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This one takes me back, not only to this performance in Mountain View CA, but to its origins in rehearsals for Yes’ Fragile album of 1971. I’ve always seen this track as a kind of breakthrough blueprint for how the band might go about these long-form compositions, something we’d been aiming for without really knowing it. When we heard it, we recognised it. We’d hinted at it in bits of the Yes album, and even Time and a Word, but this baby was born complete and perfectly formed. Nothing needed to be added or removed.
The arrival of Rick (Wakeman) in the band marked the first appearances of the Mellotron and Moog synthesizer, adding size and colour to the band’s sound. Rick was surprised to see how often we argued amongst ourselves, and at one point shortly after his arrival thought we were going to split. Passions can run high in this type of all-in-a-room-together collaborative creativity, not something the average session guy was used to in 1971. Anyway, this was the blueprint we built on for the subsequent Close to the Edge album.
Jon Anderson was on great form at this concert - powerful, clear voice without having to strain at it. Ever since the beginning of the band he had been on at me to write something for it, or at least to contribute to the song under collaborative construction. For him there were two kinds of musician: the ones that were told what to play and ‘merely’ played it, and the ones that created what was to be played and then played it - the latter, in his view, being definitely superior to the former. I shouldn’t put words in his mouth, but that was the drift of it. I had been chipping in solid ideas for a while, and was duly rewarded with a writing credit on this. I was so naïve when I started out as a musician, I knew nothing about song-writing royalties until someone pointed out that, anecdotally, Mick Jagger went to the gig in a Rolls Royce and Charlie Watts went by bus: the difference being, of course, who wrote the song!
Credit due here to Julian Colbeck, additional keyboards; Milton McDonald, second guitar; and bassist Jeff Berlin, standing in for a temporarily indisposed Tony Levin. All three were criminally under-lit and generally ignored by the video’s director, and all were vital components in thickening the sound, especially on some of the newer material. Thanks guys!
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