Welcome To AlbumLinerNotes.com
"The #1 Archive of Liner Notes in the World"
Your Subtitle text
The Yes Album
___________________________________________________
YES
THE YES ALBUM
___________________________________________________
Intimations of the Edge
“You’ll see perpetual change…”
Although Yes didn’t know it at the time, their third album needed to attract a much larger audience, or their label (Atlantic) was going to drop them. The band was somehow able to respond to this “secret challenge” by both increasing their popular appeal and deepening their
music significantly. This element of “somehow” was in fact Steve Howe, the brilliant guitarist who came aboard for The Yes Album (1971) and for an entire period of intense collective composition.
On their first two records, Yes proved themselves an excellent force, and certainly that incarnation could have made more music worth listening to – perhaps we have some sense of subsequent directions in the albums by Flash, the post-Yes group formed by original guitarist Peter Banks. But “phase 1” of Yes was a psychedelic band; with the addition of Steve Howe in place of Banks, the band took a major step toward full-blown progressive rock.
Their transition is not unlike that of Jethro Tull, which also didn’t start out as a progressive rock group; significantly, Howe had auditioned for the guitar chair in that unit as well – as had Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, which demonstrates nicely the cross fertilizations at work in that period of great experimentation in rock. The stage was set most of all by The Beatles, in a series of remarkable albums that argued for continual experimentation. Of course, experimentation was in the air in the late 1960s, and the counterculture manifested itself in both art and society.
Howe had joined an already immensely talented band, whose members each had distinctive styles. But the new guitarist was not a simple “addition”; not to wax overly philosophical, he provided a new “quantity” that led to a qualitative development. Essentially, a new Yes was born – indeed, a group that was more quintessentially Yes.
Ironically, the music on The Yes Album is in some ways “simpler” than that of the first two LPs – though, to borrow a line from The Who, “the simple things you see are all complicated.” The structures are clean, uncluttered, and even “straightforward” in some ways; indeed, there is a “blockiness” to the longer pieces. “Yours Is No Disgrace,” “Perpetual Change,” and “Starship Trooper” all use big, blocky chords in the guitar and Hammond B3 organ, providing a solid musical “skin,” not unlike the roles played by Pete Townshend’s guitar and Roger Daltrey’s vocals in The Who.
But as with The Who, there is a great deal bubbling just under the surface. The propulsive quality of Chris Squire’s basslines is remarkable, and here it is more subtle than on some later efforts. Listen, for instance, to the six notes that move like sinewy muscles under the two chord “skin” at the opening of “Starship Trooper.” It’s easy to miss. And Bill Bruford is not likely to be compared to Keith Moon in many respects, but they do have one point of similarity: very rarely does either of them state “the one.” But while Moon fills every inch of musical space with an orchestra of tom-toms, Bruford lets the space breathe in a manner unequaled by any other rock drummer. Unlike The Who, Yes in this incarnation not only had a beneath-the-surface complexity, but with Anderson and Howe’s soaring lines, it also came with a jet-pack attached.
And yet in the case of the latter, “soaring lines” gives the impression of instrumental heroics and of the “lead guitar,” that nutty expression of the time. Well, there are different sorts of musical
“heroes,” and Howe is far from the histrionic kind. Among his many accomplishments on The Yes Album, Howe led the group to a new sense of orchestration, best exemplified in his superb “solo” in “Yours Is No Disgrace.” Can a song really rock and yet also be beautiful? Can a song be beautiful without being merely “pretty”? Yes accomplished this feat many times, but “Disgrace” is a touchstone, with lyrics that respond to the Vietnam War with subtle power.
Of course, the band could also rock outright and even launch into a kind of country-rock
boogie. Prog-rock gave us many fine guitarists, who had studied musicians ranging from Wes Montgomery to John McLaughlin, and from George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Andrés Segovia (the latter undoubtedly spinning in his grave to be included in such a list). But Howe had also listened to Chet Atkins and the great flatpickers of American Appalachian music, adding the pedal steel guitar to his growing arsenal of instruments. Howe’s eclecticism was emblematic of that of Yes as a whole; diverse styles were integrated and made to work together, not put on display for the purpose of showing off.
At this stage the lineup was learning how to make this stylistic openness and generosity cohere. They were all improving as musicians and making improvement a part of the band. Yes never “replaced” members in order to preserve what they had already accomplished; they brought in new faces and changed. Thankfully there were cultural and social openings in the world at that time that allowed such a band to receive the following it deserved.
