AMERICA

"America" is a song composed by Paul Simon and originally recorded by Simon and Garfunkel in the sixties. YES was performing their own arrangement of this song live since 1970-71, when the line-up of the band was Anderson-Squire-Bruford-Kaye-Howe. Both Anderson and Squire liked Simon & Garfunkel`s music, so I think that it was the reason why YES did their arrangement for this song in the early seventies.

YES` "Full Lenght Version" of "America" originally was released in "The Age of Atlantic" album in July 1972, but it was recorded by the YES` line-up of Anderson-Squire-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe, in early 1972. It has been said that Wakeman didn`t like this song, so Bruford played the keyboards, but I don`t know how true it is. Anyway, the "Full Lenght Version" for this song is much better than the edited version included in this single in 1972. I heard it for the first time in YES`"Yesyears" Box Set which was released in 1991. This single version is obviously edited very much, so the arrangement of the full song is lost for the single version, so it is not very good, in my opinion. The "Full Lenght Version" is much better, and was released for the first time in a YES album in 1975 in the "Yesterdays" compilation album.

I think that the versions of "Total Mass Retain" and "Your Move" released as B-sides for this single in different times are only the titled parts of the longer songs from which they were taken ("Close to the Edge" and "I`ve Seen All Good People", respectively), as I don`t have any of these singles. But being "America" the main song of these singles, I think that it was good to comment about the quality of this "single-edit" version.