![]() ![]() Clay ensured that the stuff got safely to tape, with some sort of stereo image and not too much distortion. Accordingly we were assigned someone called Paul Clay, a bit like those movies where the cop says to the bad guy “You’re entitled to legal representation if you don’t have a lawyer, the Court will appoint you one”. We didn’t know any producers – other than George Martin, who was probably busy – and we didn’t know anything about production. My mallet playing got as far as Fracture with Robert Fripp and King Crimson, and my own first albums with Bruford, but then I let it drift, with too much else to do. Tony Kaye stuck religiously to his Hammond organ, and the minute we found a Rick Wakeman who was able to deliver a much broader range of sound colours, Tony’s days with the band were numbered. Jon was entirely encouraging to all comers on all instruments, irrespective of ability, in an early presage of his love of an orchestrally-wide tonal palette. ![]() I hung on through grim death through the album with a deafening Peter Banks in one ear and precious little of anything in the other – quite a feat when you remember much of ‘I See You’ is a guitar and drums duet. I remember it only dawned on me at the end that you could alter the mix you got in the headphones. It was my first time recording, and I had to learn fast. Probably Advision, then in Bond Street, London. Atlantic gave us a four-page recording contract, and off to the studio we went. I suspect I thought we were great – in the manner of most 18-year olds. We played music from the Fifth Dimension, the Beatles, David Crosby, and Leonard Bernstein, inserted vast amounts of ripped off digestible classical music and TV themes, and made the whole lot sound like a cross between Vanilla Fudge and the Beach Boys. Perhaps more than contemporary bands, we were a ‘covers’ band. And I don’t think anyone asked Tony Kaye what he liked.įrom this unlikely smorgasbord we had to fashion something. (Harold Land was a hard-bop tenor saxophone player, dead now, but quite why we named a song after him I can’t remember.) Pete was big into being Pete Townsend but knew Wes Montgomery’s octave-sound. I was a jazzer who wanted to be Max Roach who knew little about rock or vocal-orientated music. Jon was all Sibelius, Beach Boys and vocal harmony, as was Chris. In a country where regional accents can vary within 60 miles, and somebody who lives 250 miles north of London (Jon Anderson, Accrington) can be virtually unintelligible to a southerner, it may come as a surprise to North American Yes-watchers that early Yessers had practically nothing in common. ![]() Of course, we Yes-men were very new to each other, and from wildly different musical, social and geographical backgrounds. He suggests that very little has been said about Yes’ first album, so I thought I’d try to be helpful. Oh, but you’d like to know what the track listing is, wouldn’t you?Ĥ.Noodling around on the net, Sal Nunziato’s blog caught my eye. With a set list that winds its way through selections from 10 different albums released between 19. With a cover by Roger Dean, YES 50 LIVE will certainly catch the attention of Yes fans, but so will the track listing, particularly the songs from the band’s how in Philadelphia, which featured 10 present and former members onstage for the encore. If you hurry over to, you might even be able to score a color vinyl version of the album, but no promises. Recorded during the course of the band’s 50th anniversary tour throughout North America, Europe, and Japan, YES 50 LIVE was released this past Friday as a 2-CD set, a 4-LP set, and as a digital download. Over the course of their 50+ years as a band, we aren’t sure if Yes has released as many albums as they’ve had members, and we’re certainly not going to take the time that’d be required to work out that word problem, mostly because we’re not entirely sure we’d have enough time left over to tell you about their new double live album.and we know you want to hear about that! ![]()
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