music

my first introduction to yes was probably listening to them at andy’s place. like the majority of my school chums he wanted to be a musician. he had a very nice black acoustic guitar on which he would chung cha chung cha chung chung cha. while he concentrated on learning scales i was busy air guitaring.
most saturdays a group of us would head into south harrow and go directly to the fondly remembered selanby record store. andy was quite chuffed that he had managed to get hold of 12-inch single of the current yes single: ‘going for the one’ (it may have even been on blue vinyl). from then on each time we went into selanby we were confronted with numerous copies of the 12-inch single, it got so that it seemed the only person in the world who had kept his copy of the single was andy.
as with most long running bands yes have gone through many changes. personnel have come and gone, and some have returned to go again. sometimes it was the sound that changed sometimes becoming very twee other times become much harder. while steve howe and jon anderson were associated with the band you could always point to the ‘yesness’ of the sound.
the two tracks on show here capture yes at the height of their progginess with ‘soon’ from the relayer album. steve howe kicks it all off with a nice bit of slide guitar and then jon anderson comes in cha cha chunging on his guitar. you’ll notice that he was a bit elfin back then, and judging by most of his lyrics he was often away with the fairies. the rest of the band were chris squire on bass, alan white on drums and patrick moraz on keyboards.

the second track in some twenty years later. they are playing one of their more rockier tracks. jon has put on some weight and in order to hide that he is wearing a sheet. steve is still playing slide and still gurning as he plays. chris squire looks like he is wearing waders. alan white just looks older, while the crown prince of prog keyboarders is back where he belongs – that said rick wakeman is looking very sedate (well for him).

yes were proggier than most prog bands – their ability to do twee allowed them to go to places most other prog bands just didn’t approach. over the years they have released concept albums, double concept albums, live albums, double live albums, triple live albums, gatefold cover albums. if that wasn’t enough then the album ‘going for the one’ was a double gatefold album with art from hipgnosis (famous for their work on pink floyd album covers) (the cover features a naked male bum – this echoes the naked male bum on rush albums – prog promoting sexual tolerance! how punk is that!)

sit back and let the prog caress you.
trust me – you’ll love it.

vintage yes -



yes - getting long in the tooth, but still rocking the free world.