Home > Music > Rock > Progressive Rock > The Yes Album [Remaster]

Performer: Yes
Engineer: Eddie Offord
Producer: Yes; Eddie Offord
Distributor: WEA (distr)

Notes: Yes: Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion); Steve Howe (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, background vocals); Tony Kaye (piano, organ, Moog synthesizer); Chris Squire (bass instrument, background vocals); Bill Bruford (drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Colin Goldring (recorder). Recording information: Advision Studios, London, England (1970). 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.

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..."

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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