The Yes Discography: Mirror to the Sky (2023)

[KevShmev]

Solid and certainly better than Tormato, but I still prefer the Rabin years and some of what came after that to Going For The One.

Man, talk about a back-handed compliment!

But I guess we should wait for Orbert's review first before we lay into how awful Tormato is.

[Orbert]

It's coming.  I listened to Going for the One again yesterday, just because I love it so much.  I've listened to Tormato many times over the years as well, since I don't hate it as much as many seem to, but I do like to give each album at least two full listens before I start my writeup.

[Orbert]

Tormato (1978)


(front and back covers -- click for larger views)

Jon Anderson - Vocals
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Rick Wakeman - Keyboards
Alan White - Drums, Percussion

----------

Future Times / Rejoice
Don't Kill the Whale
Madrigal
Release, Release
Arriving UFO
Circus of Heaven
Onward
On the Silent Wings of Freedom

----------

"Tormato was a bit of a mess!" -- Jon Anderson
"We were trying to produce ourselves and we sometimes paid the price" -- Steve Howe
"Tormato has never been my favorite album." -- Alan White
"It just seems to me like both Rick and Steve on that particular album were seeing which one could play more notes than the other one." -- Chris Squire

Yes was once again in turmoil.  The writing team of Jon and Steve which had produced such amazing music on earlier albums didn't seem to be working, so Jon wrote much of the album alone and with Rick.  This is contrary to the credits on the album.

"Never believe credits on any album. They're all political." -- Rick Wakeman

The times were changing.  Prog was being eclipsed by Punk and New Wave.  Yes tried to stay current with shorter songs and obtuse album covers, but the result was an unbalanced album which did not play to their strengths.  Jon was writing lots of songs, and it's no surprise that the number of songs written by Jon which made it onto the album more or less reflects how many more he had written for the Tormato sessions.  This also shifted the overall sound to a more "song-based" approach.  Gone were the long instrumental excursions which characterized earlier albums and cemented Yes' place as one of the premiere prog bands of the 70's.  Replacing them were short, strange songs about UFOs and political songs about whale hunting and musings on what it might be like if Heaven itself came to Earth.

Rick had some new keyboards and was clearly very keen on seeing everything that they could do.  His ongoing relationship with the Moog company had put one of the first Polymoogs in his hands; meanwhile, he had been working on developing a successor to the Mellotron, a device he dubbed the Birotron.  These keyboards dominate the album, replacing the classic Hammond, acoustic piano, and even Minimoog which had been his standard keyboards for years.

"On Tormato, keyboards were in real conflict with me not so much in the notation, but in the sound. The Polymoog and other things weren't sympathetic." -- Steve Howe

The album is not without its high points.  "Onward" is a beautiful song by Chris, featuring a French horn solo (actually keyboards) by Rick.  "Madrigal" is an actual madrigal written by Jon and Rick, and while Steve and Chris also play on it, it clearly began as a simple voice and piano piece.  "Future Times" and "Release, Release" are high-energy rockers.  "Don't Kill the Whale" took many people aback with its blatant political message, but it charted in both the U.K. and U.S.  And the album closer, "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" is an old-style Yes prog song, complete with mood changes and multiple instrumental adventures featuring Chris, Steve, and Rick.

Tormato may have been painful to create, but the "Yes in the Round" tour which supported it was considered one of their best to date.  They played in the round, on a rotating stage with Jon in the middle, slightly elevated, and the others at the four compass points.  The stage slowly rotated throughout the show, giving everyone in the audience a chance to see each member of Yes from every angle.  Yes was so excited by the success of the '78 tour that they hit the road again in '79 without an album to support, just for the joy of playing.

Sadly, this turned out to be a mistake, as by the time the '79 tour was finished, they were all exhausted, and Yes decided to take another hiatus.



Jon, perhaps opened to the idea of working solely with a keyboardist after his work with Rick on Tormato, took this time to make Short Stories with Greek keyboard virtuoso Vangelis Papathanassiou.  Just as it sounds, the album consists entirely of keyboards and Jon's solo voice.



