90125- Rating out of 5?

[Somis Sound]

Sorry, that’s a defeatist mentality. Listen to Jacaranda, listen to Levin, Torn, White, listen to some of the Squackett material. These guys had plenty of gas in the tank. They were handcuffed by their own decisions and the lure of hitting it big again like they did with Owner.

Once they tasted the honey money from OOALH/90125, they were always chasing a "single" after that. Even all the way out to an album like Magnification with Don't Go. It's like, c'mon guys are you serious. They had the license to get as weird and experimental as they wanted, yet they were more concerned with using previous formulas and chasing another hit song. But you are right Jay, there were blasts of promise and adventure on albums like Jacaranda, FFH, Levin/Torn/White, Squackett, and even Syndestructable... Seems Yes sort of stayed in there own box after a while.

I remeber hearing Shoot High Aim Low on KLOS an L.A. station when BG came out. Actually pulled the car over and was in awe. That moment had me buying my first Yes album! Which led to the beautiful Yes wonderlands of 71-80....

[patrickq]

I remeber hearing Shoot High Aim Low on KLOS an L.A. station when BG came out. Actually pulled the car over and was in awe. That moment had me buying my first Yes album! Which led to the beautiful Yes wonderlands of 71-80....

Nice 😊

Big Generator was the first Yes album I bought. Then, like you, I bought one or another of their back-catalogue cassettes every other week, or as funds allowed, and here we are. The Yes Album was an early favorite. Ahhh…memories.

[pianozach]

Once they tasted the honey money from OOALH/90125, they were always chasing a "single" after that. Even all the way out to an album like Magnification with Don't Go. It's like, c'mon guys are you serious. They had the license to get as weird and experimental as they wanted, yet they were more concerned with using previous formulas and chasing another hit song. But you are right Jay, there were blasts of promise and adventure on albums like Jacaranda, FFH, Levin/Torn/White, Squackett, and even Syndestructable... Seems Yes sort of stayed in there own box after a while.

I remeber hearing Shoot High Aim Low on KLOS an L.A. station when BG came out. Actually pulled the car over and was in awe. That moment had me buying my first Yes album! Which led to the beautiful Yes wonderlands of 71-80....

Mark and Brian Show, a brilliant morning zoo show on KLOS, loved the track, and they arranged to have drum sets brought into the studio so they could play along to the track live.

[Enlighten]

Once they tasted the honey money from OOALH/90125, they were always chasing a "single" after that. Even all the way out to an album like Magnification with Don't Go. It's like, c'mon guys are you serious. They had the license to get as weird and experimental as they wanted, yet they were more concerned with using previous formulas and chasing another hit song. But you are right Jay, there were blasts of promise and adventure on albums like Jacaranda, FFH, Levin/Torn/White, Squackett, and even Syndestructable... Seems Yes sort of stayed in there own box after a while.

I remeber hearing Shoot High Aim Low on KLOS an L.A. station when BG came out. Actually pulled the car over and was in awe. That moment had me buying my first Yes album! Which led to the beautiful Yes wonderlands of 71-80....

Ironic, isn’t it Erik? The band that was all about breaking out of boxes, firmly planted themselves in one once they caught the hit single virus.

[Mr. Holland]

Ironic, isn’t it Erik? The band that was all about breaking out of boxes, firmly planted themselves in one once they caught the hit single virus.

I still think the 70s tend to get "mythtified". What was popular and commercial in the early to mid 70s was different to what was popular in the early to mid 80s. The Yes Album became a hit album for them. Had it not been the case they would have been without a record company. It's not like record companies in those days said "oh, just make what you want to make and we'll just keep financing everything you do, even if it doesn't sell".

Prog just happened to be very commercially popular in the first half of the 70s. There was a big audience for it. Had that not been the case then Yes would have had two choices; stay in amateur lane and without a record company or adapt to what was popular and have a record company and have succes. Yes was breaking boundaries, because they could and album sales and commercial succes allowed them to. They could have had all the artistic freedom of the world, without commercial succes and the money that came with that they would have been living that freedom in their garages.

There was talk of rose coloured glasses earlier, but I think that also goes for those who think that the 70s was this walhalla of artistic freedom without any record company push and without chasing succes and hits.

[Enlighten]

Well, if some of us are wearing rose colored glasses about 70’s era Yes then the guys in Yes were wearing them too. How many times have you heard, Howe, Anderson, Wakeman and Bruford say, “they left us alone and let us do what we wanted to do.” Record company execs may have encouraged bands to take edits of songs, like Roundabout and create offerings that were more digestible for AM radio. That’s a totally different animal than the greater muscle that the suits were emboldened with as we moved into the eighties. Rabin was told to write hits. Horn has said that ATCO was breathing down his neck while recording 90125 and if they didn’t create a hit, he would be fired. Rabin has even said that Owner wasn’t even intended for a Yes album.

