Yes - Fragile

Released - November 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Yes & Eddy Offord

Selected Personnel - Jon Anderson (Vocals); Steve Howe (Guitar); Rick Wakeman (Piano/Organ/Synthesiser); Chris Squire (Bass); Bill Bruford (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Roundabout

Having come to Yes's big commercial breakthrough, 1971's Fragile, after already being familiar with their earlier career peak The Yes Album and their later almost-as-good magnum opus Close To The Edge, I couldn't help but find it a disappointment. Along with those two albums, it constitutes one part of the trio of classic albums that will forever be remembered as Yes's definitive contribution to the music world. Unfortunately, it comes a long way short of either of its contemporaries. It lacks the innate musicality and classic tunes of The Yes Album and it lacks the ambition and scale of Close To The Edge. For a long time I wrote it off as a failed experiment, an interim measure as the new lineup of the band struggled to consolidate their sound before unleashing their next masterpiece onto the world. Through sheer persistance and the desire to understand why it was this record rather than their earlier classic that captured the public's imagination at the time, I eventually came to re-evaluate my position, and have now realised that in-between all the failed experiments lie a number of classic Yes tracks. They're marred by the muddled and generally unsuccessful premise behind the album as a whole, but listened to in their own right there are some great songs on Fragile, and it'd be wrong to write it off completely just for its failings.

The most significant change that occurred within Yes after the release of The Yes Album was the departure of keyboardist Tony Kaye. Tensions had been brewing between Kaye and lead vocalist Jon Anderson during the recording of that album, largely concerning Kaye's stolid loyalty to traditional instrumentation and the use of the piano and the Hammond organ rather than the newer technological advances offered by electronic synthesisers. Anderson, along with the rest of the band, wanted to modernise Yes's sound by taking advantage of these new possibilities, and eventually Kaye's traditionalism rendered him too much at odds with the rest of the band and he left the fold. In his place was classically trained keyboardist Rick Wakeman, an absolute virtuoso equally as adept on the Moog synthesiser or the Mellotron as on the piano and organ. Wakeman's prolific work as a session musician is already well-documented on this blog, having played on albums by David Bowie, Elton John, Cat Stevens and T. Rex, but it was with Yes that he would really get an opportunity to showcase his talent in his own right. His presence is by far one of the most exciting and fresh things about Fragile, lending a textural diversity to the sound admittedly absent from The Yes Album - a frantic organ solo in one moment will give way to a stark wall of sound from the Mellotron the next, with the blare of a synth or the rolling of a piano only moments later. There's a real richness and an orchestral quality to the sounds Wakeman is able to contribute to the band, and he's also enough of a virtuoso at everything thrown his way that he fits in perfectly with the bold, colourful, cartoonish musical style the band had already established.

Nowhere is the addition of Wakeman more successful than on the album's opening track, the classic "Roundabout," which benefits from one of the most deliriously brilliant organ freakouts courtesy of them man himself about halfway through. It does little to rewrite the rulebook in terms of the formula Yes had already established for themselves, but it's another great piece of upbeat, breathless prog with Anderson at his declamatory best, Chris Squire thudding and pounding his way through with great acumen, Steve Howe snapping and blistering away on the guitar and drummer Bill Bruford rattling about like a madman. Typical Yes, then. The other two classics are the other two longer songs, "South Side Of The Sky" and "Heart Of The Sunrise." The former isn't wholly successful and slogs through a fairly by-the-numbers instrumental and choral passage halfway through, but whenever it returns to its main refrain with Squire's brutal bass and Howe's vicious, fusion-esque guitar riff it's a powerful beast of a song. "Heart Of The Sunrise" is altogether more dramatic, propelled once again by Squire's driving, fearsome bass riff and eventually escalating into a jubilant chorus sung with great fervour by Anderson while Wakeman has a ball contributing his favourite keyboard sounds to the mix.

But sadly those three songs are pretty much where the fun ends here. Granted, they make up a good half hour of the material, so proportionately the majority of the album is great stuff. But structurally, the record is rendered somewhat redundant-feeling by the inclusion of the other material. Effectively, Fragile serves as a great example of how tedious prog can be when those behind it let the idea of being talented come ahead of the idea of making music that genuinely compels and entertains. In between the three full band performances are a number of shorter pieces that act as showcases for each of the individual band members themselves (with the exception of "Long Distance Runaround," which is another full band song but a fairly forgettable one). Every single one of them is a very good example of why Yes were best as a collective unit not as a group of individual solo artists. Wakeman's "Cans And Brahms," an arrangement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, is terrible even by his own admission, and Anderson's "We Have Heaven" is a hugely impressive stream-of-consciousness array of multi-tracked vocal harmonies, but hardly does anything to actually command the listener's attention or enjoyment. "Five Per Cent For Nothing" is the worst of the lot, but then I've always found drum solos a very difficult thing to really get enthusiastic about. Chris Squire's funky bass workout, "The Fish," is the only solo composition that really does anything genuinely enjoyable, and Howe's "Mood For A Day" is a pretty acoustic number but blurs into anonymity alongside all the other similar acoustic pieces he would contribute over the course of Yes's career.

So, ultimately, there are more terrible songs on this album than there are good ones, which makes it a difficult album to love, even if those songs take up considerably less time than the great ones. Its structure and failed "showcase the individual members" premise make it easy to dismiss or dislike, but it does reward proper attention and eventually reveals itself as a genuinely enjoyable prog classic, but one that has conspicuous flaws when assessed alongside the far more successful records that preceded and followed it. The only other thing worth mentioning about the album is that it marks the first collaboration between Yes and artist Roger Dean - it's rare that I draw attention to an album's particular artwork, but Dean's striking dream lanscapes, and his iconic Yes logo, have become so closely associated with the band themselves that it's worth mentioning the first time the world got a glimpse of his work. The prog-hungry masses at the time weren't bothered by the album's inconsistency in the end and, off the back of the success of "Roundabout" as a heavily edited single, Fragile became Yes's major commercial breakthrough. Even if it had been a genuinely terrible album from start to finish, its commercial success ultimately couldn't be something the true prog fan could begrudge as it granted the band the exposure and success they needed to move ahead in whatever direction they would make, resulting in an album that would come to be remembered as one of the defining moments of the genre - Close To The Edge.

Track Listing:

1. Roundabout (Jon Anderson & Steve Howe)

2. Cans And Brahms (Johannes Brahms, arranged by Rick Wakeman)

3. We Have Heaven (Jon Anderson)

4. South Side Of The Sky (Jon Anderson & Chris Squire)

5. Five Per Cent For Nothing (Bill Bruford)

6. Long Distance Runaround (Jon Anderson)

7. The Fish (Shindleria Praematurus) (Chris Squire)

8. Mood For A Day (Steve Howe)

9. Heart Of The Sunrise (Jon Anderson; Chris Squire & Bill Bruford)