Steve meanwhile created what many consider to be his essential work, The Steve Howe Album which, like his first album, Beginnings, features a cover by Roger Dean.  Also similar to his first album are the appearances of both Alan White and Bill Bruford on drums (on various tracks) as well as Patrick Moraz on keyboards.  Unlike his first album, Steve restricts his vocals to a single track, and another track ("Look Over Your Shoulder") features vocals by Claire Hamill.  The rest of the album is an instrumental showcase for Steve, who plays eight different instruments, including bass, pedal steel, sitar, banjo, and mandolin.  It concludes with two pieces performed by Steve on guitar and a 59-piece orchestra.  The first is a piece written by Steve, and the second is a Vivaldi concerto arranged for guitar and orchestra by Steve.

[Orbert]

I don't hate this album the way many Yesfans seem to.  It's not one of my favorites, but I bought it shortly after it came out and it was actually one of my first Yes albums, so it holds a special place for me.  And it doesn't sound "dated" to me, not in the negative sense.  It just sounds like a late-70's album does, especially the keyboards.  Rick has always been about trying new things with keyboards and sounds, not always with great results, but some of his work on this album is really good.  It's just played on keyboards that people don't like.

Rick's French horn solo on "Onward" is still, to me, the single greatest example of how to play a synthesizer and make it sound like another instrument.  Listen to the phrasing, the ways he uses glissando and not portamento, the way the timbre changes as he reaches for the high notes, just as a real French horn would do.  It is brilliant.

The interplay between Rick and Steve on "Silent Wings" is an all-time Yes highlight, from any album.  Even more incredible is that the song started as a jam by Chris and Alan.

I know, the whole "UFO" thing is silly.  But to this day, I remember hanging out in a friend's dorm room with Tormato blasting as he played pinball, and when the aliens landed and the music kept building, building, building, he was just going crazy because the music was so intense.

It's an uneven album, and it's not very prog in that it's mostly "regular songs", no extended tunes with multiple movements or changes in mood or tempo or time signature or even key.  But as with every Yes album, the playing is still top notch.  Chris' bass is as in-your-face as ever.  Alan's drumming is phenomenal.  The mixing and production are odd, but again, I don't consider them bad, just different.

Okay, start throwing tomatoes.

[KevShmev]

The live version of Onward from the first Keys album absolutely slays the studio version.  Other than that, I don't have much good to say about Tormato.

[Jaq]

Ahh, Tormato. How to discuss you without being overly dismissive, since it's clearly the lowest point Yes had in the 1970s-and you can argue their career, and I wouldn't be able to say you were wrong.

Going For The One's shorter songs did prefigure the direction that Tormato was heading in. Overall, the band's sound had become less edgy and improvisational and had become a bit more modern sounding and focused. In that regard, the band certainly hit on HALF of what they were aiming for. Tormato certainly sounded more modern than any Yes album to date-in fact, in many ways, it sounded more like a product of 1983 than 1978, largely due to Wakeman's keyboards. Focused songwriting, however, the band lacked on this go round. A lot of prog bands, at least the biggest, most successful ones, were going through evolutions at the time-Emerson, Lake And Palmer threw out the godawful Love Beach to fulfill a contract obligation, and filled half of it with dreadful pop songs, while Genesis was beginning their evolution towards being less a prog band and more a smart, pop rock band with And Then There Were Three. Yes felt the same change in the air as those two bands, and their effort fell somewhere in the middle. What killed Tormato dead, or at least, made it less than appealing, was that it was somewhat half baked. There's a lot of good ideas in there, but they don't really congeal into a whole. Tormato always feels somewhat at a distance to me, even at its best moments; it wasn't Yes going through the motions, it was Yes not really sure what motions they should be making. Howe and Wakeman never really work well together on the album, and it hurts it in a lot of places.

I could offer a defense of this album, though, if one thing hadn't happened; if Anderson and Wakeman hadn't left. I think the next album this line up COULD have made might have learned from the mistakes made here and been an album that managed to be concise while remaining prog. Interestingly, Howe wound up doing a lot of songs that qualified as that with Asia, and the entire band adopted that approach with Rabin. But I won't credit Tormato for helping there, I'll leave that notion to more knowledgeable Yes fans.

