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“Phil Carson, the then-boss of Atlantic Records in England, introduced me to the band at Advision Studios. I went there with my massively decorated copy of Parsifal illustrated by Willy Pogany. The illustrations, decorations and the text were very intense. I said to the band it would be fantastic to have this magical story in this sort of form. Of course, we couldn’t put out an album that was like an old book but there’s a little attempt at that in printing on the brown paper on the inside and having that booklet within it. So it was the faintest of faintest shadows of how it might have been. “The gatefold cover I saw as a story, a fantasy. It wasn’t symbolic of anything. It was part of a story…

“Never mind 40 years ago. In 40 years’ time, people will pick out Close To The Edge and say, ‘That’s what progressive rock was all about.’”Bill Bruford Some albums feel as though they’ve been around forever. So familiar are we with their chords, rhythms, melodies and spaces, they seem completely integrated into our daily lives over many years, having seeming arrived fully formed and somehow immutable. It’s difficult to imagine them as having existed in anything other than their final state. Yet often what appears solid and immovable is borne from any number of fleeting encounters: words from a book; a shuddering sense of clarity; the dawn breeze caressing the skin; a distant laugh; a certain look found in the eyes of a stranger; the grasp of a child; the…

The Studio Albums 1969-1987 featured all 12 Yes studio albums recorded for the Atlantic label and comes with brand new art from Roger Dean. Each disc contains a wealth of bonus materials - in the case of Big Generator, bonus tracks that were previously only available in Japan. So, those bonus tracks in full: Yes – Everydays (single version), Dear Father (early version 2), Something’s Coming, Everydays (early version), Dear Father (early version 1), Something’s Coming (early version) Time And A Word – Dear Father, No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed (original mix), Sweet Dreams (original mix), The Prophet (single version) The Yes Album – Your Move (single version), Starship Trooper: Life Seeker (single version), Clap (studio version) Fragile – America, Roundabout (early rough mix) Close To The Edge –…

One morning, around dawn, in spring 1976, Jon Anderson burst into tears. Yes’ lead vocalist was in his garage/home studio in Buckinghamshire, recording his first solo album, Olias Of Sunhillow. The singer had spent days attempting to synchronise drums, bells, voices and what he calls “a Middle Eastern guitar” to create a vital passage of music. In 2016, this would all be done at the touch of a button. Forty years ago, it was still a painstaking process. Anderson was also playing every instrument on the record. Late one night, after trying to co-ordinate the tracks yet again, Anderson dozed off at the console. When he awoke, he had no idea if the process had worked. As the dawn chorus began outside and hazy sunlight peeked through the studio window,…

1988 wasn’t a vintage year for prog. In fact, at times it seemed as if the genre as we knew it was all but extinct, or at least in very poor health. The genre’s original leading lights certainly didn’t seem to be able or willing to arrest its decline. ELP were long gone, King Crimson were on indefinite hiatus. Genesis had never been more successful, yet at the same time never further away from their progressive roots as their polished pop rock formula continued to reap chart rewards. Pink Floyd still seemed to be approximating former glories but without Roger Waters, their intellectual, if not creative driving force, and with a slick, somewhat soulless feel to their new output. And Yes? Their early 80s reinvention as a synth-based prog pop…

“This is the album I’ve been waiting for forever. This is the album I’ve always dreamed of doing,” said Jon Anderson, in April 1994 during promo activities for the Talk album. “This is the one, this is a dream come true for me on many levels. I’m very excited.” 1991’s ill-starred Union album had been a difficult, contentious creation and afterwards the future of Yes was up in the air once again. Hoping to recapture the commercial success of the group’s biggest selling records, 90125 and Big Generator, the band’s former Atlantic Records boss Phil Carson approached Trevor Rabin to reconvene the mid-80s line-up for his new label, Victory Music. An attempt to involve Rick Wakeman came to naught when Yes’ manager Tony Demetriades insisted Wakeman sever ties with his…

