Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Yes
Label: Atlantic Records
Released: 1971
Running time: 41:56
Rating: 4.5/5
At first, Yes were “psych-heads” (psychedelic rock), drawing from the foundations The Beatles had laid. They weren’t even fully aware that Atlantic Records was planning to “drop” them if they kept putting out commercially uninteresting albums like their 1969 debut “Yes” and its follow-up “Time And A Word” (1970). King Crimson laid the foundations of progressive rock in 1969 and landed on the throne right away, while Yes only slowly inched their way onto the prog track. Jethro Tull were also just a little blues band at first, slowly easing into progressive rock. Yes were similar, except the blues always stank to them, and they “kicked off” as “mild psychedelics,” which was hugely popular at the time. Just think of Pink Floyd and their ultra-psychedelic “Ummagumma” (1969). How Yes would have developed with Peter Banks on guitar is perhaps best shown by the rest of his career and the work of his band Flash.
This review hinges on two words. Steve Howe. Much like the future father of the metal riff, Tony Iommi, the jazzer Steve Howe turned up in 1970 to audition for Jethro Tull. Meanwhile, Yes were frantically hunting for a replacement for Banks. Yes vocalist Jon Anderson courted Robert Fripp (King Crimson) to see if maybe he’d want to scrub a guitar for Yes. The fact that Anderson warmed to Fripp at all said something. Yes were hungry for a complete transformation. Fascinating backstage games. But it all ended up following a totally unplanned script. Jethro Tull took Martin Barre into the band, Black Sabbath were born, King Crimson stayed as they were, and a completely reborn Yes rose up. The arrival of “hot-footed” Steve Howe as permanent guitarist changed the Yes story forever!
Steve grew up on the music of Wes Montgomery and Chet Atkins! From the latter he picked up a unique way of playing the strings with his right hand (pick and fingertips at the same time). It had never happened before that a jazz guitarist, self-taught to boot, so radically affected and transformed a rock band, and it wasn’t at all clear such a union would even be compatible. It was more than compatible! The alien “Yoda” Steve Howe was tailor-made for Yes. Inimitable and one of a kind. The band now consisted of nothing but oddballs. Jon Anderson with his spacey, mile-high, instantly recognizable soprano vocals. Bill Bruford, who had only one thing on his mind: boundless experimenting on drums! Then Chris Squire, who brought to rock music the freshly rattling, slightly overdriven, avant-garde punchy and thickly accentuated sound of the exploratory melodic lines of his bass guitar. And keyboardist Tony Kaye, who got an interesting role in the band. He became the connecting link that kept the songs compact and consistent, stamping the record with the massively thick lines of his Hammond B3 organ while Howe, Bruford and Squire sailed experimentally around Kaye’s forms.
Howe paved the way for an evolutionary step forward. Next to him everyone became far more confident, and improvisation and the discovery of new musical horizons suddenly became the essence of Yes’s expression. What made it groundbreaking was that Steve Howe was the initiator of this total overhaul. He brought in a whole heap of novelties, and Yes made an enormous qualitative leap in their musical expression. Not only was Steve more versatile than Banks before him, fresh ideas just kept flying out of him one after another. A stylistically diverse guitarist, he did a bit of everything. From boogie country excursions (The Clap, or the part of Starship Trooper called Disillusion) to jazzy experiments in solos inside songs. His quirk was clear, too: dwelling on strummed chords for too long bores him to tears, so at every transition he tries to find a space that he can then solo through, airing it out and turning it upside down. That’s why he makes such good use of the keyboard lines holding the melodic background, weaving all sorts of specialties into the songs. At root, Steve’s style comes from jazz. Dropped into a rock band, it was a real revolution. Nobody sounded like him before and (luckily) nobody ever will. In a word, simply ‘Howe-ish’! Yours Is No Disgrace is direct proof of the individuality and variety Steve is armed with. It combines everything Yes were at the time. Rock punch, wildly offbeat experimental detours, jazz-inspired moves and a whole palette of new astral sonic images that the world had never heard caught together in such a combination. In the mini-hit Your Move, Howe toys with the Portuguese vachalia (a type of guitar), while the band as a whole radiates remarkable softness and sophistication. The band never sounded like before again, either. Steve pulled everyone up to a higher level of quality. T. Kaye on Hammond B3 organ kept the songs from falling apart into motifs with his heavy lines, preserving their compactness. For the first time in the band’s history, the phrase ‘being progressive’ can sound truly fitting. The full measure of Steve’s improvising is perfectly grounded by the Hammond lines, while the rhythm section, with Steve around, gained even more room to maneuver and brought even more melody to the whole Yes sound, adding extra contrast to the music. It’s full of unpredictable stylistic leaps that flow into one another fluidly and seamlessly, which elevates “The Yes Album” to a creation of extraterrestrial intelligence. The album carries every last drop of genius in rock composing.
The “weaving and tangling of a clean jazzy sound” of the Gibson ES 175 sounded extravagantly fresh colliding with the band’s rock stance, and Yes suddenly found themselves back in the spotlight, their “star” shining brighter than ever. All of a sudden we could see it and couldn’t look away. They became progressive from head to toe and, together with King Crimson and Genesis, formed an avant-garde trio, the tip of the red-hot “progressive rock” scene of the late sixties, which kept its popularity and mass support right up until the arrival of a virus called “punk rock” somewhere around 1976.
Interestingly, in their new guise Yes actually became easier on the ears. Every part of the whole had a clear shape, all the muffled psycho-fuzz suddenly vanished from the sound, and the rhythm foundation sang with rock punch. It may sound ironic, but Yes became tougher and lighter. Tougher in sound, lighter in arrangements. Lighter especially in that they found a formula of harmonious combinatorics in choosing motifs, which sit in perfect balance throughout the songs and flow fluidly. They became tougher mainly thanks to the sound of Squire’s bass playing, which grew ever more pronounced, and Kaye’s aforementioned way of organ-ing. With “The Yes Album” the story of classic Yes really begins, hence the sense of the record’s title. Reborn like this, Yes boldly set off toward their most productive period. ‘The Yes Album’ is an unforgettable, landmark experience for the band!
Line-up
Jon Anderson – vocals, percussion
Bill Bruford – drums, percussion
Steve Howe – guitar and vocals
Chris Squire – bass guitar and vocals
Tony Kaye – keyboards
Production
Bill Inglot
Track list
1. Yours Is No Disgrace (9:36)
2. The Clap (3:07)
3. Starship Trooper: Life Seeker / Disillusion… (9:23)
4. I’ve Seen All Good People: Your Move / All… (6:47)
5. A Venture (3:13)
6. Perpetual Change (8:50)
