Yes - Going for the One (1977)

Dan:

I don't remember when I picked up Going for the One by Yes. I was not yet captivated by the band and this new one came out some time after the release of a couple of less engaging albums (Tales of Topographic Oceans and Relayer). Going for the One would then be followed by two even more dubious releases: Tormato and Drama. It seemed to me that Yes had difficulty matching their early successes; early brilliance can be a curse for artists expected to match their best work every time out.

So, with low expectations I explored the new Yes album with the weird cover. The title track got me worried; it was a bashing, slashing noisy guitar piece that put vocalist Jon Anderson in the unfamiliar position of having to shout above the band to be heard. Jon was never a good shouter. The second track, thankfully, caught me by surprise with its more familiar narrative form and well-paced dynamics. "Turn of the Century" is a beautiful song about a sculptor whose lady dies. He then creates a stone sculpture of her so that she can always be with him. I don't know if the lyrics are inspired by any ancient legends or not, but it's a moving story conveyed magnificently by the music. At eight minutes in length, "Turn of the Century" feels like a more lyrical, and less opaque, return to Yes's songwriting on their earlier albums. 

Side 2 begins with the fast tempo "Parallels." Chris Squires' lyrics are fine, but the pipe organ and guitar dominate the introduction and smother the vocals. Fortunately, "Parallels" is followed by a much shorter and more appealing song, "Wonderous Stories," which may have been a rare attempt at producing a hit single. It's reminiscent of one of the Life Seeker sections in "Starship Trooper," which tells about "talks by the water, the proud sons and daughter, who knew the knowledge of the land and spoke to me in sweet accustomed ways." In "Wonderous Stories," a new life seeker begs to hear stories from some unnamed mystic. It's a Yes masterpiece that clocks in at less than four minutes. 

The finale is another masterpiece, but much longer at 17:38 minutes. "Awaken" includes three main sections. Part 1 is a mostly vocal introduction featuring Jon Anderson's angelic voice beseeching the sun to stand still "reaching out to touch our own being / past all mortal as we / here we can be." From there, part 2 builds a dense ensemble supporting repetitious chants from Anderson: "awaken gentle mass touch" that shifts into a more rhythmic melody pondering the workings of man. The third and last section returns peacefully to the opening stanza about wishing the sun to stand still. My favorite line is the variation on the first stanza that closes the piece:

Like the time I ran away

And turned around and you were standing close to me

This lovely sentiment is repeated twice over a delicate accompaniment that ends with a soft bass note. If only all beautiful songs could end this way. 

With Rick Wakeman on organ and piano, this version of Yes could extend their instrumental reach allowing them to be more grandiose (in a good way) but also more cluttered. My tune preferences obviously favor the grandiose as long as the lyrics and contrasts are not obliterated. Hitting the jackpot on three of five numbers is a pretty good score, even for one of the most famous prog bands. 

Steve:

While I do not share Dan's opinion that Yes had fallen into a slump prior to Going for the One, this album definitely stands out among its neighbors. For one thing, the cover art is the first in a while not to feature a Roger Dean creation, and the production overall indicates a desire to shuffle the formula somewhat. This shuffling would definitely backfire on the following year's Tormato (despite some nice moments), but for the most part the Yes franchise emerges from Going for the One just as strong as they'd ever been. 

I remember hearing "Wonderous Stories" a LOT around the house as a kid. I could tell it was a big favorite of Dan's, and it's easy to see why. It's concise and tuneful, and yet it builds in emotion and density like a good prog epic. By the end, you want to get your lighter out and wave your hands back and forth. Definitely a career highlight.

I always liked "Parallels" (though I never heard Dan play it - this was after I got my own copy) for its cool bass line and its energetic chorus melody. But I especially treasure "Awaken", a track I still view with a bit of reverence - as if I would spoil its magic if I tried too hard to understand it. I just know it floors me every time I hear it, even if I don't listen to it often. There's a long quiet solo break in the middle of the track that transfixes you for a couple of minutes before the track starts up again with more spiritual verve than before. It's quite a rush.

Yes - Close to the Edge (1972)

Dan:

Close to the Edge is unquestionably one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and a perfect example of progressive rock in its earliest form. It adopts the long suite as its basic mode, draws inspiration from literary and philosophical sources, particularly Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, and rocks like crazy. Like many prog bands of the time, Yes wrote songs about personal search and discovery, as well as inner peace and enlightenment. 

I've always felt that Jon Anderson's voice is perfectly matched to songs about search and discovery. He projects a sense of purity and innocence that gives meaning even to the most opaque lyrics. It's hard to imagine anyone else singing them.

The album's program should be familiar to anyone bothering with this blog. "Close to the Edge" comprises all of side 1 and has four distinct parts. I love Rick Wakeman's cathedral organ on (iii) "I Get Up I Get Down," as well as Anderson's plaintive vocal on (iv) "Seasons of Man." Side 2 has another suite ("And You and I") and the shorter "Siberian Khatru." I've always been a bit puzzled about "Khatru." Apparently, Wakeman, Anderson, and guitarist Steve Howe wrote the lyrics but it's hard to figure out what they mean. Perhaps I should follow Steve (my son, not Steve Howe) in simply listening to the sounds of the voices rather than interpreting them. That should work pretty well because I know I like Yes songs whether I can figure them out or not. I particularly like the way the words overlap as refrains in various parts of "Siberian Khatru."

