YES

Set 1
all images © Chuck Bryant

Yes, along with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, King Crimson, and the Moody Blues, fueled much of my musical fanaticism during junior and senior high. The eponymous first album I found promising, but not very distinctive; I skipped the follow-up, Time and a Word. With The Yes Album, though, they shifted gears and began finding their niche: a vaguely classical influence, marked by unconventional meters and frequent changes (some call it "math rock"). I enjoyed the prog-rock hits like All Good People but I really ate up longer tracks like Starship Trooper and Perpetual Change.

And the unique, intriguing sounds: Chris Squire's soloist approach to the bass, Bill Bruford's punchy, jazzy percussion. Jon Anderson's voice soared along unlike any other rock-band singer I knew, and his harmonizing with Squire should qualify for a patent. He penned lyrics that would grow increasingly esoteric, sometimes only vaguely comprehensible if at all. I heard Bruford assert in an interview—late 90's, I think—that others in the band sometimes looked quizzically at certain lyrics and occasionally rolled their eyes, but no one raised serious objections because everything usually kept perking along quite well.

Fragile brought Roundabout, which both advanced the AOR (album-oriented rock) market and attracted attention (and royalties) from commercial Top 40 with the bastardized short version. Rick Wakeman replaced Tony Kaye on keyboards; among other things, he brought more synths and one of my favorite instruments, the Mellotron. One Saturday afternoon during 11th or 12th grade I played the eleven-minute Heart of the Sunrise over and over until I memorized every meter change. Listening to it repeatedly, especially the Mellotron's eerie strings, actually evoked a very slightly altered state. I didn't have the words to describe it then, and I admit that even now this may sound sort of fru-fru, but honestly, it brought me into an almost meditative oneness, flirting with something like transcendence, jumbled together with an adolescent adrenalin rush (hey, I'm 16 or 17 at the time). It so overwhelmed me that I simply had to share it with someone. So I tried to articulate this in a letter to a friend in Enterprise. I knew she also listened to good music like Yes and I thought she'd understand and appreciate what I felt.

A few days  later she wrote back, Yeah, uh, I think I know what you mean. As other variables came together I realized what she probably meant: she thought I was high, reefer happy. Hah! (Simply put: never have, most likely never will, regarding any recreational substance use/abuse.) But to use the parlance, maaaaan, did I ever get high on music, especially Yes. This sometimes took me to places that definitely did not show up on maps of south Alabama. Not only experientially, emotionally, and viscerally, but also analytically (e.g., enjoying the process of figuring out those meter changes) and anal-retentively (memorizing album data.) Yes, more than most, attracted and catalyzed much of my psychological energies.

Close to the Edge sharpened the direction Yes would pursue for the next few years: great AOR success with pieces that couldn't possibly survive in the thin air of three-minute Top 40. (Some who didn't care for this album derided it as Over the Edge). Roger Dean's artwork already graced Fragile; like Yes’ music, his illustrations too showed a new level of refinement with this album. The LP jacket opened to a surreal oceanic mesa (I don't know how better to describe it). During Mr. Beasley’s class one day I showed it to Janet, whom I had been dating awhile. She kept it to look at it. When she returned it, I found to my horror that she had drawn a little sailboat and a whale in the water.

On Roger Dean’s artwork. On my copy of Close to the Edge.

Janet disappeared mysteriously a few days later. They never found her body.

Nah, we still dated regularly, even went to my senior prom. (But we didn’t listen to Yes.)

Then came the tour de force: Tales from Topographic Oceans. Four sides, four titles. I found it overwhelming, gorgeous, inscrutable and revelatory all at once. Detractors saw it as pretentious and indulgent. I didn’t care. For me this double album felt like some sort of spiritual provocation. I didn’t really know exactly what it all meant, but it grabbed hold of me. (Remarks continue on Set 2.)

THE MELLOTRON: Not a synthesizer and actually not even an instrument, the Mellotron’s distinctive sounds came from a bank of keyboard-triggered tape-loop cartridges with pitches pre-recorded note for note from actual instruments (most often strings, brass, and flutes). Think of it as a primitive analog sampler with an often haunting quality (probably a chicken-and-egg situation: it sounds haunting because of the compositions these prog-rockers used it in, and they used it in those pieces because it has that haunting sound). Its use faded around the turn of the decade as most acts shifted to technically more accurate string synthesizers, such as the ARP String Ensemble, and even more so with the advent of digital sampling. Hardly anyone uses them today.

Hearing it still takes me straight back to junior and senior high.

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