The true story of Mr. Dean and the music

[WhiteKnight]

I think Dean's drawings for Yes covers are much more than beautiful drawings. To the eyes of a Yes fan like me, they seem to match the essence of Yes music. Surely RD is an incredibly talented artist, but with Yes he's gone beyond himself.

I've seen several examples of cover arts Dean has done for other bands; for instance, the european release of Octopus (Gentle Giant), The Magician's Birthday (Uriah Heep), Alpha and Aura (Asia). While all of them are really beautiful drawings (Octopus being among my all-time Dean favs), they don't seem to complement the music in the way Yes covers do. Asia's covers come closest to this perfect match. The overall style of Dean's paintings for Asia is similar to Yes; I would say it is just a bit more on the sci-fi side and a little less on the mystic (and the sci-fi flavor has inspired the artists of non-Dean Asia covers such as Aqua or Arena).

My overall impression is thus that Dean must have been/be a huge Yes fan, very into the music, and very close to the band at the time of their peak. To be so faithful to the music, he must have "felt" it very deeply. And his works for other bands seem to reveal that he too, like me, thinks Yes are a very special band, way above the others.

Any information on this topic?

WK

[Flo]

I read in Chris Welch's book "Close to the edge the story of Yes" that Roger Dean generally designed his artworks without listening to the albums for the simple reason that there was not much time between the final cut of the album and the official release and he had to work with anticipation before the music was completely recorded. But he sure got the Yes spirit to achieve such beautiful designs.

[BrianD]

I just posted a part of this in another section. I was fortunate enough to purchase Roger Dean's book Views in the mid 70s. In it he stated that he rarely heard the music before doing an album cover. 'I cannot say that the music is ever a direct inspiration for my work. However the music, the title, and the art work are all related, and must all affect each other to some degree.'