a classic with more prudent editing.

Now that I've shown my colours as a miserable old fart, this is a minor quibble as the longer tracks are uniformly excellent. South Side of The Sky is a particular favourite with a grand interplay between Rick and Steve Howe. As barmy as Jon Anderson is, his performance is transcendent, in a league of his own. SSOTS is a standout group effort with Bill Bruford's drumming frighteningly complex and very very tight with Chris' bass.

Long Distance Runaround achieves the seemingly impossible: a catchy sing-a-long prog song with lyrics that defy explanation.

Heart of The Sunrise is stunning. Jon's delivery is profoundly beautiful producing arguably the best track Yes had recorded up until that point.

To this day, although not my favourite Yes album, Fragile remains one of the finest headphones albums I own.

Review of Yes' 90125

Released 1983

"Talk the simple smile Such platonic eye
How they drown in incomplete capacity
Strangest of them all
When the feeling calls
How we drown in stylistic audacity
Charge the common ground
Round and round and round
We living in gravity"

The fact that I have attempted to write this review four times is entirely symptomatic of the frustrating experience I have each time I listen to the album.

Why I chose to purchase 90125 as my fourth Yes album remains a mystery to me. It was probably heavily influenced by the fact that at the time - mid 1985 - Yes were still riding high on the success of this, their most commercially successful album by a country mile. When flicking through the 'Y' section in any music emporium, the ubiquity of the hideous silver sleeve must have burned it's sickly way into my being. Of course, Owner Of A Lonely Heart was played as often on the radio as Kayleigh. I'd almost certainly also seen the video, complete with blonde highlights, silly outfits and drum machines akimbo.

Why then, was it not plain to me that this was a very different animal to the prog monster albums of their which I already owned and loved? Goodness only knows?

Mind you, there is the horrible possibility that I've conveniently forgotten that I may have actually liked it first time around. I don't think so, but who knows.

My wife has just this last week, bought the latest Depeche Mode album whose sleeve shares a remarkable similarity with 90125; sharing the same metallic silver background and pastel awfulness in the foreground. This speaks volumes to me. Yes, it was a different line-up. Yes, it was a different decade, and they were undoubtedly, and ultimately very successfully achieving the objective of reaching a different audience, but the degree of difference served to alienate a large number of the long-standing fans.

I am conscious that, at the time I bought 90125, I wasn't the biggest Yes fan in the world and that my view is largely coloured by my perception many years later and with over twenty of their albums on my shelves. While this has coloured my judgement, I find it difficult to put my current view to one side.

There are some redeeming aspects of the album, though few and far between. Without Jon Anderson's involvement, I very much doubt that the album would have enjoyed a second listen. In many respects, in sharing some of the vocals with Trevor Rabin added a worthwhile dimension to Jon's styling; he was forced out of his comfort zone and produced a very pleasant result. Although I have no time for Mr Rabin's horrid MOR vocal growling, when combined with Jon's unique delivery, the result is not half bad. Throw Chris Squire's solid background vocals into the mix and it's no surprise that commercially this worked so well. Old school Yes fans took some solace in the fact that Jon's nutty mysticism was kind of still there, not completely eradicated by the Journey-Foreigner-REO Speedwagon-esque glossiness of the overall effect.

Old school Yes fans would have originally been delighted that Tony Kaye was coming back into the picture. Many of us favour his approach over that of Rick Wakeman. We were all then bemused in the resulting departure in style from anything remotely Yes-like keyboard wise on 90125. It's all special effects and very contemporary and not what most fans expected or wanted.

The rhythm section of Chris Squire and Alan White is still present, but not immediately recognisable as such. I've always felt that Alan White's background as a more straightforward rock and roll drummer meant that he probably relished the opportunity to branch out from the odd time signatures and get back to familiar territory. Chris Squire's contribution, like Jon Anderson's remains relatively unquashed, such is the distinctive nature of his playing.

As a Yes purist, I struggle to say anything positive about Trevor Rabin's role on guitar. He was no doubt was the main change from the norm and he obviously was very successful in doing what he set out to do. For me, and for many others, his style was just not Yes-like.

I don't like being negative in reviewing any album, but, as a prog album, 90125 fails on practically level. At least for me.

Review of Yes' The Yes Album

Released 1971

"Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever.
All I know can be shown by your acceptance
of the fact there shown before you".

I had a kind of subliminal awareness of Roger Dean's classic Yes logo from what feels like a very young age. As Yes were a major band, constantly in the music press and doing the stadium circuits during the mid seventies, somehow, given my tender years I seemed to know of Yes and their caped keyboard player, Rick Wakeman. I knew nothing about their music, just that they were a 'significant' band that existed just outside the mainstream. And for that reason alone, they interested me.

With a desire to delve further into the progressive rock world, and as I was reading anything and everything I could about the genre, I continually found references to the fact that Yes were revered proponents of the prog stable.

The Yes Album was my first Yes purchase based simply on the lack of availability of anything else in their catalogue in my home town. Having purposefully set out one day to purchase a Yes album, I was disappointed that the only one I could find didn't have a Roger Dean sleeve. I found the sleeve odd (and still do) and shrugged with resignation at the realisation that my previous theory about all prog rock albums being devoid of images of the band was clearly misguided. However disappointed I was about the sleeve, I went ahead with my purchase fully expecting to be let down by the music itself.

I wore a furrowed brow throughout the first airing of the album. This was very strange music. There were so many changes of time signature, of tempo and of mood in each song that it felt as though several different songs were being stitched together. The complexity of the instrumentation struck me at this time as pretentious. This concerned me greatly, as this was a common criticism hurled at the genre and especially at Yes themselves. On top of this, the bass was being used in ways I had never heard before; wandering all over songs, in what felt like the wrong places.

And then there was the voice and the lyrics. I had been told that you either loved or hated Jon Anderson's Lancastrian tenor stream of consciousness. On this first listen, I couldn't see myself falling into the former camp.

When the album finished, I put it away for a few days feeling as though I was out of my depth and perhaps simply too young to appreciate what many others felt was a worthy piece of music.

I have since learned that many great albums just don't work on the first listen. Some indeed take either many plays to register properly, or that you just have to be in the right mood and in the right place for it to 'click'. In the case of The Yes Album, my second listen worked due to the wearing of my headphones. When Steve Howe culminates the final part of Starship Trooper with a achingly wonderful piece of guitar work, I heard it entirely differently and was seriously impressed. Also, the first time around I hadn't picked up the 'subtle' interweaving of 'all we are saying, is give peace a chance' into the denouement of I've Seen All Good People. Now that I picked it up on the headphones, I could see that it was clever and that it worked.

Picking up these nuances made me listen more intently. It was then possible to be more receptive and respecting of Tony Kaye's keyboard work and to be impressed by the drummer, who clearly had jazz leanings. Very slowly, I even began to be drawn in by Jon Anderson's singing style. I couldn't make head nor tail of the lyrics, but I became enthralled by how the whole thing just worked. I wasn't hard to see why Yes' music divided music lovers in the way that it did, but I was delighted that now that it had clicked for me, I was moving into the inner sanctum of prog.

I still don't like the sleeve though.