Source: The Yes Chronicles
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Concert/8459/fragile.html
Review: Fragile
Author Unknown
"So I went along to this rehearsal the following morning. And it was at
that actual rehearsal that the basis of 'Heart of the Sunrise' and
'Roundabout' were put together. ... I said (to Steve), 'Shall I pick you up
in the morning for rehearsal?' and he said, 'Yeah, OK, fine.' So nothing
was really ever said. That was it." -- Rick Wakeman, from the Yesyears video (1991)
Fragile
Atlantic 1972
Rating: ****1/2
Best song: "Heart of the Sunrise"
Produced by Yes and Eddie Offord
Cover by Roger Dean
Engineer: Eddie Offord, assisted by Gary Martin
Personnel:
Jon Anderson: vocals
Steve Howe: guitars, vocals
Chris Squire: bass, vocals
Rick Wakeman: keyboards
Bill Bruford: percussion
Track listing (standout tracks in bold):
Roundabout
Cans and Brahms
We Have Heaven
South Side of the Sky
Five Percent for Nothing
Long Distance Runaround
The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)
Mood for a Day
Heart of the Sunrise
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There are lots of firsts happening on this album.
It's the first album on which Yes establishes itself firmly as a true
musical democracy, with five musicians of equal strength contributing an
equal amount of ideas to the finished product.
That also means it's the first album with Rick Wakeman, whose flashy
showmanship was rivaled only by that of Keith Emerson and whose versatility
on a multitude of keyboard instruments paralleled Steve Howe's diversity on his array of guitars.
It gave Yes its first big international exposure, thanks to "Roundabout,"
which has to be one of the most played songs in the history of FM radio.
It was the first album to be wrapped in a cover by Roger Dean, who would
provide Yes with an instantly recognizable image and give listeners
something to focus on in the days before MTV.
And it struck the perfect balance between commercial accessibility and
artistic purity. This kind of open-ended musical expression wouldn't be
allowed on a major-label release today, but in 1972, progressive rock was
at the height of its popularity, and this album not only fit perfectly into
that genre but also was full of enough catchy riffs, rhythms, solos, and
hooks that it remained palatable for a large audience.
In short: "Classic" Yes arrives in all its glory.
Let's jump right into things. "Roundabout" is the familiar and timeless
opening piece for which this band is so well known even among casual fans.
Immediately, we find that the band has finally figured it out--this is the
kind of diverse, rich sound they had been shooting for with "Perpetual
Change" and really had been seeking ever since the beginning. It is the
perfection of the long-form composition. There's tension and release, there
are rich instrumentations created by all the members, there's an easy flow
from one section to the next, there's a great logic to the structure,
there's light and shade, there is a wide variety of moods. And there are
luscious vocal harmonies as well as virtuoso musical showmanship--the
closest that the members of Yes have ever come, even to this day, to a
synthesis of their two founding aims in a single piece of music. They came
close with "Yours Is No Disgrace," but this time they reached the pinnacle.
After three decades, the opening backwards piano chord still holds all its
surging intensity and anticipation as a brilliant buildup, Howe's famous
acoustic-guitar theme sounds as fresh as ever, the harmonies are still
sublime, the varying sections still flow seamlessly together, and Wakeman's
burbling arpeggio under the return of the opening guitar theme is still a
moment of haunting beauty. And then there's that killer Hammond organ
solo--you know the one. The one that's played with such blazingly
ferocious, joyful abandon, accompanied by Bill Bruford perfecting that
rim-shot snare sound--pong! ... pong!--to cut through Chris Squire's
powerful bass. And as for Squire, well, that galloping bass line that pins
down the composition so forcefully and with such impressive flair is one of
the greatest moments in rock 'n' roll bass playing. Nope, even radio-play
overkill hasn't lessened the effect of this beautiful, colorful masterwork
... and that in itself is the sign of a very well-crafted piece of music.
