Yes - Close To The Edge

Released - September 1972

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Yes & Eddy Offord

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

Standout Track - And You & I

For many, this is one of the defining moments in prog rock history. Although the spirit of prog's excess and complexity had already been mercilessly lambasted with Jethro Tull's timeless one-song album Thick As A Brick earlier the same year, Close To The Edge will always be seen as one of the definitive pinnacles of that approach to making music. It was also the album that put me off Yes for a good couple of years before finally finding my way into liking them via 1971's The Yes Album. Back when I was keen to discover all things new and all things prog, I listened to the first five minutes of the title track from this album and, not liking what I heard, decided I couldn't be bothered to make time for Yes. By the time I was into the band enough to feel like I really couldn't continue to ignore the album generally considered their magnum opus, I'd learned to have patience with things I was unfamiliar with, and persevered enough with Close To The Edge to realise that it's one of the band's crowning achievements, although it's never quite been able to find as strong a place in my affections as The Yes Album did.

In the wake of the success of Fragile, including their first ever hit single in "Roundabout," Yes had proved that they were one of the few bands able to achieve both the critical notice and acclaim afforded to the artistic pioneering of the prog circle while also gaining mainstream and chart success. It perhaps made sense, then, for their next step to be an attempt to prove that they had what it takes to really push the boundaries of music-making and to turn their hand to some of the extreme complexity and ambition of their prog rock peers. On Fragile they had begun experimenting with more long-form songwriting, the album being structured around three lengthy tent-pole tracks and a number of short interludes. This time, the band's energies would be channelled into producing an album of only three lengthy piece, one of which would take up the entire first side. As such, the band's approach to composition is noticeably different here - the focus is no longer on catchy riffs or memorable hooks, but on compelling musical ideas which can be developed and taken off in new directions, and then repeated in new contexts to sustain a lengthy suite. Perhaps the only moment on the entire album that qualifies as a truly memorable "hook" is the joyfully pretty acoustic riff midway through "And You & I" (accompanied by Jon Anderson's trills of "There'll be no mutant enemies, we shall certify,") plus perhaps that opening, blistering electric riff at the start of "Siberian Khatru." But for the most part, the listener isn't looking for immediate gratification in the form of catchy choruses or compelling melodies here. Rather, it's a search for being transported somewhere new by music that is wholly compelling and inventive and transformative and always refreshingly different, and in that respect it delivers in spades.

Much has been made of an increasing sense of spirituality in Anderson's lyrics around this time, as he became increasingly fascinated by Hindu and Buddhist mysticism, and whether or not this sense of spiritual transformation that increasingly took hold of his imagination had a knock-on effect on the kind of music Yes were creating is difficult to say, but Close To The Edge certainly feels more like it's trying to take you on an imaginative journey than any previous Yes album (or, arguably, any since) - with such lengthy songs, it's impossible for it to not keep things hugely inventive and dynamic and transportational, or it would simply collapse under the weight of its own ambition. Perhaps as a direct result of this sense of spiritual movement, the album's strongest moments are its moments of tranquil reflection rather than of dynamism and energy. To this day, I'll still defend myself by saying that my initial reaction to the opening of the title track was built on firm foundations - it eventually turns into one of Yes's finest songs, but it starts off with a faintly irritating, and certainly by-the-numbers for Yes, array of clattering percussion from Bill Bruford and twanging guitar from Steve Howe - all things we've seen Yes do before and do better on the instrumental passages of Fragile. While Anderon's vocals bring a welcome change of pace, it's not until the tempo drops completely in the "I get up, I get down" middle section of the song that it becomes something truly wonderful. Rick Wakeman's shimmering keyboard textures are breathtakingly beautiful in this part of the song, and there's an almost proto-ambient sense of tranquillity to things, a good year before Brian Eno started taking even his first tentative steps to pioneering that genre. The triumphant organ crescendo that accompanies Anderson's continued declamatory cries of "I get up, I get down" usher back in the musical motifs of the song's opening before fading back out into the same sounds of running water and birdsong that the album started on.

The other great tranquil moment is the album's true highpoint, the beautiful ballad "And You & I" that opens side two. At nine minutes, it's of course far more complex and ambitious than any traditional ballad, but it's also perhaps the most conventional of the three songs here. The simple, bright acoustic guitar riff, anchored by Chris Squire's contentedly chugging bass, is a real delight, and that aforementioned moment halfway through when the riff comes back in with full clarity and confidence is a moment of true exhilaration and one of Yes's greatest musical achievements. "Siberian Khatru," with its fearsome pace and pyrotechnic guitar work from Steve Howe, plus the menacing, almost apocalyptic cyclical chants it moves through, is another absolute triumph of a song and the closest this album gets to a true rocker, but it lacks some of the focus and precision of the other two songs here, though it does provide an important sense of dynamism that the album would lack if the closing track had been another mid-tempo number.

While Wakeman was only credited as a writer for one of the three songs ("Siberian Khatru,") his influence on the development of the material was crucial and perhaps one of the key features in the album taking the final form it did. Knowing they wanted to craft an album around three lengthy suites, the band turned to Wakeman, who had a classical and traditional musical upbringing and a better understanding of the structure and composition of music than the rest of them, to help resolve these disparate musical ideas in a way that was satisfactory. As such, Wakeman set about developing the motifs and the recycling of ideas in order for the songs to feel like complete pieces of work rather than isolated ideas, and it's fair to say that Close To The Edge would be a very different entity were it not for his collaborations in this regard. The band seemed to be in a fairly staid and healthy place at the time of recording, and the gap between Fragile and Close To The Edge was the first inter-album gap for a while to not feature any changes to the lineup (and would be the last to do so for several years, too).

Sadly, that wasn't to last, and drummer Bill Bruford has cited several times that he suggested the names of those two albums as they represented the delicate internal wranglings of the group at the time. Whether or not these internal politics were things perceived only by him or whether they did affect the group as a whole, he would be gone by the time of Close To The Edge's followup album, Tales From Topographic Oceans, having defected to join none other than King Crimson, a band pushing all the same boundaries and making the same bold statements as Yes but without any of the chart success. Tales From Topographic Oceans would unwisely attempt to one-up the achievements of this classic album by crafting a double album out of four twenty-minute epics, none of which really has enough of a central musical idea to justify even half of its running time. By the time the band produced another album of genuine worth and quality in the form of 1974's Relayer, Rick Wakeman would also have parted company with the band, though not for long. Still, all these trials were still to come for Yes, and for now it was time for them to bask in the glory of being crowned the kings of prog - they had achieved mainstream success and now they had managed to deliver an album more ambitious and over-the-top and complex than anything else in prog, perhaps even than Tull's masterful piss-take. It wouldn't be long before prog would begin to suffer hugely in the public's affection, but it's just possible that Close To The Edge represents the very pinnacle of all it achieved, even if, for my money, it's not quite got the heart and the charm of their other masterpiece, The Yes Album.

Track Listing:

1. Close To The Edge (Jon Anderson & Steve Howe)

2. And You & I (Jon Anderson; Steve Howe; Chris Squire & Bill Bruford)

3. Siberian Khatru (Jon Anderson; Steve Howe & Rick Wakeman)