Review: Yes – 90125 (1983)

90125 is Yes’ 12th studio album.

Formed in 1968, the saga of Yes seemed to be over for good a few years earlier. Against all expectations, however, the old dinosaur rose from the dead and managed to fully shed its skin. The band, which used to churn out 20-minute, intricate prog epics, was magically transformed into a streamlined, tight and ultra-modern pop band thanks to their new album. How on earth did this happen? In familiar Yes style, it’s a rather complicated story…

Yes had already undergone a very successful overhaul with the 1980 album Drama. On that occasion, the Buggles duo of vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes had replaced Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, who had left the band after Tormato. Made up of Horn, Downes, Steve Howe (guitars), Chris Squire (bass) and Alan White (drums), Drama was a successful fusion of the intricate style familiar to Yes and a new, more straightforward and hard-hitting new wave sound.

However, Jon Anderson was hard to replace and the old Yes fans had not fully accepted Horn as the new front man of their favourite band. Horn also found it extremely difficult to sing Anderson’s parts live night after night. His voice simply couldn’t take it. Horn drew his own conclusions and left Yes after the Drama tour. Horn’s immediate agenda would be to finish the unfinished Buggles album Adventures In Modern Recording and then embark on a real career as a producer. Horn achieved considerable success as early as 1982 with the production of ABC’s highly successful debut album The Lexicon of Love.

Downes initially followed Horn to continue with the Buggles, but soon jumped off the Horn bandwagon to join Howe and bassist/vocalist John Wetton on the Asia bandwagon. Asia’s powerful AOR sound bit into a buying audience and the band’s debut album unexpectedly became one of the biggest hits of 1982.

Read also: Review: Yes – Mirror To The Sky (2023)

Howe, Downes and Horn had survived the collapse of Yes with surprising ease, but the band’s rhythm section, Chris Squire and Alan White, had been left adrift. For a while they tried to get XYZ (ex-Yes, ex-Zeppelin) together with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, but it didn’t last beyond a few demos when Plant pulled out. After XYZ’s courtship, Squire and White, together with lyricist Peter Sinfield (King Crimson), released a nice Christmas single ”Run With The Fox” which didn’t achieve much success.

The label then teamed up Squire and White with Trevor Rabin, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who had already enjoyed a relatively successful career in South Africa. Prior to this, the label had tried to marry Rabin to Foreigner, Keith Emerson and… Asia. A small circuit is spinning.

Rabin, who started playing the piano at the age of six, had studied classical music and in 1972 formed the rock band Rabbitt, whose 1975 album Boys Will Be Boys! had gone gold in Rabin’s native South Africa. Rabin released his first solo album in 1977. It was only released in South Africa. However, Rabin was thirsty for international acclaim and moved to London. Rabin quickly secured a recording contract with Chrysalis and released two solo albums, Face To Face and Wolf, with the support of that company. However, Rabin felt that the support was not enough and, frustrated by the poor success of the albums, he cancelled the contract and moved to Los Angeles in a year, encouraged by the influential A&R man John Kalodner of the Geffen label.

In Los Angeles, Rabin wrote a bunch of promising AOR-sounding songs to try to get himself another better record deal. Many record companies were interested, but they were mostly willing to marry Rabin to musicians they already knew or to put him in an existing band. Around the same time, Phil Carson, who was one of Atlantic’s executives, thought Yes needed to get back on the road and he started to work things out behind the scenes. He arranged for producer Mutt Lange (for whom Rabin had done session guitar work) to introduce Rabin to Yes’s adrift rhythm section.

The trio had a jam session which, by all accounts, was pretty awful to listen to, but there seemed to be chemistry between them. Inspired by this, Rabin, Squire and White decided to continue working together and started developing songs mainly based on Rabin’s demos. Contrary to Carson’s plans, however, neither Squire nor Rabin were interested in reviving the Yes name, but wanted to do something completely new under a new name. The name Cinema was chosen. Shortly afterwards, Horn was lured in as producer (he was also initially offered the vocalist’s job). The package was starting to come together, but a keyboard player was still needed.

