Year: 1974
Country: United Kingdom
Running time: 21 mins. 55 secs.
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Yes, that is finally making its debut on this list, is one of, if not the most important group in the entire history of progressive rock. Formed in 1968, they released their debut album in August 1969, and are still sort of alive, having released Fly From Here (2011) last July - possibly their weakest studio album ever. Yes is also responsible for the despicable single hit Owner of a Lonely Heart (1983) which is probably the song that the audience at large best remembers them for.
Their real musical career was way more ambitious than said oversimple radio hit. This is especially true for Relayer (1974) which is almost certainly their weirdest, most challenging and way, way out there recording. If you'd like to have an easy introduction to progressive rock, do not start here. Side A of the vinyl release is filled by the song that is our current subject of discussion. Side B has two shorter tracks which clock just under ten minutes each. The latter of them, To Be Over, sounds almost like normal music when compared to the previous two.
According to the legend, the A Side filler The Gates of Delirium was inspired by the mammoth novel War and Peace by the Russian master writer Leo Tolstoy. As such, it is almost certainly the most outlandish and surreal anti-war song ever recorded. Its desperate and aggressive attitude may have been partially influenced by the recent disappointing departure of one of the group's then most important members Rick Wakeman, who had left to completely concentrate on his solo career. But I guess more likely this was just something that happened to be on the table at the time.
Printed on the inside of the LP cover is a pretty picture of the group, now featuring new Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz: a bunch of long haired hippies sitting meditatively on a piece of grassland and looking ever so peaceful. The Gates of Delirium is the absolute contradiction to this picture: restless, almost senseless, noisy and at times intentionally ugly. We get to the point right from the start. The introductory instrumental sequence already begins in the hallucinatory, aggression-at-the-existence-of-war mode, and when the lyrics kick in, they are precisely as incomprehensible as is contextually fitting:
Wars that shout in screams of anguish
Power spent passion bespoils our soul receiver
Surely we know
In glory we rise to offer
Create our freedom
A word we utter
A word
The rest of the song makes absolutely no more sense, although the anti-war stance is fairly obvious. When the band starts "pounding out the Devil's sermon" we are treated to easily the most chaotic instrumental sequence ever created by Yes. Not only is the music truly intense by itself. There are now also added sound effects that describe war, such as explosions and gunfire. These are not actual sounds, but rather their reproductions with musical instruments. During this sequence Chris Squire plays the hell out of his bass guitar, pay attention.
After the instrumental sequence has reached a truly insane climax, with astonishing work by drummer Alan White, Yes finally concludes their lengthy song with an extended peaceful sequence that hopes there would be no more war. This part of the track got, strange as it may sound, a single release under the title Soon. I have always wondered if those who purchased that single ever realised what an incredible musical chaos preceded it on the original recording.
For myself, The Gates of Delirium brings fond memories. Relayer was the first album I purchased after I finally got my very first turntable, a couple of months before turning sixteen, in the early spring of 1979. Such pounding I took at such a tender age.
Perhaps the strangest piece of information about Relayer is that it was a commercial hit in its time. Released in November 1974, it hit the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic, peaked at #4 in the U.K. and at #5 in the U.S. Words fail. This is incredible considering the anti-commercial content of the album. The music buying public was so enlightened then, as opposed to what they appear to be today.
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