How good would Big Generator have been if Jobson had worked out with YES?

[bondegezou]

At one point weren't there several songs that were to run together on side two? A suite of sorts..?

Yes; I believe the plan was to have this song order: "Holy Lamb", "I'm Running", "Love will Find a Way", "Final Eyes". But the record company wanted "Love will Find a Way" to come first and the plan was dropped.

Henry

[JJ88]

Yet to some of us, this was precisely what the band had become by then. While I agree about "I'm Running" and "Shoot High" being solid tracks, these were not in the slightest representative of Yes from this point on.

I was talking in relation to their earlier work, which defines them IMHO. They pulled it off on 90125, largely because of Trevor Horn's very inventive production. But Horn got fed up of them during the sessions of this particular album...he was much in-demand as a producer by this point and simply didn't need to be dealing with their squabbles anymore.

I certainly prefer Genesis' more 'pop' material of the same period to this non-descript material like 'Love Will Find A Way'...Tony Banks in particular always added something of interest to the songs.

The title track and 'Almost Like Love' I find near-unlistenable. Sorry!

[Scott Bails]

Aw, LWFAW isn't a bad song. It's far from the worst YesWest song. It's damn sure better than Stevie Billy-goat Nicks deserves.

Agreed.

As already pointed out, Big Generator has some good songs and some awful songs. For me, the title track is way too over the top, and "Almost Like Love" is just completely terrible. But things like "Final Eyes," "I'm Running," and "Shoot High, Aim Low" work very well. Would have been interesting if they could have turned out one or two more songs like that, with the more loose arrangement and grander scope.

[gearHed289]

I recently re-visited this album (thanks Amazon Prime...). My opinion - get rid of the title track and It's Almost Like Love, and you have yourself a nice 80's Yes album. Whether or not you're into that sort of thing is up to you. It's really too bad it got drawn out the way it did, and I wouldn't doubt it would have been a better record had Horn been allowed to just do his thing.

[Paulrus]

I've always preferred BG to 90125. It sounds more like a cosmic rock album -- which to me is what Yes is really about -- than a slick Trevor Horn pop rock production. As someone up-thread said, it has a clunker or two but the highs beat anything on 90125. That said, I could happily live never hearing "LWFAW" ever again. The rest of it is isn't perfect, but it just *feels* more like a Yes album to me. The next one that captured that vibe was The Ladder IMO.

On the subject of Jobson in Yes, I was thinking about this the other day while I was spinning Zinc (awesome album, btw). I think there's a reason Eddie was quickly shown the door in '83. He's an amazing musician who had loads of great ideas back then, but I couldn't possibly see him fitting in or being happy as either a hired gun, a sideman, or a partial contributor. He's too opinionated and strong-minded about his ideas and I can only imagine what would have happened when he and Trevor started butting heads. And I think Jon would have been too flake-y and airy-fairy for Eddie. Still, what he could have achieved with Yes is one of the great "coulda-woulda-shouldas" in progressive music. But I think they got him 8-9 years too late.

[dregsfan]

To the posters earlier asking where to find a great example of Eddie's prowess on the keys, look no further than "Carrying No Cross" on "Danger Money." The middle section contains some blistering organ runs as well as some nifty piano work.