An attempt was made to recruit Eddie Jobson, a virtuoso who had played in the U.K. and Roxy Music, to run the keyboard booth, but Jobson declined the honour because he didn’t like Squire and because he was working on his solo debut, Green Album.

Next, Cinema turned its attention to Yes’ original keyboardist Tony Kaye. Kaye did join the band, but the problem soon became the same issue that had originally led to Kaye’s departure from Yes: Kaye was not interested in exploring modern synthesizer technology and would have preferred to hang out behind his beloved Hammond organ. Horn and Kaye also didn’t get along at all. This eventually led to Kaye being sent home after about six months of work, leaving the keyboard playing mainly to guitarist Rabin. This wasn’t a big problem as Rabin was a skilled keyboard player and the keyboard parts on the album didn’t even need a virtuoso.

After almost a year of working on the album and burning £300,000, half of which had come directly out of Phil Carson’s own pocket, Cinema began to worry the label. Atlantic were not entirely convinced that Rabin’s vocals would be enough to carry the album to the top of the charts. The band was running out of money. Something had to be done. Carson continued his plot to put Yes back on the world map and suggested that Squire contact Jon Anderson to see if he would be interested in singing a few tracks for the album.

Squire arranged a meeting with Anderson which was eventually held in his car because the wives of our heroes didn’t get along and Anderson wouldn’t let Squire into his home. So Anderson listened to the Cinema production on cassette in Squire’s Rolls Royce and liked what he heard. Anderson was then quickly arranged to go to Horn’s ZTT studio where he recorded the vocals for four songs and made some changes to the lyrics and arrangements. The collaboration seemed to work so well that it was decided to add Anderson’s vocals to all the songs. However, at this point the money was gone. This was not a major setback, however, as Carson arranged a listening session with Atlantic bigwig Ahmet Ertegun, who immediately opened the purse strings when he realised Anderson was in the picture and the band’s new material sounded commercially very promising.

With the new round of funding, the sessions were extended. Anderson’s vocals were added to all the songs on the album, arrangements were further developed and Anderson was able to rewrite some of the lyrics. At this point, Carson pointed out that with three Yes men now involved, it would be natural to restore the name, and it would make it easier for the costly project to break even in due course. After a bit of wrangling, the name Cinema was consigned to the history books. Yes was back.

Alan White, Trevor Rabin, Tony Kaye and Chris Squire. Who is not one of the team? Zalando failed to deliver Anderson’s XS leather pants on time.
Lue myös: Levyarvostelu: Yes – Relayer (1974)

At this stage, the name of the album was considered to be The New Yes Album, but the band eventually decided that it would have been too backward-looking a move. They had a modern album on their hands that was to usher in a whole new era. In the spirit of modernism, they settled on a very simple name, which they decided to take from the album’s catalogue number, which happened to be 90124. Eventually, after many twists and turns, it turned out that this number had already been assigned to another Atlantic release and, despite Squire’s protests, the name was finally chosen as 90125 (which he thought was a much worse name than 90124!).

The album that had been backed by high expectations was now ready. With a big tour planned behind it, it was naturally understood that a keyboard player would have to be brought on stage. Eddie Jobson was again invited to join the merry band. At this point his debut album was ready and he said yes, because he too thought Yes’ new music sounded good and maybe he could handle Squire with a fat pay cheque in his back pocket. In typical Yes style, however, things got a bit messy at this point. Apparently the label was concerned about the band’s legitimacy and wanted to reinforce this by adding another original Yes member. So who else but Tony Kaye, who had gone out with a bang! Kaye was invited back and at this stage the idea was that the band would play with two keyboard players. This would leave room for Jobson to perhaps play his violin as well. Jobson was eventually caught unpleasantly by surprise during rehearsals for the concert. No one had remembered or bothered to mention it before. The new twist did not please him at all. Jobson, known as a prima donna, resigned from the project. However, Jobson left a permanent mark on Yes’ history, as he appeared in the music video for ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” before leaving.

