Yes ranks alongside King Crimson, Genesis and Pink Floyd as among the most famous, influential and innovative prog rock bands of all time.
Yes’s reputation as one of the principal originators of prog rock is largely founded on six classic albums released in the early seventies. They are The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close To The Edge (1972), the live Yessongs (1973), Tales from Topographic Oceans 1973), and Relayer (1974).
These groundbreaking albums were followed by a set of albums that contained more accessible music, including several hit singles. These include Going For The One (1977), Drama (1980), and most of all 90125 (1983). The main hit singles during this period were “Wondrous Stories” (1977) and “Owner of a Lonely Heart”—the latter was a number one in the US in 1983.
The above-mentioned nine albums account for a large amount of the 30 million sales worldwide that Yes has amassed over the decades. In total an amazing 23 studio albums, 18 live albums, and 41 singles have been released under the Yes banner.
The classic line-up of Yes that created most of the above-mentioned early seventies classic albums consisted of singer Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and bassist Chris Squire, with either Bill Bruford or Alan White on drums.
However, a total of 20 musicians have been official Yes band members over the years, amongst them are well-known names like Trevor Horn, Eddie Jobson, Trevor Rabin, Geoff Downes, Patrick Moraz, and many more.
In part because of the personnel complications, it took until 2017 for Yes to be inducted in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, when two camps of musicians just about tolerated each other on stage.
The history of Yes is complicated. To make the subject manageable, we will focus mainly on the nine above-mentioned essential Yes albums, and try to get to the bottom of why the band’s music is so great and why it had such a far-reaching influence.
HIGH LEVEL
To start at the beginning, singer Jon Anderson was working in a bar in Soho in the beginning of 1968 when he was introduced to Chris Squire, bassist in the psychedelic rock group Mabel Greer’s Toyshop. Squire already played the instrument he would become famous for, a Rickenbacker 4001 electric bass.
Anderson joined Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, and followed soon afterwards by guitarist Peter Banks. By the summer of 1968, drummer Bill Bruford, and keyboardist Tony Kaye had also joined the band. The decision was taken to call the band Yes.
Yes signed to Atlantic Records in March 1969, and recordings for its debut album began a month later, at Advision and Trident Studios in London, with Paul Clay producing.
Yes’s self-titled debut album was released in October 1969. The music on the album was surprisingly strong and well-produced. A high level of musicianship is evident throughout, and although the jazz, folk, psychedelic, pop and Beatles influences are still very obvious and not yet well-integrated, there are standout tracks in the opener “Beyond and Before,” in “I See You,” and in the dynamic arrangement of “Every Little Thing.”
Yes were already back in Advision two months later, in December, 1969. This time Tony Colton, the singer of the band Heads Hands and Feet, agreed to produce. Eddie Offord was the engineer, and recorded the band to 8-track. Offord would go on to forge a long-term relationship with Yes, producing and engineering many of their key albums.
Tony Cox was commissioned to write a number of orchestral arrangements, which were recorded by students from the Royal College of Music, directed by Cox. The recordings were followed by two concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in March 1970, with a twenty-piece orchestra during which most of the material for the new album was played.
The concerts were marred by technical problems, as well as friction with Banks, and he was fired in April. It was the first example of a constant coming and going of band members, which became known as the “revolving door policy.”
The four remaining band members apparently already had another guitarist in mind. They had seen Steve Howe play around clubs in London, and, impressed, invited him for an audition. Howe joined Yes in June 1970.
Howe’s unique approach to the guitar, using both acoustic and electric guitars and most famously the hollow-body Gibson ES-175D, fitted perfectly with the musical direction the other four members of Yes wanted to pursue.
POSITIVE
At this point, the band was running out of money, and struggling to have any kind of impact. All hopes were set on the new album Time and a Word, which was released in July of 1970.
The album yielded a number of tracks that would become Yes classics, including the title song, “Sweet Dreams, and “Astral Traveller,” but critical reaction was muted, and it only reached to number 45 in the UK charts.
Because of the poor sales, the big shots at Atlantic Records planned to drop the band. The label was talked out of this, but at various points in 1970, Yes found itself without a guitarist, a manager, money, and a record company that believed in them. It led to persistent talk of throwing in the towel altogether.
