Yes In Performance | Full Music Documentary | Jon Anderson | Chris Squire | Bill Bruford 

Yes were the Masters of the universe in the 70s! I saw them many times in Chicago, from Hawthorne race course to a bunch of shows they did at the international amphitheater next to the union stockyards! They were incredible❤❤❤

My sister was a huge fan of all types of music and I used to sneak into her room and play them when she was out (thanks sis). Laying in front of a pile of records on the floor was this album with a greenish tint with 5 guys and a white head hanging from a string. It looked cool so I put it on her record player and played it. I will never forget hearing that record for the first time. I was hooked on YES from that day forward. About a week later, I peddled my bike in the freezing cold to a record store about 2 miles from our our house to look for other YES records. I didn't have to look hard because they had a section with new releases in a rack at the front. Needless to say, I got my news paper route money out of my pocket and peddled back home with Fragile under my arm. The year was 1971 and I was 11 years old. And it's been a musical journey ever since.

I remember just like yesterday. We heard Roundabout on the car radio, coming out of Philly on WMMR. I did some chores and bought the album, Fragile. There were several hooks: Chris's bass tone, Steve Howe and Jon's vocal. In Philly, Yes was huge and we loved that group. For me, it was a journey of absorbing all of that music and lyrics that influenced me later on with guitar and bass. When I listen to Yes, I am in my happy place. They bring me right back to the 1970's and the freedom we all had during that time. When Chris passed away, it felt like I lost an Uncle. It really hurt. If you're ever feeling down go check out Wakeman. He should be doing Standup Comedy. Hilarious. It's been about 50 years now that Yes has been a part of me. I just don't know how else to describe what I feel. I love those guys so much and it did not matter if they rotated different personnel; The anchors Anderson and Squire were at least lurking about. I owe a huge Thank You to Jon, Steve, Chris, Rick, Alan, Bill and everyone who were apart of one of my alltime favorite groups.

Ladies and gentlemen Chris Squire and Yes the greatest show on earth

"Tales from Topographic Oceans" is a great freaking album!

John Anderson's voice is not falsetto. He is one of the very few men to have this kind of male voice, naturally.

51 years ago, June 1973, I started listening to Time & A Word. I had been a Yes fan since 1971. Today T&AW, is still a YES top 5 album for me.

If you can listen with full attention and bliss to a 19 minute song, then you know you have a master-piece, anything less and you would grow bored. But Close to the Edge pulls you in and never lets you go.

The amazing performances and recordings from Yes over the past 55 years continue and inspire. I truly love their impactful music, along with the creative voyages that accompany their art. It is such joy to see people experience this music in 2024 for the first time. Keep listening. There are even greater rewards for the tenth time you hear their best songs. Enjoy the ride, it is well worth your time to explore the deep cuts.

The 2 star reviews for first two albums are crap.....you were witnessing the evolution of the greatest Prog Group to ever exist.

A band made up of 5 musical geniuses at the right time and the right place in history. It was serendipitous.

