For Yes Fans - what happened?

I Completely disagree that Bill’s drumming on Close To The Edge shows any evidence of being out of touch with the rest of the band or any diminishing quality. And I can’t hear Alan’s live work being an improvement on any of the 3 CTTE songs recorded live. I think Alan’s drumming on Relayer is outstanding, but no need to slag Bill’s drumming on CTTE to help make a point.

 

I think you are hitting on something here. At some point they were no longer band where each member was collectively contributing to the music to make something greater than the sum of it's parts.

This happened (in my mind) after Bruford left. Things evolved into a different dynamic with Rabin. When the old band reformed, the old Yes never returned. They seemed to only go through the motions.

This isn't to say there wasn't some nice stuff to rise to the surface but the magic just wasn't there any more.

 

I'd normally agree, but with Alan getting pretty savaged, the bar has been set. And I'm not just trying to make a point. If it's OK to pick one drummer apart, then they are all fair game. To my ears, Bill sounds bored on side two of CTTE. And by all accounts he was bored. In fact, Alan would sit in on that stuff when Bill wasn't around, which was how the band got used to/familiar with him in the first place. And as someone mentioned before, there's just an intensity to the drumming on Yessongs that isn't quite there on the album versions of the CTTE material. That said: yeah, Bill is greatly missed on stuff like Heart Of The Sunrise.

 

This happens all too often here. Before this goes any further, could we please cease with Bruford vs. White debates? They were both great drummers and important contributors to the evolution of Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Bill was not bored with the music on CTTE, he was bored with the process of making the album. Please find a quote from Bill that states otherwise.

Alan’s drumming is harder-hitting, not more intense to my ears.

 

I didn't say he said he was bored, but that he sounds bored. Lol. But there's this:

""In fact, what finally drove me out of rock n’ roll was the repetition," he remembered in Genesis: Chapter and Verse. "That’s what had separated me from Yes. Why I had found King Crimson so attractive was because they were way more open: ‘Surprise us, go ahead, let’s improvise, terrific.'"

Certainly suggests he felt constricted in the least.

Full article here: 45 Years Ago: Bill Bruford Announces His Stunning Departure From Yes

And I agree about hard hitting and intense being different. Bill's playing is very intense even when not in your face volume-wise.

 

Time to unwatch.

 

I think Yes ultimately imploded due to their pretentiousness. Don’t get me wrong, I was as rabid a fan who has ever existed. I saw every tour from Fragile through Tales. To this day, that Tales concert is still a top 10.

But so much prog music boils down to pretentious wankery... stupid pet tricks that are only interesting because they can be pulled off, not because they are emotionally moving.

Nearly everything after CTTE until 90125 seems very lightweight. I do enjoy about half of 90125. I saw that tour and they were very good, although not nearly as good as Tales era.

I also saw the last classic lineup show in 2008 and it was a snooze fest. They didn’t even attempt anything remotely challenging. The last only remotely interesting song was an unplugged version of Long Distance Runaround.

I call the as I see them.

 

I saw Yes back in 2011 on co-headlining tour they did with Styx, and it was an uninspired performance, to say the least. That was during the period when Benoit David was the singer.

Regarding Tales, I don't call it a great album like some fans do, but I do like the first and last tracks a lot, and the album overall is an interesting journey for sure. It just suffers from too much padding, like they stretched out some of the songs to make them fit a whole album side. I guess after the major success of Close to the Edge, which was a masterfully written 18-minute song, they thought, "Hey, let's do a whole album of those kinds of songs," but it fell short of the mark. Fortunately, they got back on track in that regard on the next album with The Gates of Delirium, which is arguably as good as Close to the Edge, if not better.

 

Amazing band with great albums... beautiful music but the time has change and the band too. So simple. The glory days are in the past.
Ah ! I really like Tormato and Drama

 

What happened is commerce.

When Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman left after Tormato, the band tried to continue with a different lineup, but the reception wasn't that great and times were changing anyway. So Yes hung it up.

