Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Are: One of the greatest and longest-running acts within the “prog” idiom, right up there with King Crimson as the arguable exemplars of the form. Founded in 1968 as a merger of members of various reasonably well-regarded and moderately successful psychedelic and soul/R&B ensembles, Yes issued two not-particularly-innovative albums before experiencing a radical reinvention (coincidental with the arrival of extraordinary guitarist Steve Howe from Keith West’s Tomorrow) with 1971’s epic and mind-blowing The Yes Album. That shift from founding guitarist Peter Banks to Howe was the first of many, many personnel evolutions over the decades, and the extended Yes family tree is, again up there with King Crimson, among the most knotted and far-reaching in rock music history, with first or second order branches touching pretty much every other prominent English progressive rock act of the past half-century,  along with a variety of other non-prog entities. The generally recognized “classic era” Yes featured Howe on guitar, Chris Squire on bass, and Jon Anderson on lead vocals (those three all sang, and their vocal mix is a key to the group’s sound), with Alan White or Bill Bruford on the drum stool, and Tony Kaye, Rick Wakeman, or Patrick Moraz on keyboards. Perversely, Yes’s greatest commercial success came in the 1980s in an era where Trevor Rabin (guitar) and Trevor Horn (production) were the greatest shapers of the group’s sound. Also perversely, the comings-and-goings of various key members resulted in dueling ensembles at times, e.g. Yes (with Chris Squire as its cornerstone member) competed for a couple of years with an ensemble called Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe, before both groups were merged into an unwieldy super-group on the Frankenstein-esque kluge of an album and tour ironically labelled Union. A latter incarnation of Yes (this time built around Steve Howe and Alan White as its core/classic members) then went head-to-head with a Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Rick Wakeman (Yes ARW). The main lineage of Yes soldiers on to this day, with Squire and White both sadly deceased, and Howe and keyboardist Geoff Downes (who first appeared with the group, along with his Buggles’ bandmate Horn, on 1980’s Drama) joined by vocalist Jon Davison, bassist Billy Sherwood, and drummer Jay Schellen; they released Yes’s 23rd studio album, Mirror to the Sky, in the summer of 2023.

When I First Heard Them: Sometime in 1972, when the truncated single version of their epic “Roundabout” climbed high up the American Top Forty charts, which I diligently listened to every Sunday morning before (and sometimes after) church with my family. That single’s B-side, “Long-Distance Runaround” then emerged as favorite deep cut on the FM album-oriented rock stations that I shifted to in the mid-’70s, along with “I’ve Seen All Good People” from The Yes Album. I think the first time I heard that album in its entirety would have been around 1976, with my late friend Jim Pitt, who owned and loved it. I then explored most of the then-current catalog at the lending library at Nassau Community College (a huge source of musical exploration for me through the late ’70s), and I think the first in-real-time Yes album that I acquired was 1980’s Drama, the first without Jon Anderson on lead vocals; Trevor Horn did the job in his stead. A couple of years later, with Anderson back in the fold, the Horn-produced 90125 spawned the huge hit single “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” which seemed okay in its time, but which frankly sounds horribly dated these days, as do a lot of Horn’s busy, Fairlight CMI-fueled productions of the era, filled with canned synthetic horn stabs, clattery electronic drums and dental drill vocal mixes. The “classic” Anderson-Squire-Howe-White-Wakeman quintet re-cohered a couple of times in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then a long period of attrition (some through death, some by ejection from the fold) led to the modern line-up, with only Howe remaining from the 1970s heyday. I’ve acquired every Yes album since those days, some of which I quite liked, some of which I actively disliked, and I’ve seen them in concert a few times, those experiences always enjoyable and rewarding.

Why I Love Them: That “some I love, some I hate” paradigm makes Yes an interesting proposition for me, as the breadth and range of my feelings for different eras of the group’s work is probably broader than just about any other artist who I still spin regularly, and who I’ve engaged with since the 1970s. When I did my March of the Mellotrons long-form essay to identify the greatest Classic Progressive Rock Album ever, Yes’ Close to the Edge was one of the two finalists, edged out for the title only after a detailed sudden-death track-by-track countdown. (I’ll let you go read the article if you want to know what beat it out). So the Yes stuff I love, I love most dearly, considering it among the very best and most rewarding fare in my personal music library, but the stuff I don’t love, well, I don’t love it with almost equal and opposite negative passion. And my definitions of which eras move me most are often a bit out of line with the general Yes fandom, with the biggest bone of contention centering around Rick Wakeman, generally seen as the definitive keyboard player in the group’s history. But I actually like his work the least among the group’s long-term keyboardists, far favoring Tony Kaye’s organ-based sound, Patrick Moraz’s brief jazz-tinged stay, and Geoff Downes’ latter-day walls of space-aged pads and textures. I do know, at bottom line, what precisely makes for the most magical moments in Yes’ catalog for me: it’s the interplay between Steve Howe and Chris Squire, both of them among the very best practitioners of their instruments, with magic occurring regularly when they brought their string sounds together, lifting everything around them heaven-ward. The drummers, the vocalists, and the keyboardists can come and go for me, and I can be happy with the resultant work, so long as Squire and Howe are on it. Unfortunately, after Chris Squire’s death in 2015, that magic is no longer possible; I have all of the albums released since he flew away, and there are some nice moments on some of them, but nothing as transcendent as what they made together. Needless to say, all of my Top Ten cuts below feature the pair.

#10. “Lightning Strikes,” from The Ladder (1999)

#9. “Tempus Fugit,” from Drama (1980)

#8. “To Be Alive (Hep Yadda),” from The Ladder (1999)

#7. “Does It Really Happen?,” from Drama (1980) 

#6. “Heart of the Sunrise,” from Fragile (1971)

#5. “And You And I,” from Close to the Edge (1972)

#4. “Yours Is No Disgrace,” from The Yes Album (1971)

#3. “Siberian Khatru,” from Close to the Edge (1972)

#2. “Sound Chaser,” from Relayer (1974)

#1. “Starship Trooper,” from The Yes Album (1971)