‘Fragile’: How Yes Broke The Mould With Their Fourth Album

Having been released two months earlier, on 26 November 1971, Fragile moved from its jackhammering opener to Wakeman playing an organ-led extract from Brahms’ 4th Symphony In E minor (Cans And Brahms), proving that classical music could sit neatly as a seamless prelude to the merry-go-round groove of the yo-yoing folk shanty We Have Heaven. Closing the first side of vinyl with the jagged and syncopated riffage of South Side Of The Sky, there was little doubt that Yes’ unique musical vision had coalesced into a rock-solid enterprise.

Given how perfectly Fragile is sequenced, it’s remarkable how democratic the songwriting process was. On Side B, each musician offers a song on which they could truly shine, from drumming dynamo Bill Bruford’s percussion-led powerhouse Five Per Cent For Nothing to Chris Squire’s craggy bass strut The Fish and Steve Howe’s woozy and baroque acoustic-folk instrumental Mood For A Day. “It was an inspired time, totally inspired by the music,” Jon Anderson later said. “The music we were working on was so new and so fresh to us that it was pretty easy to get out.”

The standout song: “When anybody asks me what prog rock is about, I’d play Heart Of The Sunrise”

Lyrically staying true to Anderson’s hippie ideals, it’s possible to see Fragile as part of the singer’s journey to spiritual enlightenment – and nowhere is this better exemplified than on Heart Of The Sunrise, a sprawling, 11-minute prog masterclass full of Howe’s fiery finger work and Wakeman’s irradiating solos, and which Anderson has said “rings true to my chakra energy, my consciousness”. With Anderson singing in his alt-tenor voice of being “lost in the city” and seeking sunlight to replenish his soul, it’s easily one of the best Yes songs, and a track that received incendiary airings on the group’s 1972 tour in support of the Close To The Edge album, as documented on the band’s gargantuan 21LP box set, Progeny: Seven Shows From Seventy-Two.

Unsurprisingly, Heart Of The Sunrise is the song that Rick Wakeman cites as one of Yes’ defining achievements. “When anybody asks me what prog rock is about or whatever you’d like to call it – symphonic rock, prog rock, or whatever,” he has said, “I’d play Heart Of The Sunrise.” Imbued as it is with the esotericism of classical music arrangements and the pummelling power of brute-force rock’n’roll, it’s a masterful song on which Yes’ legacy comfortably rests.

The release: “It was just all wonderfully new and exciting”
By the end of 1971, despite a key change in their line-up, Yes had proven they were only just getting started. They had birthed Fragile a mere nine months after The Yes Album, and the new record emerged as a perfectly formed new arrival. Bristling with Wakeman’s slaloming organ flourishes, Howe and Squire’s watertight synchronicity, and Bruford’s grooves – pushing and pulling as if on shifting sands – Fragile took all the symphonic elements of Yes’ sound and wove them into the group’s prog-rock palette with aplomb.

Visually, too, Fragile elevated Yes to another level, its spectacular album cover immediately becoming the stuff of prog-rock legend. Depicting not only the soon-to-be iconic Yes logo, but also a globe with foliage sprouting from the earth, it was the first artwork commission the band had given to illustrator Roger Dean, who would quickly become the band’s go-to designer.

“It was just all wonderfully new and exciting,” Wakeman reflected, “and the record company left us alone because we were selling bucket loads of records. They didn’t understand a word of it!” True enough, Fragile went on to sell over two million copies worldwide and has since been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association Of America. Not only did the album help popularise prog-rock on a global level, but Yes’ fearless sonic voyage would go on to influence everyone from Queen to Rush. The word “classic” is often thrown around lightly but, in this case, there’s no question that it sticks. As masterpieces go, Fragile is untouchable.

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