In the autumn of 1970 the band once again convened at Advision for recording sessions, with Eddy Offord engineering, and co-producing with the band. Offord later recalled that he was by now recording the band to 16-track, and using a “very outdated, very old antiquated console.”
Yes’s third album was released in February 1971, under the title The Yes Album, because, in the words of Anderson, “we felt it was the first real Yes album.” Critical reactions were far more positive than for the previous album, in recognition of the fact that the Yes had finally found its own unique, prog rock style. All songs were written by the band members, and three tracks in particular, “Yours Is No Disgrace,” “Starship Trooper” and “I’ve Seen All Good People” became classics.
The album reached to number four in the nationwide album chart.
BREAKTHROUGH
With the band finally enjoying commercial momentum, they were keen to also continue their upwards creative momentum, and once again a band member was fired who was judged to stand in the way. While Tony Kaye was undoubtedly a master of the Hammond organ, he was reluctant to expand to playing synthesizers. For the band, synths were the sound of the future, and having spotted a suitable replacement in Rick Wakeman, the revolving door was set in motion and Kaye was out and Wakeman in.
Recordings for the new album again took place at Advision, in August and September 1971, once more with Offord as co-producer and engineer. Each of the band members recorded a short solo track for the album, and the four group tracks have become Yes classics, and foundational to the prog rock genre.
“Roundabout,” a composition by Anderson and Howe, is the most famous. The acoustic guitar intro has become iconic, and the same has happened with Chris Squire’s bass part, which drives most of the song. The other three group tracks are “South Side of the Sky,” “Long Distance Runaround,” and “Heart of the Sunrise.”
All the ingredients of the classic Yes sound are in place on the group tracks, combining Anderson’s high, ethereal vocals, Howe’s multi-faceted guitar parts, often played on a Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster, Wakeman’s classically inspired keyboards, Squire’s distinct melodic approach to playing the bass, and Bruford’s jazz-influenced drumming.
Yes’s fourth studio album was released on November 12, 1971. Called Fragile, it was the first with a cover by Roger Dean. Fragile was immediately recognized by critics as a breakthrough, and its stellar reputation continues to this day. It made it to number seven on the UK charts and to number 4 on the Billboard charts, and has gone two times platinum in the US.
“Roundabout” was a major and very unlikely hit in the US, and “Long Distance Runaround” became a staple of AOR radio. In 2015, Fragile made it to number 10 of Rolling Stone’s list of Greatest Prog Rock Albums of all time.
MASTERPIECE
By June of 1972, Yes had written enough material for another album, and again went to Advision to record it, with Offord as their main collaborator. The session for the album, Close To The Edge, were fraught with conflict. Despite, or perhaps because of, the friction, Close To The Edge turned out to be a masterpiece, that continues to be regarded as the pinnacle of progressive rock.
The album’s reputation is largely based on the almost 19-minutes long title song, which is a tour de force of musical inventiveness.
The track was written by Anderson and Howe, with significant contributions by the others. Howe’s main guitar on “Close To The Edge” was a Gibson ES-345, and he also played pedal-steel for the first time, an instrument that would become increasingly important to him. Wakeman played the Mellotron and MiniMoog, and the pipe organ at the St Giles-without-Cripplegate church in central London.
Close To The Edge was released on September 13, 1972, and was immediately recognized as “a flawless masterpiece.” It also did well commercially, reaching to number four in the UK, number three in the US and number one in the Netherlands.
The entire album was included on Yes’s first live album, the triple album Yessongs, released in May of 1973. Bruford features on only three songs, with Alan White on the remainder. Bruford had left Yes in July of 1972. Fed up with all the internal strife, he did not hesitate to make his move when he was invited to join King Crimson.
CHALLENGING
In line with the way each previous album had built and expanded on the album before, Anderson and Howe looked to expand on Close To The Edge. Their lyrical and musical concepts became ever more ambitious and led them to mastermind a double album with just four long tracks.
Also incorporating contributions from the other three band members, during the five months of its making, the end result was a concept double album called Tales from Topographic Oceans.