Now with that out of the way, let's examine two things about this wonderful
album that casual fans may not immediately notice: First, this is one of
the greatest bass guitar albums ever. (Forgive me for going off on a
tangent here, but Squire is my favorite Yes man by a long shot, and this
album is one of the biggest reasons why.) Having a full stable of supremely
talented musicians in place must have inspired Squire, because "Roundabout"
is just the opening shot. "South Side of the Sky" finds Squire interlocked
in a slow, grimy rhythm with Howe; the instrumental breaks in "Long
Distance Runaround" find him running up the neck in a flurry of rapid
eighth notes over and over, never taking a break; "Five Percent for
Nothing" is a genius job of syncopation all the way around by every member.
The long intro to "Heart of the Sunrise" is a Squire showcase, with him
first taking part in the syncopated sixteenth-note rumble that opens things
up and then moving into center stage, improvising on a line that alternates
between snaking up and then slithering back down until the band slowly
creeps back in around him, before Bruford kicks everyone back into the
opening riff. And then, of course, there’s "The Fish," which is simply
awe-inspiring. It's no clearer anywhere else than here that Squire's
signature style stems from his bringing a lead-guitar approach to his
bass--this piece sounds as deep and rich as if every member had been
playing on it, but in fact it's just Squire and Bruford. Everything that's
not a percussion instrument is Squire wailing away on a riff, a backing
rhythm, a flourish, a solo, a melody, or a harmony. Before it's all done,
there are at least six Squires jamming away in 7/4 in what to this day has
been the most entertaining of the band's live solo pieces. His 10-minute
jam on Yessongs is especially remarkable and worth the price of that
three-album set alone. (By the way, has anybody ever been able to figure
out why classic-rock radio always plays "Heartbreaker" and "Living Loving
Maid" straight through as if they were one song, and ditto for "We Will
Rock You" and "We Are the Champions," yet they always fade out "The Fish"
when it's actually connected to the end of "Long Distance Runaround"?)
The other thing about this album that may be overlooked is that, for the
cranks who think Yes is all sunshine and lollipops, Fragile is musically
and lyrically the most consistently dark album they've ever done. Now, all
things being relative, this is Yes, so don't expect to hear what you might
hear from some gloom-and-doom heavy metal group. But "Roundabout" has its
tense middle section, where Bruford's wild, erratic percussion drives the
band through the storm at sea. "Heart of the Sunrise" seems to be lyrically
about a soul lost and searching for fulfillment, ending with Jon Anderson's
plaintive line "I feel lost in the city." "Long Distance Runaround," though
extremely abstract, seems to be telling us of a relationship gone bad--"I
still remember the time you said goodbye/Did we really tell lies? ... "
along with its references to the "cold summer" and the "hot color melting
the anger to stone." When Yes did an acoustic version of "Long Distance
Runaround" on their 1975 tour, in fact, the mood is much more somber,
whereas on the album, the tenor of the lyrics can get lost under the rather
playful musical arrangement. And then there's "South Side of the Sky,"
which seems to be about, well, freezing to death.
Wakeman's effect on the band's sound was immediately immense. From The Yes
Album, where a competent Tony Kaye did a fine job adding mostly piano and
organ colors in the background, we take a quantum leap on the way to this
album, where Wakeman steps to the forefront, not just with dexterous,
classically tinged piano runs and showy Hammond work, but also with a heavy
dose of Moog and Mellotron added to the mix--just what the band had been
wanting ... and lacking. Fortunately, Wakeman was no traditionalist--he
loved to play with the newest toys available to keyboardists in those early
days of big, clumsy analog synthesizers. His immense stage setups, in fact,
gave birth to the idea of stacking keyboards on top of one another; for
him, it was simply out of necessity, but nowadays many bands' keyboardists
are seen onstage either having stacked their instruments up or arranged them on racks.
Yes was now an embarrassment of riches--a true musician's band, where every
passage of music would be refined and perfected, every idea integrated into
an expansive whole, and virtually every note discussed and analyzed,
sometimes to the point of fisticuffs in the studio! That may seem
over-the-top, but just listen to the results--all the experimentation,
stretching out, and bickering fused to create timeless classics. Aside from
"Roundabout," we can hear it come through in the album's other three band compositions as well.
