Books about Yes & Books about Yes Lyrics?

[GAZ]

Hardcover – 6 May 2022



I have a few books about yes.
Can we make a list of them all here - maybe including your opinion of them? (inc band members books)

I'm also interested in books that try to examine and explain Yes lyrics.
How many are there, and what do you think of them?

Regards

Gaz

[Soundwaveseeker]

Currently reading Decade: Yes In The 80's book by Stephan Lambe. It covers Yes during that decade and goes into the albums and Yes related bands and solo efforts by Yes members in the 80's like Jon & Vangelis, Asia, Wakeman solo, etc. So far a decent read.

[Gtkgasman]

Have a few on the shelf, to get you list going.

Members
Bill Bruford - The autobiography - Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks, and more. Good read in the spirit of bills personality. I need to read this again as it’s been quite a long time. He prob has something more recent out now.

About Yes
close to the edge - the story of yes, chris Welch.
yesstories - Yes in their own words, tim Morse.
time and a word - the Yes story, Martin popoff.
yes - perpetual change, David Watkinson.

To be honest, I couldn’t finish any of them. End up scanning the quotes, facts, figures, discography info, etc, pics of lps and 45s. the authors don’t thrill me.

Roger Dean - Views. Love it. I need Magnetic Storm and whatever the last one was too. Also his Trading Card set is a very nice page turner if you grab em all /
the set.

Also - have a Yes Sheet music book, from ‘72, has TYA and Fragile combined, with lyrics also. Simply titled Yes.

Thats a good start for your list anyway.

Wakeman is on my want list........

[Ash Armstrong]

I also have the Steve Howe Guitar Book, but it's hiding behind the tour programmes and Roger Dean's Views.

[Gilly Goodness]

Nice shelf Ash.

1. Martin book. Some good insights esp. about lyrics but tad pretentious. He's some kind of Marxist professor. Not that there's anything wrong with that

2. Welch book. He was there. Tad sycophantic.

3. Morse book. Recycled quotes but got it before I had heard Talk and Union so was enthralled by the info on them. A lot of neg comments were proven right.

4. Haven't read Bill's but like his dry sense of humour.

5. Steve's book is not very racy. Factual. Lots of guitar tech. Had a first wife.

6. Roger's books are great. My favourite landscape artist.

7. Don't forget the Special magazines like Uncut. Loads of great old articles. Photos.

[Ash Armstrong]

Thomas Mosbo's book Yes: But What Does It All Mean? probably looks into the lyrics most closely. I bought my copy directly from the author in 2001, so it might be scarce now. Gets a bit too keen on all the mystical gobbledygook for me but still offers some interesting interpretations.
Alan Farley's The Extraordinary World of Yes (2004) is a nice little book, but as with a lot of books about the band and their music, much of it is recycled from interviews. Nicely written, some interesting insights but lacks depth.
The best for me, as it's from a more scholarly perspective, is Bill Martin's Music of Yes (1996), followed by Simon Barrow's much more recent Solid Mental Grace (2018), also purchased directly from the author. Both bring genuine, though often contradictory, critical perspectives to bear on the music and the lyrics. Note that 'contradictory' need not mean one cancels out the other: the goal in criticism, whether of text, image, music, whatever, is to explore antitheses in order to arrive at a fresh take, a thesis, on matters pertaining. Excuse the digression into Hegelian dialectics.
Conventional band biographies, though I have several, offer little insight, and as they usually derive from previously published material, can obscure or conceal more than they reveal.

[Ash Armstrong]

Nice shelf Ash.

1. Martin book. Some good insights esp. about lyrics but tad pretentious. He's some kind of Marxist professor. Not that there's anything wrong with that

2. Welch book. He was there. Tad sycophantic.

3. Morse book. Recycled quotes but got it before I had heard Talk and Union so was enthralled by the info on them. A lot of neg comments were proven right.

4. Haven't read Bill's but like his dry sense of humour.

5. Steve's book is not very racy. Factual. Lots of guitar tech. Had a first wife.

6. Roger's books are great. My favourite landscape artist.

7. Don't forget the Special magazines like Uncut. Loads of great old articles. Photos.

Bill (Martin) does style himself as a Marxist, though he tends to align himself with a quasi-Maoist tendency. He's retired from academia now (De Paul Uni, Chicago). Met him a couple of times at Yes shows in 98.

The Dan Hedges' book from 1980 is the earliest band buography I think. I bought it soon after publication.
The Yessongs book is actually the music to the songs that appear on the album, but it's a very rudimentary transcription, and often inaccurate. Useful for some of the chords back in the day but there are much better transcriptions online now. Its big plus is the 24 pages of b&w photos from the 1972 Crystal Palace Garden Party show.

[ragtime]

I had Dan Hedges, Yes: The Authorized Biography years ago. I'm not sure where it is now. I probably lent it to someone ... I have Bruford's autobiography, which is a good read - intelligent, critical analysis and sardonic, witty commentary on the modern music industry and his own contribution to it

[Gtkgasman]

Nice shelf Ash.

1. Martin book. Some good insights esp. about lyrics but tad pretentious. He's some kind of Marxist professor. Not that there's anything wrong with that

2. Welch book. He was there. Tad sycophantic.

3. Morse book. Recycled quotes but got it before I had heard Talk and Union so was enthralled by the info on them. A lot of neg comments were proven right.

4. Haven't read Bill's but like his dry sense of humour.

5. Steve's book is not very racy. Factual. Lots of guitar tech. Had a first wife.

6. Roger's books are great. My favourite landscape artist.

7. Don't forget the Special magazines like Uncut. Loads of great old articles. Photos.

Was there ever a doubt that Ash would have the most packed book shelf?!?!? 😉

[Gilly Goodness]

Was there ever a doubt that Ash would have the most packed book shelf?!?!? 😉

And stories about meeting the actual people....

8. Ash Armstrong "Brushes with the Music Industry".
Faber and Faber 2022

[Soundwaveseeker]

Bill's autobiography is well worth checking out, lots of wit and humor.

Also have Peter Banks autobiog, here you can read his career and about some of the less talked about moments like how Flash imploded and split up in the middle of a tour. I'm not sure if that's even available anymore. There's also a Yes book called Endless Dream: 70's 80's 90's, I forget who wrote that one, I'm too lazy to go to the bookshelf to fish it out right now. That one goes into the post 70's years for a large chunk of the book, but is a bit critical of Billy Sherwood. Decent reads, most of them. Not so much into some books' retelling of the same Yes story, or books that just cut and paste the same quotes and pages of the same discographies. I kinda like the ones with a different angle.

[Ceasar’s Palace]

I’d love a Yes book done like the Beatles Anthology. I suppose it would have to cover only the Atlantic years.

[Ash Armstrong]

My First Yesbook !

Pulled this old thing off my bookshelf last night. Startling to realise I'd written it 45 years ago. I used an Osmoroid fountain pen with an italic nib.
So, the Dan Hedges' book was not my first Yesbook, the one I wrote myself was! This probably makes me a bit of a fan....

[Ash Armstrong]

More images from my first Yesbook...

[carlmarx38]

More images from my first Yesbook...

that's pretty sweet, definitely qualifies you to be a SMYF (Super Mega Yes Fan).......how many tours have you seen them Live ?

Only thing I'm confused about, where were you during the crazy 20-year run of the original Yesfans.com ?