However, Wakeman and Offord were uneasy with the project, and divisions deepened by a rift about where to do the actual recordings. A compromise was reached to record at Morgan Studios in north London, not least because it had a 3M M79 24-track tape machine, and then to make the studio feel and look like a farm.
As before, the music was recorded minute by minute, with countless overdubs, and Offord given the task of piecing everything together. The same painstaking process was also applied to the mix.
Atlantic had invested £90.000 pounds in the album in recording costs alone, and had no other choice but to put all its weight behind promoting the album, which was graced with a sublime cover by Roger Dean. It was voted ‘best album cover of all time’ by readers of Rolling Stone early this century.
Tales of Topographic Oceans was released in the UK in December 1973. Perhaps surprisingly, the album was a commercial success. It was the first-ever album certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry purely based on pre-orders, and it became the band’s first UK number one. It also went to number six in the US.
However, reviews were mixed, and many regarded the album became as a gigantic misstep, the moment when prog rock finally went from close to the edge to over the edge.
Despite all this, time has been surprisingly kind on the album, and it has in recent decades been reappraised as arguably Yes’s greatest moment. It certainly is one of Yes’s most challenging. As one critic put it, “Tales from Topographic Oceans is the black hole of Yes experiences, the band dissipating, expanding, exploding and imploding all at once.”
JAZZ-ROCK INFLUENCES
Wakeman left the band on 18 May 1974. the remaining four band members started writing and rehearsing new material for what was to become their Relayer album. When they felt they had made some headway, they started looking around for a new keyboard player, the next swing of the revolving door ended in August, when Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz joined the band.
The new five-piece proceeded with recording sessions in the garage of Chris Squire’s house in Surrey, which he had converted into a recording studio. Eddy Offord was once again present as engineer and co-producer, and brought in a 24-track recorder and a mixing desk from his own mobile rig.
The recording sessions were relatively short by Yes standards, despite the band reportedly recording “The Gates of Delirium” in thirty second to one minute sections.
Relayer sounded markedly different from previous Yes albums. The arrival of Moraz meant that the strong classical elements that Wakeman brought to the band made way for funk and jazz-rock influences.
However, Steve Howe is by far the most featured instrumentalist on the album, and the most important change in the band’s sound came from the fact that he switched from playing semi-acoustic guitars, like the Gibson ES175, to the solid body Fender Telecaster. He also played a lot of pedal steel.
Relayer was released in the UK in November 1974, and reached to number 4 in the UK, and number five in the US. Critical reaction was more positive than to Tales from Topographic Oceans. The tour for the album took in 88 dates, and lasted until August 1975.
CELEBRATION
In August 1976, the band reconvened at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. After a few weeks a revolving door opened, and Moraz was out, and Wakeman back in. The band had decided to write shorter and more easily digestible songs, which was to Wakeman’s liking.
The band self-produced, and John Timperley, the resident engineer at Mountain Studios, was behind the controls. Recordings lasted until April 1977, and included another excursion to a church for Wakeman to record organ parts, this time to St Martin’s Church in Vevey, just outside Montreux.
Going for the One was released in July 1977, and was a big commercial success, going to number one in the UK, and number 8 in the US. Anderson called the album, “a kind of celebration.”
The lead single from the album, “Wonderous Stories” also was a big hit in the UK. It was an odd choice for a single, because the two most immediately arresting tracks on the album are “Parallels,” and “Going for the One.”
After completing the 90-date Going For The One tour in December 1977, Yes gathered again in London in February 1978 to start rehearsing their next album, which was recorded at Advision and RAK Studios. The location was again a source of heated debate, as some band members wanted to record abroad. The conflicts only escalated from there.
Yes ended up self-producing, and the album, called Tormato, was released in September 1978. While it has since gone platinum in the US, it is not highly regarded by most fans, critical, and even band members.
When the band tried to record its next album with producer Roy Thomas Baker, known for his work with Queen, the divisions in the band turned out to be unsurmountable. By March 1980, both Anderson and Wakeman had left the band.
DRAMA AND SPLIT
At appeared that the classic Yes period had come to a rather inglorious end. However, there was to be a very unexpected next chapter in the band’s history, that delivered at least one more essential album, made with a very unlikely collaborator.
