Yes - Yes Album
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Music CD Cover
Artist: YesBrand: YES
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-01-14
Music Label: Elektra / Wea
Soundtracks:
- Yours Is No Disgrace
- Clap
- Starship Trooper: A. Life Seeker/B. Disillusion/C. Wurm
- I've Seen All Good People: A. Your Move/B. All Good People
- A Venture
- Perpetual Change (Bonus Tracks)
- Your Move (Single Version)
- Starship Trooper: Life Seeker (Single Version)
- Clap (Studio Version)
Free Music Notes for Yes Album
Free Music Review: Perpetual change--and the beginning of the Classic Period for Yes (1971-1977)--abounds
Hit: 5 Stars
The year is 1971, and Atlantic records has reached a critical, if unspoken, decision in regards to the promising British band Yes: If the band's third studio attempt follows in the wake of the past two, then the label has no choice but to drop the band. This sort of ultimatum abounds often in the music business, as bands fail initially to meet sales expectations. It happened with Kansas after their third album, 'Masque' (1975), much in the same way it happened with Yes earlier in the 1970s.
Luckily, neither band surrendered to the tremendous pressure generated by their precarious contract positions, and both bands produced successful albums when it really counted.
What follows is a description of Yes' triumph, 'The Yes Album.'
Something clicked in the group between the previous 'Time and a Word' release and this one. That something, many believe, was the exodus of Peter Banks and the inauguration of supreme guitar talent Steve Howe. The lineup, then, stood as follows: Jon Anderson on lead vocals, Bill Bruford on drums, Steve Howe on guitar, Tony Kaye on keyboards, and Chris Squire on bass, with Howe and Squire contributing their backup vocals where needed. Howe brought to the table something the band sorely lacked: a lead guitarist. Banks was decent at what he did, but he was not strong enough by any means to carry the band. Steve Howe, however, was a master of his instrument, and it really shows on this album--previously almost unheard, the guitar takes the center stage as the solo instrument par excellence on 'The Yes Album.'
On top of his game also was every other member of the band. Tony Kaye, while never even close to Rick Wakeman (who would succeed Kaye on the following year's 'Fragile' release), evolved into something of a competent keyboardist on this album. At very least he left behind the cheesy, dated, '60s style organ registrations in favor of the timeless, distorted Hammond sound that defines classic and progressive rock. Bill Bruford stopped playing like a typical, generic drummer, and began asserting himself for the truly innovative magician he is. Chris Squire finally dropped once and for all the psychedelic wah-wah effect, turned up the treble on his Rickenbacker, and what do you know: The celebrated, trademark Squire bass sound was born. And Jon Anderson sang better than ever, both clearer and with greater tonal accuracy. Also, and perhaps most prudently, Anderson made the transition from writing pedestrian lyrics to painting images with words and poetry, while relying on the music itself to complete the pieces and affect the flow. This high-brow, esoteric lyrical content--the meaning of which is completed by the instrumentation--is one of the defining qualities of Yes, and is one of the many reasons why Yes is both a musicians' and an intellectuals' band.
That having been said, the "sixth member" of the band, producer Eddie Offord, really saved the day on this album. He sculpted what we now identify as the "Yes sound," that extremely clean and precise timbre that is unique to the band. Everything that needed to be warm and analog (Steve Howe's guitar and Jon Anderson's vocals, for example) is presented richly, and everything that needed to be well-defined (Bill Bruford's drums and Chris Squire's bass) stands out in the mix. And everything that was there just for accompaniment (sorry, Tony) was parried into the mix nicely, where it is neither swallowed nor oppressive.
The music on this release is a departure from anything the band had ever attempted before it. Gone is any shred of the Beatles, bereft is the album of any covers, and we can all fondly say goodbye to the awkward arrangements and poor final production that plagued the previous releases. This album sets the stage for the prolific and magnificent work the band would produce through and including the 1977 'Going for the One' release. On 'The Yes Album,' the band had finally found its core sound and its comfort zone. 'The Yes Album' is dominated by four long epic suites, which are all structured in a similar manner. And yet, within each distinct work, there is myriad experimentation and instrumental musing. However, there is an underlying structure that keeps the work from passing beyond the realm of interest. The two shorter works, including a showcase by Steve Howe, serve as intermissions in a sense between the larger, grander works.