It only got worse as we moved into the nineties and beyond. I’ve seen it first hand. My old bandmate, Matt Scannell, soul survivor of the band Vertical Horizon, experienced this in spades after having a number 1 hit record. The follow up to that hit record was rejected outright by MCA because it had “too many guitar solos” and “had no hit”. He literally had to put his tail between his legs after three years of writing and recording this follow up and create a new record. Let me ask you something Arno, do you think that something like that would have ever happened to Yes while they were recording Tales or Relayer?

[Ash Armstrong]

Artists were allowed a greater degree of creative freedom in the 1970s, or from about 1967 to 1977. Album sales were huge and sustained, record companies were getting good returns on their advances and were ok taking a longer-term view on their investments. Then when the OPEC crisis hit in 1973, vinyl production and quality, prices went up, sales went down. It took a few years for record companies to re-orient themselves, and the upsurge in pub-rock, punk and New Wave coincided with all of that, driven by the industrial unrest and the recession. For a while, maybe 8-10 years, it was a time of great creative freedom for bands, artists of all kinds, but you had to be there to be able to look back on it and see that.

[Mr. Holland]

Well, if some of us are wearing rose colored glasses about 70’s era Yes then the guys in Yes were wearing them too. How many times have you heard, Howe, Anderson, Wakeman and Bruford say, “they left us alone and let us do what we wanted to do.” Record company execs may have encouraged bands to take edits of songs, like Roundabout and create offerings that were more digestible for AM radio. That’s a totally different animal than the greater muscle that the suits were emboldened with as we moved into the eighties. Rabin was told to write hits. Horn has said that ATCO was breathing down his neck while recording 90125 and if they didn’t create a hit, he would be fired. Rabin has even said that Owner wasn’t even intended for a Yes album.

It only got worse as we moved into the nineties and beyond. I’ve seen it first hand. My old bandmate, Matt Scannell, soul survivor of the band Vertical Horizon, experienced this in spades after having a number 1 hit record. The follow up to that hit record was rejected outright by MCA because it had “too many guitar solos” and “had no hit”. He literally had to put his tail between his legs after three years of writing and recording this follow up and create a new record. Let me ask you something Arno, do you think that something like that would have ever happened to Yes while they were recording Tales or Relayer?

I agree that record company pressure was bigger in the 80s.

But what I'm saying regarding the 70s is that the more artistic freedom they experienced then, was bought by their commercial succes. I'm of the opinion that they were allowed to make Tales, because of the commercial succes of Close to the Edge. Tales already went gold in pre-sales alone, thanks to the succes of Close to the Edge. I'm saying their artistic freedom was allowed as long as commercial succes followed it, or preceded it. Had Close to the Edge bummed in sales I very much doubt whether they would have been allowed to make Tales. In that way I don't think the 70s differed as much from the 80s or any other decade, except that in the 80s indeed record companies took an even more directory stance.

[patrickq]

[snip]But what I'm saying regarding the 70s is that the more artistic freedom they experienced then, was bought by their commercial succes.[snip]

I think this is a critical point. The sheet-music publishers of 150 years ago, the record companies of the 1970s, and today’s entertainment conglomerates are all businesses. Their role has never been to fund musical explorations for the sake of art. If Yes were given a couple of years to find their sound, it’s because the company saw this as a reasonable up-front investment. And they were right.

Is it a bad thing that popular music is a competition among large corporations? Well, if it weren’t for big-business record companies, we’d have no Chuck Berry, no Beatles, no Yes. Do I like the idea that monetized music contributes to the wealth gap between rich and poor? Hell no.

[Davy]

I agree that record company pressure was bigger in the 80s.

But what I'm saying regarding the 70s is that the more artistic freedom they experienced then, was bought by their commercial succes. I'm of the opinion that they were allowed to make Tales, because of the commercial succes of Close to the Edge. Tales already went gold in pre-sales alone, thanks to the succes of Close to the Edge. I'm saying their artistic freedom was allowed as long as commercial succes followed it, or preceded it. Had Close to the Edge bummed in sales I very much doubt whether they would have been allowed to make Tales. In that way I don't think the 70s differed as much from the 80s or any other decade, except that in the 80s indeed record companies took an even more directory stance.

Correct. Yes was not an anomaly in the '70s. The music scene changed, and Yes began to change with it (GFTO, Tormato, Drama.) I don't dispute Jay's point that the band became infected with the hit single virus, but an album like Relayer would have gone nowhere in 1983.

[Enlighten]

Folks, no one is under any illusion about the “business” aspect of the “music business”. But more and more over the years, business people and not music people, took over record companies. Herb Alpert was a musician but he also ran A & M records. Ahmet Ertegun was a songwriter and jazz enthusiast and he was also a record executive with a keen eye and ear for actual musical talent. There was balance and understanding between music and business with people like these running record companies. As we moved into the eighties and beyond, that balance of music and business got more and more skewed towards business.

