In the late 60s, the London music scene was brimming with “hip” young bands eager to recast rock’n’roll in their own countercultural image. Among them was Yes, whose self-titled debut album, released in the summer of 1969, dared to fuse rock with classical, jazz and psychedelic influences, capturing a spirit of youthful experimentation that would pave the way for the rise of progressive rock.
Listen to Yes’ self-titled debut album here.
Former members of the psych-rock group Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, singer Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire placed an advertisement in Melody Maker announcing their search for a new drummer. With Bill Bruford answering the call, keyboardist Tony Kaye began meeting with the group for rehearsals at The Lucky Horseshoe Café in London, in early 1968, and the line-up solidified when ex-Mabel Greer’s Toyshop guitarist Peter Banks was invited to join.
Together, this group of young musicians forged a unique sound that blended a diverse range of influences into something truly unprecedented. Musically elaborate and often invoking thought-provoking song concepts, Yes’ self-titled debut album would mark a bold departure from the three-minute pop fodder of the era, with a style that would go on to influence countless other rock bands that followed in the group’s wake.
Here is the story of Yes’ debut album and how it planted the seeds that would one day bloom into the genre known as progressive rock.
The backstory: “They knocked everyone out completely”
Influenced by bands such as The Fifth Dimension and The Nice, Yes quickly established themselves on the London music scene, but the nascent group’s big break came in October 1968, when Rob Flynn, then manager of the Speakeasy Club, received a recommendation from The Nice’s manager, Tony Stratton-Smith, to book Yes after Sly And The Family Stone dropped out of a gig. “They knocked everyone out completely,” Rob Flynn later said after Yes turned in a show-stopping performance that left the original headliners a memory, “and nobody asked for their money back.”
Though they were primarily a covers band at this point, Yes had a unique musical style that instantly won over audiences, often giving their hard-hitting renditions of other artists’ songs a psychedelic spin. As drummer Bill Bruford later described it, the group would fuse “classical music and TV themes” in a way that made them sound like “a cross between Vanilla Fudge and The Beach Boys”.
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Frequently dabbling in lengthy arrangements that took them into unexplored jazz-rock territory, it was clear that Yes were fashioning something completely new. “Jon [Anderson] was all Sibelius, Beach Boys and vocal harmony, as was Chris [Squire],” Bruford said of the band’s early sound. “I was a jazzer who wanted to be Max Roach who knew little about rock or vocal-orientated music. Pete [Banks] was big into being Pete Townsend but knew Wes Montgomery’s octave-sound.”
Rob Flynn was so taken with the group that he gave up his job at the Speakeasy to manage the band full-time, and, thanks to his contacts in the music industry, he was able to get Yes a support slot for Cream’s farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. As Yes played before an audience of 5,000 people, sharing the same stage as Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, it seemed to many as if the baton was now being passed for Yes to become the next big boundary-pushers in rock music.
The recording: “Jon was entirely encouraging to all comers on all instruments”
After signing with Atlantic Records, Yes headed over to Bond Street in London’s West End and began recording their debut album at Advision Studios. “When you make your first record,” Jon Anderson later told Stereophile, “it’s like a baptism into the real world of recording.” Fuelled only by the bravado of youth, the band soon realised they needed some extra assistance behind the mixing desk.
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“We didn’t know any producers – other than George Martin, who was probably busy – and didn’t know anything about production,” Bruford later recalled. “Accordingly we were assigned someone called Paul Clay who ensured that the stuff got safely to tape.” Unbeknown to the band, Clay was also a newcomer to production work, and Yes’ debut album was actually his first big assignment. As a learning experience for all parties, it could have gone either way.
The goal, as the band came to see it, was to capture their sound on record in a way that replicated their much-lauded live performances. “From this unlikely smorgasbord we had to fashion something,” Bruford explained. “Perhaps more than contemporary bands, we were a ‘covers’ band… I’m a keen believer in starting with covers, but then ‘re-imagining’ them when you are beginning to find your stylistic feet.” As a result, the band opted to record a cover of The Beatles’ Every Little Thing, transforming the Beatles For Sale album track from a folk-pop curio into a nearly six-minute-long psych-rock frenzy.
