This is the first in a series of Owlbadger guides, where we look at the work of one band or artist with a critical and opinionated eye. The idea is that someone unfamiliar with their work has an insight into where to start, what to spend time on and, more importantly, what to ignore; this is information that’s difficult to glean from an impartial source such as Wikipedia and is especially important with a band such as Yes, with a career spanning decades and an output that ranges dramatically in style and quality. There’s the added complication that some of their most commercially successful work is music that Owlbadger fans will heartily dislike. It’s easy to be mislead into thinking that Yes are simply awful 80’s MOR if all you’ve heard is ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, and that would be a great shame because, as I hope to show, Yes music from their early to mid 70’s era is one of the most glorious artifacts of the golden age of rock.

The early 70’s were a very special time for music in the UK. For the first time in history we had gone from being a musical backwater, a poor relation to our European and American cousins, to the global leader. The late 60’s had seen a revolution in the complexity and ambition of popular music. It was the leading cultural manifestation of the ongoing social and political revolution of that era. Lead by the Beatles, but ably supported by a host of contemporaries, bands were pushing the boundaries of song form and instrumentation. Aided commercially by the increasing popularity of album sales, and technologically by the advent of multi-track studio recording and the increasing popularity of Hi-Fi, which encouraged the production of ever more rich and complex music. The guitar heroes of the late 60’s had encouraged a new appreciation for instrumental virtuosity, and the Beatles’ experiments with composition and studio technology had enabled bands to go far beyond the traditional four chord major key pop song, while the LP allowed individual pieces of music to extend to up 20 minutes.

By the dawn of the 1970’s the stage was set for the emergence of what would later be called ‘progressive rock’. Pink Floyd had been producing long experimental instrumental pieces since Interstellar Overdrive in 1967 and bands like the Moody Blues had experimented with new instruments such as the Mellotron, but the first unambiguous progressive rock release is probably King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King in 1969. It was hugely influential and provided a template for a host of emerging bands. The field was now open to anyone with the ambition and chops to extend rock with ideas borrowed from Jazz and Classical music, as well as branching out with a whole new vista of extended rock ideas. Yes represent the peak of this trend, the epitome of progressive rock.

Early Albums

Yes was formed in 1968 by bassist Chris Squire and vocalist Jon Anderson, both denizens of the late 60’s Soho music scene. They bonded over a shared love of the close harmony singing of Simon and Garfunkel. Jon Anderson, originally from Lancashire, had sung with several bands by the time he met Squire, and had had a couple of his solo singles released by EMI. His high, clear, voice, with the close vocal harmony provided by Squire’s, is the focal point of the Yes sound. They are one of rock music’s great, but rather unrecognised, vocal teams; equal in my opinion to Simon & Garfunkel, Lenon & McCartney, or Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Anderson was a sponge for every pseudo-spiritual, new-age, mumbo-jumbo idea in circulation, and it forms the inspiration for the majority of the lyrics. Unless you share a similar mindset, they have to be taken with a large helping of whimsical tolerance. It’s all part of the Yes experience to let them wash over you without attempting to make any sense of them, and as a stream of schoolboy-cod-philosophy-consciousness on which to hang Anderson’s glorious melodies, they often work extremely well. There’s even sometimes some quite lovely poetry in there alongside the mumbo-jumbo. You certainly won’t find any grit or real life in there, and certainly no humour. The overall impression is of a young new-age hippie taking himself far too seriously.

Squire brought in the guitarist from his previous band, Peter Banks and keyboard player Tony Kaye. Drummer Bill Bruford (from my own home town, Sevenoaks in Kent) was recruited from a Melody Maker advert. Bruford and Squire together form another cornerstone of the early-classic period Yes sound. They are one of rock’s great rhythm sections, and quite unique in many ways. Squire played bass with pick, like a guitarist, rather than the more common finger style, and that alongside his use of a 4001 Rickenbacker bass, gave him a hard driving sound that really cuts through. The bass is a lead instrument in Yes, much more so than in most other rock bands. Bruford’s jazz influenced drumming is about as far from a swinging rock four-to-the-floor sound as you can get, but not in the mould of the Ginger Baker / Mitch Mitchel loose 60’s style either, rather more like an intricate clockwork mechanism, busily accenting the driving bassline. They are both immensely inventive and always a pleasure to listen to.

This established the five piece, vocals, bass, guitar, keyboards and drums line-up that would stay more or less constant throughout the band’s history even while the membership changed drastically.

The first two albums, the self titled debut ‘Yes’ and ‘Time and a Word’, are somewhat charming artifacts of late 60’s pop, but not really representative of what is to come and should be skipped by someone investigating Yes for the first time. It’s fun though, if you have a friend into 60’s pop - perhaps The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle for example - to play them the first Yes album, which has a very similar feel, and makes a great addition to any 60’s psychedelica playlist. Some of the elements of the classic Yes sound are present, Jon Anderson’s singular choir-boy vocals, his instinct for melody, and Chris Squire’s impressive harmonies are immediately apparent. Another joy is to listen to the early stages in the evolution of the Squire/Bruford machine. The rest is not so great: Peter Banks’ jazz club licks are predictable and uninteresting, especially when compared to what comes later, and Tony Kaye, although a competent keyboard player, is no Rick Wakeman. I’ve probably only listened to the two albums all the way through a couple of times at most. There are a few nice bits, with the first album, ‘Yes’, being much the better of the two. My favorite track from ‘Yes’ is Survival, a delicious melody and a beautiful performance by Anderson and Squire. Looking Around, a great 60’s rocker, is also worth a listen, but you’re missing the whole point of Yes if you linger here.

Part 2. Early Classic Period