UNION

Union used to be the Yes album Yes fans loved to hate, and to some degree it still is. I would guess that casual fans are probably more forgiving. More than anything else, fans were upset over the process used to create the album. This seems to bleed over into a feeling that the album itself is poor. And while band leader and vocalist Jon Anderson was clearly the mastermind here, blame has been deflected onto producer Jonathan Elias. It's true that without Anderson and Elias, there'd be no Union album, even if the two Yes factions had united for a tour. And from one perspective, we Yes fans have Anderson and Elias to blame for a bunch of mediocre material. But from another, we have them to thank for putting together a collection that includes several strong tracks.

In fact, if Union were marketed as a take-it-or-leave-it, "odds & sods" compilation for fans, I'll bet it's Prog Archives score would be 3.5, not 2.5. Instead, as I recall, it was hyped, as its title more than implies, as a "union" of the eight musicians whose managers had been suing each other just months before. When "Lift Me Up" was issued to radio stations in advance of the album's release, I remember taping it off the radio and deconstructing it with friends. We figured out that Bill Bruford (who was obviously playing the electronic drums alongside Alan White's acoustic kit) and Steve Howe (whose guitar licks we could clearly discern from those of Trevor Rabin) were both on the song! With Anderson and bassist Chris Squire clearly audible as singers, that meant at least three quarters of each faction had played on the track; surely keyboardists Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman were in there somewhere too! Right?

No, not right. "Lift Me Up" was one of four songs recorded submitted by the Rabin-Squire-Kaye-White band, with Anderson's vocals added later. The other eleven songs were Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe songs, to two of which Squire added backing vocals in an attempt to make the songs sound more like Yes. Add to this the fact that studio musicians were all over Union like ants on a lollipop dropped in the dirt at the park, and the result is not a union at all. But the felony here is more in the marketing, to which the band acquiesced, and not the music, which is more of a misdemeanor.

There are fifteen songs on the full version of Union, and several are not bad. Anderson-Howe-Elias pieces like "I Would've Waited Forever," "Shock to the System," "Holding On," and "Silent Talking" (the latter credited to Anderson, Bruford, Elias, Howe, and Wakeman) all contain strong, melodic sections, as do Rabin's "Lift Me Up," written with Squire, and "The Miracle of Life," written with Mark Mancina. "Evensong," written and performed by Bruford with bassist Tony Levin, is an nice little number which doesn't overstay its welcome.

Even better than these is "The More We Live - - Let Go," written by Squire and Billy Sherwood, and performed by these two with Anderson singing lead on the verses. (Having cited Sherwood, I'll mention what might be obvious: in addition to the eight official members of Yes, there are significant songwriting and instrumental contributions from several others, most notably Levin, who plays more bass on the album than Squire; Elias, who co-wrote, and is credited with performing on, more than half of the songs, and guitarist Jimmy Haun, who apparently is the primary guitarist on the album.

The standout song on Union is Howe's acoustic-guitar solo "Masquerade," an enjoyable, well-composed, very nicely played piece. As a bonus, it is a near-perfect introduction to "Lift Me Up," which follows "Masquerade" in the running order.

I'm sure that it's been pointed out that there are about forty minutes of good, though not great, songs on Union. Prior to Union - - prior, that is, to the CD age and the expectation that albums should be an hour long, Yes albums were 35 to 45 minutes long (except for Tales from Topographic Oceans). Had Union just contained the above-listed songs, I'd say it was a three-star album. However, this was not to be, as Union goes for an additional half-hour (I'm including "Give and Take" here; the total time of the complete album is about 70 minutes).

I'm not going to drag these songs through the mud, other than to say that in addition to the good 40 minutes, trust me: there is plenty of bad - - and ugly. And while the poorer tracks are more concentrated on the second half, there are low-quality pieces interspersed throughout, which really reduces the listening experience.

So, two stars. In short: two very good songs, an album's worth of decent ones, and an EP's worth of dreck.