[Orbert]

Jon and Rick did leave, but the next album, Drama, is one of my favorite Yes albums.  Jon and Rick wanted to go in a mellower direction.  Meanwhile, Steve, Chris, and Alan wanted to get heavier and try to get back to the prog sound they'd established in the 70's, and Drama scores in that department.  Short Stories is pretty lightweight, as are Rick's solo albums from this time.

I think it was an album that had to be made, if only to force the issue.  Jon Anderson was more and more starting to see himself as the leader of Yes, not just the lead singer.  And he wasn't completely wrong; "Close to the Edge", Tales from Topographic Oceans, and "The Gates of Delerium" were all his ideas.  I'll give him credit for those.  What blows me away is that in just a few years, he went from that to songs about UFOs and The Circus of Heaven.  Jon leaving, and Rick following, were necessary for the evolution of Yes to continue.

[Perpetual Change]

Jon and Rick did leave, but the next album, Drama, is one of my favorite Yes albums.  Jon and Rick wanted to go in a mellower direction.  Meanwhile, Steve, Chris, and Alan wanted to get heavier and try to get back to the prog sound they'd established in the 70's, and Drama scores in that department.  Short Stories is pretty lightweight, as are Rick's solo albums from this time.

I think it was an album that had to be made, if only to force the issue.  Jon Anderson was more and more starting to see himself as the leader of Yes, not just the lead singer.  And he wasn't completely wrong; "Close to the Edge", Tales from Topographic Oceans, and "The Gates of Delerium" were all his ideas.  I'll give him credit for those.  What blows me away is that in just a few years, he went from that to songs about UFOs and The Circus of Heaven.  Jon leaving, and Rick following, were necessary for the evolution of Yes to continue.

Jon seems to have gone from being "off in the deep end" to "out in left field" around that time. I guess Magic Mushroom teas once per day will do that to a man.

I've never heard Tormato in it's entirely, so I'll reserve comment.

[Orbert]

Jon has always been a very spiritual person.  He speaks of God in a monotheistic way, not in the sense of a Christian god but more like he's open to outside ideas and a cosmic consciousness and all that.  I ridicule the song "Arriving U.F.O." but it's not really a stretch for Jon; it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that he believes firmly in extraterrestrials.  I just prefer my Yes music a bit more vaguely ethereal.

Quotes from other members of the band hint that Jon was starting to see Yes as his personal vehicle; Jon just says that he was writing a lot more than the others, so naturally that ratio would be reflected in what made it onto the album.  The problem is that Jon doesn't separate his songs from what would be more appropriate for Yes.  But if the others weren't writing a lot, I'm not sure that they had much room to complain.  Rick continued to crank out solo albums, and Steve made some amazing music on his solo album from this period.  If they had brought those ideas to the Yes table, Tormato would have been a very different album.

[Jaq]

Arriving UFO doesn't really bother me considering the time frame; the 70s were big on extraterrestrials visiting the earth and being responsible for ancient wonders, especially the whole Chariots of the Gods thing, and UFO sightings were a big deal back then, largely due to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, admittedly, but UFOs were part of the cultural zeitgeist back then. In fact, in 1978, you were running into sci fi themes a lot thanks to a lot of reasons, even Star Wars (which I doubt is the case here.) It would have been ODD if some band didn't address UFOs in some fashion.

[Nel]

What can I say about Tormato... I like "Don't Kill The Whale". The beginning sounds like the theme to a crime detective show. Not really interested in the rest of the album. And the cover art and album title are atrocious. I know the story behind it, but still, it's awful. Thank goodness they went back to Dean for the next one.

[Mladen]

I'm not really a fan of this album. It does sound like a mess. There are some great parts, Onwards is very nice and Release release can be a lot of fun, but I'm not sure about the rest. Even the proggy stuff doesn't do anything for me...

[Kwyjibo]

So it's come to this, the first really low point in their long career. And the cover art with the thrown tomato seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This album to me always was more of a Anderson solo release than a group effort and that may be the problem. It's more song orientated and less proggy, that in itself is not necessarily bad, but the songs for the most part just don't work. Future Times and On The Silent Wings Of Freedom are decent, Don't Kill The Whale is a fun song despite it's blatant message but the rest is just meh. And did they really think that including Anderson's son to talk about a circus was a good thing?