“I stopped smoking in 1978 and drinking in ’85. I was going to die otherwise.” Hollywood actor Bradley Cooper’s disembodied head is currently in a small village just outside Doncaster. Next to it stands a waxwork replica of his torso. The body parts belong to a US branch of Madame Tussauds and have been sent here, to a costumier’s in Yorkshire, to be measured for an outfit. Stagewear Unlimited have been dressing showbiz stars for more than 40 years. Their client list has included Michael Jackson, Norman Wisdom, Cannon And Ball, geriatric DJ/stripper ‘Gyrating Jeff’ – and Saxon. Another of its regular patrons, former Yes keyboard player and TV pundit Rick Wakeman, is here today, being fitted for a new outfit for a forthcoming performance of his 1975 extravaganza The…

A young boy is climbing a steep hill at night. Carefully, he makes his way through the tangles of sparse scrub that cling to the side of Lion Rock; from his vantage point he can see Kowloon spread before him, the name of which comes from the term for nine dragons. Immediately below, the very last house of the accommodation reserved for British army personnel in Hong Kong, where he lives with his parents, huddles into the mane of Lion Rock. Beneath his feet, time stands still, the passing of millions of years solidified in granite. Above him, a scattering of distant stars wink through the pearlescent glow of a glorious moonlit night. “It was just magical,” says Roger Dean with a sigh, he’s clearly moved by the memory of…

40. THE REMEMBERING (HIGH THE MEMORY) Tales From Topographic Oceans, 1973 Jon Anderson wanted “a calm sea of music” for Side Two of …Topographic Oceans, according to biographer Tim Morse. But nothing ever turned out so simple with this band. The opening passages are dreamy, but Howe can’t help but disturb the peace with emotive guitar lines and electric sitar. Squire’s lively bass offsets the singer’s Hindu-influenced visions and vocal musings, to beguiling effect. JS 39. THE FISH (SCHINDLERIA PRAEMATURUS) Fragile, 1971 A showcase for its composer Chris Squire – the title came from Squire’s nickname as a result of his fondness for taking very long baths. It’s built around a groove in 7/8, with Steve Howe picking out the harmonics on guitar as a backdrop. Live, the track was…

“Yes bore no resemblance to anything else that was about at the time and I thought, ‘Shit, this is going to be a great band.’”Rick Wakeman On the morning that Prog speaks to Rick Wakeman, the veteran keyboard player is in a very good mood and about as far removed from his ‘Grumpy Old Rick’ Twitter handle as is possible to imagine. The reason? “I’m going to get my [Covid vaccine] jab this morning,” he says with some enthusiasm. It’s also possible another reason the 71-year-old is so chipper is that he’s talking about the events of 1971, a year that saw his career coincidentally given a massive shot in the arm after joining Yes. In February 1971, The Yes Album was released and, nine months later, Fragile: two remarkable…

In 1968, 19-year-old Chris Squire came round in the geriatric ward of the Chelsea And Westminster Hospital, convinced he was dead. He’d ended up there after taking homemade LSD, and being found, crazed and gibbering, by his girlfriend at the flat they shared in nearby Kensington. “It was like being in God’s waiting room,” Squire recalls now. “For a while I really didn’t know if I was still alive.” When he realised he wasn’t dead, Squire returned to the flat – and stayed there for months. “This girl looked after me,” he sighs. “She worked all day and I stayed in all day. The most I could manage was a trip to the shops at the end of the road.” There was, he insists, one good outcome to all this.…

For an artist whose name is readily associated with all kinds of fantastical vistas and otherworldly imagery, it’s rather ironic that Roger Dean’s cover to Close To The Edge is a masterclass in understatement. “The texture on it was meant to feel like a leather book cover. I’ve got hundreds of dark green leather-bound sketch books, and I quite liked that look and feel,” Dean tells Prog. “I also wanted it to have some memory of that idea of creating a book that we did with Fragile. The common wisdom among advertising and art directors is that green won’t sell, but I thought it might! “After Fragile, I felt Yes needed a logo and designed it without talking to them,” he continues. “For all I knew they weren’t even going…

