Some Background About the Origins of Select Classic Yes Songs

[downbyariver]

Here's a song that a band called Bodast was working up for a potential 1968 release (The band was signed to a label and had an album scheduled to be released, but said label went out of business right before that was to happen, and so it did not come to be. Someone later got the 1960s recordings together and put them out in 1981):

Does that tune sound familiar to anyone?

In addition to this "portion of a song from the Bodast album titled 'Nether Street' [that was] renamed 'Würm' and [...] re-used as part of the song 'Starship Trooper' from The Yes Album in 1971.", Steve Howe, who was in Bodast prior to joining Yes, "says fragments of songs he was working on for Bodast also turned up later in Yes's 'South Side of the Sky', 'Close to the Edge' and Asia's 'One Step Closer'" (Quotations from Wikipedia).

Of course, Steve Howe probably wrote them in the first place, they weren't getting heard (The album was cancelled, the band was gone, and their release a dozen years later was likely only enabled by their conditions to a very successful band, Yes), and the Yes and Asia versions are far better than what I've heard of the Bodast versions, so I'm not criticizing this in any way. I just thought it was interesting trivia.

Did anyone here have an opportunity to hear Bodast play live in the 60s? Anyone recognize any of the riffs when they heard The Yes Album, Fragile, or Asia's self-titled debut for the first time?

Hat tip to the guy on Reddit who posted a lot of this information over there earlier.

[Gilly Goodness]

It's even better than YES. 😉


Steve is really gnarly!!!

[YesWill]

great song, kickass guitar. I have the album, but had forgotten how good it is.

The first 20 seconds or so of the solo starting at :48 and again at 2:00 sounds familiar, but I can't place it. Does anyone recognise it?

[Susanne]

Nether Street pops up (on shuffle) in my listening now and then. It's always fun!

[YesWill]

gotta say I am sometimes disappointed by the lack of quality discussion around here.

An interesting thread about the origins of one of Yes' most iconic songs.... three responses....

A bitchy thread about who dissed who at the Alan White tribute event... 26 pages! 🙄

It should be about the music folks!

[pianozach]

gotta say I am sometimes disappointed by the lack of quality discussion around here.

An interesting thread about the origins of one of Yes' most iconic songs.... three responses....

A bitchy thread about who dissed who at the Alan White tribute event... 26 pages! 🙄

It should be about the music folks!

You are welcome to add to the "quality discussion", but I notice that you haven't added any of THAT to this thread yet.

Pot, kettle.

[Ash Armstrong]

Personally, after almost 50 years of Yes listening, I'm all anecdoted and gossiped out. There's been a few books on this kind of thing, Yes Tales was one, but I've no interest in hearing or reading any more about the origins of this or that bit of this or that piece of music, so I guess for me now is really is just about the music, and listening to it, rather than choreographing a ballet about architecture... ain't life a bitch.

[YesWill]

You are welcome to add to the "quality discussion", but I notice that you haven't added any of THAT to this thread yet.

Pot, kettle.

pianozach, didn't you see post 3 of this thread? Perhaps not a PhD dissertation, but at least I listened to the song DBAR linked to, shared my reaction, and asked a followup question about the song. I consider that quality enough.

And in case it wasn't clear, I am taking issue with threads like the White tribute, not this one. This thread has potential, if only more people would post to it.

And coming back to the BODAST clip, I found it very interesting to see how mature Howe's playing was a full three years before he joined Yes. To me this is an fascinating insight into an alternate universe with Howe as guitarist in a prog band that isn't Yes. Asia and GTR don't count in my opinion as they were not terribly proggy.

[luna65]

gotta say I am sometimes disappointed by the lack of quality discussion around here.

An interesting thread about the origins of one of Yes' most iconic songs.... three responses....

A bitchy thread about who dissed who at the Alan White tribute event... 26 pages! 🙄

It should be about the music folks!

This community existed for 20 years prior to this version of the discussion forum and this topic has been discussed in the past. Having already discussed it I personally have no desire to do so again. Which is not to say that there won't be people who do, but probably not many. Hence the paucity of responses.

[Davy]

Exactly, it's not like this is news to most of us, no offense to dbar.

[YesWill]

This community existed for 20 years prior to this version of the discussion forum and this topic has been discussed in the past. Having already discussed it I personally have no desire to do so again. Which is not to say that there won't be people who do, but probably not many. Hence the paucity of responses.

OK. That’s a good point. I also seem to remember this topic from a while ago.

But the loss of the very rich history of this site, if I may say, after others have already said, is really unfortunate.

[luna65]

Agreed.

[Yesed]

The origin of the Wurm is super cool. The best Yes will always find its origins in Anderson/Howe, imo. The origins of the All Fighters Past section from Tales, from the Fragile sessions, is even cooler, to me. My two favorite Yes albums. Cool thread idea, btw.