Maybe they just ran out of ideas or were a little burnt out in the creative area but it's obvious that something had to change to revitalize the band. Looking at Drama it seems that the departure of both Anderson and Wakeman (again) was excatly that.

In conclusion: Don't hate, don't like, normally don't listen to it.

[Orbert]

Drama (1980)


(click for full painting)

Geoff Downes - Keyboards
Trevor Horn - Vocals, Bass
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Chris Squire - Bass, Keyboards, Vocals
Alan White - Drums, Percussion

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Machine Messiah
White Car
Does It Really Happen?
Into the Lens
Run Through the Light
Tempus Fugit

----------

After the 1979 tour, Yes reconvened in what have become known as "the Paris sessions".  They felt that a change of scenery would give them a fresh outlook and perhaps spark some new ideas.  Some of the results of these sessions can be found as bonus tracks on this album and elsewhere, and they reveal that the musical direction of the band had not changed much since Tormato.  That is, Jon Anderson seemed to be writing the bulk of the material, and the material itself was simpler, more song-based.  This seemed to frustrate the rest of the band, especially Steve, Chris, and Alan, who were looking to either move into a heavier direction or return to their proggier sound from earlier in the 70's.  Amidst these tensions, Rick Wakeman decided to leave the band again, and Jon Anderson followed shortly after.

Steve, Chris, and Alan chose to carry on with Yes.  They began working on new material, although they weren't sure what form the new Yes would take.  Continuing as a power trio was a possibility, as was the idea of finding a new singer and probably keyboard player as well.  Although Chris and Steve both sing, outtakes from the new "London sessions" are all instrumental.



As it happened, Yes manager Brian Lane also managed a new band, The Buggles, who had a hit single ("Video Killed the Radio Star") and a hot album in the charts (The Age of Plastic).  The Buggles also happened to be a duo, a singer and a keyboard player.  Brian suggested that they try playing together, just to see what might come up.  After one session together, Chris asked them to join Yes.

Trevor Horn, the singer, was not so sure; in fact, he resisted.  He knew that joining Yes meant that he would at some point be asked to sing onstage before huge crowds and essentially "be" Jon Anderson.  Either that, or he would be seen as the one who dared to replace Jon, and either way, Yes audiences would likely reject him.  Besides, he honestly preferred the production side of music-making and did not consider himself a great singer.  Keyboardist Geoff Downes was into the idea.  He had literally dreamed of playing in Yes and had written a song about it ("Tempus Fugit").  Trevor eventually gave in and the lineup for the new album was complete.

Drama reflected the heavier direction that Steve, Chris, and Alan had been pushing for, combined with the whimsy and new age sound of The Buggles, and the end result is rather progressive.  It seemed fitting that artist Roger Dean was asked to provide the cover art, for the first time in half a decade.  Drama is considered a worthy addition to the Yes catalog by many fans and their strongest effort in years.  The sound quality is also noticeably better than the previous few albums, partly due to the return Eddie Offord at the console.  After backing tracks had been laid down, however, Eddie left, and the album was finished by the band.

While the album was considered a success, critically if not commercially, the ensuing tour was nearly a complete disaster.  Trevor's voice was similar to Jon Anderson's, but not strong enough to sustain the high range of the Yes catalog every night.  There were certainly some off nights, and as predicted, crowds reacted poorly to the new lineup.  Some fans attended the concerts with no idea that either Jon or Rick had left the band.  It probably did not help that The Buggles, who had replaced their beloved Jon and Rick, were seen as one-hit wonders, no more than a lightweight pop act.  (This is unfair, as Geoff is a gifted keyboard player and The Age of Plastic quite a good album.)

With concerts getting poor reviews and some cancelled for poor ticket sales, the tour ended prematurely.  The "great experiment" of trying to continue without Jon and Rick seemed to have been a failure, and Yes officially broke up after Drama.  Steve and Geoff went on to form Asia, Trevor went back to his first love, producing, and Chris and Alan began looking for new projects.

[Zydar]

Great album! Machine Messiah is a Top 5 Yes song for me. I don't care that Jon isn't on it, great music is great music.

[a51502112]

Trevor Horn - Vocals, Bass
I doubt Trevor Horn played any bass on Drama.

My fav Yes album.

