The Yes Album by Album Thread (Part 2)

I still get a chuckle out of that statement every time I see it. That's marketing for you.

 

I was quite surprised, actually quite enjoyable, because of it's length it is mastered at low volume, my copy is dead quiet, I'm actually re-doing a needledrop of it right now, i know I'm one of the few on this forum that enjoys this album

 

Nice. I might have to pick it up next time I see it... if I see it. It shows up on ebay occasionally for more than I'd pay.

I've only heard it once via youtube, so I don't really count that. Sounded more like Yes to-the-max than anything, but it was enjoyable enough that I might track down the CD.

 

To me Union sounded like what it was- post-produced to death with a cast of thousands. Lift Me Up was the only thing I could listen to.

 

You're not alone - I personally love the album as well, but it is a pretty big piece of crap for the most part

 

I discovered some of the early promo mixes of the ABWH II tracks from Union are different to the album versions and I prefer them. The promo mix of Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day has a middle section cut from the album version. The promo mix of Take the Water has a second half cut from the album version. Some songs though like Angkor Watt I think just can't be saved no matter what the mix or edit.

Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day - The longer promo mix



I also find Jon's rejected and abandoned ABWH II demos pretty interesting. Some tracks seem to have a strong Randy Newman influence of all things. Jon mentions liking his music in that interview I posted earlier where he talks about Yes' abandoned follow-up to Tormato and Song of Seven. Steve's Turbulence from this time period is great as well and provides a counter argument to Elias' claim that Steve wasn't playing well enough. It could well be that Steve's heart just wasn't in it as he pieced together that ABWH was going to morph back into Yes. That's just a guess.

 

Great, thanks for posting that, In search of it I had to resort to a Bootleg Japan Mini cd from Mexico, we'll see how this works out

 

Union
Released April 1991
Produced by too many cooks

Jon Anderson – lead vocals
Steve Howe – guitar, backing vocals
Trevor Rabin – guitar, backing vocals
Chris Squire – bass, backing vocals
Tony Kaye – keyboards, backing vocals
Rick Wakeman – keyboards
Bill Bruford – drums
Alan White – drums, backing vocals

Additional musicians

Jonathan Elias – synthesizer, keyboards, vocals
Tony Levin – bass guitar, Chapman Stick
Jimmy Haun – guitar
Billy Sherwood – bass, guitars, keyboards, vocals
Allan Schwartzberg – percussion
Gary Barlough – synthesizer
Jerry Bennett – synthesizer, percussion
Jim Crichton – synthesizer, keyboards
Gary Falcone – vocals
Deborah Anderson – vocals (Jon's daughter)
Ian Lloyd – vocals
Tommy Funderburk – vocals
Sherman Foote – synthesizer
Brian Foraker – synthesizer
Chris Fosdick – synthesizer
Rory Kaplan – synthesizer
Alex Lasarenko – synthesizer, keyboards
Steve Porcaro – synthesizer
Michael Sherwood – vocals (Billy's brother)
Danny Vaughn – vocals

1. "I Would Have Waited Forever" (Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Jonathan Elias)
2. "Shock to the System" (Anderson, Howe, EliasJonathan Elias)
3. "Masquerade" (Howe)
4. "Lift Me Up" (Trevor Rabin, Chris Squire)
5. "Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day" (Anderson, Elias)
6. "Saving My Heart" (Rabin)
7. "Miracle of Life" (Rabin, Mark Mancina)
8. "Silent Talking" (Anderson, Howe, Rick Wakeman, Bill Bruford, Elias)
9. "The More We Live – Let Go" Squire, Billy Sherwood
10. "Angkor Wat" Anderson, Wakeman, Elias
11. "Dangerous (Look in the Light of What You're Searching For)" Anderson, Elias
12. "Holding On" Anderson, Elias, Howe
13. "Evensong" Tony Levin, Bruford
14. "Take the Water to the Mountain" Anderson

Some highlights-

I Would Have Waited Forever
Starts out with the chorus with a cliche Who like riff and then goes into the verse with a cliche Kinks like riff. Steve plays some pretty good double note octave though but they are not very inventive....very by the book. Not exaclty a barnburner of a song.

Shock to the System
Starts with an OK E boogie type descending guitar riff. The chorus is not bad though with some decent guitar from Steve. The bridge is pretty good also.