First, there's "South Side of the Sky," a sort of lost Yes classic that
fans frequently clamor for but was rarely played live, until the band
finally revived it for their 2002–03 world tour. After that forcefully
plodding Howe/Squire riff (which, incidentally, was from yet another piece
originating in Howe's pre-Yes band Bodast) carries on for quite some time,
Wakeman takes over on solo piano and drastically changes the mood. As a
barrage of notes work their way slowly up the keyboard and come tumbling
back down in a free-tempo crash of dissonance, there comes a brief reminder
of the flash of brilliance Pink Floyd's Rick Wright had a few years
earlier, with the classical etude that opens up his solo piece "Sysyphus"
and ever-so-slowly degenerates into a muddle of angry noise. But Wakeman
doesn't stop there--out of the swirling winds comes a delicate, tinkling
piano line that builds up to a surprisingly gentle full-band section, in
marked contrast to the feel of the rest of the song. Bruford's drums and
cymbals click and pop at random along with the bass and piano, barely
holding to the beat, while above soars a gorgeous passage of wordless
harmonizing. From the best I can tell, there are at least four, and perhaps
five, voices emanating from the song; clearly discernable are Squire, with
the repeating, high-pitched "laaa, laaa, la" opening up each phrase, and
Howe's homely voice in the left channel holding down the lower end. In the
background seems to be Anderson's voice, double-tracked on two lines, and
perhaps another Squire voice as well. In any event, this passage flies by
all too quickly, and when it fades away, the howling winds return, followed
by a pulsating, mechanized growl rising to throw us back into the main riff
of the song. Another verse, and we fade off into the cold, forbidding void.
Moving onto side two, we find the other hit song from Fragile, although a
very minor hit compared to the success of "Roundabout." "Long Distance
Runaround," the last short-form band piece until 1977, seems a
contradiction of sorts as previously noted, with its rather melancholy
lyrics being laid out against a bouncy musical backdrop that hints of
lighthearted whimsy. Howe, in the left channel, and Wakeman, in the right,
kick things off with an interlocking theme on electric guitar and electric
piano, and soon joining over both channels are Squire, with his
aforementioned eighth-note pattern, and Bruford, with some delightfully
off-the-wall syncopation. There really isn't a lot of thematic development
on this piece, but then there really can't be in only three and a half minutes.
Still, the band makes full use of the limited time frame, for when Anderson
enters, we go into a completely new musical setting--one that is remarkably
sparse but still says quite a bit. In one channel we have Wakeman playing
staccato notes on piano, and in the other we hear Howe and Squire poking in
and out with a short unison riff. But the real genius here is the drumbeat.
Never one to settle for a traditional beat when faced with a 4/4 signature,
Bruford turns this into a piece of mathematical precision. A casual listen
may suggest that Bruford is just hitting his snare at random intervals, but
no, there is a great logic to it. What you have to do is count along with
the beats of every measure, beginning with "1" in the first measure. After
that, he hits the next measure on 2, then the next on 3, and the next on 4,
and then an entire bar passes without a hit until the next one comes
in--back on 1 again. When the music shifts into the refrain, he reverses
the count: The last measure of the first pattern ends on a 4, so in the
next, he repeats on 4, then on 3, then on 2, and then on 1. Three beats of
silence, and then a smash on 1 again, as the opening pattern begins anew.
Marvelous! He would employ the same trick a few years later on a woodblock
on King Crimson's "Starless," with the same illusion that there's a totally
random, or tricky, beat being played when in fact it's quite simple--just
very disarming!
The album closes with what could be considered Yes's first full-blown epic:
the 10 1/2-minute extravaganza "Heart of the Sunrise." From those opening
alternations of upswinging guitar/bass riff and hyper-speed Hammond organ
blasts, through Squire's moody bass solo, and then back to several
restatements of the opening rumbling riff, complete with lots of
tension-building starts and stops, we've gone through an exhausting assault
on our senses before the singing even begins more than three minutes in.
Incidentally, what Bruford does during Squire's solo is absolutely magical.
