In Happy Days fandom it is often agreed that the moment Fonz water skis over a shark the decline in the quality of the show began. Some argue that the appearance of a poundshop Bertie Basset like villan marks the end of “quality” in Doctor Who.
Me? I ascertain that 1997s Open Your Eyes is where the rot began to set in for Yes. Others say Union, or 90125. But Open Your Eyes is where its at. A terrible album, yet to make an appearance on the Music Project.
Fortunately the albums following the release of Open Your Eyes showed how much of a driving force Steve Howe could be in the band. Having lost Rabin to music production and realising that Sherwood was better as a producer than a performer, the albums that followed: The Ladder and House of Blues, showed that the band when it consisted of Wakeman, White, Anderson, Squire and Howe could bash out some amazing tunes. Think Tormato, Going for the One and Tales from Topographic Oceans.
However this 2001 release on the Castle label, described as a compilation of studio tracks from the Keys to Ascension albums, not only showed what the band was capable of when they weren’t trying to recapture the Lonely Heart era without Rabin or Horn as a guiding hand. But it also sowed the seeds for the albums to follow.
There are some really catchy tunes on this album and I am often surprised that I don’t listen to it more often. The track Mind Drive is a banging tune and Be the One has foreshadows of Magnification floating around it. The album also features Children of the Light which credits Vangelis as one of the writers. This truly is an album from Yes’ renaissance – capturing and blending all the bits and sounds that made the bands post-Bruford line up often referred to as the classic line up.
Sadly, in 2001, my ears were elsewhere. The Great Download was starting to begin and I was discovering new genres, new sounds and new aural pleasures. Music was becoming freely available and visits to Virgin and HMV were beginning to wane. It wouldn’t be until a chance visit to the fledgling Yes website that the realisation there were new albums available AND A TOUR on the horizon that I realised that there was new stuff for me out there.
Apple Music – Not available at time of posting
Youtube Music – https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=OI2ETFvwzAY
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As long term readers of this project might remember, during the divergence of Yes in the early nineties, when Chris Squire said “No” to Jon Anderson’s use of the band name
When this album was released back in 2000, the internet as we know it today was still in its fledgeling state. Websites were mostly created and owned by actual people rather than by corporations and users actually had to seek out their news rather than have it shown to them if an algorithm deigned to do so. As a result, I was only aware it had been released because I saw it while I was browsing the CD racks in HMV.
Possibly one of the first albums I had recorded on cassette. My middle brother had this on cassette and did a copy for me on his twin tape but as home taping killed music, there was nothing after this.
I originally bought this album from Woolworths in Pwllheli while holidaying in my Uncles cottage. I remember being excited at the prospect of being able to listen to it on the record player we had there. And so, in 1986 progressive rock reverberated across the Welsh mountains for a brief moment Heart of the Sunrise leading the charge. That was until I was told to turn the music down.
In my eyes, Yes’ best but final album. Technically, this isn’t Yes’ final album but it is the last one I bought before Chris Squire’s death in 2015.
Stegzy's Music Project 
The Ladder – Yes [#659]
by stegzyThe 18th Yes album arrived in 1999 and is massively different to the previous album, Open Your Eyes which isnt hard as Open Your Eyes is truly awful.
At this point, Rabin had left, Howe had rejoined, Wakeman was off being a grumpy old man and had been replaced by dodgy Russian keyboard player Igor Khoroshev who would later leave the group in shame following an assault on two female security officers.
I came to The Ladder quite late. I’d spent much of the 1990s checking the racks at HMV for new releases and looking for snippets of news in fashionable magazines of the time. Yes were not fashionable so news rarely made it beyond the pages of NME and I was too much of a protohipster to buy NME preferring to Uncut, but only when they did stuff on 4AD. At this time I’d moved on from the airy fairy floating castles of Prog and had lurched into the dark twisting forests of Goth via the bucket hat wearing pathways of indie. So its probably no surprise I’d missed this album and it wasn’t until 2001 when I discovered the album had been released.
Its ok. It’s not Big Generator, Going for the One or Drama . Its just – OK and not one of the albums that seemingly I play a great deal. Standout tracks on the album are probably Homeworld – from the computer game Homeworld – and It Will Be a Good Day (The River) and even then I prefer the live version from House of Blues.
The next “studio” album would be Keystudio in 2001 and then in the same year, Magnification followed by nearly ten years of live recordings and rereleases before Fly From Here in 2011 which marked the end of the traditional lineup and, some fans say, the end of the band. But more of that – later…..
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1999 Chris Squire Eagle Records Jon Anderson Progressive Rock Steve Howe Yes