Skip to main content

Enter your email below to be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Please enter a valid email address
Please accept the terms
How Yes’ Self-Titled Debut Album Planted The Seeds Of Prog-Rock
Warner Music
In Depth

How Yes’ Self-Titled Debut Album Planted The Seeds Of Prog-Rock

With a sprinkling of psychedelia, jazz and classical influences, Yes’s debut LP offered bounteous hints of a prog-rock harvest yet to come.

Back

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”.

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.

“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.

Due to the inexperience of everyone involved, Yes struggled to get their instruments to sound right. “We spent about three days trying to get a Hammond organ sound,” Peter Banks told Cherry Red TV, “because Tony [Kaye] was playing a Vox Continental keyboard. So we hired this Hammond organ and couldn’t get a sound out of it.” Banks even remembers Atlantic Records’ then president, Ahmet Ertegun, visiting the studio three days later, only to find the musicians “still fiddling around with a Hammond organ”.

Other problems arose when the band tackled The Byrds’ song I See You, which placed much weight on Bill Bruford’s shoulders. “It was my first time recording, and I had to learn fast,” the drummer said, explaining how he struggled to play along with guitarist Peter Banks, as he didn’t realise he could alter the mix in his headphones. “I hung on through grim death through the album with a deafening Peter Banks in one ear and precious little of anything in the other,” he continued. “Quite a feat when you remember much of I See You is a guitar and drums duet.”

Considering how much of Yes’ setlists were comprised of eclectic cover versions – of songs by everyone from The Fifth Dimension to Leonard Bernstein – it’s a testament to the band’s foresight that they chose to make space on their debut album for a handful of originals, such as the song Sweetness, which would become the band’s first single. Among the most ambitious of the Yes-penned tracks was Harold Land, a chilling PTSD fable about a soldier who returns from war to an empty life (“He had lost his love and youth/While leading the attack”), while the album closer, Survival, was a proto-prog marvel replete with stabbing guitar riffs that offered listeners tell-tale signs of Yes’ future as prog-rock pioneers.

Remarkably, despite their lack of experience in the studio, Yes managed to lay down their debut album within a single week. Over half a century on from the sessions, the band’s enthusiasm remains palpable on record, with Bruford later noting that their frontman’s pro-amateur philosophy seemed to work in their favour (“Jon was entirely encouraging to all comers on all instruments, irrespective of ability,” he has said.) Gripped by a spirit of adventure, Yes had succeeded in finding their footing as a recording act, emerging with a fresh and distinctive debut album to kick off their musical journey.

The release: “We’re all very lucky to be in the position of having more freedom to do what we like”

Upon its release, on 25 July 1969, Yes’ self-titled debut album was greeted with glowing acclaim from music critics across the board, with even hard-to-please Rolling Stone journalist Lester Bangs calling it “a definitive album” and complimenting its “brisk fuzz leads” and “whirring bass”. Although the record missed out on the charts, the industry had certainly taken notice: it was clear Yes were pioneering a trippy style of rock music that was bridging the gap between psychedelia and more complex and esoteric styles such as jazz and classical music.

For hard-rock bands of their time, this forward-thinking approach was revelatory. From the moment Peter Banks’ morse-like guitar riff and Chris Squire’s sludgy bass kick off Beyond And Before – a song dating back to the Mabel Greer’s Toyshop era, and now installed as the opening track on Yes’ debut album – the record introduced a group boasting all the punchiness of mod stalwarts such as The Who or Small Faces, before blindsiding listeners with Anderson’s hair-raising vocal harmonies. With Tony Kaye’s organ runs adding a touch of sophistication alongside Bill Bruford’s jazz-inspired drumming, Yes were taking popular music to a new frontier.

“Pop is a very exciting business,” Anderson told journalist Chris Welch in a 1969 interview, “and we’re all very lucky to be in the position of having more freedom to do what we like than others have had.” Both Anderson and Squire had previously told Welch that they intended to “be poppy but not doing Top 10 stuff”, marking Yes out as bastions of unconventionality that appealed to London’s counterculture scene.

Yet though they stood apart from their contemporaries, infusing their music with many melodic nuances for musos to mull over, Yes were also punchy and accessible, instantly catching the ears of radio DJs such as David Symonds, Johnnie Walker and Mike Harding. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than on Looking Around, which was released in October 1969 as the second single from Yes’ debut album. Positively screaming with hit potential, the song’s rollicking combination of Beatles-esque harmonies and Tony Kaye’s bluesy organ runs should have ignited the pop charts. Alas, the world wasn’t quite ready for Yes, but critics were in no doubt that the group’s time would indeed come.

The legacy: “We had no idea the impact of what we were creating”

Hopping from the psychedelic rock guitar theatrics of Jimi Hendrix to the multi-layered counterharmonies of The Beach Boys via jazz tunings, classical arrangements, Beatles-inspired pop and the proto-metal heaviness of Vanilla Fudge, Yes were ahead of the curve when it came to the future of rock music. Among the the many Yes line-ups that have coalesced over the years, each new album is a snapshot of a particular era, but it’s this one that opened the door to progressive rock’s future, setting in motion everything that would come to pass during the group’s game-changing 70s period.

As Tony Kaye later said: “We had no idea the impact of what we were creating back in the 60s would be so long lasting.” A seminal record that introduced the world to the inimitable voice of Jon Anderson and the unique and exemplary bass work of Chris Squire, Yes’ self-titled debut album was also a launchpad for Bill Bruford, who is still remembered today as one of the best drummers of all time.

More than a mere stepping stone, Yes’ debut album is a crucial piece of the band’s history, capturing the group’s early enthusiasm and the purest distillation of their artistic vision. That raw, youthful energy is precisely what makes the record so captivating – it’s the sound of a band finding their voice and pushing the boundaries of what rock’n’roll could achieve, and it successfully set the stage for a further flowering of Yes’ talents.

Buy Yes vinyl at the Dig! store.

More Like This

‘I Want To Know What Love Is’: The Story Behind Foreigner’s Classic Power Ballad
In Depth

‘I Want To Know What Love Is’: The Story Behind Foreigner’s Classic Power Ballad

Foreigner songwriter Mick Jones almost gave I Want To Know What Loe Is to Aretha Franklin, but instead it became his band’s biggest song.

Tom Verlaine: The Life, Music And Legacy Of Television’s Visionary Guitarist
In Depth

Tom Verlaine: The Life, Music And Legacy Of Television’s Visionary Guitarist

Though a trailblazing guitarist, the naturally reclusive Tom Verlaine shunned the rock-star life and let his music do the talking.

Sign up to our newsletter

Be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Sign Up