Current YES tour (Steve Howe & Company)

All of this talk about the pure technical aspect of musicianship makes me raise my eyebrow because it’s an aspect of music-making that doesn’t really matter in the end. What does matter is if said musician can actually write good music. If they can’t, what are they left with? As for players that are different, well that’s pretty obvious. I love Bill Bruford for example, but I love Gavin Harrison as well. Two totally different players. Not one of them is ‘better’ than the other. Anyone who makes the argument that someone is a better musician just because they can play their instrument better than the other musician clearly lacks the insight or knowledge that it’s these differences that make music such an exciting art form to begin with.

 

He did a superb job on Fly From Here. I listen to FFH as much as the older material. It and with Drama are 2 of my favorites.

 

To each his own. IMO Rabin is a competent guitar player, a mediocre song writer, a third rate soundtrack composer and a technically fine but bland singer.
(Before anyone asks: I do have "Jacaranda" as well as pretty much every rock/pop album Rabin has played on including his south african albums. I used to be a Yes completist.)

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting that technical ability automatically makes one a better muaician. What some of us were saying is that you have to have the chops to pull off the music you are trying to execute, and we were doubting that the current version of Yes does.

The excursus into the relative technical ability of modern players was to show that the bar has been raised quite a bit in the past fifty years, and that the raw technical ability of the best musicians today far outstrips what people could manage in the past.

 

I love the band ( in all it's incarnations ) like you do.

 

I liked him a lot as I don't like Davison at all.

I don't think he's a mediocre song writer. He wrote pretty much the entire 90125 and the other stuff he wrote while in YES was very good.

 

Thank you for your post . I discover Todd Sucherman just now and wow he's really something ! Another virtuoso ! Concerning Rudess, he's another great one too.

 

Musicians today may be ultra-technical and can run circles around players from yesteryear, but that hardly matters to me. The music itself is what speaks to me and what a musician does with the music is ultimately what determines whether I consider them a good musician or not. Everything else is merely icing on the cake.

 

90125 is the only thing Rabin ever did that was somewhat successful. A lot of that success can be attributed to Trevor Horn's production skills.
Rabin wrote exactly ONE song that is still remembered by the public other than hardcore Yes fans and that's "Owner Of A Lonely Heart".
I do like some of his stuff from the 80s (e.g. "Changes") but a great songwriter he ain't.

 

I would say Gavin Harrison is way more "proficient" than Neil Peart.

 

Gavin is great. Even Bruford likes him a lot ;-)

 

Marco Minnemann is another great drummer. There are lots of fantastic musicians around, I just find the idea that the younger guys are somehow technically more adept than the legendary musicians of the 60s and 70s ridiculous.

 

Some music can' t be just done by only good musicians. Prog rock music needs great instrumentalists able to express it's complexity. As in classical music, the musical performance is essential.

 

I’m speaking in general terms. I’m quite aware of the musicianship that progressive rock needs, but, as I stated, that is merely icing on the cake. Without a formidable approach to songwriting, then you have NOTHING.

 

It goes without saying.

 

So does excellent musicianship in progressive rock. That’s a given.

 

90125 wasn't somewhat successful it was a monster seller giving YES there first #1 hit.- that album was probably the biggest selling album in the bands history. Had 90125 not came out I'm very sure they YES would have called it quits. The 80's was a terrible time for prog rock bands. Trevor came along with a full albums worth of great material and injected a shot into the band. When I went to those 80's concerts there were so many teenagers that went and started getting into YES simply because 90125 was a great album. Many of them dove into the back catalog and became lifelong YES fans. I agree that while I like some stuff on Big Generator and stuff on Union that he wrote and Talk as well after that he was pretty dried up as a songwriter. His contributions should not be minimized by anyone. Even the guys in YES said many times that 90125 gave the band a second life when prog was pretty much dead in 1983.

 

He has received, inter alia, eleven Broadcast Music Incorporate film score awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Temecula International Festival, a Henry Mancini Award (2012) etc... Not too bad for a third rate soundtrack composer.

 

Yes but how much of the success can be attributed to Rabin's songs other than "Owner"? And what else did he write that stood the test of time? Nothing at all. One great song does not make a "great songwriter". Lennon, McCartney, Dylan, John Fogerty, Tom Petty...that's what I call "great songwriters". In progressive rock Tony Banks and the guys from Rush were great songwriters. Anderson and Howe in the 70s were much better songwriters than Rabin ever was.
I mean...are "Love Will Find A Way" and "Lift Me Up" works of a "great songwriter"? They are pleasant fluff at best.

 

Whether you like it or not is up to you, but 90125 was popular as an album and had followup hits with Hold On and Leave It. Yes played the entire album on their very successful 84/85 tours, and ARW is currently doing Changes which is apparently a highlight of the shows.

 

I love 90125. Always have. But that does not mean Trevor Rabin is a "great songwriter" because 90125 is the only great success he ever had and it is questionable how much of its success has to do with Rabin's songwriting skills. I mean..."Leave It" is not exactly proof for him being a genius songwriter, is it?
But I'm beginning to repeat myself and I leave it to others to explain their opinion ad nauseam.
Carry on with the scheduled program.

 

Rabin wrote ALL the songs on 90125. That whole album is amazing. I'm not comparing him to the classic YES stuff by any means. 90125 still today is a great album. The stuff that Rabin wrote after were so-so. I was never comparing him to the people you mentioned by any means. I saw simply saying that if 90125 didn't come out when it did YES would have been finished and if not finished they would have been playing very small venues. 90125 is a pop masterpiece so it's not just Owner(which is my least favorite track on 90125). Maybe you didn't know that Rabin wrote the music for the entire 90125 album.

 

Leave it is an amazing song and the acapella version is stunning. Once again I'm not saying that Rabin is an amazing songwriter long term like other songwriters but with 90125
He wrote a perfect pop masterpiece with some great prog moments included.

Trevor Horn had a lot to do with it BUT Rabin had all the arrangements and instrument parts written out ahead of time.

 

Trevor Horn had a lot to do with it indeed. Amazing producer.

 

I don't think I'm communicating what I want to say accurately. I, too, don't care about technical ability per se; in fact, one of the problems I see now is that young musicians are a little too focused on such things.

However, technical ability does matter, and it matters if you are listening to Yes or The Rolling Stones. If you took the Velvet Underground and they tried to play "Heart if the Sunrise," I think you would agree that the result would be bad music.

Technique is not something that can be divorced from overall musicianship. You can like Lou Reed all you want, but he is not a good guitarist, unless the words "good" and "guitarist" have meanings I don't recognize, or you mean something like "Lou Reed is the perfect guitarist for the Velvet Underground."

And, anyway, the point was that the chops needed to play Yes music- which only a few people had back in the day- are commonplace today. I'm not so sure that people who aren't musicians realize how high the bar has been raised (not saying anything about you, just a general comment).