I enjoyed this documentary alot, which brings the fresh perspective of what the flowering days Yes music was composed: new keys, pitches, rhythms, arrangements, patterns (and overcast surrealist watercolors). I didn't hear critics but studio people, fellow musicians who know what it is Yes were trying to write and play. Yes were certainly an enigma. Consider: Steve Howe was quoted several times in the 70s sharing that he did not read music well (but yet knew his way all around the guitar like a blind savant virtuoso); then Rick Wakeman who was a bona-fide conservatory-trained virtuoso, who absolutely knew the 'theory' of everything they were doing. Anderson was also self-taught, and also quoted back in the day revealing his own constant personal growth toward secure status as professional musician. He said he reached that place during his solo album in 1976! [So what was he doing until then?] Close to the Edge, the piece, is overwhelming, I've heard it hundreds of times; but hearing the Rainbow Theatre film version (again) tonight was shocking; this audacity, this beyond bold presentation, astonishingly assured, and clearly confident. The side two of the album is just as good, but all three selections together are heroic feats of complexity and beauty. I think the Close to the Edge album (and Yes generally) is rooted in the phenomenon of Stravinsky's audacious ballets between 1910 and 1913. In fact, Yes, as the hailed masters of 'progressive' rock, were always balletic during the 70s. Ballet is a form you would say is through-composed, a trip from A to B to C to D et al, never quite repeating, in an evolving narrative. Its the 20th century ballet (and the Russians no less) that introduced this idea of unfolding non-repeating feral yet sidereal music. Herbal cigarettes and funky porcinis aside, open-ended narrative forms came from (avant-garde) modern classical composers. Yes applied this long-form aesthetic (whether they knew entirely or not) to electric music. I don't see how one could say they were a rock band. They were an art salon act. Squire called them the everyman's underground group. They made a music of human ultimacy for the rock stage. It is definitely revealing that during the Fragile tour they played the Finale from the Firebird for the first time as an act introduction or act signature (this, before Close to the Edge even appears) , as if to say "where Stravinsky left off, we now take up..." Siberian Khatru is this masterful unbridled chamber piece, to me the ultimate bow to Stravinsky. In 1970s Yes, there is always the search for Source, which is what religion perenially holds. Tales is a fascinating conundrum: that is, alot of music and beauty drawn out over big acoustic spaces - so much in there, so much finely fitted-detail and poetic sonority; but textually, terribly muddled or plain confused and immature. Chris Squire said in interview they (Jon & Steve) had picked a "weak concept". Tales is sonic magnificence resting on a foundation of poverty, and Anderson admitted this indirectly years later. The second side (The Remembering)(religion wisdom & grace in particular being the lost objects recalled) is the one masterpiece of that record - the closest they got to marrying the text with shape of the music assembled. Some may wish to add side 1, because it is asking the big question what happened to modern humanity, what did it forget as a creature-family. >> God, faith. Religion has always waited with answers. The references to Christianity are numerous on Tales, but they were all non-practicing protestants as adult musicians who did world touring. I wish they had included Relayer and Going for the One and stopped there, because though Yes always pushed themselves up mountains, there was nowhere else to go after Awaken, except back to streets on earth. Awaken is the realization of what they were really looking for on Tales. They introduced us to God without religion. Which is a very good first move.... Awaken is the unsurpassable masterpiece of the 1970s catalog. Records seven and eight (important numbers!) are truly great. Ultimately, I don't think Yes can be completely explained . Others here note perfectly; its more: what does it sound like and how does it move you. But I can agree with most everything that got said by the observers in the film, including the crunchy disagreements over Tales.

So cool. I got an audio only version of this as a gift many years ago. I heard an interview with Rick Wakeman saying that many of the time signatures were to fit Jon's lyrics, to fit the pronunciations, syllables, rhythm, etc. Of course there are the ones that are large scale compositional choices.

Don’t you just love these critics!! The man in the arena taking all the slings and arrows and the spectator running their mouths.

Yes, Siberian Khatru is my favourite song on Close to the Edge, but The Gates of Delerium and Sound Chaser are my other favorite Yes songs.

The fact that many of the people talking here haven't got a clue about music doesn't detract from Yes being the greatest prog band of all time.

Jon never sang falsetto.... it's his awesome voice....pay attention.

Interesting assessment of Yes. I am a Yes fan and a I have a more favorable view of them. This documentary was a bit thin on content and somewhat incomplete, even for 2003. For instance, I have a different opinion of the Tales album. I think it was their best compilation at the time of release. Years later, Magnification came out which was yet another great compilation. It was great to hear these epic albums played live. I would call it masterful.

Tony Kaye's dedication to the organ really was very important to the drive of the first stages of Yes. Their move to more "advanced" technological palettes did not ultimately serve them well, even if Wakeman's broader palette did for a while. _The Yes Album, Fragile,_ and _Close to the Edge_ are so full of drive and body.