Masquerade
A classical/folk hybrid instrumental from Steve that is one of his least complicated numbers playing wise. Based on a simple D Major chord pattern. Still a decent piece and a needed break on the album.

Lift Me Up
Starts out with a heavy open E riff. The verse then goes into a E-D-A folk gospel progression with the chorus using a slight variation of the verse chords. The melody in the chorus is great though and very memorable with some great harmony parts. Not the most groundbreaking of tunes but a pleasure to listen to nonetheless. Some nice call and response parts in the gospel like chorus.

Saving My Heart
Yikes. A reggae tinged disaster.

Silent Talking
Another E based riff opens up the song...very generic sounding. The riff continues in ostinato style in the verse and basically goes nowhere. Another head scratcher IMO.

Holding On
Some decent guitar work from Steve on this one but once again very generic riffing. The verse then goes into a D Minor-C pattern that also goes nowhere. The chorus is pretty good saved by Jon's vocals.

Evensong
Another head scratcher IMO. What were they thinking? What the hell is this?

Take the Water to The Mountain
Filled with trademark Jon lyrics and floating melody. Pretty good harmony vocals save the song. Crappy sounding percussion though.

Both Yes factions joined together for this recording, hence the title of the album. The album did not sell very well as compared to Big Generator. The album is kind of a mish mosh in some ways but is overwhelmed by Kaye's (I think it is him) modernistic keyboard work, Rabin's power chord based songs and White's straightforward drumming. Bruford, Howe and Wakeman are barely identifiable on the album IMO. I wonder if some of the parts that sound like Bruford, Howe and Wakeman are in fact one of the studio players that Jonathan Elias brought in......11 count em' 11 keyboard players. The record company execs are also to blame IMO for the way this album ended up. They should have left the two factions alone to record their respective albums. I guess they thought it would be better dollars wise to join them and see what happens rather than "compete" with each other.

Rumor has it that ABWH had some demos that are awesome but never made it to the album. I have never heard the demos.

I am not a big fan of this album. Most Yes fans I know rate it at the bottom of the barrel. IMO, the only thing that saves it somewhat is Jon's vocals. Can you ever think of a time when Jon's vocals are not great no matter how putrid the material? I can't.

 

To The Stars from Jon's ABWH II demos

 

Do you think Jimmy Haun plays on all the ABWH group stuff?

 

Are most of the ABWH demos that never made it to Union available on Youtube?

 

In his interview with Henry Potts, Jimmy says a few tracks have only him playing, Shock to the System, Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day which Jimmy says was written last minute, Dangerous and Take the Water to the Mountain. The other ABWH tracks on Union have a mix of his work and Steve's.

http://www.bondegezou.co.uk/iv/jhinterview.htm#p2

 

I could not even venture a guess. I never heard of him until Union. Is he mostly a studio session guy?

 

Yes. They are also available officially as a Jon Anderson release called Watching the Flags That Fly.

Here's another one.



If you go a few pages back, I posted another one, Axis of Love that was nearly revisited for Keys to Ascension according to Rick Wakeman.

 

Understand about this record, that not very much of what you're hearing is actual members of Yes playing, particularly on the ABWH material.

In the notorious interview with session guitarist Jimmy Haun posted above he goes through every song and details, without any shame or guilt, how much of the guitar he actually played on those songs -- and it was almost all of it. There are just scattered moments that are actually Steve.

Wakeman's playing was either changed in MIDI or replaced with other people. As far as I know the drumming is actually Bruford but again, it's probably been heavily manipulated. The only guy whose playing was left intact is Tony Levin -- and he's not in Yes!

On the Yes West material written by Rabin, as usual Tony Kaye is most likely not there at all and it's anybody's guess how much Chris Squire there is either. Those were basically demos that Rabin gave to Jon to sing on. "The More You Live," meanwhile, is almost entirely played by Billy Sherwood, who Chris wrote the song with.

 

Another one from Jon's demos, this one is sort of similar to For You For Me from Song of Seven.

 

It must have been very strange for Steve to play Shock live then on the Union tour. It was a very good approximation of Howe for sure.

 

Good info. I can hear Steve a few times on the album. Where I do hear him it is almost like an afterthought on his part. Let me say this.....I think it is him. If he is not playing on the songs where I mention he is, I am hoping someone will correct me.

 

I do like the artwork on the cover though.

