The YES Album - 50 years old and still sounding great

Advert in Melody Maker, February 1971

The February 6th 1971 edition of the UK music paper Melody Maker  carried a rather enigmatic full page advert, mostly in black, with a small photo at the top and "The Yes Album - Available tomorrow" at the foot of the page.

For such a momentous album, Yes's third but destined to be their first success sales-wise, it was a strange bit of promotion. 

And since The Yes Album celebrates its 50th birthday this month, fans are recalling the effect it had on them. 

Many regard it as their best - with good reason. There's something about the musical virtuosity, their sheer power as a band and the melodic and climactic nature of the music that make this record such a classic. 

Every band member contributes strongly, whether it's the thunderous bass of Chris Squire - that jumps out of the speakers on my vintage vinyl copy - or Tony Kaye's anthemic Hammond organ playing, or Bill Bruford's distinctively snappy drumming. 

Notably, The Yes Album was the first to feature guitarist Steve Howe, who had replaced original guitarist Peter Banks the previous year. Howe gave the band a shot in the arm and it's that freshness and vitality - of a band relaunched that comes across on this record. 

Howe had been introduced in July 1970, just as Yes were releasing their previous album Time And A Word, though he didn't play on it. They started recording in the Autumn of that year.  

An interview in Melody Maker at the time indicated there had been rumours of a split. MM was one of the music papers that had predicted big things for Yes way back in 1969, but a hit record had so far eluded them. They took a break and parted ways with Banks.

"Steve is a fine guitarist and very cooperative," said Bill Bruford. "Peter was a player who never said anything. Steve talks about it, so we know where we stand."

Bruford also mentioned that Steve Howe's singing allowed them to do three part harmonies. "We are also doing Simon & Garfunkel's America, which has been given a great Yes arrangement." This recording was not used on The Yes Album. It was subsequently included on the Yesterdays collection of the best tracks from their first two albums.

Yes were expected to break big in 1970

I didn't buy The Yes Album on release - I was still listening to Mungo Jerry and Slade in 1971. But I can still remember the first time I heard it. I was struck by Howe's guitar playing above all. He obviously wanted to make an impression as the new guy, and the rest of the band must have been happy to give him the chance, because he absolutely dominates side one of the vinyl record. 

Not only did he have a whole track to himself, The Clap, showing off his Chet Atkins influences. His guitar breaks in the opener, Yours Is No Disgrace, and the climactic Starship Trooper, took each song into the stratosphere.

Howe's arrival was the beginning of the musical chairs that have been a constant feature of Yes ever since. After The Yes Album, organist Tony Kaye was shunted in favour of the more versatile Rick Wakeman.

A couple of years later Bill Bruford left to join King Crimson and was replaced by Alan White. Wakeman left the following year and Patrick Moraz joined for one album. Perpetual Change indeed. 

There's some excellent film footage available of early Yes, particularly around the time of The Yes Album. Here is a film of them made in 1970 to promote songs from Time & A Word.

By the end of 1971, Rick Wakeman had joined, as shown in this footage from October that year.

I also have a bootleg CD of them playing at The Roundhouse in London, on this day in February 1971, just after the release of The Yes Album.

The poster I had on my bedroom wall, mid 70s

 

 

Worth watching is the 'Sounding Out' documentary filmed in 1971 (parts 2, 3 and 4 are also on YT) 

Yes live in 1972 at Crystal Palace Bowl audio only

Also on the this blog:
1970 - Steve Howe join Yes, Rick Wakeman joins The Strawbs

Yes headline the Reading Festival in 1975

Below, Jon Anderson interviewed in 1973

A bizarre happening at a Squeeze show in 1979

One Saturday in May 1979, I went with my then girlfriend to see The Tubes at Hammersmith Odeon in London. This was my second time seeing them after their mind-blowing show 18 months previous, which I wrote about here.

We had tickets about three rows from the front, to get the full effect. The support band was Squeeze, who had already had a few hit singles, so they were going to be worth checking out, we thought.

In fact, we got way more than we bargained for. As Squeeze took the stage, it was announced that their drummer Gilson Lavis had been taken ill and instead, the percussionist from The Tubes, James 'Mingo' Lewis, would deputise for him. 

Well Mingo didn't just deputise, he stole the show with a display of latin percussive fireworks that pinned everyone to their seats. This was a man who had played in the classic early 1970s line-up of Santana. He composed songs on their 1972 album Caravanserai and also composed for and played with Al Di Meola on his first three solo albums. 

