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Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius
This week, Mark and I returned to the show to talk about the Yes classic album, 90125 from 1983. It is clearly, we believe, a great album but what makes it a great Yes album? It wasn’t originally going to be a Yes album at all and only became one at the last possible moment when Jon Anderson arrived on the scene. The band Cinema, consisting of Tony Kaye, Alan White, Trevor Rabin and Chris Squire had basically finished the record with Trevor Horn but, as you can read in full detail in Stephen Lambe’s excellent book about the album, there were several reasons that band was ultimately replaced by the name and the aura of Yes.
What do you think Mark and I came up with for our 6 reasons and would you have chosen the same features? Let us know in the show notes for this week’s episode.
- Is this a real Yes album?
- What makes it great?
- Who makes it great?
Yes – The Tormato Story & Tales from Topographic Oceans – Yes Album Listening Guide
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YMP Patrons:
Producers:
- Joseph Cottrell
- Wayne Hall
- Ken Fuller
- Jeffrey Crecelius
Patrons:
| Aaron Steelman | Lind |
| Al Dell’Angelo | Lobate Scarp |
| Barry Gorsky | Mark Baggs |
| Bill Whittaker | Mark James Lang |
| Bob Martilotta | Mark Slater |
| Brian Harris | Martin Kjellberg |
| Brian Sullivan | Michael Handerhan |
| Chris Bandini | Michael O’Connor |
| Craig Estenes | Miguel Falcão |
| Dave Owen | Paul Hailes |
| David | Paul Tomei |
| David Heyden | Rachel Hadaway |
| David Pannell | Robert Nasir |
| David Watkinson | Robert Vandiver |
| Declan Logue | Ronnie Neeley |
| Dem | Scott Colombo |
| Doug Curran | Simon Barrow |
| Fergus Cubbage | Stephen Lambe |
| Fred Barringer | Steve Dill |
| Gary Betts | Steve Luzietti |
| Geoff Bailie | Steve Perry |
| Geoffrey Mason | Steve Rode |
| Guy DeRome | Steve Scott |
| Henrik Antonsson | Steven Roehr |
| Hogne Bø Pettersen | Terence Sadler |
| Todd Dudley | |
| John Cowan | John Thomson |
| John Holden | John Viola |
| Jamie McQuinn | Tim Stannard |
5 replies on “Six reasons why 90125 is a great Yes album – 681”
I posted online recently about how many of our favorite progressive rock bands of the 1970s had trouble navigating the changing musical landscape of the 1980s and adjusted their sound as a consequence. It seems to me that the ones who successfully shifted their styles were the ones who emulated other successful bands, while maintaining their own unique brand. Painting with broad strokes, I suggested that the most notable survivors of the 1970s and the musicians that inspired them in the ’80s were: King Crimson (sounding like Talking Heads at times), Yes (with more Rush influence than The Police, I would say), Jethro Tull (occasionally indistinguishable from Dire Straits in the 1980s) and Genesis (riding Phil Collins’ coattails to sound more like his solo albums than anything they had done before). I got some pushback when I suggested the Yes/Rush comparison, but I’ll elaborate to say that, although 1970s Rush was in part inspired by ’70s Yes, I believe that 1980s Yes was itself inspired by ’80s Rush. The Rabin era has a punchier sound that seems much closer to what Rush had been doing (quite successfully) than anything Yes had done in the prior decade. It seemed to work better for Yes than, say, Rick Wakeman trying to emulate The Buggles (“I’m So Straight I’m a Weirdo”).
First time I heard Owner was during my first trip to NYC, first exposure to MTV and thus the video featuring Danny Webb, the actor whose other claim to fame at that time was being the first character to be killed off in C4 soap opera Brookside. This was Xmas of 1983.
I loved Owner from the get-go, not least because of what it owed to the “Into Battle With The Art Of Noise” ep which came out a few weeks prior (good shout that Kevin!).
I bought the 12″ next pay day when I got back home. Never occurred to me to buy the album as my interests were by them more about jazz, post punk and the music that was coming from the NY dance floor than what the 70s behemoths were up to. I was buying a lot more singles than albums in those years and didn’t make up for that until I bought Yes Years in 91 (?) for old time’s sake, having no Yes on cd at that point, and thus warmed a little bit to the Rabin aesthetic.
Is 90125 a great album? Totally. Is it a great Yes album? Not really. I loathe the flag of commercial convenience thing (just as I did with the rebranding of ARW). Drama probably shouldn’t have a Yes album either.
A clean break after 78 with Cinema being Cinema into the 90s and then Yes coming back into being with the Keys era would have spared Yes the burden of constantly chasing another US hit single and perhaps that would have allowed them a more Crimson-esque legacy with their copybook as a band of progressive adventurers unblotted by some of the music that has been released under their name.
For me “Magnification” is the only Yes record made since that is really worthy of the them. “Fly From Here” runs it close but is padded. There are some great tracks scattered about the later day catalogue but it pains me that the solo records of the last 30 years are often so much more interesting, more exciting and more melodically engaging than those that bear the Yes name. Especially in recent years what with Steve’s fantastic jazz oriented albums, DBA and “Red Planet” etc.
Talking of which a quick word re the exo-X-xeno record. Not my usual cuppa tea by any means but it’s an absolute monster of a Yes side project. Most modern prog leaves me stone cold but this is a genuinely exciting and memorable set.
Hell yeah, 90125 is a great album. And a great Yes album to. I’m a Yes whole and I find this to be much more Yessy than anything released by the current lineup.
However, I need to protest regarding this episode’s claim that Queen had problems adjusting to the 80s. Queen were bigger than ever in Europe, South-America, Africa and Asia in the 80s. It’s true that their popularity waned in the US, mostly because of homophobia and the great video lampooning Coronation Street, but they sold records by the truckloads and filled stadiums very easily in those days. And then there’s that Live Aid performance…
90125 is a great Yes album thanks to the new meeting of the talents and imagination of Rabin, Squire, White, Kaye, Anderson and Horn, which resulted in those great songs and production.
On pages 23-27 of his new book on TALES, Kevin quotes extensively from Simon Barrow, including this passage: “…there lie the other two poles of music as advancement (‘progress’) and music as entertainment…between what turns our lifelong attention to unveiling beauty on the one hand, and what satisfies an often more immediate and physical need…”
What Jon Anderson did in 90125 was to lift this record from the latter to a much more sublime level. His contributions to Owner, Hearts, and Changes are incredibly effective. Just look at the “One word from you, one word from me” segment in Changes. This calm moment in the song encapsulates the lyrical message and transforms an excellent song into a great song. And that is what makes 90125 a great YES album.