 

It's kind of amazing that Jon, who was not even in Yes when this project was started, was able to control it so completely that a) he turned an album of songs by his band of ex-Yes members into an actual Yes album; b) he and the producer could rerecord or rework most of his bandmates' parts; c) he co-opted what material the "official" version of Yes had and d) he convinced all of them to go on tour together, even though they all hated the album and must have all been upset with him. He must be a master manipulator.

Honestly though -- while Union is basically a fraudulent Yes album I still find several of the tracks pretty enjoyable and I'd still probably rather listen to it than a lot of what Yes did after. As I said earlier "Lift Me Up" and "Miracle of Life" made me think that everyone would have been better off if the 90125 band had just stayed together and made a third album; they're as good as anything else that lineup did. I think "The More We Live" is pretty good even though many fans seem to dislike it... it's basically a sequel to "Shoot High Aim Low." (Including the utterly un-Yes-like "Saving My Heart" was a mistake though.) And, not realizing at the time how concocted it was, I thought the ABWH portion of the album got off to a pretty good start with "I Would Have Waited Forever" and "Shock to the System" -- these tracks certainly have more energy to me than the ABWH album does, and seem to find an acceptable middle ground between the two versions of the band. Beyond that, though, the album just falls off a cliff, with some of the most confused, incoherent recordings ever to appear on a Yes album to that point.

 

The only Union about this is that Squire sings backing vocals on the ABWH songs. This has to be Yes' biggest failed opportunity. I would rather have seen Peter Banks and Patrick Moraz than the performances we got here and on the tour.

I thought the show had some very forced moments:
1) Howe playing YesWest material, mostly on acoustic
2) Bruford playing with Squire on Long Distance Runaround
3) Saving My Heart being performed on the 2nd leg
4) Worst of all, the dueling parts on Yours Is No Disgrace.

 

In a lot of cases the parts are Steve's ideas, they were just rerecorded with tones that were deemed more commercial/contemporary. "Shock" sounds like Trevor Rabin worked on it. But Haun mentions other songs where he was going "What might Steve Howe play here?" Pretty bizarre situation.

 

There is an extended version of I Would Have Waited Forever on the In A Word box set. It has an ending guitar figure. Are we to presume that is Jimmy Haun as I thought Steve played on that track? Or maybe no one really knows for sure except Jonathan Elias.

 

The original officially released version of Union is not an album I have much time for these days. For me, almost worse than the orchestra of session men and some tracks that don't hide the fact very well that they were written last minute is the sloppy editing. Ever since I heard the promo mixes of Without Hope and Take the Water, the edits on the official version stick out like a sore thumb to me, not what I'd call professional work.

The In a Word Yes box set includes the promo mix of I Would Have Waited Forever which was also issued on a CD single back in '91. It has a full outro rather than fading out and you can hear more of Steve's original guitar parts at the end. I think Shock to the System became good when played during the Union tour. Masquerade is a good but simplistic solo from Steve. According to a 1993 interview Steve did for Notes from the Edge, it was included at the insistence of Roy Lott from Arista records. Steve says Roy told him "We've spent millions on this record, now we want a track to come from you."

Lift Me Up and The More We Live Let Go are my favorites from the Yeswest contributions. I think Miracle of Life is okay but I don't think the majority of the track lives up to the great intro. I always skip Saving My Heart, that's a real low point for Yes imo. Talking of low points, Angkor Watt and Dangerous are also pretty horrible, imo. I was actually kind of relieved to find out Steve doesn't play on Dangerous. If you're a real glutton for punishment, a few ridiculous club mixes were made for Dangerous. They're out there but I wouldn't waste time hunting them down. Holding On is an okay track but not amazing. Take the Water to the Mountain is far better in the promo mix version, it has an unused second half where the feel changes from tribal to a more standard anthemic Yes style. Evensong is a very short excerpt from some versions of the duet Bruford and Levin played during the ABWH shows Levin was there for.



"You've got a situation of eight people with eight different managements, eight or nine record companies, eight odd publishers, eight lawyers, eight accountants..., the end is listless as they say. There's just so many people, anyone of them could have been the fly in the ointment and wrecked the whole thing." - Rick Wakeman , 1991

 

An unused Yeswest submission for Union that eventually was released on the Yesyears boxset. The title is rather ironic considering all the backroom politics that happened during the Union sessions.