In terms of the formal structures, Bruford and Squire were less and less of a “rhythm section” – certainly there is no comparison with what their respective instruments were doing in blues-based rock music. As Yes went forward into a period of even greater creativity, they would work without a net, so to speak – but on The Yes Album they had a “net,” in the form of Tony Kaye.
The multiple-keyboard setup was about to become the progressive rock standard, but here the mighty Hammond B3 does a lovely job keeping the music together, and Kaye’s piano work at the close of the undervalued “A Venture” is truly a magical mystery tour. With the help of Squire and Howe, Jon Anderson became an even better singer (he keeps getting better even today) and a more powerful wordsmith. Musical lyrics should not be expected to hold up as independent poems, but many of these “Yeswords” do.
As an avid player of the game, I can’t help but remark on Yes’ contribution to chess music, which indeed is a real genre from John Cage to Wayne Shorter to Gryphon (who toured with Yes in the mid-‘70s), not only in “Your Move,” from “I’ve Seen All Good People,” but also in “Perpetual Change”: “We look on as pawns of their game.”
The Yes Album inaugurates what I call the “main sequence.” This is a term from astronomy that has to do with the period when a star begins to shine at full strength for a long period of time. The star called Yes was already there in the sky, but suddenly we noticed it, and we could not look away.
– Bill Martin
Bill Martin is the author of numerous books on music and political philosophy, including Music Of Yes: Structure And Vision In Progressive Rock (1996). His essay “Another Green Language: Still Yes After All These Years” appeared in Elektra/Rhino’s boxed set In A Word: Yes (1969-). He is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago.
___________________________________________________
1. YOURS IS NO DISGRACE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire/Steve Howe/Tony Kaye/Bill Bruford)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
2. CLAP
(Steve Howe)
Atlantic single [b-side] #2819 (9/71)
3. STARSHIP TROOPER
(words by Jon Anderson/Chris Squire;
music by Jon Anderson/Chris Squire/Steve Howe)
a. LIFE SEEKER
(Jon Anderson)
b. DISILLUSIONED
(Chris Squire)
c. WÜRM
(Steve Howe)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
4. I’VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire)
a. YOUR MOVE
(Jon Anderson)
b. ALL GOOD PEOPLE
(Chris Squire)
© 1971 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
5. A VENTURE
(Jon Anderson)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
6. PERPETUAL CHANGE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
All Songs Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
BONUS TRACKS
7. YOUR MOVE (Single Version)
(Jon Anderson)
Atlantic [UK] single #2814 003 (7/71)
Atlantic single #2819 (9/71)
8. STARSHIP TROOPER:
LIFE SEEKER (Single Version)
(Jon Anderson)
Atlantic [UK] single #2814 003 (7/71)
9. CLAP (Studio Version)
(Steve Howe)
[Previously Unissued]
The Yes Album was first issued as Atlantic #8283 (3/19/71)
Personnel:
JON ANDERSON: vocals, percussion
CHRIS SQUIRE: bass guitars, vocals
STEVE HOWE: electric & acoustic guitars, vachalia, vocal
TONY KAYE: piano, organ, Moog
BILL BRUFORD: drums, percussion
Recorders on “Your Move”: COLIN GOLDRING
Produced by YES & EDDIE OFFORD
At ADVISION STUDIOS, London, Autumn, 1970
Engineer: EDDIE OFFORD
Co-Ordination: BRIAN LANE
Thanks to TOM DOWD
“Clap” Recorded Live at THE LYCEUM, London (7/17/70)
Photography: PHIL FRANKS & BARRIE WENTZELL
Design: JON GOODCHILD
Reissue Supervision: STEVE WOOLARD & DAVID McLEES
Sound Produced by BILL INGLOT
Remastering: DAN HERSCH and BILL INGLOT at DIGIPREP
Product Manager: MARC SALATA
Editorial Supervision: CORY FRYE
Liner Notes Coordination: TIM SCANLIN
Art Direction & Design: BRYAN LASLEY
Photos Copyright © 2002 PHIL FRANKS
www.philmtreax.com
Photo Research: STEVEN P GORMAN
Project Assistance: PAUL OLSEN, APRIL MILEK, RANDY PERRY, LEIGH HALL, GINGER DETIMAN & STEVEN CHEAN
Special Thanks: CLIFFORD W. LOESLIN & DON WILLIAMS
YesWorld, The Yes Online Service
http://yesworld.com
© 2003 Warner Strategic Marketing. Warner Music Group, an AOL Time Warner Company.