Now for a detailed description of each track:
1. "Yours Is No Disgrace" - Right from the onset, with the bass/drum pattern, one knows he or she is hearing something grand and spectacular. This pattern is repeated twice, and then the distorted Hammond organ overlays this bass/drum pattern as it perpetuates and modulates keys. Enter Steve Howe, with his trademark guitar, which those listening to the album in 1971 heard for the first time. He plays a virtuosic passage right over this growing bed of instrumentation, and in that instant a band is born.
The piece meanders gloriously through numerous vocal and instrumental escapades, never waning in interest or intensity. There are quiet passages, long solo passages, and intense, layered vocal passages. The lyrics seem to mean very little, even after one listens to the song many times, but there we have the magic of Yes: The lyrics don't have to mean anything at all, so long as the bond between them and the music remains sound. And Jon Anderson was a master of engineering this bond, and the results are positively beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, this music is the definition of progressive rock: It transcends the here and now and the mundane, and transports the listener to a world where the rules don't always apply, and where all that matters is the music.
2. "Clap" (NOT "The Clap") - This is Steve Howe's showcase tune. It's a live track, recorded in a very warm-sounding and reverberant location. I am not a guitarist, and by virtue, I tend to become bored with these sorts of things. It is the same with "Mood for a Day" on the next release, 'Fragile.' It is such that I am not qualified to really evaluate this song musically, though of course in the technical sense it is dazzling. Steve Howe, in my opinion, is one of the two greatest guitarists in the history of the art. Therefore, he has every right to be rather annoyed that people keep calling his song "The Clap" (even the record producers!).
3. "Starship Trooper" - This song is structured a little differently from the first epic. This piece comes in three distinct movements, "Life Seeker," "Disillusion," and "Wurm" (Wurm is a glacial valley in Europe and might be the genesis of the name of this movement, the instrumentation of which indeed conjures images of fjords and such). The tale is again told through cryptic poetry bound to its music, and the first movement is anchored by Squire's trademark bass and Howe's indispensable electric guitar. The second movement begins abruptly with Howe's frantic acoustic guitar strumming and a different vocal melody. An innovative bridge returns to the first theme before the final movement, an instrumental, begins. This movement gains in intensity before a truly phenomenal, forward-miced Howe solo rips into the open musical space and crowns the fadeout.
4. "I've Seen All Good People" - This is the infamous single from the album, and behind "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" and "Roundabout," it is probably Yes's most well-known song. A double-movement work, the song begins with the skeletal sounding "Your Move," possessed of an insistent thumping double-strummed bass note, anchored by the bass drum. The heavy vocal harmonies that begin this piece are a capella, and the instrumentation is mostly acoustic (there are even recorders). Just before the climax of this movement, Tony Kaye plays what is probably the most significant passage of his entire career with the band when his massive, distorted Hammond enters perfectly on cue to produce a positively gravitational effect. At the end of this sequence, there is a swell on the organ until it seems as though one's head might explode, and then a ringing silence. Then begins the second movement, an energetic rocker called "All Good People." The same words, "I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way," are repeated over and over again, the music building in intensity, until the final fadeout, where the band--complimented by that blasting organ--sings the phrase in a continually descending tonality each time until the fadeout is complete.
Despite this rather orgasmic description of the song, of the four epics on this album, this one is my least favorite. I will always remember it affectionately as the first Yes song I ever heard and wanted to own, and that is perhaps why I don't like it so well as I did in the past: I believe I am simply tired of it. And of the four epic tracks, this is the only one you will ever hear on the radio anymore. And so progressive rock dies a little more by the hands of the media conglomerate who have, since about 1974, acted in concert to achieve just that end: the death of progressive rock.
They will never succeed.
