How long did it take for you to become a fanboy/fangirl?

[patrickq]

When you first heard Yes, were they instantly your favorite group? Or did it take a few days? Months? Years?

I first heard Yes with pop singles on the 90125 album, then saw them in concert just about 35 years ago today. By March (or was it April?) I was permanently hooked. So for me, we’ll say 3-4 months.

How about you?

[luna65]

A few years. I'd been hearing them on the radio since I was a kid, but it wasn't until college that I really got into them for good, as it were.

[Enlighten]

The moment I heard Chris Squire’s bass guitar on Roundabout.

[Ash Armstrong]

Immediate. I cycled home from the record shop with Close to the Edge in its bag, bought with money I'd got for my 14th birthday. It was the summer of 1973.
Schoolmates had mentioned them, The Yes Album and Close to the Edge, but not Fragile, and I loved the gatefold image of the impossible waterfalls. It spoke to me of the end of C.S. Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the mouse Reepicheep goes over a waterfall. I'd not heard anything by them at all.
It blew my mind from the first listen. I played it constantly, leaving the auto-change arm up so it restarted continuously. Prior to that, I had Genesis Live and Focus at the Rainbow but my listening was mostly T.Rex.
Changed everything for me.

[Yorkshire Square]

Never really rated them, myself...

[patrickq]

Never really rated them, myself...

“They’ve earned themselves a distinguished place in rock history as one of Britan’s loudest bands.”

[patrickq]

When you first heard Yes, were they instantly your favorite group? Or did it take a few days? Months? Years?

I first heard Yes with pop singles on the 90125 album, then saw them in concert just about 35 years ago today. By March (or was it April?) I was permanently hooked. So for me, we’ll say 3-4 months.

How about you?

============

Edit: I guess I meant in my case, 3-4 months after thinking of them as an actual group, though 3-4 years after hearing them and their name.

[Ash Armstrong]

“They’ve earned themselves a distinguished place in rock history as one of Britan’s loudest bands.”

Yes in November 1973 was my first rock concert. It was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.

[soundchaser09]

loved them ever since the 35th anniversary CD I picked up in 2009, what a treasure trove of songs. I came to prog via Genesis, and I knew instantly that Yes were right up there with them.

[OB1kenOB]

Before I noticed Yes I was into Beatles, Beach Boys, Eagles, Frank Zappa, Moody Blues. Mid 70's I started noticing them on the radio, then a friend played Tales and Relayer and Close to the Edge on his stereo and I was a fan. But when they came to my home town on the Ten True Summers tour they were my favorite and still are.

[luvyesmusic]

They were over when I truly discovered YES. When I got back to the states, I bought a ticket to see Jon play in a bar in Boston. Too young to get in.

Me thinks next I had exposure to YES with Trevor R.,, The Buggles, and ASIA with Mtv. Next went to a YES 90125 show, and being a metalhead, too, not only did Trevor slaughter much of Steve's parts, he just wasn't up to the level of a real shredder, and the outfits were terrible. One and done, until I went to an away ARW show decades later to mainly hang out with friends.

I went to a couple of Steve solo shows. I went to a few ASIA shows,, and I went to a GTR show. I went to a Wakeman and Wakeman show. I went to a ton of other, primarily metal and Def Leppard shows.

But it wasn't until the opportunity to experience three Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe shows, and one on pay for view with a very weak Jeff Berlin on bass, the other Tony was a bit strange playing bass with sticks on his fingers. Didn't really care for Bill's electronic drums and sounds and Rick's Casio sounding sound selections, and pretty weak bass sounds, but it was magical and fun. I was hooked right there and then. This was the closest I was going to get to YES, or so I thought. ;-)

Dozens of YES and all things YES related shows and decades since they were already over, when I truly discovered them, it has been quite the Wonderous adventure. I wear one or two YES, ASIA, Circa: , YOSO, or DBA shirts every week, still.

[Soundchaser413]

Let's say that the first album I bought by them (in my case a cassette tape copy of 90125) was ground zero. In my case I would say about two full years at least. After getting heavily into Yes I almost entirely forgot about Led Zeppelin who was I was into right before them.

[Soundwaveseeker]

I was already into King Crimson, Rush and ELP by the time I made the plunge and bought Drama the last week of 1984. I kinda liked Owner Of A Lonely Heart from the months before that and thought that the part after the guitar solo sounded like Grace Under Pressure Rush, but I didn't get into Yes because of that then-current hit or album. For my birthday in November '84 I got The Young Person's Guide To King Crimson 2-lp compilation album, and it came with an extensive chronological booklet. Of course it mentioned Bill Bruford and Yes and gigs with Yes, so I quickly learned that Yes were not a newer rock band, but one of those arty classical-influenced bands. I didn't know they went back that far. Then I saw some of the album covers. The fact that this one album (Tales) was a 2-record set and only had 4 songs on it intrigued me. After Christmas, I bought Drama 'cause it had the coolest cover of all the other ones, might as well start with that one. So I would say I became pretty hooked very quickly. This band Yes had wild album covers and made adventurous fantasy music, so I was in. Within a month, I also had Fragile, 90125 and Yesshows - in that order. Unintentionally starting with that sequence has served me well as a Yes fan - I started out (and remain) non-lineup specific. I didn't know most of the members at first, for all I knew Trevor Horn was on Going For The One. I knew Bruford was only on early albums because he was in King Crimson, but that's it.

As I remember it, here's the sequence in which I bought the albums. Don't ask me how I remember this, I'm not that much of a Yes nerd really, but:

DRAMA
FRAGILE
90125
YESSHOWS
CLOSE TO THE EDGE
GOING FOR THE ONE
CLASSIC YES
YESTERDAYS
RELAYER
THE YES ALBUM (or was it Yes Album then Relayer, that one's hazy)
TIME & A WORD
YESSONGS
TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS
YES
TORMATO
9012LIVE THE SOLOS

first new Yes album was Big Generator, which I had to wait two years for, and by then I had switched to Genesis as my go-to prog band.
first Yes show was Big Generator tour, for some reason I didn't get to see ABWH, but I saw Union and most every tour since.

[luvyesmusic]

I left my family to go back to the states for the second half of my junior year, 81-82, as I needed a school credit I wasn’t going to get taking correspondence courses. to graduate on time.

During the band trip, I got the original Dean Cola YES logo airbrushed on the back of my jean jacket. The artist did seem to be a bit young to do it perfectly from memory, but he did. I guess I have been an actual fanboy longer than I thought. I saw Priest and Maiden on a regular basis back then, but I choose to be different by wearing a logo of a great band that no longer existed.

[Gary Betts]

A friend played me Close to the Edge (I guess this was late 74) I didn’t understand what I was listening but instantly it was the start of a life long love of Yes music.