The Yes Album: Yes

While not one of my favorites, favorites being 'Fragile', 'Drama', and 'Magnification', I do still think it's a pretty good album. 'Seen All Good People' is my personal favorite from the album. 

This was the first time I had heard Steve Howe play guitar and I have to tell you....it was very intimidating because he just appeared one day in YES with this very hyper energized type of playing and amazing technique. He was a ball of energy on fire. He was a beachball sweating inside a furnace! He was a guitar player in a straight jacket wating to free himself and perform.   It was like an explosion and most guitarists had to go home and practice. Between styles/techniques of Ragtime playing, Jazz with some Jim Hall tone, sustaining Rock leads playing technical Progressive Rock note passages at a clean precise speed of no tomorrow....my God..it was time to practice and many guitarists had no idea what they were in store for on the next album. I wasn't too surprised when he began playing Classical nylon string guitar on Fragile. I could tell immediately that he contained other dimensions to his playing because I was trained, but yet many of his shifting patterns were awkward and difficult to master precisely and consistently ..which made him a very technical player. He was a little monster in the 70's and many guitarists were trying to catch up to him. I realize this sounds a bit extreme, but he devastated fine guitarists when he first appeared on The Yes Album.

Edited by TODDLER - February 09 2015 at 10:56

of course its a f**king classic. they get better later though imho, but this is all still great!

richardh wrote: It has the most warmth of any of their albums and is only behind CTTE and Fragile for sheer musical brilliance in my book. Howe coming into the band put them on a different planet from what they were before but it needed Wakeman to take them just one more notch up to being the very best in terms of a having a keyboard player who could compete with Keith Emerson ( this was important at that time!).

Agreed. The Yes Album was my first deep exposure to what became known as Prog. I would compare it to a first love. You will always have a special place for it in your heart no matter what comes after.

It has the most warmth of any of their albums and is only behind CTTE and Fragile for sheer musical brilliance in my book. Howe coming into the band put them on a different planet from what they were before but it needed Wakeman to take them just one more notch up to being the very best in terms of a having a keyboard player who could compete with Keith Emerson ( this was important at that time!).

^I spell it Squire, Bruford, Anderson and Howe.

The Yes Album is under rated.  I see-saw back and forth between "Close to the Edge" and The Yes Album, as not only the greatest Yes album, but the greatest prog rock album of all time.   The Yes Album is flawless.

Good album. Starship Trooper is my favourite track.

I don't really share the love for this album, and I consider myself a real Yes fan... perhaps my second favourite band, just after Pink Floyd. However, I just don't like this one. The only song I really like on it is Starship Trooper, and that one I like much better on the Keys to Ascension version, with the extra keyboard solos, so I don't really have any reason to listen to this album at all.