And what kind of music was Cinem… er, Yes now peddling to the people? To a certain extent, 90125’s music continues along the lines of Drama, straightening Yes’ progressive curves even further and stepping even closer to the middle ground of pop music.On the other hand, the album rocks so hard at times that it can by no means be called a pure pop album either. Perhaps 90125 could be defined as a rock album with pop sounds and a light progressive twist. Two things stand out to define 90125 perhaps more than anything else. The first is Rabin’s catchy AOR-inspired choruses and the second is Horn’s extremely polished and modern production. Horn has honed the sounds to the last detail and every second of the album feels polished and carefully considered. On the other hand, however, Horn has firmly insisted that the album is mostly played live by the band and ultimately it’s just a polished production that makes the most of the fine musicians on the album. Yes play their simpler material with real rigour and authority. The vocal parts have also been given a huge amount of attention. On few albums does Anderson sound quite as good as on Horn’s carefully recorded 90125.

90125 opens with the song that became the biggest single hit of the album and Yes’ entire history. Atlantic boss Ahmet Ertegun had stated early on in the project that ”boys this time the album has to have a hit” and boys it delivered.

The album’s first track ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” was based on a demo written by Rabin in Los Angeles, and at least Horn has claimed that the song would have been left off the album entirely had he not insisted it be included. In fact, ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” was only recorded after most of the other material was almost finished.

Horn has said that he realised immediately after hearing Rabin’s demo that ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” had huge hit potential. In the same breath, he has said that while the chorus was brilliant, he found the verses of Rabin’s original version horrible to listen to and exactly the kind of ”American rock” he hated. Horn decided that he would do everything he could to make the end result more interesting. The final version benefits not only from the whole band’s arrangements and improved lyrics, but especially from Horn’s production, which could well be called overproduction if the final result wasn’t so brilliant.

In the final version, Rabin’s fierce guitar riff, Horn’s production jigs, most famously the powerful blasts of the Fairlight horns (apparently sampled from James Brown’s band), the breakbeat-like samples and Anderson’s powerfully sung, extremely catchy chorus come together perfectly. The song doesn’t sound anything like the Yes of old, but as a pop song it’s almost perfect. Live, ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” has never worked very well which shows how important Horn’s studio polish is in this song.

”Owner Of Lonely Heart” topped the singles charts in the US and was apparently the eighth best-selling single of the year. The song is not the album’s strongest offering in my opinion, but its importance as a driving force behind the album’s success cannot be denied, of course.

The second track on the album, ”Hold On”, is also from Rabin’s demo tape. It features a great acappella section where Anderson chants intensely with a slightly robotic effect. The chorus line ”Hoooold on” is a bit overdone, but the song still rolls along quite nicely and Rabin gets to play some great mercurial guitar breaks.

After two Rabin-driven songs, the next track is mainly music composed by Squire. ”It Can Happen” starts with a rattling sitar (played by guest Deepak Khazanchi) and Squire’s exciting pumping bass pattern. Anderson’s vocals are again a stunning listen. His voice has a fierce, confident power and intensity. The vocal arrangements on the song are excellent and also make great use of Squire’s voice. The song’s staccato chorus ”It can happen to you / It can happen to me / It can happen to everyone eventually” is really addictive and cleverly constructed. Alan White also gets to shine on the drums as he embellishes his tight playing with some nifty little flourishes here and there. ”It Can Happen” is one of 90125’s strongest songs.

The album’s fourth song ”Changes” starts with a great instrumental intro composed by White that reminds me a bit of King Crimson’s early 80’s ”gamelan-rock”. A marimba-like pattern in an irregular time signature (17/8 has been calculated by some genius) is combined with a synthesizer and the intro successfully raises the intensity by adding White’s drums and Rabin’s electric guitar with a crisp sound. Then suddenly the mood becomes much more relaxed and we move into the actual song that Rabin wrote.

Rabin was told by record company people in Los Angeles during his wilderness years to write music that sounded more like Foreigner. To which Rabin said ”thanks, but I don’t think so” which is ironic because actually ”Changes” is at least somewhat in the same vein as the AOR giant. But fortunately ”Changes” is in every way like a turbo-charged version of Foreigner. The song is carried by Rabin’s gritty, simple riff and White’s simple, but extremely tight, drum beat. But the best thing about the song is how successfully it alternates between Rabin’s and Anderson’s vocals. Rabin’s voice on its own quickly becomes boring, but when juxtaposed with Anderson’s more original high-pitched voice the result is powerful. Especially as Anderson is again on fire as a singer on this song.

