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Thread: Help me understand Union!

  1. #26
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    I think I recall reading where Howe and Wakeman both heard the album for the first time while on the Union tour and were appalled when they heard someone else playing their parts. I believe it was Wakeman who threw the cassette out of a limousine window while riding to or from a show.

    I'm pretty sure Howe plays on Masquerade. Other than that, I'm really not sure.

  2. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by jrw View Post
    I think I recall reading where Howe and Wakeman both heard the album for the first time while on the Union tour and were appalled when they heard someone else playing their parts. I believe it was Wakeman who threw the cassette out of a limousine window while riding to or from a show.

    I'm pretty sure Howe plays on Masquerade. Other than that, I'm really not sure.
    Ah, that explains some of the dodgy musicianship on the Yes East tracks. I knew it wasn't YES!

  3. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by jrw View Post
    I think I recall reading where Howe and Wakeman both heard the album for the first time while on the Union tour and were appalled when they heard someone else playing their parts. I believe it was Wakeman who threw the cassette out of a limousine window while riding to or from a show.
    I remember that Wakeman quote (was this in Keyboard Mag in the feature on both Wakeman and Kaye ?), but I don't think I've ever read Steve Howe comment on having his parts replaced. I don't think he's actually ever acknowledged that happening. Only in Henry's interviews with Jimmy Haun and Jonathan Elias was that aspect covered, and I don't think we have Howe's perspective.

    I think the Howe and Wakeman stories are different anyway. Wakeman just wasn't there a lot of the time as he had several solo tours during the period. While Elias criticised some of Howe's parts for not being up to professional standards, requiring Haun to replace them with imitations, I don't think Wakeman's playing was criticised per se, it was just that he only laid down provisional tracks and never showed up to replace them with usable takes.
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  4. #29
    If I recall the Elias article, he said that Rick was "great at playing scales". If you needed someone to play a scale, he could have easily have had a 14 year old girl play them as well.

    I understand that Elias was put in a bad position, but he didn't have to throw the whole band under the bus. He could have been more professional and just admitted that Steve and Rick were obviously not into the project and the record co put tons of pressure on releasing "something, anything."

    The tour was pretty good though.

    As much as I really loved 90125 and Big Gen (except for Almost Like Love and the title track), I find Rabin's Union tracks and post Union tracks total cheesy pop prog. Miracle of Life and Saving My Heart are just embarrassing crap. Although they were supposedly demos that Jon sang over. Lift Me Up is OK, but not as good as anything on the prior Yes West albums.

  5. #30
    cunning linguist 3LockBox's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yanks2014 View Post
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    Compact Disk brought high fidelity to the masses and audiophiles will never forgive it for that

  6. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Halmyre View Post
    Quick! Name anything else of note that Elias ever did? Ding! Time's up!
    The Prayer Cycle and American River, 2 of his solo projects, are both very good. He also produced, IIRC, a rather good solo album by Robert Downey Jr.

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  7. #32
    I listened to this yesterday, and for me the only complete dud of a track on the album is "Dangerous". The rest is actually pretty good material, though it does have this weird feeling of being basically demo-quality performances covered up by massive overproduction. They really overdid the vocal overdubs, and I can only assume that somebody must've gotten a new vocal delay/echo effect machine about the time this was recorded, because sheesh do they overuse it!

    Standout tracks for me include The More We Live, Silent Talking, and Holding On.

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adinfinitum View Post
    If I recall the Elias article, he said that Rick was "great at playing scales". If you needed someone to play a scale, he could have easily have had a 14 year old girl play them as well.

    I understand that Elias was put in a bad position, but he didn't have to throw the whole band under the bus. He could have been more professional and just admitted that Steve and Rick were obviously not into the project and the record co put tons of pressure on releasing "something, anything."

    The tour was pretty good though.

    As much as I really loved 90125 and Big Gen (except for Almost Like Love and the title track), I find Rabin's Union tracks and post Union tracks total cheesy pop prog. Miracle of Life and Saving My Heart are just embarrassing crap. Although they were supposedly demos that Jon sang over. Lift Me Up is OK, but not as good as anything on the prior Yes West albums.
    Miracle of Life? Interesting. One of my favorite post Drama tracks and easy favorite on Union.

  9. #34
    If I take off "Shock to the System", "Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day", "Saving My Heart" and "Dangerous", Union sounds good to me.

