Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

25/07/71 : The Yes Album - Yes

It feels like '71 wouldn't be complete without a bit more Yes - I'd love to tell you which visit this is, but unfortunately searching the blog for their name returns quite a few false positives, so I'm just going to guess it's our third visit. And I'm expecting it to be well done, but not particularly enjoyable.

Hmmm. It is well done in terms of musicianship, but it seems to suffer from ELP syndrome in that everyone has to be given a go to do their particular thing which means you get all sorts of weird sections when you're not expecting them (a Spanish flamenco-style guitar instrumental, anyone?) and consequently it doesn't really hang together as an album. However, I would say none of it is particularly unenjoyable and some of the Jon Anderson focussed stuff is pretty decent, but it's not something I'll be rushing back to.

We're at a relatively high #18 in the chart this week on their 22nd week of a 26 week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its fourth and fifth weeks. The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel, The Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Paul & Linda McCartney and Rod Stewart with the highest new entry being The Doors (#28).

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album and features a line-up change with Peter Banks having been replaced by Steve Howe on guitar. Apparently they rented a cottage in Devon to write and rehearse new material but when they got there they discovered they weren't allowed to make any noise after dark, which shows a certain lack of planning on someone's part - they moved out to a farm instead and Steve Howe liked it so much he bought it. It also tells us that Tony Kaye has his foot in plaster on the cover because the band had been involved in a head-on collision in their car a few days before.

There's also an interesting story about how it charted because, at the time, the postal workers were on strike which prevented record stores sending their sales figures in to Melody Make who compiled the chart - so instead they used a chart compiled by Richard Branson based upon the sales at his record store and a few others. So Yes's manager just went into the Virgin store and bought a load of copies (and I suspect he wasn't the only one) - and when the strike was over, people just started buying it because it was high in the charts! Critically, it was pretty well received and commercially it got to #40 in the US, which is higher than I was expecting.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for four quid, but if you want a original mint version they're going for £180 - which I won't be spending! But I can understand how this holds fond memories for plenty, even if it doesn't exactly hit the spot for me - I do think that's enough Yes for this year though.

01/08/71 - A bit too much, but some great tracks