Should 90125, Big Generator, and Talk be rebranded as Trevor Rabin albums?

[Ash Armstrong]

Alongside the thread about rebranding Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe as a Yes album, I can't help but look sideways at that mirror and ponder upon this... I have never not considered ABWH as a fully-conceptualised, fully-formed and realised Yes album from day one. To me then and now it signified the return of 'My Yes'.
However, being mischievous to a fault by nature, I have to put the question about rebranding the Trevor Rabin albums, as I have thought of them since day one, as Trevor Rabin albums, and not Yes albums?

[Mr. Holland]

Nope,

Certainly to 90125 and Big Generator there was a lot, lot more to them than just Rabin. Trevor Horn as a producer had an enourmas influence. And Squire and White had a lot of compositional influence, certainly on 90125, and Squire and Kaye on Big Generator.

Talk was a true collaboration between Rabin and Anderson, compositional wise, as both have numerous times acknowledged.

So, while those albums certainly represent a (hard) break in style with 70s Yes, and Rabin might represent that break the most, those albums were for the better part team band efforts. Yes band efforts.

[madbear]

I like Talk, though it's not that much like Yes... don't care what you do with 90125 and Big Generator though. Whatever they are called I won't be listening to them

[Ash Armstrong]

Nope,

Certainly to 90125 and Big Generator there was a lot, lot more to them than just Rabin. Trevor Horn as a producer had an enourmas influence. And Squire and White had a lot of compositional influence, certainly on 90125, and Squire and Kaye on Big Generator.

Talk was a true collaboration between Rabin and Anderson, compositional wise, as both have numerous times acknowledged.

So, while those albums certainly represent a (hard) break in style with 70s Yes, and Rabin might represent that break the most, those albums were for the better part team band efforts. Yes band efforts.

My disappointment can be applied to all the participants, though I single out a special kind of opprobrium for Horn.
My difficulty in reconciling the forms of music they were creating in the 1970s with what they opted to do in 1983 has been compounded since hearing yesterday a live performance of The Ancient on YouTube, which I've linked on another part of the forum. Only ten years lie between Tales and 90125, fewer between the latter album and Relayer. Setting aside the changing business landscape over that decade, and avoiding facile comparisons with other groups and artists to make or disavow a point, I really, genuinely, struggle with reconciling how they went from 'breaking new ground', as visionary creative musical architects, with works like Tales and Relayer, to making the kind of stuff I hear on 90125. I genuinely don't understand how creative artists like I thought they were can do that: give up so much, squander so much. That's how it felt to me back when I first heard the Rabin album in 1994, and that's something I'm still unable to reconcile now. Why opt to jump on the mainstream American rock bandwagon and churn out stodge that's almost indistinguishable from much else that was popular in mainstream rock? I'm ok with not getting it, and all that mass of glossily produced, easy-listening mainstream melodic-rock, arena-anthems, power-ballads fodder, like Asia, Heart, Foreigner, Toto, Boston, Kansas, et al, all of that tedious, mass-produced, readily-marketable aural crap, none of which appeals to me at all, quite the contrary. I don't get any of it. I mean, why? It's ghastly.

[Frumious B]

Well, my Unified Theory Of Yes is that Yes was founded as a Beatlesque pop band with a strong instrumental side and that is what they have actually always been for their whole recorded career. Sometimes, especially on the 70s albums, the instrumental side asserts itself more. I disagree that the YesWest music sounds just like “mainstream American rock music”. None of those bands had vocal harmonies like Yes and there is also a New Wave influence that first appeared on Drama which carried through into the YesWest era.

[Davy]

Leave It and Owner still sound pretty unique, and 90125 is one of my favorite albums. Still, I was disappointed to find out later how little influence Anderson had on the band - at the time of Big Generator I thought he and Squire were really clever.

I do think 90125 and especially Big Generator were true band efforts, though, despite the two Trevor's massive contributions on 90125, but Talk really is a Rabin solo album featuring Jon Anderson.

[Frumious B]

Leave It and Owner still sound pretty unique, and 90125 is one of my favorite albums. Still, I was disappointed to find out later how little influence Anderson had on the band - at the time of Big Generator I thought he and Squire were really clever.

I do think 90125 and especially Big Generator were true band efforts, though, despite the two Trevor's massive contributions on 90125, but Talk really is a Rabin solo album featuring Jon Anderson.

I think they certainly did have ample influence. You can hear what Trevor Rabin writes sans Anderson and Squire. You can also hear what Steve Howe writes without Anderson and Squire.

[Olorin]

I'd have to say no, the YesWest albums should not be rebranded as Rabin albums, although it's a fair question and a clever response to the ABWH thread.

I remember when 90125 came out, how crestfallen and borderline-disgusted I was. I had first really become aware of and gotten into Yes during the breakup period between Drama and 90125 and had absorbed all the albums up through Drama over a period of just a few years. Thus, I had a pretty firm notion of what Yes sounded like, though admittedly that notion didn't fully embrace the first two albums and held them as somewhat of an anomaly. Anyway, when I heard the band was reforming I was very excited but when I first heard Owner on the radio, it was like, huh? This is Yes? Getting the album and hearing all of it didn't really help.

This was around the same time that the Genesis tune Mama was on the radio, but paradoxically, I liked it. My introduction to Genesis had been And Then There Were Three and my initial album acquisition from that was forward with the newer albums, and only a bit backward toward the older albums. So the difference between Mama and the other Genesis material I knew wasn't that great. Compare and contrast with 90125, which was so utterly different from what I thought Yes should sound like.

