FRAGILE

Melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, and in tonal range and colours, everything in the music had to take account of this leap in the role of what many regard (if they regard it at all) a “background” instrument.

Yes has many “sleeper” songs, from “A Venture” (The Yes Album, 1971) to “To Be Over” (Relayer, 1974) to the more recent “Footprints” (Keys To Ascension 2, 1997). “Long Distance Runaround” is also a little gem, where a single idea unfolds perfectly. Fragile is built around four group and five solo works, of which Steve Howe’s “Mood For A Day” and Chris Squire’s “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)” especially stand out. The former is a warm and delicious classical ­guitar work that has since become part of the instrument’s basic repertoire. The latter track opened possibilities for “symphonies of bass guitars” (here echoing the title of Stravinsky’s work for wind instruments) that still need to be pursued.

The album closes with “Heart Of The Sunrise,” a study in dynamic contrasts that runs the gamut from “21st Century Schizoid Man” – inspired furious charging to dreamy pastoralism of the sort that can only come from feeling “lost in the city.” The song is a fine work in itself, but it’s also an appropriate elaboration of the green language into which Yes entered ever more deeply – a language of English romanticism, of William Blake especially, against the background of and attempting to speak with the counterculture of the time. “Ten true summers” have passed three times over since we first heard this significant musical statement, but time has not diminished its power or necessity.

– Bill Martin

Bill Martin is the author of numerous books on music and political philosophy, including Music Of Yes; Structure And Vision In Progressive Rock (1996). His essay “Another Green Language: Still Yes After All These Years” appeared in Elektra/Rhino’s boxed set In A Word: Yes (1969 – ). He is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago.

In hindsight, restricted access to Advision was perhaps something of a blessing in disguise. It allowed Wakeman to honour his pre-YES session commitments, and enabled the rest of the band to continue pre­fabricating sections of material which could then be gradually assembled upon their return to Advision. “Rick would often overdub later because he was busy with sessions,” recalls Steve Howe. “We did a bit of work and then added Rick to it and that seemed to work for everyone. Chris spent hours working with Rick developing how that music would be performed. There were bits where Rick played with Chris and Bill and I dropped out in places, like in the middle of ‘South Side of the Sky’, I didn’t need to play anything – so I didn’t.”

Howe’s point regarding the intense focus upon the structure and design of each piece is borne out in the early working version of ‘South Side of the Sky’, heard for the first time in Fragile’s 2015 release featuring Steven Wilson’s remix. Breaking away from the gently converging vocal harmonies, Howe’s folkish interlude sets up space for a nimble Wakeman solo. While pleasant in itself, that they ultimately dropped the section, opting instead to maintain a more subdued mood, highlights the band’s rigorous, sometimes exhaustive and exhausting approach.

Rick Wakeman wasn’t the only person to become a member of the extended YES family during the recording of Fragile. Although he had produced covers for other bands and labels, Roger Dean’s work on Fragile not only established him as one of the quintessential artists of his generation at the age of 26, but initiated a creative partnership with the band that endures to this day. “I was very excited to be working on a project with such interesting music,” says Dean of the start of their association.

“Bands like YES really opened the door to an appreciation of music that was way wider than the rock’n’roll that I loved. People used to say to me ‘weren’t YES really pretentious?’ But that isn’t how they did it. They didn’t try to be clever; they just were very clever musicians and they wanted to play to the very limit of what they could do. It was just natural for them. It wasn’t being pretentious – it was the sheer joy in performing at the edge.“

Dean’s simple but evocative artwork, with its expansive suggestions of mankind pushing out towards the frontiers and extremes of both inner and outer space, found its echo in Anderson’s opaque lyrics which sought, in part, to address his unfolding search for spirituality and meaning in a fraught and turbulent world.

If The Yes Album consolidated the band’s position in Europe, it was Fragile that signed, sealed and delivered the all-important American market. With a surprise hit single version of ‘Roundabout’ dominating FM radio, and the happy synchronicity of their fourth studio album peaking at No.4 in the US album charts in January 1972, YES had well and truly arrived. That they had achieved this feat of tenaciously going forward without a backward glance, of pursuing their artistic vision through a commitment to change and grow as players in less than six months together, is nothing short of astonishing.

The death of Chris Squire in 2015 reminds us how fragile life can be and of course makes the 2015 edition of the album all the more poignant. Squire often stated that Heart of the Sunrise was among his favourite contributions to YES. His playing from that opening roar, down to the interplay with Bill Bruford’s drumming, and climbing back up into the main theme again, distills all the aspects to Squire’s approach: tough, deft, economic, lyrical and, above all, intense. The fact that he was just twenty three years old when he did it makes this album all the more remarkable.

Sid Smith
August 2015
Whitley Bay
 

Sid Smith is a freelance writer featured in Prog. Classic Rock, BBCMusic, Q, Record Collector etc. He is the author of rock music biographies as well hundreds of sleeve notes for reissues and new releases. You can find out more by visiting sidsmith.blogspot.co.uk