TIME AND A WORD

"Time and a Word" in the "A" side of this single is the title track of YES`s second album, which was the last album they recorded with the original line-up of Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Peter Banks, Tony Kaye and Bill Bruford. The "Time and a Word" album has in most songs orchestral arrangements done by Tony Cox. I like the album, but maybe the sound mixing made the album in some songs to sound too much with the presence of the orchestral arrangements to the point that sometimes Peter Banks` and Tony Kaye`s playing can`t be listened very clearly. In fact, the orchestral arrangements simply duplicated some instrumental arrangements that both Banks and Kaye played with their instruments before the orchestral arrangements were added to the songs. This can be listened more clearly in the live recordings that in 1997 were included in the album titled "Something`s Coming - The BBC Recordings 1969-70" (which also was released in 1998 in the U.S. as "Beyond and Before - The BBC Recordings 1969-70").

The song "Time and a Word" is a song composed by Jon Anderson and David Foster (a musician who previously worked with Anderson in a band called "The Warriors" in the mid sixties; he is not the famous Canadian musician and producer of the same name). They also composed "Sweet Dreams" which also was released in the "Time and a Word" album. Some websites say that Foster appears in both songs singing backing vocals and with him also playing acoustic guitar in the "Time a Word" song (a thing that Banks confirmed in one interview). Some websites (including Foster`s) also give to him credit for co-writing "Yours is no Disgrace", a song that YES recorded for their "The YES Album" in late 1970. The "Time and a Word" song is good, with some sixties "idealism" in the lyrics about "peace and love". In this song, there is not much space for Banks`s and Kaye`s playing, with the orchestral arrangements (which I like) taking the main role, and it also has good lead and backing vocals. Bruford and Squire play very good drums and bass arrangements.

The song in the "B" side, "The Prophet", is one of the best songs from the "Time and a Word" album. But this single version has some differences in the mixing, with the drums having more presence (particularly in the bass drum and the cymbals) and with some parts of the orchestral arrangements being removed. This single version of this song was later released as one of the bonus tracks included in the Expanded and Remastered version of the "Time and a Word" album which was released in 2003. This re-issue of this album also includes the original mixings of other songs of the album ("No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" and "Sweet Dreams") that were initially released in the early German version of the L.P. The album was released in the U.K. until July 1970, three months after Banks was fired because he did not agree with Anderson and Squire about the inclusion of the orchestral arrangements in the album. These different mixes of these three songs are interesting but still not very good, in my opinion. Maybe the band, the record label, the producer (Tony Colton) and the recording engineer (Eddie Offord) still were not very satisfied with the mixing of the album, so they delayed the release of the album to improve the mixings. But I still think that a new mixing done in the present could do better things to the "Time and a Word" album songs to show a better balance between the sound of the band and the sound of the orchestral arrangements.