Tales is an acquired taste, its in my vinyl library cause I’ve grown to like it. Not love it but, appreciate it! And I still wish Bruford never left, it would have been interesting to see where they evolved with him. Nothing against Alan White, but he’s more a rock drummer than prog rock.

I don't agree with a lot of what these guys have to say in the first ten minutes; Banks was Hendrixy, Chris wrote the odd time changes, the first album was sub par (let's hear you play it on your instrument?), Jon's falsetto, the music is uninteresting without Jon, the early assessment of Chris's contribution being the grounded one, all wrong imo.

5:48 - Ain't it truth. Hard-headed Steve knows this too. Shine On Jon.

Critic 1: Pete Banks is some kind of Hendrix. Critic 2: Pete Banks was too jazzy for them.

Close to the Edge is not a masterpiece?? Don't you just love the uselessness of music critics?

I can’t believe how poor the contributors are on this documentary. It is full of misinformation and inaccuracy. I wonder if many of them have ever listened to Yes albums. Jerry Ewing is particularly obnoxious - particularly for the editor of Prog magazine. I think he’s more of a metal guy.

"Without Jon's voice, it's not Yes". And yet I'd rather listen to Drama than anything they released after it.

INSIDE YES was the name of this unofficial but good DOCUMENTARY when released

HealingLoveALL HealthyFlashbacks 🎶🥰🎶

The sound engineer chris stilmant saying CTTE isn’t a Masterpiece, what a joke, I’d like to hear some of the crap he’s worked on.

I’m left wondering which songs on Fragile are “subpar”. (33:30)

Total garbage for a documentary of one of the best prog rock bands ever..

Titled "INSIDE YES" on my CD Box version, this unofficial release has some very interesting different insightful opinions and great analysis into the bands 70's career !

Is there a second part? Yes performed a lot more albums, of course, but this video has reduced the reviews to the first six studio albums.

“Squire”, not “Squires”. Jesus, you’re in a Yes documentary.

The only thing pompous here are every one of these so-called "critics"! I can't call Yes pompous. Complicated at times. But calling a band of real musicians pompous is arrogant! And who are the most self-important, arrogant, and pompous individuals on the planet? CRITICS!

Huge Yes fan here. Still listening to them today. I never purchased the Tales album and couldn't name you one song off of it. Only album of theirs you would have to tie me down to listen to. Just not a fan. But as they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Long Distance Runaround 29:00 Sorry bro that's not quite right...

Cue the journalists following their fashion noses and dismissing TFTO as 'crap' and 'ludicrous'. Ironically, these are the only expressions that can be applied across the board to music journalists. It's why I stopped reading their tripe 50 years ago.

👍👍

So, there are some chord inversions in "I've seen all good people" and that is "Bach like"? Utter nonsense....

Topographic Oceans a 3 star album? Hmmmm

"Tales....makes you thankful for punk"??? Get outta here.🙄

Underwhelming doco.

Yawn. Mostly blather! I'd rather hear the music than these mere opinions!

I don't mind that the band went through a lot of lineup changes over the years. But now without Jon or Chris, I just can't call it Yes anymore. It's just a Steve Howe tribute band. I liked Fly From Here. It was a decent record. But Jon Davison sounds awful and ruins everything and without Chris, it's just pathetic.

This was not good.

smh lols for non entities repeating familiar words they can't understand ... so then we get a music lesson. we won't be hiring this AI vid editor

Oh by the way. Nobody cares about chord progressions and arpeggios. Jeez a little of stolen valor as the saying goes.

One thing never mentioned is that Yes were a self-proclaimed "magic mushroom" band. They were very frequent users of it, and made most of their music while on it, and believed its what humanity needed to evolve and progress to higher levels of being. Where did l hear this ? From their own mouths. Most of the "analysis" by the nerdy, so-called experts in this video, is a bunch of pure, self-important, dreamt-up crap.

Sorry. But YES is the greatest band of all time.