UNION

Announcing to the world...... this is the worst album of Yes.

More incoherent than Tormato, and even noisier than Big Generator, and less accomplished than Talk.

The best parts were mixed out by a bitter sound mixer who had no idea how he was destroying the product. It would have been half decent if Wakeman and Howe were allowed to indulge in some virtuosity but they are mixed out of the recordings. Producer Jonathan Elias should be lynched by the prog community for deliberately replacing Wakeman and Howe's solo prowess with inferior so called session musicians. There are dozens of musos not even related to the Yes membership, and way too many vocalists creating a hyper soundscape of saturated noise. The usually brilliant Bruford all but disappears. Anderson does his best on vocals to resurrect some decency and shines on a few numbers, such as Shock to the System. I can't think of a single high point, though Masquerade is Howe at his best, but the album is certainly so bombastic and bad at times it is laughable.

The idea must have sounded good on paper to reunite the two Yes lineups. The incredible success of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe must have made the other Yes members sit up and take notice. So the idea was to reunite both Yes's and have a massive tour. This they did with varying degrees of success. The almighty dollar would be enough to entice the members to get together. Can you imagine the excitement at the time, the tabloids, the fan expectations? It should have worked. The problem is the album is terrible. Due to the pungent stink of this album the fans were understandably less than enthusiastic about the tour. Even the band members were condoning the album, Wakeman famously calling it "Onion" as it made him cry, because he hardly recognised his keyboard work. There was a good reason too as it was replaced and under mixed throughout by that mixer. It would make any respected fan cry as Yes continued to release abysmal albums. This may be a warning to all other bands out there who would consider reuniting after members had split. It cannot work as there are two directions and two genres attempting to merge. As in business the merger always drowns out one party, in this case Rabin's rabid band of mercenaries were poisoning and stifling the unmitigated talents of ABWH.

Bruford is also quoted as stating the album was the worst thing he has ever been associated with, an embarrassment. No wonder as Bruford is virtually non existent here, even replaced at times, surely the unforgivable sin of prog. It did not help either that the old Yes members were informed that after the tour and album they would be out. So that in itself is testament to the fact that the very heart and soul of Yes was being systematically amputated; wrenched out of existence to make way for a new improved Yes, the progressive being replaced by the regressive.... and commercially viable. Prog was never meant to be viable to the masses but of course it was all about the money. Roger Dean even left this one alone.

I guess now this album stands as a monument to how it all broke down and it is really an essential part of the history of Yes; that is the decline of Yes. Having said that this album is definitely not worth owning unless you are one of these people who have to have everything Yes created. Even then Union is the epitome of what happens when great minds refuse to think alike.

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