Time and a Word : The Yes Story by Martin Popoff

by Martin Popoff

Prog. rockers Yes probably polarize opinions more than just about any other band. To their army of fans, they are visionaries who have consistently raised the musical bar. To their detractors (and there are many), they represent all that is bad about progressive rock bloated, self-indulgent and not connected to the real world. It is doubtful that Yes are bothered by this opprobrium having sold over 30 million albums and played to packed audiences in a career that started in 1969 and continues to this day (with a very fluid band membership). Martin Popoff is renowned for his metal musings but let the truth be told, he has been a closet Yes fan since the 1970s and was delighted to be asked to write this book. That fact alone will raise eyebrows. The book follows the tried and trusted Timeline format, with key events from the birth of Jon Anderson (1944) to the present day. Recorded in painstaking detail, no stone is left unturned. If you ve ever wondered how the Close To The Edge Album got its name, you ll find out here. You ll also learn why Anderson and drummer Alan White spent a lot of time in junkyards. Popoff secured interviews with Anderson, Bruford, Howe, Wakeman and the late Chris Squire (in one of the last interviews he gave) along with other actors in the drama. He also got the views of contemporaries such as Steve Hackett (Genesis), Bill Ward (Black Sabbath) and John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia et al) to provide a rounded view of the prog movement. This book will appeal to Yes fans old and new. There are plenty of both"

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

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First published May 1, 2016

About the author

At approximately 7900 (with over 7000 appearing in his books), Martin has unofficially written more record reviews than anybody in the history of music writing across all genres. Additionally, Martin has penned approximately 85 books on hard rock, heavy metal, classic rock and record collecting. He was Editor-In-Chief of the now retired Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, Canada’s foremost metal publication for 14 years, and has also contributed to Revolver, Guitar World, Goldmine, Record Collector, bravewords.com, lollipop.com and hardradio.com, with many record label band bios and liner notes to his credit as well. Additionally, Martin has been a regular contractor to Banger Films, having worked for two years as researcher on the award-winning documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, on the writing and research team for the 11-episode Metal Evolution and on the ten-episode Rock Icons, both for VH1 Classic. Additionally, Martin is the writer of the original metal genre chart used in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and throughout the Metal Evolution episodes. Martin currently resides in Toronto and can be reached through martinp@inforamp.net or www.martinpopoff.com.

Reviews

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

History of Yes

A great read! Yes has been one of my favorite bands since the early 70's. Loved this history of the greatest progressive rock band.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting one on several levels, but in order to get very much out of it you either have to be a fan of music history in general or a big fan of the group Yes itself [1].  Now, admittedly, I am more on the side of the former than the latter, but this book has a lot to offer for those who are fans of the group and have been for a long time and/or who want to know about the whole span of their career going back from the beginnings of the lives of the musicians to the mid 2010's when this book was written.  Besides the interest that the book offers for its subject material, the book's structure is also of interest.  The author has chosen to avoid a conventional narrative formula by adopting a chronologically-based discussion that includes a wide variety of different material, and strives to include as much as possible from the various musicians themselves.  A lot of musicians have been in Yes, and it is remarkable how prolific they have been apart from Yes as well, as this book is at least a partial effort at a history of progressive music influenced by Yes and its members.

This book is about 200 pages long or so and it is divided not thematically into chapters but chronologically by decade.  So it is that the book begins with an introduction, then discusses the period before the 1970's when the members of Yes were growing up and building their chops and then releasing their first music (1), the 1970's, when Yes had a great deal of success as well as turmoil (2), the 1980's, where the fluke success of "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" kept the band popular despite a lot of division within the group as a whole (3), the 1990's, when the various segments of Yes unified but there was continued drama in the keyboard department and also a diminishing popular interest in the group (4), the 2000's, where the band continued to tour but whose albums were not paid attention to by the general public and where a new generation of Yes musicians joined the fold (5), and the 2010's, where the book was written and where the band was starting to lose its members to death from old age, alas (6).  After this material there is a selected discography, notes and sources, special thanks, and information about the author.

In the main, it appears that this book had several aims.  The author wanted to convey the full sense of Yes' career from their beginnings as a noodling progressive act with a lot of band drama to their rare flashes of pop success that were not particularly sought by most of the members, and which included a few years of there being two feuding Yes camps, which joined together for a great tour but a rather uneven album, and then how Yes became a legacy act whose tours were appreciated and whose old songs were enjoyed by fans but whose new material has generally fallen on deaf ears despite the continued creativity of the group.  On top of the goals of the author in conveying some sense of the whole discography of Yes as well as its complex history, the author also appears to want to encourage the induction of Yes into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which had not happened by the time this book was published but did happen in 2017, which means that this book can be considered to be a success in what it sets out to do, at least.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was hoping for the definitive story of Yes, but this isn’t it. It has a lot of oral history, but not nearly as much as the earlier Yesstories. It’s thorough in talking about solo stuff, Asia, GTR, etc. —and I couldn’t care less.

The biggest fault is how vague it all is. In the interviews, Jon Anderson sounds like a mystic hippie, but the author calls him the practical one. Explain! What are any of these people really like beyond what their their quotes reveal? The only person that seem clear to me is Rick Wakeman, and that’s because he explains himself very well. The author’s job in a biography is to fill in the blurry bits. That doesn’t happen here.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent sound bites history of Yes covering not just the band but various side and solo projects. I will confess that my interest in Yes both started and ended in the 70s so the comprehensive discography has given me a long list of future cd purchases.

Ray Smillie

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat sterile linear history of YES and YES related recordings. Most appealing to me was the discussion around the side projects and YES related bands such as Asia, GTR, Squakett, etc,...
L

[pianogal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of the layout. I wanted more narrative from the author, as opposed to snippets of interviews with the 9,000 members of YES and other journalists.