How Yes Revised Prog for the ‘80s with 90125
Happy 40th to the album that rescued and revitalized the band
Before 90125 changed everything for Yes, the band came within a hair’s breadth of disappearing forever.
For ‘70s prog heroes, entering the ‘80s was about as easy as starting a campfire on the ocean floor. Yes managed it better than most with 1980’s triumphant Drama. But even though that album responded to the trends of the time by onboarding The Buggles into the band, newcomers Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes were working gamely to fill the huge chasms Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman’s departure had created.
While that worked out way better than anyone had a right to expect, the results were more about adding a modern sheen to the old-school sound than finding an entry point into a new era. Yes fell apart soon after, with Downes and guitarist Steve Howe moving towards the big bucks by joining fellow prog veterans John Wetton and Carl Palmer in AOR supergroup Asia.
Bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White made an abortive stab at starting a supergroup of their own with Jimmy Page, hypothetically dubbed XYZ (Ex-Yes and Zeppelin, get it?). But that didn’t pan out, and after making the surprisingly fine 1981 holiday single “Run with the Fox” as a duo, they began a new project called Cinema with keyboardist Eddie Jobson (Roxy Music, U.K., Frank Zappa, etc.) and South African singer/guitarist Trevor Rabin, formerly of Rabbit and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
Eventually Jon Anderson joined his old buddies, and founding Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye was unexpectedly brought in off the deep bench, having left the Yesverse after 1971’s The Yes Album. To avoid a too-many-cooks situation, Jobson jumped ship, and with a band made up mostly of Yes members, Cinema made the obvious move and changed its name to become the new iteration of Yes.
Part of the reason their 1983 album, 90125 (cheekily named for the record’s catalog number), had such a fresh feel was that despite the lineup, it really was a new band. Before Anderson and Kaye had come aboard, they had already begun establishing a new musical identity, and that process continued wholeheartedly even after the shift from Cinema to Yes.
Another major factor for both the aesthetic and commercial success of the record was its cutting-edge production. The new Yes wisely reached out to Anderson’s replacement from the previous lineup, and Trevor Horn brought plenty of modern pop production prowess with him, having already shepherded ABC to stardom and become one of the early masters of the game-changing Fairlight CMI sampler.
It was truly a tale of two Trevors, though. Before Anderson came into the fold, Rabin was the main singer and songwriter. Anderson’s vocals and lyrics were retrofitted to preexisting tunes, though the seams don’t show. But Rabin takes a greater role in the proceedings than anyone but Anderson or Howe ever had, despite being the “new guy.” And Rabin and Horn respectively add rock and pop elements that probably wouldn’t have been part of the picture otherwise and are essential to the sound of 90125.
“Owner of a Lonely Heart” is loaded with Fairlight touches that were completely state-of-the-art at the time, wedded to a rock-solid, radio-friendly guitar riff while still retaining an undeniable Yesness. A whole new way of being Yes came into view, and listeners voted with their wallets, making the single one of the most unexpected No. 1 hits of 1983 (and the only one in the band’s entire discography). Hell, even the anthemic B-side, “Our Song,” was a hit. The triple-Platinum album too remains far and away the biggest seller in the band’s catalog.
VIDEO: Yes “Owner of a Lonely Heart”
Even if that had been the entire story, Yes still would have been an utterly revitalized band with a wider audience than ever, pulling back from the precipice of non-existence in a bigger way than anybody (including the band) could have ever imagined. But the real reason we’re still talking about 90125 40 years after its release is that it’s not just the host of a great single, it’s a classic album in its own right.
For instance, “Leave It,” which also landed in the Top 40, bears one of the most winningly elaborate vocal arrangements ever to bedeck a Yes song, to the point that the B-side’s a cappella mix of the tune is a treat in itself. The hard-charging “Cinema,” the instrumental that opens the second side of 90125’s vinyl version, provides proggy bona fides in no uncertain terms. So does “Changes,” with its death-defying time signatures, but it also adds some vital vocal interplay between Rabin and Anderson, helping to underline the former’s presence on the front line. And “It Can Happen” boasts some tangy sitar licks, the kind of slippery Squire bass line that defined Yes from the beginning, and an earworm chorus.
Unfortunately, the band didn’t maintain their momentum. It took four years for the follow-up, Big Generator, to appear. And when it did, it was mainly a reminder of the many ways its predecessor could have gone wrong. Years of infighting and upheaval would follow, but future versions of Yes would keep releasing compelling music for decades to come.
And none of it would have been possible without 90125 bringing the band back from the brink of extinction.
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