Yes "Mirror To The Sky" Review

Now this is the interesting discussion to be had! I don't put that much weight on being the original member, what's more important to me instead is if you took part in the classic works. So Rick Wakeman to me holds much more stake at the Yes name than Tony Kaye and Steve Howe much more than Peter Banks (if he was alive, that is). If Yes disbanded after two albums they would be a footnote, but the arrival of Howe in large part transformed them into the band most of us here love and Wakeman added the icing on the cake. I bet a lot more people would dispute the legitimacy of a Kaye/Banks led Yes than a Howe/Wakeman version. You can always take the "no original members left" argument to extremes and complain about an Åkerfeldt led Opeth since he's just the random bassist who wrestled control for himself.

Anyhow. It would be a totally different thing if after Yes disbanded in 1981 the next thing we know is years later Steve Howe starting the band up again with one-time minor member Geoff Downes and three random guys called Davison, Sherwood and Schellen. But as it happened the band slowly and organically evolved into the present state with each new member establishing themselves as solid contributors (Davison, Sherwood) or upgrades (Schellen) and not just hired guns (Downes seems to be the closest to that by far with not many writing credits to his name and no technical ability to match Wakeman). As a musical species they're much more in tune with the classic Yes qualities than some earlier formations with more original members. Musically I'm much happier with this Yes being Yes than the almost-Cinema calling themselves Yes back in the 80s. That was a very different species despite many of same names on the record sleeve.

It's an interesting discussion where there's really no right or wrong. I'm happy that they call themselves Yes because I might not have listened to Steve Howe Band's new album Mirror to the Sky at all. Now we have a band called Yes releasing an album sounding like Yes that's better than most other Yes albums since the 70s. Might be somewhere in my top 3 after Magnification which is the best by far.