Close to the Edge and The Yes Album are two of the most original works in all of rock history. Despite their lofty ambitions and mysterious resources, they're most enjoyable to hear. Yes peaked with these albums; nowhere else in their recorded output will you find the same level of excellence on display. That's not a true critique of their other works but rather a tribute to two of rock's best.

Steve:

Spot on, Dad. This album is definitely a pinnacle not just of progressive rock but of music in general. I'm always reminded of something one of the band members said about the process of making this album (can't recall who or where, sorry) - that the band really didn't know what they were doing as they were making it. That is a rather self-effacing way of saying that they were quite literally inventing a new kind of music, and although they didn't know exactly what the end result would be, they trusted each other, trusted their ears, and worked tirelessly to make it just right.  There is a clear line of development from earlier multi-part suites like "Starship Trooper" to the more unusual structures of "Heart of the Sunrise" from Fragile, forward to the artistic zenith of "Close to the Edge" and "And You and I". These latter tracks improve on the impressive compositional economy of the earlier tracks while adding panoramic layers of sonic detail that seem intended to conjure nothing less than Heaven itself. Tell the Moondog, tell the March Hare.

"Siberian Khatru" is no less impressive. Yes reaches that same transcendental spiritual breakthrough with the building section where they sing "Outboard / River / Bluetail / Tail Fly / Luther /In time..." and so on. As Dan hinted above, I don't search for or find any real meaning in lyrics like these, but when I hear them in this vocal and instrumental arrangement, they sound like the Ultimate Truth.

Yes - The Yes Album (1971)

Dan:

It's tempting to underestimate the music of Yes because it is so familiar now. It was actually a radical departure from conventional song forms, creating long, oddly structured suites that carried vague but often profound meanings. Their albums provide clear examples of what most people consider prog to be as a music genre. The Yes Album was also commercially successful and stands as a major landmark of early prog. 

Departures from convention tend to be risky, if only because audience expectations can't be adjusted beforehand. I'm reminded of the turmoil that Ornette Coleman's music precipitated in the late 1950s. He has later been credited with freeing jazz from some of its self-imposed limitations, thereby expanding the possibilities for expression. Yes's departures are more about changing expectations of the way songs are written. Conventional songwriting would involve a lyric, perhaps some clever rhyming scheme, repeating melodies over a progression of chords (most often based on the blues), and bridges connecting the front and back ends of a song. Yes defied many of these conventions but managed to connect with audiences once they got past their formative stage, which included two earlier albums - Yes (1969) and Time and a Word (1970). 

After a brief acoustic interlude by Howe, "Starship Trooper" closes side 1. It is my favorite Yes song by a wide margin. For one thing, the lyrics actually make sense. I quoted part of them in a published response to some academic criticism I once received. 

All I know can be shown by your acceptance of the facts there shown before you.

Take what I say in a different way and it's easy to say that this is all confusion.

(I restrained myself from including the next line in my response: "As I see a new day in me, I can also show if you and you may follow.) 

"Trooper" is organized as a suite of three songs: "Life Seeker," "Dissolution," and "Würm." "Würm" ends the 9:26 minute opus with an increasingly deep loud repeating phrase, eventually fading out. It reminds me of Abbey Road's "I Want You, She's So Heavy" except for the fadeout.

Yes's next albums, Fragile and Close to the Edge, would take even more risks that worked superbly. Two lesser albums followed (Tales of Topographic Oceans and Relayer), and I felt the band had moved away from its strengths both instrumentally and in the songwriting. Going for the One (1977) restored much of the earlier excellence, only to be followed by Tormato, which I never got into. Yes re-formed in the 1980s for 90125 and Big Generator. I liked 90125 and its hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart," but none of the later albums come close to the majesty The Yes Album. 

Steve:

Because it laid the foundation for the peak albums in the Yes discography, The Yes Album can sometimes be taken for granted. Yet, when I listen to it, I often think it's my favorite album of theirs while it's on. One of the reasons for this is that they still sound human on this album, like a band of mere mortals getting together and just playing some rock and roll. Except this was rock and roll that they composed in the most radical way they could imagine, developing their ideas into long-form musical progressions that held your attention like a 3-minute pop song would. On future albums, their musical sophistication would sound almost otherworldly, but they're still relatively down to earth here. 

"Yours is No Disgrace" is a good example. Although there are solos and instrumental breaks, this is not merely a 3-minute song stretched out to 9 minutes using extended vamps with solos. The song establishes (rather bluntly, so it's impossible to miss) a main theme at the start, introduces a secondary melody once the vocals begin, and then spends the rest of the song playing mutations and variations of these fairly simple musical themes, presenting them in multiple contexts that never sound repetitive. "Perpetual Change" uses a similar approach.

Long-form progressive rock songs often take the form of multi-part suites, and The Yes Album has a couple of these as well. "Starship Trooper" is essentially three songs combined into one, but it uses overlapping musical themes to tie them together - for example, the "speak to me of summer / long winter's longer than time can remember" bridge is used both in the opening "Life Seeker" section and after the 2nd "Disillusion" section. Speaking of "Disillusion", that part (credited wholly to Chris Squire) contains the pungent lyric Dan called out above, and I do recall him calling out that lyric way back in the day as well. Even if it didn't mean much to me at the time, the words just sounded cool together in their rapid delivery during that brisk section. 

Update: As of December 2023, Steven Wilson's remix of The Yes Album became available as part of the Super Deluxe reissue. We auditioned the new mixes and find them a strong improvement over the previous digital versions.