This chapter in the history of Yes is one of the oddest one, as there was widespread incredulity when news leaked out that Anderson and Howe had been replaced by pop duo The Buggles. The duo had enjoyed a major pop hit in 1979 with “Video Killed The Radio Star.” Prog rock fans had The Buggles down as the epitome of naff and lightweight.
The Buggles consisted of singer Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes, and to everyone’s surprise, it turned out that they were huge Yes fans. The new album the new 5-piece worked on, Drama, was recorded in the late spring of 1980 at Townhouse and SARM East, Roundhouse and RAK Studios in London, with Eddy Offord again engineering the backing tracks.
Drama was released in August of the year, and surprised everyone by having a harder-hitting sound than previous Yes albums, with the 10-minute long opener, “Machine Messiah,” quickly recognized as a classic Yes track. A song called “Tempus Fugit” also is a highlight.
However, although the album went to number 2 in the UK, fans had trouble accepting Horn as a legitimate replacement for Anderson.
For this reason, the band split immediately after the Drama tour ended in December 1980.
HIT PARADE WONDERS
In 1982, Squire and White were introduced to South-African guitarist Trevor Rabin. They tarted rehearsing several songs written by Rabin, which were shorter and more commercial than anything Yes had done.
Because he enjoyed the simpler, more straightforward song format, former Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye agreed to join as well, and the quartet adopted the name Cinema. Trevor Horn offered to produce the band’s debut album.
Recordings took place at SARM and Air Studios in London, with Gary Langan and Julian Mendelson engineering, and J.J. Jeczalik the main programmer of the Fairlight CMI. It was a team that helped the musicians make the astonishing transformation from old fogey prog rockers stuck in the past, to hit parade wonders and musical trendsetters.
This was most strongly exemplified on the song that became the album’s opener and a worldwide hit, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” One contentious aspect was the use of programmed drums. The song was recorded to a drum part programmed in an Akai MPC by White, Squire and Horn. Langan and Jeczalik also sampled a drum part by White in the Fairlight. The song also contains a sample of a horn section of the song “Kool Is Back” by Funk, Inc. The sound effects are the most attention-grabbing aspect of the song, and were completely new at the time.
By April 1983, when the recordings for the album were almost complete, Jon Anderson joined the band, and writing and recordings continued. With four former Yes members in the band, it was inevitable that the band would eventually call itself Yes.
“Owner of a Lonely Heart” was released as a single in October 1983, and the album a month later. It was titled 90125, after its catalogue number. The single reached to number one in the US, and over time the album went three times platinum, which made it Yes’s biggest selling album.
Yes had completely reinvented themselves, which led to mixed reactions from many older, prog rock fans, but enthusiasm from pretty much everyone else. The instrumental “Cinema” won the band its first and only Grammy Award, in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category, and both “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and the album were nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.
With 90125, Yes had planted itself firmly in the modern, music technology-influenced music era, and the album still sounds fresh today. The band and Horn wanted to capitalize on the success, but the next album, Big Generator, released in September 1987, nearly four years after its predecessor, turned out too poppy and anonymous for the tastes of most fans and critics.
UNASSAILABLE REPUTATION
After this, the band teamed up with former members Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford for Union, which was released in 1991. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with an eight-piece band, the sessions were fraught with tension and the whole was less than the considerable sum of the parts.
Yes has released another 10 studio albums since Union, many of them containing great music, but the widespread view is that none of them are as essential as the earlier records.
Yes’s most recent album is Mirror in the Sky, released earlier this year, featuring the current line-up of old-timers Steve Howe and keyboardist Geoff Downes, with singer Jon Davison, bassist Billy Sherwood and drummer Jay Schellen.
With the other surviving band members, and the band itself, still in action, the story of Yes continues to be written. Whatever the future may hold for the band, its legacy as one of the founding fathers of prog rock, and bizarre as it may sound, also of eighties pop-rock, is unassailable.
Over the decades the band’s level of musicianship and songwriting has been astounding, and it has influenced thousands of musicians around the world, and become a central part of the lives of countless fans around the world. With an oeuvre that contains many hours of music that is essential listening, Yes was and remains one of the principal classic rock acts of all time.
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