And it really wasn't just the Rabin influence, although I blamed him for it. But everything else seemed different too, especially Squire. On the older albums, Squire played like a madman; I don't have the music terminology to describe it, so I'll just have to say he played a lot of notes, and that was a big part of the Yes sound. But on the new album, it was almost like they could have plucked someone off the streets, given them a bass, and said drop in a few notes here and there. A few years later (BG era), I was discussing this with a coworker who was actually in a band and he said that though Squire didn't play many notes now, the ones he played were well-chosen. I guess we could call this his minimalist period, LOL.

Ultimately, my first fledgling attempt to make peace with 90125 was by lumping it more or less with the first two albums, as music that was trying to be more radio-friendly vs. being a prog epic. Four years later, I liked BG better and felt it was a bit more Yessish, and eventually over a long period of time, I made my peace with YesWest, viewed it as part of the spectrum of Yes, and quit hating Trevor Rabin (sorry Trev, it wasn't fair to make you the fall guy). All that said, YesWest still does carry some not-always positive connotations for me as it was part of the soundtrack of a challenging time in my life. Also, it does seem paradoxically a little more dated and product of its times to me than the 70s material, though maybe because I found the 80s very often to be rather artificial musically.

Since this thread and the ABWH thread have a strong spirit of what if/how about, here's a question: what if Eddie Jobson hadn't gotten booted out of Yes to bring in old alum Tony Kaye? How would that have affected YesWest? Would it have been less accepted as Yes since it would have had one fewer alum in it, or would Eddie have brought a more prog sound and made it more accepted as Yes to the old fans? I'm really only familiar with his work for the three albums he did with Roxy Music and I always think of that blazing violin solo on Out of the Blue. Of course, there's no guarantee he'd have sounded anything like that in 80s Yes, but still, it's an interesting question.

[luna65]

Absolutely not. All of them represent a vision beyond Trevor's contributions. They are what Yes (i.e. YesWest) embodied at the time.

I can understand not caring for Trevor as a musician and/or songwriter, but being so reductionist is an obvious prejudice, IMO. It's fine if you don't get it, don't like it, and it's an era which has been dead for some time and will not return. So no angst required.

[soundchaser09]

No, I love the variety of Yesmusic and Trevor Rabin's contributions were an excellent part of that, I really enjoy that period of the band and think they were very successful artistically as well as commercially.

I understand the Rabin sound is different but then Tormato is very different form GFTO, Drama is very different from Tormato, Open Your Eyes is very different to Relayer, Tales is very different to The Yes Album, Fragile is very different to Time and a Word. You get my point. Yes has had a lot of different sounds in its years and that's part of what makes it fascinating to me.

[pianozach]

The timeline of the progression (or devolution) of Yes back into those first two albums started at Going For the One really. They all but abandoned the epic format, and went for shorter, more concise, more radio friendly tracks, and they succeeded. The title track made the radio. Awaken was the sole nod to their former CTtE/TfTO/Relayer selves.

It continued with Tormato, which had plenty of shorter tracks, and they scored a minor hit with Don't Kill the Whale.

With Jon gone, the three remaining members joined with the Buggles and created a Prog Rock / New Wave / Pop masterpiece that failed so spectacularly that the band dissolved.

Then Howe and Downes leave to co-found Asia, a Prog Pop thing, leaving only White and Squire. After joining forces with Rabin, and grabbing Kaye from the Yes dustbin, they created a logical successor to Drama (Cinema), but Fate intervened, Anderson rejoined, the suits got involved and "the product" was re-Christened "Yes", even though Yes fans tagged it as YesWest. 90125 has a great deal in common with Drama, except for that lack of success. 90125 put Yes back on the map.

Big Generator, to me at least, seemed an attempt to recaptured that 90125 magic. It didn't, but it still had hits.

Then Anderson decided it was time to resurrect Old Timey Prog Yes, and ABWH was created. So fans were treated to concurrent Yesses; a modern Yes, and a throwback Yes.

And then both Yesses were amalgamated into a Frankenstein Yes, with a Frankenstein fake unification album called Union, which was not well received, but a monster tour which was.

Eventually YesWest released a new album that practically no one even new existed unless they stumbled across it accidentally in a record store, and Rabin split.

Anderson resurrected ABWH, but had to use replacement parts. Yes was reborn, even though it could easily have been called AWWH + Chris Squire.

[rabin105]

Sorry but no and also I have and would argue your assessment on both the 70’s material and the 80’s material


jon always felt Revealing was a 20 minute pop song

as for the Rabin era

songs like Hearts Leave it I’m running changes and endless dream all are Prog rock at the core

shoot high Aim low final eyes

[Grey Wolf]

Not just no but Hell No.

[Skankindead]

No way.
At a bare minimum they're Cinema albums, but I've always considered them Yes albums through and through. The band heavily collaborated with each other for 90125, and even if they did less so for the next few albums, they still contributed a lot. Definitely wasn't just Trevor pulling the strings.

[Ash Armstrong]

You're all wrong. In some cases very wrong indeed. You can expect visitations from The Re-Educators in the next few days. Some honey, a thirsty goat and the magic egg-whisk will soon make things right. Prepare yourselves.