[Nel]

Drama is my favorite Yes album. It's possibly the only one where I wouldn't skip a single track. There... there really isn't much more to it than that. I love the songs on here, cheesy as some of them may be, and I really wish the rest of 80s era Yes had followed this direction.

Chunkilicious bass ftw. 

[Jaq]

One thing about Drama that's always interested me-and it's a great album, one of my higher end Yes albums-is how bloody HEAVY it is. Especially in terms of Steve Howe's overall career-I always wondered how he went from the sound he had on Tormato, to the simply massive sound he had on Drama, then back to the sound that was closer to his usual on the Asia albums. Someone more knowledgeable about his work may have an answer, but Drama just sticks out like a sore thumb with his sound (you can cite the one GTR album too, but Drama is WAY away from the Howe norm.)

Another thing about this album: I was listening to it when I finally bought it on CD a few years ago, and I thought, I swear, the following: "Man, Trevor Horn wasn't really that great a singer, but he was awesome on the production end. I wonder what Yes with him producing a different singer would have sounded like?"

Thirty seconds later: "Hold on a minute..."

 

[Sketchy]

I really like this album.  I've heard Going For The One, but not Tormato, but Drama seems a lot more fresh than Going For The One to me. Machine Messiah and Tempus Fugit rock so damn hard too.

[Orbert]

Trevor Horn - Vocals, Bass
I doubt Trevor Horn played any bass on Drama.

He plays bass on "Run Through the Light".  Chris plays keys on that one.

[KevShmev]

I like this record. Machine Messiah is a great tune, and everything else is pretty solid.  Having no Jon Anderson is a bit strange, but I can handle it for this record, although I expect it might have been different had I been a fan at the time this came out (similar to how ambivalent I was towards Fly from Here last year). 

[Mladen]

I remember getting into the band in the summer of 2009, listening to all of their classic records, even Tormato, but for some reason skipping this one. Man, was I missing out! I was probably skeptical about an album without Jon Anderson, but I don't miss him at all when listening to Drama.

Tempus fugit and Machine messiah are among their best songs, especially the latter, being absolutely intense and heavy, yet beautiful. Also, dare I say that Does it really happen is almost as good as the two classics I mentioned, I'm having so much fun every time I hear it, the groove is incredibly infectious. And lets not forget Into the lens, a song that I couldn't get out of my mind the first time I heard it, and I still can't get enough of ''I am the camera, camera camera.''

Overall, Close to the edge is untouchable, Fragile and Relayer follow, then there's The Yes Album, and finally Drama. These five albums remind me why I love this band so much.

[The Letter M]

I did not comment on Tormato, mostly because it was never one of my favorites among their first 10 albums, and in fact, I would rather take most of their first two albums over most of Tormato. I have grown to appreciate it more over the years, but it's still slightly under par for what they were capable of, being the same lineup that put out Tales From Topographic Oceans and Going For The One. There were two or three songs on it that I really liked, but following an album like GFTO and preceding the greatness of Drama, it's just the bad tomato in the sandwich of two meaty monsters.

As for Drama, I absolutely love Love LOVE this album, and when I first got into Yes, I could not get enough for it. This is probably one of their best albums, IMO, and definitely worthy of a spot in my Yes Top 5. "Machine Messiah" rocks in a way that they had only touched on before, and it's so HEAVY and powerful. Unexpected after their previous album, but more than welcome. The follow tracks after it are all great, well produced pieces of music. This whole album is one I have kept in my car's CD player for days and weeks on end, spinning it everywhere I'd go. Definitely one I can never get tired of listening to! It's just so good, you almost forget Jon and Rick even left the band!

-Marc.

[Orbert]

There are really only two reasons why people didn't expect this album to be any good: Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.  With them gone, the assumption was that Yes would pretty much fall apart.  But look at the direction in which Jon had taken them with Tormato; the others called it "too folksy" or just too light.  That's what Jon was into at the time.  And while Rick is one of my favorite keyboard players, he was getting into some pretty cheesy sounds, and the success of Relayer showed that he wasn't irreplaceable either.