  10. #35
    Studmuffin Scott Bails's Avatar
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    "Miracle of Life" is one of the best YesWest™ songs, IMO. And, yes, "Saving My Heart" is very pop, but it's good pop, IMO. Love both tracks.
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  11. #36
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    I'll split the difference. "Saving My Heart" is an utterly unredeemable piece of shit and a strong contender for the title of absolute worst thing Yes ever recorded, while "Miracle of Life is...well, one of the better tracks on Union, anyway.

  12. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    I'll split the difference. "Saving My Heart" is an utterly unredeemable piece of shit and a strong contender for the title of absolute worst thing Yes ever recorded, while "Miracle of Life is...well, one of the better tracks on Union, anyway.
    Circus of Heaven ran away with that title a dozen years or so before Saving my Heart was born, but yeah it isn't exactly awesome.

  13. #38
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mstove View Post
    Circus of Heaven ran away with that title a dozen years or so before Saving my Heart was born, but yeah it isn't exactly awesome.
    "Saving My Heart" makes COH sound like "Close to the Edge."

  14. #39
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    Is H&E better than Drama? FFH surely not..

  15. #40
    I once did my own edit of Lift Me Up, where I took the acapella intro that's on the single version, and cut and pasted it on the album version. I had to snip off the fade where the drum machine fades in with Rabin's guitar solo over it. I cut it so that it goes straight from the vocals to the heavy fanfare thing. The weird thing was, the acapella intro was about the same length as the part of the album version I cut, so it still ended up being about the same length as it was originally. I thought it came out pretty good.

  16. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    "Saving My Heart" makes COH sound like "Close to the Edge."
    No. No it doesn't.

  17. #42
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    ABWH's second effort was weak. the YesWest tracks stood out and carried the album. LMU & MOL are great tracks and stood the test of time. if Union didn't happen those songs would have been on the Talk CD.

  18. #43
    Miracle Of Life IS pretty good - I just liked it better the first time I heard it, when it was called Four Holes In The Ground on the PFM album The World Became The World....

  19. #44
    I remember when I first got this I just got a promotional cassette of it before the official album had come out. I didn't have the liner notes so when I heard Chris Squire singing backup on songs like "I Would Have Waited Forever", I just assumed it was him playing bass there too. Nope, it was Tony Levin doing a very credible job of sounding like Squire's playing.

  20. #45
    Member Kcrimso's Avatar
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    My favourite songs on Union:

    I Would Have Waited Forever
    Shock To The System
    Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day
    Miracle Of Life
    Silent Talking

    So yeah I prefer "ABWH" songs.

  21. #46
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    Miracle Of Life never sounded like Squire and White played on it. As for Kaye, it is hard to tell what he plays on any YesWest track.

  22. #47
    YES fans like to blame/bash Elias for the UNION debacle. It was a big money project and he was expected by the record company to deliver. Don't forget that Jon Anderson was riding shotgun the whole time but he seems to avoid most of the critism. I think that given the circumstances its amazing that it even got completed and is listenable. I revisited UNION after buying a 10 song stripped down version retitled "Re-Union" and reading the Elias and Haun interviews. If "SavingMy Heart" is jettisoned it makes a decent album.

  23. #48
    Also it was early in Elisa's career and I'm sure he was under a lot of pressure to deliver. I believe he has produced Duran Duran James Taylor and AlanisMorrisette.

    I think its really more down to some of the YES men not caring about the project and a rediculous cynical record company idea for an artificial "union" of the 2 YES camps.

  24. #49
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    some random thoughts on an album which has (apparently not) been debated to death:

    “i would have waited forever”, “shock to the system”, “without hope” and “silent talking” are credible attempts of YesEast (aka ABWH) to sound like YesWest.
    it had to come out at the time it did in order to continue the momentum of ABWH’s success. which happened.
    throw away the booklet and forget about all the political issues and the general behind-the-lines brouhaha and you might discover a disjointed but enjoyable album. at least that’s how i choose to approach union.

    so there you go.

  25. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by iguana View Post
    “i would have waited forever”, “shock to the system”, “without hope” and “silent talking” are credible attempts of YesEast (aka ABWH) to sound like YesWest.
    it had to come out at the time it did in order to continue the momentum of ABWH’s success.
    Might I ask why you think that, and why in the manner it occurred?

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