Yes – Fragile

This past week, I was going through a bin of closeout/used CD’s marked at 4 for $1. One of the CD’s I came across was a band (and CD) called White.  Being the music(and drumming) fanatic that I am, I knew this was Yes drummer-Alan White’s band. So, with that in mind, I want to go back and talk about an album released the same year I started kindergarten!

In 1972, I was 5 years old. It would be 13 years later that I would come to love and appreciate the music of an English band known as YES. It wasn’t as if I’d never seen the name of the band. But, it would be a college friend that would educate me and eventually get me hooked on the music of YES!
During my teen years, I really loved flipping through records/albums in Mall record stores, department stores, and independent record stores. My father was the general manager of a department store and I remember going through the kid’s records and then gradually making my way into the Rock stuff. I was especially drawn to the Beatles after finding out I shared the same birthday with some guy named Ringo Starr. I would start at the A’s and flip through all the records till I got to the Z’s.  I would also peruse through the (what I found out later were called) cut-out bins too. These albums were usually very cheap. But, sometimes, I would find some cool treasures. I often remember getting to the Y section and I would inevitably come across an album(or two) by the band yes,,,,probably Tormato or Drama.
In 1983, There was a big buzz going about the band YES. This was the early days of MTV and music videos.  One of the songs in wide rotation on all video outlets was the song Owner of a Lonely Heart and the album was called 90125.  All of a sudden, YES was everywhere and (from what I heard) I liked it.
Fast forward to the fall of 1985. It’s my freshman year of college. I started my college career as a music education major and one of the first things I was involved with was the College Marching band. On my first day of early marching band rehearsals, I met up with a friend I had met the summer before at KSC Music camp. I walked into rehearsal and saw my friend Shaun. In the summer of 1984, Shaun had educated us small town kids from North Platte about what punk and hardcore was really like by introducing us to bands like Suicidal Tendencies and the Butthole Surfers. He taught me that Punk was more than funny hair colors and goofy clothes that the mainstream media had saturated the public as “Punk Rock”.  After about the second day of band rehearsals, a bunch of us were on our way to a meal of some kind at the campus cafeteria. Shaun shared the information that he had listened to the first 3 YES albums the night before. Wait a minute…YES? The same guy I knew as a punk aficionado was listening to YES? It turns out Shaun had a girlfriend back in Lincoln that was a big YES fan and got him turned onto the band and he turned out to be more of a fan than she was.
This was 1985. Most of my peers had heard the multi-platinum selling album 90125 from 1983. But, very little of them knew about the albums from the 70’s lineups.  I may have heard of Roundabout at one point…maybe!  Shaun was not a fan of the 80’s/Trevor Rabin lineup. He used to say (or rather PROCLAIM) that it wasn’t YES without Steve Howe on Guitar or Bill Bruford on drums. Well, Bruford left after the album Close to the Edge and by 1982, Steve Howe was a member of the new 80’s supergroup-Asia.  Bassist Chris Squire has been the only member to see the band through all of its incarnations.
After meals at the Student Union, we’d walk back to his dorm room and Shaun would pull out a hollow body electric guitar and strum a few songs. But, he would always “warm up” with the opening notes and riff from YES’s Roundabout from the 1971 album Fragile.

Through Shaun, I became more and more interested in the band.  In 1985, Atlantic Records released a live concert video and album of the band’s 1984 tour called 9012LIVE.  As I was walking through the dorms or the student union, I saw a live video of YES (with Trevor Rabin) performing a song that I didn’t know and wasn’t on the 90125 album. They just kept singing something about “All Good People”.  It was complex, longer in length that usual pop songs and really cool.  So, I went to the only expert on YES songs that I knew. Obviously, Shaun told me it was a song called I’ve Seen All Good People from 1971’s The YES Album.
A couple years had passed and I was working at Dustys Records and I had access to all kinds of music. As employees, we would see all kinds of used tapes, LP’s and (later) CD’s come in the store. There was a very “mousey” woman(don’t remember her name) that was a huge YES fan. She began bringing in her old YES LP’s and replace them with a CD copy.  By this time, I had become a fan myself. I think I had heard a CD compilation of the 70’s music.  So, I began to snatch them up for myself.  The three I was most interested in were The YES Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge.
I have a distinct memory of getting my pristine used copy of Fragile back to my apartment and I was ready for some serious listening.  In other words, I sat on my bed and plugged in a set of headphones for optimum aural enjoyment and discernment. I put on the headphones and (of course) the album starts off with Roundabout.  Steve Howe’s flamenco style intro starts the song and into a freight train riff accompanied by Chris Squire’s monster Rickenbacher bass and the pulsating rhythms of Bill Bruford on drums.  After that, the album begins to highlight the individual members of the band and their respective talents. I definitely remember looking at the liner original liner notes and realizing all the musicians had their own showcase pieces.  The second track is Cans and Brahms dedicated to the talents of keyboardist(and new guy) Rick Wakeman. It’s a classical extract from Brahm’s 4th symphony. It’s a mix of Wakeman’s accelerated talents on various flavors of keyboard sounds.   Wakeman had come in to replace original member Tony Kaye on keyboards.  It’s According to 1001 Albums :

