Relayer (1974)(click for full painting)
Jon Anderson - Vocals
Steve Howe - Guitar, Vocals
Patrick Moraz - Keyboards
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Alan White - Percussion
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The Gates of Delerium
Sound Chaser
To Be Over
With
Tales from Topographic Oceans, Yes had hit their pinnacle, recorded and published their symphony, and needed to get back to making regular (for them) albums. They eased into it, with an album having the same structure as
Close to the Edge: a side-length epic on Side One and two nine-minute pieces on Side Two. And of course another beautiful gatefold cover by Roger Dean.
Rick Wakeman had finished the
Tales tour and left Yes (for the first time). Having worked for many years as a session musician with the likes of David Bowie ("Space Oddity"), Cat Stevens ("Morning Has Broken"), Elton John ("Madman Across the Water") and others, and also tasted success as a solo artist, he found working with Yes to be fine when he liked what they were doing, otherwise he didn't see the point in staying on. On his birthday in 1974, he made the decision to leave Yes and called them to tell them. Literally minutes later, his own label A & M called to tell him that his solo album
Journey to the Centre of the Earth had just hit Number 1 on the British charts.
Chris Squire had spent the band's off-time converting his garage into a studio, which they filled with Eddie Offord's audio gear. The result was a recording space where the band didn't have to worry about what time it was or how many hours they'd have to pay for. They hadn't really worried too much about it before, but now they truly had the freedom to write and record at their own pace and were anxious to begin work on the new album. Unfortunately, they had just lost their keyboard player, so they conducted interviews and auditions while the
Relayer sessions began.
An early favorite was a friend of Jon's named Vangelis Papathanassiou, who would later reach international fame with his soundtrack to
Chariots of Fire. Vangelis unfortunately had some trouble adjusting to working within a band, especially a band such as Yes as they were pushing into a more jazzfusion, improvisational period, and after two weeks, they all agreed that it just wasn't working.
Yes eventually decided upon Swiss keyboard player Patrick Moraz of the band Refugee, a prog trio in the style of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. (The other two-thirds of Refugee were in fact bassist/vocalist Lee Jackson and drummer Brian Davison, who were in The Nice with Keith Emerson before he'd broken up that band to form ELP.) Before Refugee, Patrick was in Mainhorse, another prog band which had recorded one album before breaking up.
Patrick's mastery of the keyboards seemed to nicely fill the hole left by Rick Wakeman's departure, and his energetic style fit well with the direction Yes was going. The middle section of what would become "Sound Chaser" was already written, and in one of their first sessions together, they asked Patrick to provide an introduction to it. The frenetic, improvised solo that he provided impressed everyone, and things were off to a great start.
"The Gates of Delerium" -- at 23 minutes, Yes' longest epic of all -- is based loosely on Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace". It begins with an examination of some of the reasons for war, includes a lengthy instrumental "battle scene" and concludes with a hymn to peace titled "Soon". Atlantic, becoming somewhat frustrated in their efforts get some radio exposure for Yes, released "Soon" as a single in the U.K. and eventually the U.S. as well. In general, Yes maintained their popularity by word of mouth more than by radio singles.
The aforementioned "Sound Chaser" is mostly instrumental, largely improvised, and highly energetic. It is inspired by the jazzfusion sound of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever, but with Yes vocals. "Sound Chaser" was originally the opening number on the
Relayer tour, but the band eventually realized that by starting with such a high-energy piece, it took another two or three songs until they'd settled down enough to play some of the older material properly.
"To Be Over" starts and ends quietly, but it (like all songs on this album) features an extended Telecaster solo by Steve. Trivia: Many people have tried to figure out the lyrics to the chant at the end of "To Be Over". Jon Anderson finally revealed in an interview that they are gibberish. They just figured out some syllables that sounded nice and fit the music, wrote them out, and sang them.
The recording sessions for
Relayer started off well, with the band very excited about their new direction and having a new keyboard player with new ideas, but both musical and personality conflicts began to arise. In particular, Steve had some specific ideas about what he wanted Patrick to play under his guitar solos, and Patrick disagreed with much of it. And while the band was trying to incorporate more improvisation into their work, they each had different ideas how that should work. There was also a slight language barrier between Patrick (whose English was not yet very good) and the rest of the band. This would be Patrick's only Yes studio album.
By the time the album and its tour were done in 1975, a group decision was made, and Yes took its first official hiatus.