Geoff Downes was very good for one so inexperienced, and his approach to keyboards is actually very similar to Rick's.  He has an ear for orchestration, using the different sounds in layers, and it works within Yes the same way as Rick's keyboards had.  In fact, probably moreso, as Steve had expressed frustration with Rick's choices of late and found it hard to work with.  In The Buggles, Geoff was basically the entire band, so he knew how to create space, and how to leave room for other instruments to fill.  The other instruments used to be more keyboards, but it's really the same principle; each instrument worked within its space.  Steve once again had room to go crazy with his constant "solo over everything" style, and Chris owned the lower end, as always, in a similar way.

Trevor's voice is high, but otherwise isn't really very much like Jon's.  What made it work is that his voice blended with Chris' and Steve's in the same way as Jon's; the classic Yes three-part harmonies were still there.  His lyrics were somewhat whimsical and spacy, and in that sense not too different from Jon's lyrics from the early 70's.  Jon had actually started his trend towards more literal lyrics by this time, so it could be argued that Trevor was actually more suited to Yes than Jon was at this point.

Drama is one of my favorite Yes albums.  When it came out, I had my doubts, but I'd heard "Tempus Fugit" on the radio and thought it was a cool song, and when I went to the record store, I was thrilled to find that not only was there a Roger Dean painting on the cover, but the album "opened up".  For some reason, this was always very important to me.  An album with a jacket that unfolded was just cooler than one which didn't.  Usually the cover art continued around to the back, forming a larger picture, and it also meant there was an inside gatefold for more art, photos, lyrics, or whatever.  Tormato was the first Yes album that didn't open, and not only was it disappointing just for that, but it was also a sign to me of their lowered status as a band; it meant that Atlantic was no longer willing to invest in deluxe packaging for Yes albums, and that was discouraging.  Drama was a return to form in many ways.  But with the way the album was received, and the disastrous tour which followed, it's understandable that this was really the last straw.  The 70's were over, and so was Yes (for now).

[The Letter M]

Another thought-
Of all the 6-song albums released in 1980 by a band with a single-word name, Yes' Drama is probably my second favorite!!!

-Marc.

[Orbert]

I like Permanent Waves too, but it's second to Drama for me.

[The Letter M]

I like Permanent Waves too, but it's second to Drama for me.

Yes, but how close are they?

To me, it's probably pretty close. I've also been on a near 2-month long Rush binge, so I've been all about Rush for weeks now.

Also, PEW probably ranks in my Top 5 Rush albums, so it's already pretty high on my "All Time Favorite" albums list.

-Marc.

[Orbert]

It's pretty close.  I've been a Rush fan longer than I've been a Yes fan, but I think my infatuation for Yes just goes a bit deeper.  I'd put Moving Pictures over Drama, but probably not Hemispheres, for example.  Both bands had some good runs of killer albums.

[KevShmev]

Drama is good, but Permanent Waves is all-time great.  It ain't close in my book.

[ytserush]

Not sure how Rush comes into play here, but....

Strangely, as much as I'm not much into Tormato, the mix isn't bad and there are a lot of neat things going but it's not sustained for some reason for me.



Drama is a top Yes album for me. When I first heard it shortly after it came out, I was unaware of any baggage or ...wait for it....drama associated with this album.

I love the modern sound and it still doesn't sound very dated to me. Although some effects are "trapped in the 80's" the emphasis is definately on the music.

[Orbert]

I didn't think much about the title until later, but it does seem to fit, doesn't it?  I think it was Steve who was asked what the title Drama meant, and he just said that it seemed appropriate.  Typical Steve Howe answer, quite direct if you understand what he's getting at, otherwise pretty obscure.

[Orbert]

Yesshows (1980)


(click for full painting)

Jon Anderson - Vocals
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Patrick Moraz - Keyboards
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Rick Wakeman - Keyboards
Alan White - Drums, Percussion

----------

Parallels
Time and a Word
Going for the One
The Gates of Delerium
Don't Kill the Whale
Ritual
Wonderous Stories

----------

When Jon and Rick left Yes in 1979 following the Tormato tour, the remaining members chose to carry on, but Atlantic Records was not so sure about the future of the band.  It was therefore decided that it was time for another live album, to keep Yes in the public eye and ear, and of course to bring in some revenue for the label.