Jon Anderson and Chris Squire sought to develop the band’s sound with newfangled synthesizers. Tony Kaye’s preference for Hammonds(and arguments with roommate Steve Howe) led to his exit in August, by which time Wakeman had left the Strawbs, bringing Yes a whole new level of virtuosity and showmanship.

Next up is vocalist Jon Anderson’s multi-layered vocal exercise known as We Have Heaven.  As I listened with headphones, this was hypnotic as the vocals swirled around me. This song could also be a great credit to producer Eddie Offord and his inventive production skills.
South Side of the Sky is next as is definitely a showcase for the band as a unit. In the liner notes of my 1993 Gold-Disc, Bob Mack states:

…both the title and sound effects of which anticipate Dark Side of the Moon.  This may be the hardest rocker they ever did and it’s hard to say which is cooler; the lumber bass riff, Steve Howe’s mathematical but woodsy guitar runs, of the way Bill Bruford kickstarts the beat at both the beginning and after the windy, piano-tinkling middle section

Drummer Bill Bruford short 38 second avant-garde piece is next and is important to note that Bruford was all of 20 years old when he held the drum throne for the recording of this album.
Side two of the album starts off with Long Distance Runaround.  I love how Wakeman’s keyboards and Steve Howe’s guitar start this song together then to be propelled by the Bruford/Squire rhythm section. The song goes from driving beat to laid back with an underlying rhythm while Anderson and Squire harmonize vocally.

The song then segues seamlessly into Chris Squire’s bass showcase known as Fish(Schindleria Praematurus).  The band definitely stretches out and gets to show all of their instrumental chops. Bruford has always championed himself as a jazz drummer and fan of instrumental experimentalism.
Steve Howe is next with his acoustic guitar suite Mood for a Day.  Howe’s guitar playing is definitely a different animal from the rest of the guitar heroes of the 70’s. Most players were from the blues school of playing established by Clapton, Beck, Page and Hendrix. So, Howe was a distinctive voice in the world of aggressive (and louder) players of the hard rock 70’s.
Heart of the Sunrise closes the album with a piece of music that clocks in at 11:26. This song is made of different movements that ebb and flow with relentless musical prowess and then to subtle dreamy vocals and then more complicated riffing and rhythms. Once again, Bob Mack in the 1993 liner notes states how this influenced the metal bands of the 80’s

Finally, the colossal coda, “Heart of the Sunrise” ends the album by pounding the listener into submission with an accelerated, all instrumental-united attack that was adopted a decade later by practitioners of “speed” or “thrash” metal. The only difference between this song and Metallica is that Jon Anderson can sing

At first, I don’t think my mind could take in this whole song. It wasn’t until years afterwards that I truly appreciated the depth of musicianship on this album.

After college, I worked at the Dustys Records store in Grand Island.  In the summer of 1991, Atlantic Records released a box set titled YES-years which featured 4 discs of music from all of the band’s lineups. It was so much to take in. I just became such a fan that I wanted to take in all that I could by the band. Also that year, the band released an album with the 80’s version of the band and the “Fragile” lineup called Union.  It was a summer of much YES music. I liked a lot of the early stuff and then the 80’s stuff too. For the past 5 days, I have been on a YES kick that has only fueled this blog. As I write this blog, I am influenced by the 1993 liner notes. YES was very instrumental and influential not only to the genre of progressive rock and bands like Rush and Kansas, They also influenced pop music. 90’s Pop producer Trevor Horn was once a member of the band and then a producer of such acts like Seal(among others). 
In 1001 Albums…

Critically lauded and Top Ten in the UK and the United States, it signaled, as Jon said, “Yes are a people’s band” – albeit people with a love of the music at its most complex