Once again, Yes made the music they wanted to make in the 70’s. You can’t tell me that those guys were all in on making music like Saving My Heart, Walls, No Way We Can Lose, If Only You Knew and Don’t Go.

[Somis Sound]

Folks, no one is under any illusion about the “business” aspect of the “music business”. But more and more over the years, business people and not music people, took over record companies. Herb Alpert was a musician but he also ran A & M records. Ahmet Ertegun was a songwriter and jazz enthusiast and he was also a record executive with a keen eye and ear for actual musical talent. There was balance and understanding between music and business with people like these running record companies. As we moved into the eighties and beyond, that balance of music and business got more and more skewed towards business.

Once again, Yes made the music they wanted to make in the 70’s. You can’t tell me that those guys were all in on making music like Saving My Heart, Walls, No Way We Can Lose, If Only You Knew and Don’t Go.

You nailed it. The Yes Album is not commercial. All Good People is almost 7 minutes. If there wasn't some problem with the mail system, and their buddy (Richard Branson??) who owned the record store didn't give them some help in the charts, Yes might never have continued. But the album did chart due to a "favor", and a mail service shut down. Then you get Roundabout, an 8 1/2 minute song. They were definitely not writing 3 and a half minute songs or being told to! But the suits were editing them, that is for sure. But they did have the freedom to make these longer form sort of commercial songs, then the labels would adjust around what the band presented. Then CTTE, then TFTO, then Relayer. It just got weirder and longer and longer. I'd call that artistic freedom. Also smart business. If this weird stuff sold and sold out concert tours, keep it going! Until punk and disco changed the landscape a bit in the mainstream.

[pjt]

At least Yes didn't go full pop like Genesis did in the 80s. I like most of the prog-pop songs on the Rabin albums, though not nearly as much as the classic period. By contrast I don't like much of anything by Genesis after Duke.

Full pop? YMMV, but Me And Sarah Jane, Dodo/Lurker, Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea, Tonight Tonight Tonight, Domino are not pop songs.
Was Invisible Touch overly po? it was. And I couldn't care for most of their pop songs, but Land of Confusion is as great as a song can be, and it's not remotely prog.
By the way, is Mama pop?

[Skankindead]

Full pop? YMMV, but Me And Sarah Jane, Dodo/Lurker, Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea, Tonight Tonight Tonight, Domino are not pop songs.
Was Invisible Touch overly po? it was. And I couldn't care for most of their pop songs, but Land of Confusion is as great as a song can be, and it's not remotely prog.
By the way, is Mama pop?

A bit late on this, but these are my thoughts exactly. A lot of people give Genesis crap for 'selling out' in the 80s, but they never stopped making their music unique from everyone else. Every one of their albums since Duke has at least one big, proggy song in it, and even most of their 'poppy' songs have parts with weird chord progressions that you would never catch another band dead using. Just listen to the chorus of Jesus He Knows Me, or the bridge of Invisible Touch, or No Reply At All. That's All is in a style of music that practically nobody else was doing in 83. My friend on the Genesis subreddit does a series on this exact subject called A Trick Of The Ear, which I'd recommend reading through if you're interested.

Back on the subject of 90125, my thoughts are not too dissimilar, although Yes was a bit more explicitly pop-rocky than Genesis by that point. They sounded a bit less like classic Yes, and more like Huey Lewis. As degrading as that may sound, Yes still had a lot of great tricks up their sleeve, and each song stands apart as its own great track. What I think is most obviously good about their new sound is that one of the best parts of 70s Yes, the gorgeous harmonies, was still intact - just with Rabin's tenor instead of Howe's bass. I also really like the production on 90125 - it's all very meticulous, but it means no space is wasted, and it all goes to making the songs what they are. And, like Genesis, they never completely lost their prog edge - how could they with Chris Squire as part of the band? It's most obvious in songs like Changes and Hearts, but other songs such as Cinema and It Can Happen also showcase some trademarks of prog, like the odd rhythms and the sudden time signature changes. And then there's songs like Leave It, which like That's All, says "screw it" and sounds like nothing anyone else is doing.

The funny thing is, I got into 70s Yes way before 80s Yes. I never heard much from any Yes post-CTTE growing up, since my dad loves 70s Yes and HATES 90125. But I honestly think 90125 has more going on than people give it credit for. There's a lot of passion going into it, and you can hear it on the album. It's like what Alan said on Yesyears:

The enthusiasm that we all felt for Cinema was really what you were listening to when you heard 90125. We spent eight months rehearsing all of that material. A lot of the success of that album came from dedication to a new type of sound.

[luna65]

Alan's comment is indicative of why I say that the album is more than just one person or one particular aspect. They created a chemistry and a sound before they started recording.