5. "A Venture" - This is the second shorter track from the album, and another I am not really qualified to describe. It could be because I really don't like it very much that I am unable to comment. Certainly this would contribute to an explanation for why I don't even remember how it goes, only that I never liked it. I vaguely remember that it had a pastoral feel and that it was piano-dominated. Kaye actually wasn't a bad keyboardist overall, and in any band other than Yes he would have seemed very good. When among giants, however, a mere mortal--no matter how tall--just doesn't measure up. A good effort, nonetheless, on a rather substandard song.
6. "Perpetual Change" - This is the sixth and final epic on the original album. It basically follows the same form as the others, and includes many of the same elements that make the other three great. The beginning is a very intense introduction, akin to the one on the later "Heart of the Sunrise" on `Fragile.' Then, in an almost jazzy fashion, the actual sung part of the song begins very softly, building gradually to the words "perpetual change." This pattern repeats several times throughout the song, and then a completely new section (the chorus) begins, with Jon Anderson singing up in the stratosphere as he usually does, the melody triumphant and uplifting. After this sequence from the first theme to the chorus is repeated twice, a totally new section begins in stark juxtaposition. This section, an instrumental, makes use of some advanced panning and other studio trickery, and it brilliantly weaves themes from the entire song together. A return to the pattern from before, and then a unique fadeout sequence complete this piece, a very strong finish to a very strong album.
The bonus tracks don't really add very much, but contrary to the bloody murder some reviewers are screaming, they don't take away from the album, either. After all, compact disc players all have a wonderful little button called "Stop." Perhaps this review will enlighten some of those other reviewers, who seem not to have discovered this revolutionary advance in consumer control on their disc players.
This particular edition of the album (the 2003 Rhino release with bonus tracks) enjoys a negligible increase in sound quality over the 1994 Atlantic/Joe Gastwirt remaster. Basically, after the fashion of all modern remastering, the volume level has been maximized. Overall, the tracks are more consistently mixed than on the 1994 release, and of course there are bonus tracks. My inclination is, if you have the Atlantic release and don't particularly care about the bonus tracks, it's up to you if you want to upgrade or not. I can't make a definite argument one way or the other. Generally maximized volume output is always a good thing (try hearing the 1994 release on a boom box in a noisy room somewhere and you'll see what I mean), and especially if you're buying the album for the first time, don't hesitate to get the 2003 Rhino release. But if the volume output is not a concern of yours, then it is entirely up to you whether or not an upgrade is a good idea.
Overall, this is where I would recommend new Yes fans to start with the band. Everything you need to get a solid impression of what the band was all about is right here. And yet, this album doesn't have training wheels; there's nothing less impressive about this album then, say, `Fragile' or `Close to the Edge' (all right, nothing really compares to `Close,' but that's a given). Basically, this album is the most accessible of the first three classic Yes albums, and it's where the band really found its characteristic sound. It's always a good idea to start at the beginning, so I would start with `The Yes Album,' then go from there. And, on a broader scale, I would recommend this album to just about anyone in the world, really. There are some things that were just destined to be classics. `The Yes Album' is one of them.
Yes Album Poster
2003 remastered reissue of 1971 album includes three bonus tracks, 'Your Move' (Single Version), 'Starship Trooper - Life Seeker' (Single Version), & 'Clap' (Studio Version). Elektra/Rhino.Not quite the classic lineup (even Rick Wakeman would not join until Fragile), but thanks to new recruit Steve Howe here for the first time is the mature Yes sound in all its sonic glory. On tracks like the barnstorming showpiece "Starship Trooper" Chris Squire's monstrous bass looms large in the mix, Bill Bruford's jazz drumming skates edgily around the beat, and layered on top are those remarkably long-limbed solos from Howe--one of the very few guitarists to fuse the best of jazz with rock (as well as creating a landmark in acoustic guitar literature with his Chet Atkins-inspired solo "The Clap"). Singer Jon Anderson's elliptical lyrics had yet to flower into the truly bizarre realms of Close to the Edge and Tales from Topographic Oceans, but he was already using words more for their sound value than sense ("Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face / Caesar's Palace, morning glory, silly human race"). Put it all together and you've got an album with a much sharper edge than their later bloated extravaganzas. --Mark Walker
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