Yes Yes Y’all

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Fragile, Yes’ 1971 rococo-boogie masterpiece, is historically important—in terms of Yes, prog, and rock-in-general canon—for a few reasons. Fragile is arguably the first progressive rock album to successfully take all the various influences and ambitions associated with the medium (classical music, composition, lyrical concepts concerned with themes other than sex, drugs, or opposition to whatever the squares were shilling on any given year) and alchemize them so that they were seamlessly the song (as opposed to being played as interludes, digressions, or psychedelic freakouts at the end or beginning of a song). Fragile is also the band’s first without Tony Kaye, who—presumably fearing the day when minimoog-intelligence would achieve dominion over the human race—had left the band over his not sharing the rest of Yes’s enthusiasm for all the new fangled ivory tickling technology. Kaye was replaced by Rick Wakeman, who’d already embraced the modular moog in his previous outfit, the Strawbs (popular rumors—that Wakeman left the group after he found out the next Strawbs album would be called Grave New World and a Fitzrovia palm reader warning the keyboardist that “there’s something coming called ‘punk,’ and its fans will be called ‘punks.’ There will also be a band called ‘Discharge,’ who will have a second LP tha… you know what? Just trust me on this one. They’re gonna hate you enough as it is.”—are unconfirmed). Finally, the main reason Fragile warrants all this hyperbole and fancy reissuing is that Yes’ fourth studio album is (again, arguably) the “best” Yes album (we’re partial to 90125 in this household, but we’re not paid to argue). This commonly held belief is based largely (and compellingly) on the strength of “Roundabout” alone. But the Valkyrian heaviness of “South Side Side of the Sky, ” the proto-Supertramp of “Long Distance Runaround,” and even “Five per Cent for Nothing”—with it’s 35 second length and deconstructed Steely Dan-ism making it the first (and last) yacht rock grindcore hybrid—all make an equally strong case for Fragile being hits upon hits.

In the original CREEM writeup of Fragile, our reviewer wrote, “They don’t try to mask a basic rock style under the cloak of blues, jazz, or avant-garde posturings. It’s all blatantly simple and out front.” This, if we’re sticking to traditional prog narrative, may seem like an absurd thing to say. As might my claim of the album being chock full of bops. Basic? Simple? Bops? Fragile, the Yes album which references Brahms in its second track, quoting from his 4th Symphony in E Minor, with nary a mention of either rolling over him or giving him the news? The album that has a song that name drops a prehistoric fish? And the fish referenced in “"The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" isn’t even one of those cool fish typically groked by the post-Woodstock set (Moby Dick, barracudas, Country Joe, etc.), it’s a neotenic goby??? 1971 was admittedly one of the more bonkers years in recorded history so, compared to, like, the Vietnam War or the Manson trial, Yes might have seemed relatively uncomplicated.

On the other hand, taking the songs on Fragile in a vacuum, untethered from pre- and post- conceived notions of prog, and just listening to them, the critic ain’t exactly wrong. The drapes may skew liturgical, with the carpeting sporting enough medieval music tassels to make Morgan Le Fay blush. But the album’s actual architecture is of its time and better; it’s the high and higher vocal harmonizing (which are pure stardust). It’s the celestial funk of Chris Squire and Bill Buford—the former laying down a cartoonishly fat bass tone and the latter replying with a hi-hat and snare choreography so assertive it’s surprising that there aren’t secret tapes of Nixon calling it “a real bitch.” It’s Wakeman rocking the tardis like a boyish Delia Derbyshire; combining traditional organ and grand pianos, mod con electra-piano and mellotrons, and his beloved minimoog, to make melodies unbothered by time and space.

Adding into account the fact that all this was performed by a gang of psychedelic jazzbos and Classical scene dropouts, all with the bountiful and flowing locks of young Suzanne Pleshettes, and what you’ve got is a vision of the ‘70s so ambitious and borderline utopian that it should have ushered in a new Summer of Love. If Fragile failed to do so, that just solidifies its place in history. Despite parental fear mongering and the CIA’s best efforts, rock and roll was never about convincing anyone. Rock and roll just gives the people what they want before they know they want it. Say what you will about prog but, in 1971, enough kids wanted a galloping, comet-like beat, slathered with enough sheer gorgeousness to make dreams and reality conjoin right in front of their spotty lil’ faces. In that (and in the “ooh ooh”s scattered throughout), Fragile is, above all, rock and roll music.

(It’s also possible that, in the winter of 1971, with the MC5 in disarray, the Stooges on hiatus, and Patti Smith still on the horizon, the staff of CREEM was kinda just making stuff up as they went along. But I think both my bosses and the good people at Rhino would prefer I go with the “larger truth” angle, so let’s go with that.)