“I actually wanted to record Tales From Topographic Oceans in a tent in this beautiful wood that I’d found, miles from anywhere. I thought we could bury a generator 300 yards away under the ground so we could have electricity in the tent. We’d be able to record there and have all these natural sounds around us. That’s where my brain was at at that time. Of course, they thought I was totally crazy!” laughs Jon Anderson. “Crazy” turned out to be one of the nicer things said about the sixth Yes studio album upon its release in December 1973. Although achieving Gold status on both sides of the Atlantic, it received a mauling from many critics. When the band played the four-sided opus live, many fans found it a…

Chris Squire is checking the time and he’s smiling. It’s long gone midnight, deep within St Paul’s Cathedral, where he’s watching recording engineer Gregg Jackman and a couple of assistants placing microphones and checking levels. Advising them as to the best spots within the vast, resonant building is Barry Rose, the newly appointed sub‑organist who is about to play the third largest pipe organ in Europe. Joining Rose at the keyboard, Andrew Pryce Jackman, Gregg’s brother, goes over the details of the score he’s written as Rose adjusts his headphones. Looking upon this nocturnal activity, Squire recalls when he and the Jackman brothers were choristers at St Andrew’s Church in Kingsbury. They had been under the direction of Barry Rose, then their energetic choirmaster, and had even performed in this…

The back cover of Yes’ 1978 album Tormato shows the five band members wearing sunglasses and looking in different directions. “That was my idea,” says Jon Anderson now. “Because we were all going in different directions.” Anderson left Yes, for the first time, soon after. He’d grown weary of “the crapola”, and being asked: “Why don’t you write another hit?” Anderson has never done what his bandmates, his record company or, one suspects, his bank manager might have wanted him to. As a solo or collaborative artist, he’s made chart-topping electro-pop records, a commercially ruinous Latin album and a collection of Celtic songs with musicians from his local boozer, The Frog & Peach in San Luis Obispo. But he’s always stayed true to himself. The die was cast when he…

Well, that’s it. No more tour buses, no more soundchecks, no more set-lists to ponder, no more “Can I have a bit more vocals in my monitors please, John”, no more studio tans. Having called time on his playing days and got himself a nice little office job, of sorts (see The Office boxout on p63), the only thing Bill Bruford’s drumsticks are likely to be used for now is stirring tins of Dulux matt white when he finally gives the kitchen ceiling the lick of paint he’s had to put on hold (“When I get back from the tour, darling. I promise this time”) for the past however many years of his myriad musical pursuits. Retired? Surely not? It’s difficult to think of Bill Bruford having closed the door…

“I’ve never been very comfortable with Yes in the 80s. I like to keep my sound as uncomputerized as possible.”Steve Howe After 1994’s Talk failed to recapture the band’s commercially winning ways of the 80s, Yes turned back towards their 70s sound and personnel in the hope of rekindling their fortunes. In late 1995, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire and Alan White reunited with Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman to record two new songs, Be The One and That, That Is. The following year the band recorded three live dates at the Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo, California, which became the basis for the two Keys To Ascension albums, featuring a mix of live performances of the classics alongside new studio material. Howe was clear that Yes had broken with…

“At the time I was working a lot on Friends Magazine with the late Jon Goodchild, who’d come over from the States from Rolling Stone. He was their art director at the time. Out of the blue, he asked me to do some stuff for this upcoming Yes album, which they were recording at the time. “He, being a designer, had this idea of getting the band against a white backdrop. He’d got some Marshall stacks sent to him in this photographic studio and we had the band’s name stencilled on the back and the plan was that we’d stand the band around them and we’d start from there. “We got set up and waited for ages. We checked our setup and checked it all again for something to do.…

