Yes: Yesterday and Today
Phil Bell, Sounds, 26 November 1983
Phil Bell gives the nod to the reformed, revitalised Yes
"There is a disco mix! I believe that it's valid for us to go into these avenues. But I wouldn't say the single itself is actually a disco record, even though they did play it at the Camden Palace last week!" — Chris Squire.
CAN YOU believe it? A sussy, scorching single from the maestros that sculptured Close To The Edge, Tales From Topographic Oceans and Going For The One.
Make no mistake, Yes are back with a crash and a bang or two! Crashing back into action with 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart', a dynamic ditty with cacophonic, diametric instrumental bangs and blasts laced with infectious melodies and a breakneck squealer of a lead break.
Jon Anderson is pleased. "Love lost, love won, or it could be happening… someone looking for love. These are supposed to be the three main options for a hit record, aren't they? Which one's 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart' then? I don't know!"
It's a curious re-entry into the arena for the imperial imp and the merry Yes-men. Instant mass appeal guaranteed by a careful balancing of opening HM chordery, a neat beat-for-the-feet, and an irresistible hookline. Anderson thinks that essentially it's not really that far removed from the olden structured epics, rather systematically streamlined.
"I actually always wrote short songs, I used to like piecing them together with songs by Steve (Howe, as if you need reminding). Because I always felt there was more substance to a seven minute song than a three-minuter. To me, in some ways, that was the wrong way of thinking because you should be able to condense as well as expand. I started to think about expansion simply as a defence mechanism of not being able to make hit singles with the 'progressive' music we made in the early days.
"For instance, I think 'And You And I' was just a little song, but we developed it into a meaningful structure of music! It was only four chords!"
Careful Jon, you might destroy some people's illusions!
"True, but music is an illusion in a lot of ways."
Few folks should know better. Anderson's celebrating two decades in "da biz" this year. Twelve of those years he and Squire devoted to building Yes into the immense supergroup they're remembered as; church organs and lush vocal harmonies, stunning stageshows and surreal Roger Dean sleeves, magnificent musicianship on monumental masterpieces, such were the hallmarks, the mention of which usually draws reactions of nostalgia or nausea.
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Chris Squire's Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, sitting outside the Knightsbridge Hilton where in turn new guitarist Trevor Rabin and he gave their new Yes stories, is just one souvenir of that bygone era of rock opulence.
(The Anderson interview was conducted a couple of days later in a hired Chelsea mansion, while Alan White was off chasing the eagle that escaped while filming the 'Lonely Heart' video; eventually it was captured on Tower Bridge after a dramatic cross-London dash!)
Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman were, of course, replaced in Yes by Buggies Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes in 1980, an ambitious merging that gave the band's lease of life a ten-month extension.
But Hammersmith Odeon in December of that year saw the last time Yes trod the boards, and it seemed that the curtain had finally come down on one of Britain's all-time Mega-groups.
Of course Steve Howe, together with ex-Yes manager Brian Lane, has since found further multi-platinum satisfaction in Asia, and it never seemed probable that Yes might one day reform without him. But they have! It was not, however, an instant decision. Squire swears.
Dateline London, early 1982: "Since the last format of Yes split up Alan and I had been doing some things together, the 'Run With The Fox' single at Christmas in 1981. Then we thought it would be more constructive to put a band together, that wasn't necessarily going to be anything to do with Yes."
Dateline Los Angeles, early 1982: South African guitarist (and not many people know this, a qualified classical conductor too!) Trevor Rabin, with a string of albums behind him — first with Rabbit, homeland heroes, then solo — is about to sign his latest project to RCA shortly after rejecting a "cut and dried" proposition to join a forming British-based supergroup, Asia!
"Then there was this call from Chris, thru the record company. Mutt Lange had recommended me so Chris said come over and let's play. Alan, Chris and I went to Chris's studio and mucked around, and it felt good. So I went back to LA while we were deciding what to do, and Chris came up with the idea of bringing Tony Kaye in."
Kaye, for those uninitiated, was the original Hammond handler in Yes from 1968 to 1971. However, he never made the reformed Yes, being nudged out last winter soon after recording started with Trevor Horn at the helm, reportedly (officially) because he didn't fancy touring:
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