Mingo with Santana

As well as that, Mingo appeared on Return To Forever's 1973 album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy and from the same year, Love, Devotion, Surrender by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin. 

So his latin jazz credentials were impeccable. And he knew his way around a drum kit, in ways that Gilson wouldn't be able to emulate if he lived to be 100. 

Squeeze's songs are good, catchy tunes, but they are all in standard 4/4 time and don't require much in the way of rhythmic embellishment. Clearly, nobody told Mingo that, because he played up a storm, adding latin rhythms and percussive flourishes that transformed the songs, or at least attempted to. 

We were transfixed and the look of amusement, or perhaps bemusement, on Glenn Tilbrook's face showed how weird the whole thing must have been for Squeeze too.

Meeting Glenn Tilbrook before the show

If you want an idea of how Mingo looked and sounded playing along behind Squeeze, check out this clip. It's not from that time but it illustrates very well what he was playing over their straight-ahead pop songs. 

In 2011, I saw Squeeze playing at Greenwich in London as part of an outdoor mid-summer festival. I saw Glenn hanging around in the crowd beforehand so I went and asked him if he remembered the show. 

Of course he did. He told me it was "fucking amazing", one of the best live gigs he's ever done and "I just wish there was a recording of it." 

Sadly there isn't, just a memory of how two musical worlds collided to produce an amazing and bizarre spectacle, for one night only. 

Also on this blog:
How The Tubes Conquered London, 1977 

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

A tribute to jazz giant Chick Corea

Chick Corea's musical journey took him to many different destinations. Each shared a common quality, reflecting a lifelong exploration of keyboard sounds and rhythmic possibilities. As a piano player, composer and innovator, he was up there with the very best in jazz history, and he combined this musical gift with great humour and a naturally positive attitude.

His journey ended, quite suddenly it seems, on February 9th, when Chick passed away at the age of 79 from a rare form of cancer, which his family said was discovered only recently.

Of all the modern jazz greats I have seen in concert, Chick was the one I saw the most -The Elektrik Band in London in the 1980s; the expanded Acoustic Band in New York in 1992; with John McLaughlin in the Five Peace Band in New Zealand - and many other nights of amazing music.

At the Blue Note, Hawaii

When my wife and I took a holiday in Hawaii a few years ago, as we approached our hotel on Waikiki beach, I noticed a sign for the Blue Note jazz club just a few yards away. Chick Corea was having a week's residency at the club, in a trio format with Eddie Gomez and Brian Blade. So the first thing I did was get down there and buy tickets for the following night's show.

Chick was a great advocate of pianist and composer Bill Evans and as a feature of these shows in Hawaii, Chick showcased some unrecorded Bill Evans tunes that Evans' son (called Evan) had passed to him.

For my wife and I, there were echoes of a night 20 years previously. Back in December 1992, just before we were married, we flew to the US from London to visit her brother and sister in law in Connecticut. 

The flyer for the 1992 Blue Note show

Out in the suburbs it was freezing and the snow was piled high. There wasn't much to do out there and we were going a bit stir crazy. So one weekend we ventured into New York City and booked a hotel in midtown Manhattan, opposite Carnegie Hall on 57th Street. 

On the Saturday night, after an expensive restaurant meal, I had booked us in to see Chick Corea and his band at The Blue Note in Greenwich Village. And what a band that was - as always Chick had the cream of the jazz players working with him. On this occasion it was Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, John Pattitucci on bass, Bob Berg on sax, Wallace Roney on trumpet.   

Here's a clip, from that same time, of the trio, Corea, Pattitucci and Colaiuta at the Blue Note in Tokyo. I bought a CD of this show from a store in Tokyo and later got the DVD. It's that good.

Chick and Dave Holland with Miles Davis

There were so many highlights and different musical collaborations in Chick's career. His time in Miles Davis's band, during the period when Miles went electric and invented jazz rock fusion with the album Bitches Brew, is captured in this clip from 1969, and here, when Miles and band appeared at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. 

A reviewer of the IOW performance said, "The group's use of rock rhythms was far more evident than before, but they proved beyond any doubt that they are capable of making it as subtle, as complex and as rewarding as any conventional jazz rhythm."

In the 70s, Chick collaborated with vibraphonist Gary Burton, with whom he recorded several duet albums for ECM, including 1972's Crystal Silence. 

