YESSONGS = Simply the best!!

[TOIT-TOM]

In thinking about all of the wonderful albums they have put out in the last 30+ years, I still believe Yessongs is the Cream of the Crop. It contains all of the MEGA hits from their heyday, and it is one of those albums that never grows old. It is like listening to something that was just recently recorded! It is like some of the Beatles albums that never grow old.

Think about it.....we all still crave hearing Siberian Khatru on their tours as the opening song, then of course the rest of the MEGA hits, and finally the encore has always ended up with one or two MEGA hits + roundabout.

It is simply forever.:yesbird: :yesbird: :yesbird: :yesbird:

[Alexander]

Is there any explanation for the title "Wurm" which appears on 'Yessongs'? I think it's after "Starship Trooper".

[Original_Shifty]

Sorry, title has nothing to do with this post.

Wurm is part of Starship Trooper. It is the third movement of the song. It is not after Starship Trooper, it is part of it.

Now why it's called Wurm, I don't rightly know.

[yesindeed]

Yessongs is the quintessential Yes album.

[Jackaranda]

It's the one album I'd have if stuck on a desert island. It captures the band's strongest point at a high point in their career--live performance. Many of the tracks, in my opinion, are better than the originals.

[Alexander]

It's disappointing no-one knows. Why is the piece called "Wurm" and not, for example, "Wadda Hey" or "I Got Five On 'Er"?

A quick checking of the encyclopedia indicates that Wurm is what geologists call the last stage of the Ice Age. This may be when Europe was cut off from the rest of the world.

But isn't there a type of dragon called wurm? A dragon without wings or legs was called a lindworm. This was important in the age of chivalry, when you carried heraldic crests and had to know your lindworms from your other varieties of symbolic beasts.

Now I'm through declaiming. I hope someone will answer. I've waited twenty years to know why it's called Wurm. And I'll probably wait another twenty. It's a good thing life is long. Where are the experts? I ask you. Where have they gone?


:crybby:

[Purple Wolfhound]

Alright Alexander, quit yer ballin’, here’s a hanky – now blow yer nose. :D Thanks to you my curiosity was piqued, so the Wolfhound, though I’m not an “expert” (by any stretch), may have found you something from the pages of Notes From The Edge. :1read:

The following excerpt came from issue # 160, which was an interview conducted with Steve Howe, so you’re getting it straight from the horse’s mouth:

MOT: I don't know if anyone's ever asked you it but I'm curious about the third section of "Startship Trooper", "Wurm". What's the story behind the title, "Wurm"?

SH: Well you know the piece was on the Bodast record. That was in a song called "The Ghost of Nether Street" and I left Bodast and then I was in Yes, and we were looking for a piece of music so I played the chords as we do, and I suppose months later somebody said, what are we going to call it? Because quite often you work on things without talking about what it's called. At the time I was absolutely hopeless in thinking of titles, I mean if somebody said, what should you call it, I would not be able to think of anything...I can't remember what it is. There was something about the word we liked and we used the German version, or something like that, it was really just a left field, there was no real deep meaning in that at all, it was just kind of colorful word.

["Wurm"--the 'u' has an umlaut--was not in a German dictionary, and a colleague from Germany advised that spelled that way it meant nothing. The word appears in dictionaries without the umlaut, and means a mite. --MOT]

And this excerpt, from issue #162:

"WURM" IN THE ICE AGE ===================== From: Ulrich Klier (100716.572@CompuServe.COM)

I have just read the Stewe Howe interview in NFTE 160 which I found very interesting. Somewhere in the middle of the interview your were discussing the origin of the title "Wurm" in "Starship Trooper". As far as I know "wurm" is used in the scientific language of geologists and is the name of an interglacial period (some 12.000 or 19.000 years ago) - that may be the reason that nobody found it in a dictionary. Well in fact it doesn't really mean anything in German (as you have discovered already) it's just a name. That's all. One secret less in the world of Yes?

[We also received this note:] From: "00rtgreffey@bsuvc.bsu.edu" You may want to verify this, but if I recall correctly from one of my archeology classes, Wurm (umlauts and all) is the name some German came up with for one of the ice ages. I think it may have been the most recent. Machete Bug

[Though this is a tantalizing explanation Steve's response was that as far as he remembers this isn't the origin. From what he recalls the band thought the word meant something else (he can't remember what it was) and later discovered that it didn't. --MOT]

So it would appear that the mystery may yet continue, since Steve can’t recall exactly where the origins of the word came from either. Heck, I wouldn’t after almost thirty years. Anyway, I hope this helps (a little?). :shrug:

Peace,

Phil

[Alexander]

Wolfhound, I congratulate you on the excellence of your response. Yes, you have verily risen to the challenge. Surely this site is unsurpassed for the quality of its contacts. Yes has the smartest fans I've ever met!

The very first time I heard Steve's guitar on Wurm I admired it because it was so accessible (for Yes is so often theoretically complex). I wondered why no-one ever tried to play that before. Maybe it responds to some archetype or primordial memory, as if Steve unearthed a prehistoric instrument and began to play it.

I agree the Ice Age allusion was a tantalizing possibility. Recent theories have surmised the isolating effect of the Ice Age caused a lot of human differentiation.

But if Steve says it wasn't that...we'll just have to leave him be. Don't want to get him in trouble! As Steve might say: :nono:

[Jackaranda]

Back around 76, when I was first really into Yes, the progressive rock station in Nashville, which was the most listened to station in town at the time (Rock IS big in Nashville too, you know), played side six of Yessongs one night, and after that final, incredible fadeout of Starship Trooper, the DJ comes on and says "Folks, that's music extrordinare".

Just one of those moments that sticks.

[RobAdams]

YESSONGS is the definitive live Yes recording...While YESSHOWS, HOUSE OF YES and the live KEYS TO ASCENSION 1 & 2 tracks are wonderful - it is YESSONGS that remains THE essential live Yes album.

[Purple Wolfhound]

Originally posted by Alexander
I agree the Ice Age allusion was a tantalizing possibility. Recent theories have surmised the isolating effect of the Ice Age caused a lot of human differentiation.

But if Steve says it wasn't that...we'll just have to leave him be. Don't want to get him in trouble! As Steve might say: :nono:

I came up with a couple of my own theories concerning the origin of Wurm overnight, but I suppose it's best to "let the sleeping Wurm lie", as it were...:worm:

Peace,

Phil

[Alexander]

Originally posted by Purple Wolfhound


I came up with a couple of my own theories concerning the origin of Wurm overnight, but I suppose it's best to "let the sleeping Wurm lie", as it were...:worm:

Peace,

Phil

Phil,

It seems you are an intuitive thinker and open to ideas. Wurm is nothing to be afraid of. The trick is to make it work for you.

I've often thought the sinuousity of the guitar line might have suggested a worm to Steve. When you hear Wurm it seems to be turning round and round. It's just my theory.

Correction of an earlier error: a wingless and legless dragon is technically called a guivre, not a lindworm. Lindworms had wings. But they didn't have legs. Such differences had greater significance. Examine the family crests of Oliver Cromwell, or Louis I of France. It's surprising that the dragon, a symbol of evil, has been revered as a heraldic symbol by Europe's royal families.

[Jackaranda]

YESSONGS is the definitive live Yes recording...While YESSHOWS, HOUSE OF YES and the live KEYS TO ASCENSION 1 & 2 tracks are wonderful - it is YESSONGS that remains THE essential live Yes album.

:thumbs:

[ANTIOCH]

Yes Rob . . . what he said !
It captures everything that was and is YES.
I bought the remastered version and it just keeps on kicking !!!!!!!