YES
THE YES ALBUM
___________________________________________________
Intimations of the Edge
“You’ll see perpetual change…”
Although Yes didn’t know it at the time, their third album needed to attract a much larger audience, or their label (Atlantic) was going to drop them. The band was somehow able to respond to this “secret challenge” by both increasing their popular appeal and deepening their
music significantly. This element of “somehow” was in fact Steve Howe, the brilliant guitarist who came aboard for The Yes Album (1971) and for an entire period of intense collective composition.
On their first two records, Yes proved themselves an excellent force, and certainly that incarnation could have made more music worth listening to – perhaps we have some sense of subsequent directions in the albums by Flash, the post-Yes group formed by original guitarist Peter Banks. But “phase 1” of Yes was a psychedelic band; with the addition of Steve Howe in place of Banks, the band took a major step toward full-blown progressive rock.
Their transition is not unlike that of Jethro Tull, which also didn’t start out as a progressive rock group; significantly, Howe had auditioned for the guitar chair in that unit as well – as had Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, which demonstrates nicely the cross fertilizations at work in that period of great experimentation in rock. The stage was set most of all by The Beatles, in a series of remarkable albums that argued for continual experimentation. Of course, experimentation was in the air in the late 1960s, and the counterculture manifested itself in both art and society.
Howe had joined an already immensely talented band, whose members each had distinctive styles. But the new guitarist was not a simple “addition”; not to wax overly philosophical, he provided a new “quantity” that led to a qualitative development. Essentially, a new Yes was born – indeed, a group that was more quintessentially Yes.
Ironically, the music on The Yes Album is in some ways “simpler” than that of the first two LPs – though, to borrow a line from The Who, “the simple things you see are all complicated.” The structures are clean, uncluttered, and even “straightforward” in some ways; indeed, there is a “blockiness” to the longer pieces. “Yours Is No Disgrace,” “Perpetual Change,” and “Starship Trooper” all use big, blocky chords in the guitar and Hammond B3 organ, providing a solid musical “skin,” not unlike the roles played by Pete Townshend’s guitar and Roger Daltrey’s vocals in The Who.
But as with The Who, there is a great deal bubbling just under the surface. The propulsive quality of Chris Squire’s basslines is remarkable, and here it is more subtle than on some later efforts. Listen, for instance, to the six notes that move like sinewy muscles under the two chord “skin” at the opening of “Starship Trooper.” It’s easy to miss. And Bill Bruford is not likely to be compared to Keith Moon in many respects, but they do have one point of similarity: very rarely does either of them state “the one.” But while Moon fills every inch of musical space with an orchestra of tom-toms, Bruford lets the space breathe in a manner unequaled by any other rock drummer. Unlike The Who, Yes in this incarnation not only had a beneath-the-surface complexity, but with Anderson and Howe’s soaring lines, it also came with a jet-pack attached.
And yet in the case of the latter, “soaring lines” gives the impression of instrumental heroics and of the “lead guitar,” that nutty expression of the time. Well, there are different sorts of musical
“heroes,” and Howe is far from the histrionic kind. Among his many accomplishments on The Yes Album, Howe led the group to a new sense of orchestration, best exemplified in his superb “solo” in “Yours Is No Disgrace.” Can a song really rock and yet also be beautiful? Can a song be beautiful without being merely “pretty”? Yes accomplished this feat many times, but “Disgrace” is a touchstone, with lyrics that respond to the Vietnam War with subtle power.
Of course, the band could also rock outright and even launch into a kind of country-rock
boogie. Prog-rock gave us many fine guitarists, who had studied musicians ranging from Wes Montgomery to John McLaughlin, and from George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Andrés Segovia (the latter undoubtedly spinning in his grave to be included in such a list). But Howe had also listened to Chet Atkins and the great flatpickers of American Appalachian music, adding the pedal steel guitar to his growing arsenal of instruments. Howe’s eclecticism was emblematic of that of Yes as a whole; diverse styles were integrated and made to work together, not put on display for the purpose of showing off.
At this stage the lineup was learning how to make this stylistic openness and generosity cohere. They were all improving as musicians and making improvement a part of the band. Yes never “replaced” members in order to preserve what they had already accomplished; they brought in new faces and changed. Thankfully there were cultural and social openings in the world at that time that allowed such a band to receive the following it deserved.
In terms of the formal structures, Bruford and Squire were less and less of a “rhythm section” – certainly there is no comparison with what their respective instruments were doing in blues-based rock music. As Yes went forward into a period of even greater creativity, they would work without a net, so to speak – but on The Yes Album they had a “net,” in the form of Tony Kaye.
