Yes - Going For The One and Tormato. Yes experts what say you?

Yeah, it's ok. I'm not crazy about it.

 

The common view seems to be that the peak years are 1971-72 with The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close to the Edge.

I think that The Yes Album is a little overrated - I don't think as it's exciting as what was to come, like it's still got a foot in the psych-rock camp and it's texturally limited with Kaye on keyboards.

While Tales is too meandering and diluted over those four twenty minute tracks, I think the following two albums are again Yes at their best - Relayer is terrific heavy jazz fusion and Going For the One has five great songs, even if it misses Eddie Offord a little. But Tormato doesn't have the material and it has some strange instrumentation choices like the birotron and the bass sounds.

For me, the Big 4 Yes albums are Fragile, Close to the Edge, Relayer, and Going For The One.

 

I think this one has been discussed to death since the birth of the Internet.

In sum -- Tormato sucks, but we learned Yes was possible of much worse sucking later on. So from a historical perspective, it was but a hint of the downfall to come.

GFTO would have been a nice swansong.

 

Going for the One is great, albeit compromised by a thin, crowded production. It needs Steve Wilson, but if I recall the masters are missing.

Tomato I dn't feel confident commenting on - I have barely played it, which says it all really.

As to Yes albums, their first two albums are often discarded unfairly. I love them. No, it's not the full-blown prog rock band yet, but the musicianship is there, and Anderson sounds great. I love them.

So classic Yes is everything from the debut to Going for the One. I throw in 90125 as well, a real renaissance.

I've never gotten on with Tales, and bought the CD/BR version to try it again. Have yet to break the seal on it.

 

It’s a song that regularly chokes me up when I sing it. I find it a very emotional piece.

 

Tormato is the better album of the two. Going for the One has one OK side (A) and one all-time classic side (B). There, I said it.

 

Blimey, you certainly did.

But by your analysis of GFTO, for Tormato to be better it would need to have one good side and one all-time classic side, wouldn't it? Or, at the very least, two good sides. I think I better listen again to figure out what I'm missing!

 

Love both albums but Tormato just edges it for me! Release Release is probably the best 'rock' song ever recorded by a 'Prog' band!
The mixing on both albums the only dissapointed for me!

 

Yes is probably my second favorite band, i'm a big fan of a large portion of their discography. That being said, there is a noticeable drop in musical quality in the late 70's. None of the songs on Going For The One click for me other then Awaken, and even then that song is kind of boring in my opinion, it's not varied enough to justify 15 minutes of song length (and up to 17 in live performances). Tormato is a 50/50 album for me. It has some great moments, especially Onward and On The Silent Wings Of Freedom, but it's not enough to bring up the rest of the album. Luckily this was all rectified with Drama, which is one of their best albums imo.

 

If you scrape the best Tormato tracks together, you might have one good side, but even the best material doesn't rank up with Classic Yes in my mind. GFTO smokes it.

 

Here's half-an hour, give or take, a bit more than a side:

Release, Release
Madrigal
Future Times/Rejoice
Richard
Onward
On the Silent Wings of Freedom

I think that easily bests the first side of GFTO.

 

Not in my estimation....and I'm a fan of Tormato. Onward gets much more interesting live on Keys To Ascension, while here it's a relative dud. Richard was an outtake for a good reason -it's an o.k. song, but not particularly strong. Future Times/Rejoice, On The Silent Wings of Freedom and Release, Release are good songs, but they pale compared to Awaken and Turn of The Century AIMHO.

Another Tormato song improved substantially is the Live Don't Kill The Whale from Yesshows.

 

My point is simply that I think Tormato's status among fans has been colored by the band's account of the recording of the album and their mixed feelings about it. Likewise GFTO benefits from the band's own narrative that this was a feel-good reunion that everyone was happy with. I wouldn't argue with you that very little in the Yes canon holds a candle to the flip-side of GFTO. But both albums have peaks and valleys. I love Turn of the Century, but some days I think it sounds out of place on this album. I'm not a huge fan of Parallels, but it's a good song. I happen to think very highly of some of those Tormato tracks, and to me overall it's a better listening experience if I want to play an album through. This is coming from someone who thinks the band peaked on side 2 of Tales, so don't take my opinion too seriously.

 

I was a teenager when both these albums were released. My brother bought them and we both played the hell out of them. I liked each album and was fortunate to catch the '78 tour. My opinion regarding both albums I can assure you was not colored by revelations regarding the mood and tension of the band during the recording process (I was blissfully unaware of this at the time like most Yes fans).

 

I will go on the record as saying that the middle section of Arriving UFO is cool but coulda been amazing, ala Gates of Delirium.

 

I didn't mean to imply you, specifically (sorry if it came across that way); it's more of an overall pattern I've noticed. I don't think we're actually that far apart in our respective assessments of these two albums. You didn't happen to catch one of those '78 shows in the northeast where they actually played Release, Release, did you?

 

My first Yes concert (and first big rock concert) was the GFTO tour in LA in Sept 1977 at the age of 12. By then I had been into Yes about a year or so and loved the main albums (starting with Fragile, then Relayer, Close to the Edge, Tales, Yes Album and of course Yessongs). I was turned on to them by my older brothers and friends.

At that time Yes seemed like such a distant, mysterious entity and I was hungry for any information about them. It seemed like forever since they had released an album. In the summer of 77 word got out that Wakeman had rejoined and they were coming out with a new album. The first I heard of GFTO was actually from a radio interview with Alan White speaking on the phone to (I believe) KTYD in Santa Barbara (I had the tape for many years after). During the interview they played "Parallels" and "Turn of the Century", so those were the first two songs I heard before I got my hands on the record itself.

My impression of the album will always be bright, sunny, streamlined in a way, and full of positive energy and light. This applies to the actual sound of the album and also it's influenced by the blue skies of the cover. Though in retrospect I do get what people say about the murkiness of the mix, etc, the sound of the album seems to fit the music for me, and everything sounds of a piece, live, together and authentic. It will always be one of my favorite albums in the universe.

By contrast, I also remember getting the Tormato album a year later. When I first put it on , I immediately heard the guitar sound that kind of went "splat" like the tomato on the cover. I suppose the cover had an effect, but there was something wrong with the sound. It felt like somehow, things with the band were contracting or deteriorating.

However, I went to the Tormato show and the "Ten True Summers" show ('78 and '79), and they were great shows, and I eventually came to love Tormato in its own way...