Country: United Kingdom
On 22 July, 1977, an album so masterful came out that it will most certainly echo in eternity. Going for the One was the first album by Yes since the return of keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman, who had been absent from the group's lineup for nearly three years due to concentration on his solo career. During this time, the rest of the group released only one studio album with a replacement keyboardist, the 1974 success Relayer, then proceeded to also create solo albums.
On this occasion, Yes relocated to Switzerland to record their new album on the shores of Lake Geneva. The actual studio was located in Montreux, but Wakeman's church organ sequences were recorded in the nearby town of Vevey and transferred via phone lines to the studio. I wrote about this already last year, when the closing track of the album, Awaken, reached number one spot on the Top 20 Long Prog Masterpieces list. Please check that story out over here.
The incredible title track that opens the album sets the mood perfectly. I guess it should be called my number one favorite piece of music of all time, since I must have heard it approximately 500 times since its release and it still gives me goosebumps every time. This in spite of the peculiar way the song begins: without Wakeman's keyboards, and with Steve Howe playing a lap steel guitar which seems out of place on a prog album and the sound of which I don't even like.
Soon enough, Wakeman's organ also kicks in, and the soundscape begins to fill up. This is one of the charms of the song: it begins with a very simple rock instrumentation but ends with a massive wall of sound. The singer Jon Anderson wrote the song that is his absolute best. Lyrics don't make very much sense but after five minutes, you are so giddy with how great everything has been that ending the track with "Talk about sending love, love, love, love" makes perfect sense anyway and may move you to tears.
Having risen so far up in such a short time is great, but could exhaust the listener if the album were to continue on the same level. So, the next thing Yes does is calm things down considerably. We begin the immensely beautiful Turn of the Century quietly, with Howe's acoustic guitar and Anderson's high pitched vocals. Wakeman's keyboards start to enter the background sounding a bit like a string section, and we are on our way with this beautiful song.
The video above is obviously fan made. Turn of the Century represents greatness almost equal to the title track, but from the opposite end of the Yes spectrum. The rocking and noisy symphonic prog classic is followed by something eerily fragile and lovely. It seems a little strange that a completely uncommercial song like this could be taken from an album that, following its release, spent two weeks as number one on the UK album chart.
Personally, I have always felt that the third track on the A side, Parallels is the only even slightly weak link on the album. Don't get me wrong - it is a great, great track. But I don't feel it is quite as full of wonders as the other four songs on Going for the One. Originally composed for inclusion on bassist Chris Squire's debut solo album Fish Out of Water, it was left out from there because Squire felt that it didn't quite fit the collection of other songs he had written for that album.
Parallels opens mightily with Wakeman's church organ, recorded in Vevey, playing a sequence of chords at a loud volume. The rest of the group joins in, and it is soon apparent that we have once again returned to the rocking end of the group's output. It all works really well, but unlike on the other tracks, there isn't much of anything to truly marvel.
B side of the vinyl version opens with the first single taken from the album, Wonderous Stories. Yes keeps alternating between hard rocking and quieter, more acoustic songs: this one is Turn of the Century's soulmate. Again we open with acoustic guitar and vocals, and the song that starts to take its form impresses already early on with its strong, beautifully composed melody. The song is even more stunning than Turn of the Century - a relatively short track with a memorable tune. No wonder it was selected as a single.
The video above brings me fond memories. In 1977, you could already hear some contemporary rock music on the radio even in Finland, but to see it performed in television was still a rare thing. I had the immense pleasure of seeing and hearing this exact same video clip in Finnish television on 23 December, 1977. By that time, I was already familiar with both this song and the title track, having heard them several times on the radio. But to see the band actually perform it (well, actually this is only a playback) was a new pleasure, previously unheard of.
The rest of the B side is filled with the well over 15 minute long work of art that is the greatest Long Prog Masterpiece ever made. I have already written about it in the previous blog entry, see link above, so there is no point in repeating myself. Let's just add one thing to what has already been said.
I have heard a rumor that Jon Anderson thinks Awaken is the best thing that Yes ever recorded. This is difficult to verify, but seems to originate from several sources and could very well be true. After all, this is a truly exceptional masterwork even in the progressive rock genre. And it is the word masterwork that Anderson has used to describe the song.
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