He took what would otherwise have become a static repetition of one bass
line and made it burst with life by adding perfectly placed random
syncopated bits of clicks and pops and rolls and punches in the spaces in
between. And, as always, he never lost sight of the core beat. And he knows
just when to switch from hi-hat to ride cymbal as Wakeman's droning
Mellotron begins to push the intensity level up just a bit before Howe
creeps back in with the opening riff. Through it all, Bruford here proves
his genius once again. What he does works so well because, unlike so many
drummers who just sit at the back of the stage and thoughtlessly pound
their drums to smithereens, Bruford listens, like an actual musician with a
finely trained ear, to what's going on around him, and then he adjusts his
playing accordingly to add to the texture as well as become an integral
part of it. As hard as he has tried, Alan White has never come close to
recapturing the simple brilliance Bruford displays on the opening of this
piece. Bruford, after all, is a colorist, while White is more-or-less a
straightforward rock 'n' roll timekeeper.
Anderson's opening section is spacious and lulling, and as it closes out, a
solo organ line takes us into one of the band's most masterful uses of
counterpoint. It's so simple and well integrated that you may not even
notice it on a casual listen, but briefly we hear three distinctly
different melodies and rhythmic ideas sharing the same space--one by Howe,
one by Wakeman, and one by Squire and Bruford! Another start-stop moment
leads into another brooding Mellotron line, and then we slip back into the
second of Anderson's stanzas, with the backdrop picking up a little more
energy this time through.
This is a very rare Yes song in that Anderson sings it all alone, without
any harmonizing whatsoever--except for a very brief moment when his own
voice is double-tracked. On its own, and in this expansive setting, his
voice sounds somewhat frail and frightened--which helps to convey the sense
of yearning and isolation the lyrics seem to impart. But now, after a
crescendo on Bruford's drums, we'll hear Anderson rising to full force as
he wails, in a wanting tone, "Sharp! Distance! How can the wind with its
arms all around me?/Sharp! Distance! How can the wind with so many around
me?/I feel lost in the city." We can almost feel the coldness that his
character here feels, through his dramatic delivery.
After this we go back to the triple counterpoint, then to a brief vocal
bridge revisiting an earlier theme, and then into a very fussy, intricate,
carefully constructed instrumental section. We hear an alternation of a
syncopated 5/4 and a familiar 6/4--first, a unison band riff led by Wakeman
on organ and Moog, and then into the menacing introductory riff. This
bandies back and forth until a new bass/organ counterpoint yanks us in a
new direction, with Howe gently soloing over the top in muted tones. This
serves as another perfect bridge into yet another new theme--actually, a
twist on the opening riff, here restated by Wakeman on piano in an elegant
manner. Anderson intermingles with repeating Wakeman piano solos, full-band
restatements of the main riff, and a few more full-stop sections, until
that familiar Mellotron tone leads us into Anderson's final verse, a
desperate cry restating the opening lines. Once more on the Mellotron, then
three times through the main riff, and the song just ends, that abruptly,
leaving us in suspense over what happens next to our longing narrator.
Well, we never do find out, but we do get thrown a humorous little
surprise, as the door that gets slammed shut at the end of "We Have Heaven"
reopens, and we find Anderson still working away at his vocal collage,
right where we had left him. This little bit of whimsy breaks the solemn
mood and, as we'd expect from Yes, ends things on an upbeat note.
"We Have Heaven" was supposedly the inspiration for the idea to have each
band member take a solo spot on Fragile, an idea that creates an odd
dichotomy and thus makes the listener think the title of this album is
quite appropriate. Actually, the title of Fragile is said to have come from
then-manager Brian Lane, who happened to see "Yes--Fragile" printed on some
of the band's stage equipment in a photo when asked what the title of the
next album would be. For such an off-the-cuff origin, the title was
definitely appropriate, because of the drastic contrast between the rich,
complex band pieces on the album and the much shorter, more direct solo
pieces scattered across the vinyl. And after Anderson had come up with the
whim to begin layering a bunch of his own vocal lines on top of one
another, he thought it would be a good idea for everyone to come up with
their own individual solo pieces to match.
