The Yes Album [Bonus Tracks] [Remaster]

Performer: Yes
Engineer: Colin Goldring; Eddie Offord; Eddie Offord
Producer: Yes; Eddie Offord; Bill Inglot; Yes; Eddie Offord
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Yes: Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion); Steve Howe (acoustic & electric guitars, vachalia, background vocals); Tony Kaye (piano, organ, Moog synthesizer); Chris Squire (bass, background vocals); Bill Bruford (drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Colin Goldring (recorder). Recorded at Advision Studios, London, England in Autumn 1970. Originally released on Atlantic (8283). All tracks have been digitally remastered. Yes: Chris Squire (bass instrument, background vocals); Steve Howe (background vocals); Jon Anderson, Tony Kaye, Bill Bruford. Personnel: Chris Squire (vocals, guitar); Steve Howe (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion); Tony Kaye (piano, organ, Moog synthesizer); Bill Bruford (drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Colin Goldring (recorder). Audio Remasterer: Bill Inglot. Liner Note Author: Bill Martin. Recording information: The Lyceum, London, England (07/17/1970). Photographers: Phil Franks; Barry Wentzell. Unknown Contributor Role: Steve Howe. The album that first gave shape to the established Yes sound, build around science-fiction concepts, folk melodies, and soaring organ, guitar, and vocal showpieces. "Your Move" actually made the U.S. charts as a single, and "Starship Trooper," "Perpetual Change," and "Yours Is No Disgrace" became much-loved parts of the band's concert repertory for many tours to come. Remastered in 1995, with significantly improved sound. ~ Bruce Eder With THE YES ALBUM, Yes began an important new chapter in its career and defined much of what the next decade would bring. They had left behind not only their original guitarist, Peter Banks, but also the covers of 1960s tunes by the likes of the Byrds and the Beatles. The arrival of the more hard-edged Steve Howe signaled the group's ascent into full-blown progressive-rock mode, a style whose parameters Yes helped craft with this recording. Though Rick Wakeman and his classical-influenced arsenal of keyboards had not yet come aboard, Tony Kaye's roiling Hammond organ and Chris Squire's busy bass lines perfectly interacted with Howe's idiosyncratic playing to create a uniquely fugue-like sound, as Bill Bruford's polyrhythms and Jon Anderson's angelic voice simultaneously kept things on a more abstract and ethereal plane than almost anything that had been labeled "rock" up to that point. "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace" would become hallmarks of prog rock and launch a thousand pale imitations by third-string art-rockers for decades to come. With THE YES ALBUM, Yes began an important new chapter in their career and defined much of what the next decade would bring. They had left behind not only their original guitarist, Peter Banks, but also the covers of 1960s tunes by the likes of the Byrds and the Beatles. The arrival of the more hard-edged Steve Howe signaled the group's ascent into full-blown progressive-rock mode, a style whose parameters Yes helped craft with this recording. Though Rick Wakeman and his classical-influenced arsenal of keyboards had not yet come aboard, Tony Kaye's roiling Hammond organ and Chris Squire's busy bass lines perfectly interacted with Howe's idiosyncratic playing to create a uniquely fugue-like sound, as Bill Bruford's polyrhythms and Jon Anderson's angelic voice simultaneously kept things on a more abstract and ethereal plane than almost anything that had been labeled "rock" up to that point. "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace" would become hallmarks of prog rock and launch a thousand pale imitations by third-string art-rockers for decades to come. The album that first gave shape to the established Yes sound, built around science-fiction concepts, folk melodies, and soaring organ, guitar, and vocal showpieces. "Your Move" actually made the U.S. charts as a single, and "Starship Trooper," "Perpetual Change," and "Yours Is No Disgrace" became much-loved parts of the band's concert repertory for many tours to come. It was remastered in 1995, with significantly improved sound. Then, in January 2003, Rhino reissued The Yes Album in a newly remastered and expanded edition, with a much brighter, crisper and fuller sound, new annotation by Yes scholar Bill Martin, and three bonus tracks: The single edits of "Your Move" and the "Life Seeker" portion of "Starship Trooper", and the studio version of the Steve Howe acoustic guitar solo number "Clap". All of the music, down to the tiniest nuances of Howe's guitar work or Chris Squire's bass playing, is exposed as never before, and the vocals have greater warmth. The studio version of "Clap" is less focused and succinct than the slightly shorter live rendition from the original LP, and it contains about a minute of material that Howe removed from the piece and later explored more effectively in "Mood For A Day" off of the group's next album, so we're essentially getting a preview-after-the-fact of part of Fragile. ~ Bruce Eder

Rolling Stone (2/6/03, p.64) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...It was the addition of Steve Howe's guitar pyrotechnics that finally allowed Yes to find their true identity. The following year's YES ALBUM is a gigantic leap forward..." Q (6/00, p.63) - Ranked #86 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...The sound of British prog rock at its most inventive....[It] is Swinging London-meets-Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey..." Q (6/00, p.63) - Ranked #86 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...The sound of British prog rock at its most inventive....[It] is Swinging London-meets-Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey..."

The longest-running prog-rock group in the business, Yes flew on the strength of Jon Anderson's high, angelic voice and the group's instrumental virtuosity. The band began in England, rising from the ashes of pop-psych outfits like Tomorrow, Bodast, and Mabel Greer's Toyshop. Extending the technical facility of psychedelia and downplaying the trippiness, it helped forge the template for progressive rock and reigned as its most popular practitioners in the '70s. Over the years, Yes has weathered personnel changes, lawsuits, and changing public tastes while holding on to its original vision.

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