Yes’s 21st album, Heaven & Earth, was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, whose past console credits include Queen, Journey, The Cars and very nearly Yes in 1979. Baker had been booked to oversee the follow-up to 1978’s Tormato. Unfortunately, by the time he’d arrived in Paris, where the band had started recording, the group had almost broken up. Squire recalls that Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman had been writing songs together, and that he and the rest of the group [Alan White and Steve Howe] weren’t overly impressed with the results: “We got as far as four backing tracks.” Then disaster struck when White went to a roller-disco and broke his ankle. “Without a drummer we couldn’t do any more, so we shelved it.” “And I buggered off back to…

Tomorrow morning, and probably every morning when he’s not on tour, Jon Anderson will have breakfast in bed with his wife, Jane, at their house in the old Spanish mission town of San Luis Obispo, California. “And then we sit for a while and watch the birds, the deer and the rabbits outside the house,” he says. Anderson’s sing-song voice is so familiar from those old Yes albums that when you ask where he lives in relation to Los Angeles, you half expect him to answer, ‘Close to the edge, down by the river…’ (In fact, it’s a three and-a‑half-hour drive north of LA.) It’s not a bad life, then, for the 70-year-old, Lancashire-born singer-songwriter and exiled Yes vocalist. However, there have been some not-so-good days. In 2008, Anderson suffered…

“You never go into a studio thinking I’m going to make a really bad record,” said Jon Anderson in 2012, speaking to Classic Rock magazine. “You always go in thinking you’re going to make the best record you could ever make,” The second half of the 70s, for Yes, delivered what some consider to be their best record and what many consider to be among their worst. Plus, of course, the customary twists and turns concerning personnel, direction and morale. They went for – and arguably landed – “the one”, Tomatoes were thrown, metaphorically and literally, before they closed the decade with a split, a reboot and a drummer breaking his foot on roller-skates. “We always put the music first,” said Steve Howe. “We kept pushing on to the next…

The devastation felt by fellow musicians and fans following the news of Chris Squire’s death has been immeasurable. Tributes have accurately portrayed Squire as one of the world’s most innovative and talented bass players, as well as recognising his gregarious personality and ability to keep Yes functioning at the highest level, despite what often appeared to be an ever-changing line-up. For all those accolades, his loss on a personal level has been keenly felt by those who’ve worked closely with him over the past five decades, and Yes drummer Alan White has been a constant rhythmic companion for 43 of those years. Despite sounding clearly distressed at the loss of Squire, White is keen to pay tribute to his close friend, reflecting on the last few weeks and how Squire…

“We’d said, ‘You should go out as Yes featuring Steve, Alan and whoever is in the band and we’ll go out as Yes featuring us three,’ and they declined.”Jon Anderson Since it was established in 1983 by Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has largely kept progressive rock at arm’s length. The organisers’ sniffiness has meant that just a handful of prog bands and artists have been inducted over the years: Frank Zappa (1995), Pink Floyd (1996), Genesis (2010), Rush (2013) and Peter Gabriel (2014). There are some glaring omissions – King Crimson, ELP, Jethro Tull – but one name stands out: Yes. As one of the genre’s founding fathers and band who did more than any to popularise prog, their absence was…

“We can’t deny that Heaven & Earth was not well received. It was a linear type of album; it lacked the dynamics of this one.”Geoff Downes Among the most fascinating aspects about Yes is the band’s perpetual state of transience. De facto leaders have come and gone as each chapter of their saga unfolds. Following the loss of co-founding bass player Chris Squire in 2015, Steve Howe has emerged as the group’s latest alpha male. Now into a third spell as a player, the guitarist produced and pretty much drove the bus as the post-Squire incarnation of the band laid down their inaugural statement – their 22nd studio album. Howe’s mission with The Quest was simple. “I wanted to help Yes reinvent itself,” he explains. The 1990s and beyond, as…