ECM Records founder Manfred Eicher said: “Crystal Silence introduced the piano and vibes duo of Corea and Gary Burton who played together every year for more than four decades, perfecting a virtuosic chamber music of their own (aptly augmented with strings on 1982’s Lyric Suite). 

with Gary Burton

"Chick and Gary were quickly able to anticipate each other’s improvisational responses, phrasing, and rhythmic accentuation. The result was often breathtaking: an effervescence of melody and countermelody, with synchronized cascades of sound."

“I’d call our music true contemporary music,” Chick had said back in 1974. “Classical music has influenced our music harmonically and formally. What I’m striving for is incorporating the subtlety and beauty of harmony, melody and form with the looseness and rhythmic dancing quality of jazz and more folky musics.”

He picked up with Burton regularly thereafter, including for these live shows in 1981, for the album Like Minds, which also included his Miles bandmate, bassist Dave Holland, his original trio drummer Roy Haynes and Pat Metheny - the first time Chick and Pat had worked together. Later, New Crystal Silence reunited Corea and Burton once again. 

Chick is perhaps best remembered by rock listeners for his work with the jazz fusion group Return To Forever. In common with Weather Report, RTF went through different line-ups that made a significant difference to their sound. The earliest, latin-tinged incarnation contained Joe Farrell, Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. 

Return To Forever

Eicher said of the original Return To Forever sessions: “The whole band had a wonderful energy as they played Chick’s compositions. And Chick’s sound on the Fender Rhodes was beautiful, luminous, hypnotic.”

Here's some great footage of that band playing live, minus Flora, from 1972 

Only Clarke was retained for the second version of RTF which moved much more into the jazz rock arena, adding drummer Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors to the mix. Their album Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy has some remarkable playing and interaction between all four band members.

Connors left the band and was replaced by Al Di Meola, who was only 19 when he joined! This was the most commercially successful version of Return To Forever, beginning with another great album, Where Have I Known You Before, which followed the feel of the previous album but with a bit more funk, courtesy of Clarke's electric bass riffs. 

Though they disbanded in the late 70s, this version of RTF reformed to tour in 2008, including a concert at the Montreux jazz festival that was released on blue-ray.

In October 2011, I caught one of the shows in the month-long season in honour of Chick's 70th birthday at the Blue Note in New York. This one featured another of the Bitches Brew alumni, John McLaughlin. 

The show was capped by an appearance by Gayle Moran, Chick's wife, who had been a member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1970s. They played Smile of the Beyond, from the MO album Apocalypse, with Gayle singing and the drummer Brian Blade whipping up a storm in the concluding passage of the tune. I wish I had a video of that. It was astonishing. Someone did post it on youtube at the time, but it has since disappeared.

So all in all, with the albums, DVDs and live shows, I think Chick Corea must be one of the artists I have seen and listened to the most.  

On his passing, Chick's family posted the following note on his Facebook page:

Chick with John McLaughlin

"Throughout his life and career, Chick relished the freedom and the fun to be had in creating something new, and in playing the games that artists do.

He was a beloved husband, father and grandfather, and a great mentor and friend to so many. Through his body of work and the decades he spent touring the world, he touched and inspired the lives of millions.

Though he would be the first to say that his music said more than words ever could, he nevertheless had this message for all those he knew and loved, and for all those who loved him:

“I want to thank all of those along my journey who have helped keep the music fires burning bright. It is my hope that those who have an inkling to play, write, perform or otherwise, do so. If not for yourself then for the rest of us. It’s not only that the world needs more artists, it’s also just a lot of fun.

“And to my amazing musician friends who have been like family to me as long as I’ve known you: It has been a blessing and an honor learning from and playing with all of you. My mission has always been to bring the joy of creating anywhere I could, and to have done so with all the artists that I admire so dearly—this has been the richness of my life.” 

Thanks for the music Chick. Rest In Peace.

More Chick Corea listening and viewing pleasure :

The Spanish Heart Band - “Armando’s Rhumba” 

New Akoustic Band - 'Round Midnight, live @ Blue Note Tokyo - 1992

A phenomenal performance by the Akoustic Band 

Akoustic Band feat. John Patitucci & Dave Weckl - 2018

Chick Corea & Gary Burton - La Fiesta, 2011

Chick Plays "Spain" (Tutorial with Overhead Camera and Transcription)

Chick, Miroslav Vitous, Roy Haynes - 'Now He Sings, Now He Sobs', 2012

The Ultimate Adventure 2007