What happened in the '80s was Yes in name only - the band was to be called Cinema and it became a new version of Yes due to label pressures. An alternate way of looking at Yes is a lot less complicated, and much more consistent with a lot of what happened to many bands of their era: Yes existed until 1980, disbanded for awhile, got back together in the mid 1990s for a reunion that stuck (Keys to Ascension) and then continued as primarily a legacy/greatest hits vehicle.

 

If my understanding is correct, We Can Fly From Here was indeed the first song Trevor and Geoff pitched for Yes, but it was decided this would be held back for the album after Drama (along with Sad Night At The Airfield, Madman At The Screens, Life On A Film Set and Vermillion Sands, the latter eventually turning up on Buggles' Adventures In Modern Recording, as did Into The Lens, which was reworked into I Am A Camera). A demo tape from late 1980/early '81 containing most of the material intended for this project is doing the rounds, and it's remarkable how much was finally revisited three decades later - I'm even more stunned that the end result turned out so great!

Anyway, when it comes to the Yes albums I've listened to most over the years, my favourites appear to be Tales From Topographic Oceans, Relayer, Drama, 90125, Big Generator, Fly From Here* and Heaven & Earth. Really, I'm surprised by that last one, though it's possible I just play it a lot because the novelty factor has yet to wear off.

*In this case, I've "rolled my own" custom tracklist for this album, which consists of the original 2011 release except Hour Of Need, which is the alternate full-length version, and I put Don't Take No For An Answer in the same place it featured on last year's Return Trip.

P.S. Who else is curious to hear more from the short-lived Cinema? I've heard that several rehearsals and even studio recordings from before 90125 took shape exist, yet are unlikely to see the light of day officially...

 

So curious to hear the 20+ min original "Cinema" song - I am curious of what it would have been... I am always thinking that if that 80s lineup would not have been called "Yes" and not added Jon Anderson - because I agree, once Jon was in, it could not have been called anything other than "Yes" - I would have liked the "Cinema" band... specially with Eddie Jobson in it...

v

 

I've got one of those rehearsals.
I'll dig it out.

 

Haha. You can start up your conversation here if you like! Post-Rabin Yes: What are your thoughts?

The Post-Rabin thread seems to be withering on the vine.

 

Licking wounds about thread hits on your own thread, within the context of this one, seems like poor form. This topic was more specific, which elicited more reasoned responses. Being so general was just going to invite personal recollections and laments about the prior glory days.

 

It wasn't this devious sounding in my mind but I can see your side of things on this.

 

What became known as Cinema on 90125 was indeed an extract from a much longer, mostly ambient piece called Time. If you're curious to hear a further two minutes of this, it was used as a (partially) taped intro for earlier shows on the subsequent 9012Live Tour. Here's a soundboard recording that includes the additional part in great quality:

That would be absolutely fantastic! A collector over at the Yesfans forum once showed off a CDR they'd made from a cassette of Cinema rehearsals in 1982, hinting that further captured practice sessions from the same period also exist. However, to my knowledge, nothing has ever surfaced beyond a large number of Trevor Rabin demos that are often mistakenly credited to this short-lived interim group, even though some are the very same solo recordings he'd later mine for the 90124 album.

 

Jon Anderson Interview: New Solo Album ‘1,000 Hands,’ Yes Reunion – Rolling Stone

Howe would be nuts not to meet halfway. His group carries little excitement now. At least a reunion could generate enough buzz to put people back in the seats. They'd need a little bit more though. Replace Downes with Wakeman, and at least that provides for the ability to play in better venues.

 

I hear dozens of little snippets of Yes music swirling round in my brain when I wake up in the morning - there can’t be many bands that have written so many infectious tunes. Looking forward to new Anderson solo album. Haven’t seen them live since 1972 so if the factions reunited for one last tour, I might be tempted, particularly if Bruford involved which is unlikely.

 

Has he ditched the horrible electronic drums yet???

 

Yeah, some dip on a message board should've told him what was or wasn't appropriate to play.

 

Here's the lineup I'd go see:

Anderson, Howe, Wakeman, White, Tony Levin.

Very, very close to the classic lineup we all know and love. If Trevor Rabin wants to come too, he can if he likes.