The multiple-keyboard setup was about to become the progressive rock standard, but here the mighty Hammond B3 does a lovely job keeping the music together, and Kaye’s piano work at the close of the undervalued “A Venture” is truly a magical mystery tour. With the help of Squire and Howe, Jon Anderson became an even better singer (he keeps getting better even today) and a more powerful wordsmith. Musical lyrics should not be expected to hold up as independent poems, but many of these “Yeswords” do.
As an avid player of the game, I can’t help but remark on Yes’ contribution to chess music, which indeed is a real genre from John Cage to Wayne Shorter to Gryphon (who toured with Yes in the mid-‘70s), not only in “Your Move,” from “I’ve Seen All Good People,” but also in “Perpetual Change”: “We look on as pawns of their game.”
The Yes Album inaugurates what I call the “main sequence.” This is a term from astronomy that has to do with the period when a star begins to shine at full strength for a long period of time. The star called Yes was already there in the sky, but suddenly we noticed it, and we could not look away.
– Bill Martin
Bill Martin is the author of numerous books on music and political philosophy, including Music Of Yes: Structure And Vision In Progressive Rock (1996). His essay “Another Green Language: Still Yes After All These Years” appeared in Elektra/Rhino’s boxed set In A Word: Yes (1969-). He is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago.
___________________________________________________
1. YOURS IS NO DISGRACE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire/Steve Howe/Tony Kaye/Bill Bruford)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
2. CLAP
(Steve Howe)
Atlantic single [b-side] #2819 (9/71)
3. STARSHIP TROOPER
(words by Jon Anderson/Chris Squire;
music by Jon Anderson/Chris Squire/Steve Howe)
a. LIFE SEEKER
(Jon Anderson)
b. DISILLUSIONED
(Chris Squire)
c. WÜRM
(Steve Howe)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
4. I’VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire)
a. YOUR MOVE
(Jon Anderson)
b. ALL GOOD PEOPLE
(Chris Squire)
© 1971 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
5. A VENTURE
(Jon Anderson)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
6. PERPETUAL CHANGE
(Jon Anderson/Chris Squire)
© 1971, 1972 (Renewed) Topographic Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
All rights administered by WB Music Corp.
All Songs Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
BONUS TRACKS
7. YOUR MOVE (Single Version)
(Jon Anderson)
Atlantic [UK] single #2814 003 (7/71)
Atlantic single #2819 (9/71)
8. STARSHIP TROOPER:
LIFE SEEKER (Single Version)
(Jon Anderson)
Atlantic [UK] single #2814 003 (7/71)
9. CLAP (Studio Version)
(Steve Howe)
[Previously Unissued]
The Yes Album was first issued as Atlantic #8283 (3/19/71)
Personnel:
JON ANDERSON: vocals, percussion
CHRIS SQUIRE: bass guitars, vocals
STEVE HOWE: electric & acoustic guitars, vachalia, vocal
TONY KAYE: piano, organ, Moog
BILL BRUFORD: drums, percussion
Recorders on “Your Move”: COLIN GOLDRING
Produced by YES & EDDIE OFFORD
At ADVISION STUDIOS, London, Autumn, 1970
Engineer: EDDIE OFFORD
Co-Ordination: BRIAN LANE
Thanks to TOM DOWD
“Clap” Recorded Live at THE LYCEUM, London (7/17/70)
Photography: PHIL FRANKS & BARRIE WENTZELL
Design: JON GOODCHILD
Reissue Supervision: STEVE WOOLARD & DAVID McLEES
Sound Produced by BILL INGLOT
Remastering: DAN HERSCH and BILL INGLOT at DIGIPREP
Product Manager: MARC SALATA
Editorial Supervision: CORY FRYE
Liner Notes Coordination: TIM SCANLIN
Art Direction & Design: BRYAN LASLEY
Photos Copyright © 2002 PHIL FRANKS
www.philmtreax.com
Photo Research: STEVEN P GORMAN
Project Assistance: PAUL OLSEN, APRIL MILEK, RANDY PERRY, LEIGH HALL, GINGER DETIMAN & STEVEN CHEAN
Special Thanks: CLIFFORD W. LOESLIN & DON WILLIAMS
YesWorld, The Yes Online Service
http://yesworld.com
© 2003 Warner Strategic Marketing. Warner Music Group, an AOL Time Warner Company.
