The Yes Album

Description

With THE YES ALBUM, Yes began an important new chapter in their career and defined much of what the next decade would bring. They had left behind not only their original guitarist, Peter Banks, but also the covers of 1960s tunes by the likes of the Byrds and the Beatles. The arrival of the more hard-edged Steve Howe signaled the groups ascent into full-blown progressive-rock mode, a style whose parameters Yes helped craft with this recording. Though Rick Wakeman and his classical-influenced arsenal of keyboards had not yet come aboard, Tony Kayes roiling Hammond organ and Chris Squires busy bass lines perfectly interacted with Howes idiosyncratic playing to create a uniquely fugue-like sound, as Bill Brufords polyrhythms and Jon Andersons angelic voice simultaneously kept things on a more abstract and ethereal plane than almost anything that had been labeled rock up to that point. Starship Trooper and Yours Is No Disgrace would become hallmarks of prog rock and launch a thousand pale imitations by third-string art-rockers for decades to come.