Golden Age - The Lost Yes Album

[John Vehadija]

Hi, so I was going through the demos today and so far I found

Abilene
Picasso
Richard
Tango
Never Done Before
Friend Of A Friend
Golden Age
In The Tower
Some Are Born
You Can Be Saved
Everybody's Song
Countryside
Crossfire
Days

Do you think any other songs from Song of Seven would've been on this album
Or do you think any other demos surfaced on other solo albums?

Thank you for any info!

[soundchaser09]

I dont think that 1979-1980 Yes album was shaping up very well personally. Tormato was already a step down from Going for the One this would have been another. Drama far exceeded these pieces IMO.

[Ash Armstrong]

I don't think there's anywhere they could have gone with most of that material. Jon used the best of it for Song of Seven, which is an album I like a lot more than either Tormato or Drama, and he was working with a band that did them justice. Given the state of things with Yes interpersonal relationships over that period, Yes were, as Steve put it, "unproduceable". How much of that unproduceability can be attributed to what was going up their noses, god knows? You probably needed to be there. Glad I wasn't.

[Old Frothingslosh]

The Paris sessions show that the band at that time was on empty as far as creativity. Curious how history would have been rewritten if they had taken a year off and all did solo projects like a few years prior and regrouped after. As far as Tormato being a step down from GFYO, I'm one of the crazies that disagree. I much prefer Tormato to GFTO. The tour for Tormato was just fantastic (my 1st Yes show) and the sales at least in the US were pretty strong as the album did go Platinum, not saying sales match quality, I just always found it more accessible than GFTO.

[rabin105]

Hi, so I was going through the demos today and so far I found

Abilene
Picasso
Richard
Tango
Never Done Before
Friend Of A Friend
Golden Age
In The Tower
Some Are Born
You Can Be Saved
Everybody's Song
Countryside
Crossfire
Days

Do you think any other songs from Song of Seven would've been on this album
Or do you think any other demos surfaced on other solo albums?

Thank you for any info!

I dont hate the paris suff and kind of wished the band in 05 would of finished the album since Jon wasnt willing to come back to the studio but the rest of them were...


I usually Keep Crossfire off of paris and put it on the second lost album

Townhouse

which includes
1. Telephone Secrets
2. Fade away
3. Crossfire
4. Satillite
5. Go trhough this


I usually add Run with the Fox, and 3 tunes from adventures in modern recording to fill out the album

[Homemade Parachute]

I'm one of the crazies that disagree. I much prefer Tormato to GFTO.

YMMV, of course, but I can see that argument, as GFTO is often a shorthand for "Awaken", while Tormato isn't really short for anything, I don't think, but is a more even collection of songs. Kind of like when people talk Rush's 2112 as an album, they really mean "2112" as a song, and (rightfully) forget side two. As much as I like Awaken (and it took me a loooooong time to get there), a) I absolutely take the ARW version as canonical (heresy, I know), and b) can pretty much live without the *song* "Going for the One", "Wondrous Stories" and "Parallels" are ok, and "Turn of the Century" is best in the K2A version. So of *albums* I'm likely to play, Tormato wins out (maybe because it's been so tragically ignored live, so there aren't a lot of versions of the best songs).

[Chris2210]

I don't think Abilene is a demo - wasn't it the b-side of Don't Kill the Whale?

I'm not sure you'd classify them as demos, but I've more than a soft spot for Vevey revisited and especially Montreux Theme - outtakes from GftO [on the Rhino editions].

I think JA and the rest of the band were starting to veer into different creative directions at the time. That's evident on Tormato, but moreso on the Paris sessions. Difficult to hear any of that stuff as Yes music which is weird as all the principals are still there. Just not on the same page.

[Chrisklenox]

There’s Run Through The Light which eventually made it to Drama. I think the track Song of Seven could have been a Yes song…

Any other tracks… Countryside ended up as a Steve Howe track. That’s about all I can think of besides the ones that made it to Jon’s lp. I think history played out the way it should. They had a few good ideas in there, but they were well short of ingredients to make a full Yes album. Had they put that out as an album with some more overdubs, it may have ended their career. Cinema may well have stayed as Cinema, since Atlantic probably would have had no interest in gambling on Yes after the disaster that a Paris album would have been. Maybe ABWH would have happened a bit earlier and made another album… who knows… I do feel that things would have been very different.

[pjt]

Tormato still had a lot of good ideas that were IMHO left unfinished, or overplayed in the measuring battle between Steve and Rick.
The Paris sessions don't even sound as good ideas to me. The band in their heyday could have easily taken those ideas and make a great album out of it, but not the post Tormato Yes.

Does it Really Happen is one of my favourite Yes tunes, and I never liked it in its Paris form. So the Drama Yes had it in them.

[Gary Betts]

I guess it was never intended that we hear these songs, understandably so.

[pjt]

I guess it was never intended that we hear these songs, understandably so.

Yet the demos always come out sooner or later. Steve actually publishes all his demos, Rabin 's demos surfaced also, so he published his as 90124, so it's not like it's something private that gets distributed against their wills. However, I still can imagine they wouldn't have published the Paris demos being all awkward and forced, showing how they felt at that time about each other and generally.

[rabin105]

Yet the demos always come out sooner or later. Steve actually publishes all his demos, Rabin 's demos surfaced also, so he published his as 90124, so it's not like it's something private that gets distributed against their wills. However, I still can imagine they wouldn't have published the Paris demos being all awkward and forced, showing how they felt at that time about each other and generally.

Well they did for the most part in 2004