Chris sat down with tapes from the past three tours and began editing.  At one point, Yesshows was to be like its predecessor Yessongs in that it would be a triple LP package and feature the entire album Tales from Topographic Oceans, just as Yessongs had contained all of Close to the Edge.  Chris was also asked to prepare a two-LP version, in case it was decided that another three-LP release wasn't feasible.  Then the famous meeting of The Buggles with Steve, Chris, and Alan took place, leading to the Drama sessions and eventual album, and the Yesshows project was shelved.

After the band officially broke up in 1980 following the aborted Drama tour, Atlantic decided to release Yesshows after all.  Apparently because Yes technically did not exist at the time, no one from the band was consulted, and someone at Atlantic dug up the two-LP rough cut that Chris had put together.  This became Yesshows.

Yesshows has material from the Relayer, Going for the One, and Tormato tours, which is why both Rick and Patrick appear on keyboards.  Patrick plays on "The Gates of Delerium" and, perhaps surprisingly, on "Ritual".  The remaining tracks have Rick on keyboards as they were taken from the later tours.

The album opens, as does Yessongs, with an excerpt from Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite".  But in this case, we join the excerpt nearer to its conclusion.  We hear the applause as the band takes the stage, and they play along with the final segment, leading directly into "Parallels" to open the concert.

Because of its length, "Ritual" was originally split across the two sides of the second LP.  There was a fade-down at the end of side 3, then a fade-up at the beginning of side 4, just before the point of the fade-down, so no music is actually missing, but it was still unfortunate that the song had to be treated this way.  Incredibly, the two parts were not rejoined on the original CD release but instead the fade-down and fade-up were preserved as on the original vinyl.  This was eventually corrected, and current CD versions of Yesshows feature a seamless 28-minute performance of "Ritual".

Another questionable edit is the joining of "Time and a Word" with "Going for the One".  The performances were taken from different nights, from two different tours.  It is a clever segue, but it never actually took place in concert.

Chris is alternately quite proud of the job he did in creating Yesshows, or quick to point out that it was merely a rough cut, (perhaps to apologize for the questionable edits he made), depending on when you ask him.  Other members of Yes were generally unhappy with the results, including the choice of performances, the mixes, and the sound quality in general.  They tend to point out that no one consulted them about Yesshows at all, including Chris.  Some fans complain that the bass is too prominent in the mix.  (The album was produced and mixed by the bass player; go figure.)

Most fans, however, were just happy to get more Yes.  With live versions of two fan favorite epics, both of the band's recent hit singles, a classic from the early years, and two songs from Going for the One which took on new life in concert, there is much to like about this album.  Even if it had been a triple-LP release, by the time all of Tales from Topographic Oceans was included, and "The Gates of Delerium" given its own side, there would have been only one LP side left for anything else.  The two-LP release, with its greater variety, was probably the right decision, although to this day, fans would still love to hear a complete live performance of Tales from Topographic Oceans.

Yesshows features another surrealistic landscape cover by Roger Dean.  The artwork on the front and back covers both come from the same painting, but they do not form a continuous print, which is an odd choice, as the original painting is quite large and would have lent itself nicely to such an application.  The larger view (click on the cover above) shows the original painting, with its references to both Yessongs and Relayer.

[Jaq]

Oh yes, the album I confuse in title with Yessongs. 

Ritual being spread across more than one side was one of two "wow, can you really do that?" moments in my formative days of progressive rock listening, the other being the similar way the epics on ELP's Welcome Back My Friends...were continued across more than one side. That's definitely something that's been lost from the days of vinyl albums; true, you get the song as it was intended now on both Yesshows and the ELP album, but you lose a little something. You lose the sense of a band being so adventurous that they break the format of the music and stretching boundaries literally.

These days, what strikes me most about this CD is how well Time and a Word fits in with the longer, more epic version of Yes that is on display for the rest of the songs. I mentioned this WAY back in the thread, but it still bears repeating, how the evolution of Yes could be tracked so neatly all the way through their career. I think I'll give this one a spin today, it's been a bit since I have played it.

[Mladen]

I should listen to this live album... As well as most of the albums you're about to discuss, so I'll just enjoy the read. 

[ytserush]

I love this album. As I've said before, I think it sounds much better than Yessongs.

Thanks for the back story. I didn't know that about this album. I don't recall reading that in the Chris Welch Close To The Edge book for some reason.