The result of Anderson's personal inspiration was his simple but charming
folksy acoustic piece "We Have Heaven," in a mood that foreshadowed the
style that would dominate his first solo album, Olias of Sunhillow, a few
years later. The bouncy, lilting accompaniment is, actually, rather
McCartneyesque. For about 90 seconds we hear Anderson rhythmically
harmonizing with lots of other Andersons on an ever-increasing number of
vocal lines, starting with just one and continuing to mount: "Tell the moon
dog, tell the march hare," "We have heaven," "Look around," "He's here,"
and "Here is here." The result could easily become cacophony, but instead
it sounds almost angelic, and just when it could have become a little bit
too much, the previously mentioned door slams on the song--literally. The
footsteps leading away from the door take us directly into an approaching
storm of rumbling thunder and high wind, setting the stage for the dark
shroud of "South Side of the Sky."
Emerging out of the other side of that eight-minute opus comes Bruford's
shot, "Five Percent for Nothing." Not listening closely, one may write it
off as a throwaway piece that didn't have much effort put into it. But
examining it more closely, one sees that perhaps the most amazing thing
about this little 35-second piece is that it's in plain old 4/4
time--amazing because it's so heavily syncopated you'd swear it would have
to be in the most incomprehensible time signature imaginable. That's the
genius of Bruford at work once more. And yes, it's neurotic and choppy, and
there's no discernible melody, but that's the point--this may be his solo
spot, but instead of just doodling through a solo on his drum set in Ginger
Baker or John Bonham fashion, he turns the entire band into his drum set.
The short note values being played by the bass, guitar, and organ are a
representation of a pair of drumsticks wildly bashing around from one drum
to the next; every sound can and should be imagined as a drum being hit!
Who else would have thought of doing something like this? Bruford was
always known for his clever, smart-alecky personality, and it shines
through bright and clear here. The title, by the way, is a reference to
Yes's original manager, to whom they had to agree to pay five percent of
future royalties after they cut their ties with him. The working title for
Bruford's piece was "Suddenly It's Wednesday," which has its own
nonsensical but smart-alecky quality to it.
Squire's showcase "The Fish" we've already covered, to which I can only add
that, for those who don't know, the title is a reference to Squire's
nickname, which comes from the fact that Squire (1) was legendary for
taking incredibly long baths and (2) is a Pisces. (A fellow Pisces, that
is, with his birthday falling only two days before my own! Instead, I got
to share my day with David Gilmour, which I guess isn't all bad.) The
subtitle, which constitutes the only sung lines in the song, isn't
gibberish--it's the scientific name for an actual species of fish.
That leaves Howe's stately, part medieval, part Spanish-flavored
classical-guitar piece "Mood for a Day," which serves as a pleasant,
relaxing interlude between "The Fish" and "Heart of the Sunrise"; and
finally, there's Wakeman's contribution, "Cans and Brahms." This piece
drags the rating of Fragile down a bit, because ... well, because it's just
so pompous and silly and pointless and painfully out of place on this
album. It's simply Wakeman playing a multitude of keyboard instruments on a
reading of a section of Brahms' 4th Symphony. Now, it's hard to fault
Wakeman for this showing up on the album--you see, because A&M Records
owned Wakeman's recording rights, he wasn't able to contribute an original
piece of music to an Atlantic album, so this showed up instead of the
original piece he had intended to contribute. That one was called "Handle
with Care," and it would be heard later under the title "Catherine of
Aragon" on his solo debut The Six Wives of Henry VIII--an A&M album. Even
Wakeman hasn't had flattering things to say about "Cans and Brahms," but at
least it was mercifully short, and it proves how corporate and legal idiocy
can get in the way of good music, which is something that would come to
haunt Yes often throughout its career.
Of course, Wakeman's always appearing in Yes "courtesy of A&M Records" also
spoke to the fact that Wakeman always viewed himself as somewhat of a free
agent who would be happy to loan his prodigious talents to Yes but would
never give up his outside solo and session work completely. And he knew he
could afford to do it, because he was a big name in the music community at
the time and gave Yes its first superstar member; he was in the
advantageous position of Yes needing him more than he needed Yes. This also
goes a long way toward explaining why Wakeman has come and gone in Yes so
many times--his allegiance to the band just wasn't that strong and didn't
need to be; he was quite happy to always play by his own rules.
For the time being, though, Wakeman wasn't going anywhere. He would enjoy
this rise to stardom along with the rest of Yes, and he would help to push
the music even further than it had been pushed on Fragile. In fact, the
band was about to send the barriers of rock music crashing down.
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