”Changes” also deserves praise for its dynamics. It moves smoothly from calmer moments to louder, more percussive sections and back again, adding a progressive feel to the overall impression, even if the individual instrumental performances are not particularly challenging.

The end quickly returns to the minimalist rhythmic pattern of the intro, but the repetition is too short and it would have been nice if it had been developed a bit further in the outro.

The gorgeous intro of ”Changes” leaves you expecting more than what Rabin’s actual song ultimately delivers, but it’s still an excellent and versatile track.

Next up is the first and only instrumental song on the album, ”Cinema”. Of course, the name is a tip of the hat to the short period when the band still had the same name.

”Cineman” is said to be the intro to the 20-minute epic ”Time”. 90125 ended up with only 2 minutes of ”Time”. What happened to the remaining 18 minutes is not told in the story. Was it really recorded? If it was, it hasn’t yet surfaced, which is odd in Yes’ case because everything possible and impossible has usually seen the light of day sooner or later in some form.

The regrettably short ”Cinema” is a powerful little instrumental. Rabin’s guitar dives, chugs and screams with exquisite ease, White rampages through the middle of his drum kit with hyperactivity and Squire’s hands wander freely on the bass guitar. Ending too soon, ”Cinema” leaves you wanting more. Which is never a bad sign.

”Cinema” won Yes a Grammy Award in the category ”Best Rock Instrumental Performance”.

From the instrumental ”Cinema” we jump to the other extreme as the following song is dominated by vocals. Co-written by Squire and Rabin, ”Leave It” is the album’s strangest offering and a tour-de-force of vocal delight, with a funky bassline that puts vocals in the spotlight. The song’s ping-pong ball-like tossing of numerous vocal tracks against each other is extremely tight and downright futuristic. White’s real drums blend seamlessly with Fairlight’s sampled drum beats. ”Leave It” is the only track on the album, along with ”Cineman”, for which Anderson gets no credit at all.

”Our Song” is obviously mainly Anderson’s handwriting, but it blends stylistically with the rest of the material. A new ”Close To The Edge” is not to be expected. The song features Squire’s mellow bass line and Anderson’s breathtaking vocal performance. The fanfare-like keyboard sections are one of the few moments on 90125 when keyboards take centre stage. The song’s final build-up is quite effective.

”City Of Love” takes a slight leap towards hard rock. Launched by lightly menacing riffs and surprising rhythmic beats, the song plays aggressively. Anderson isn’t usually at his best when he needs to be really rrrock-rrrock, but he copes reasonably well with the menacing vocal parts of ”City Of Love” with Rabin providing support. You can even hear Michael Jackson-esque screams here and there! I understand that Jackson really dug 90125 and has sampled ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” for the song ”D.S.” and Rabin eventually ended up playing a guitar solo on the King of Pop’s album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.

The album ends with ”Hearts” which at seven minutes is the longest song on the album. ”Hearts” is the only song on the album that is credited to the entire band. The song opens with a bell-like simple synthesizer melody and Anderson’s vocals counterbalanced by Rabin’s voice. ”Hearts” is structured alongside ”Changes” as 90125’s most versatile offering, as it contains many separate sections. Some of these work better than others and ”Hearts” remains an uneven whole. The pieces don’t quite fall into place. The actual chorus of the song has always struck me as a bit corny, but on the other hand, the counter melody composed by Anderson (verse ”Many moons cascade one river…”) is really powerful. Towards the end, the song moves into a hard rock atmosphere reminiscent of ”City Of Love”, with Rabin buzzing and wailing his guitar to the border of good taste. Mostly, though, he comes out on the winning side. At the end you can hear a very Andersonian devotional coda that would have fit perfectly on Jon & Vangelis albums. For Anderson ”Hearts” is obviously a beloved song as he has returned to it several times later in his solo career. Most memorably on the fine Change We Must (1994) album, where the song was performed with a symphony orchestra.

The 90125 quickly became a huge success and, depending slightly on the source, is said to have sold between 7 and 8 million units. So by a margin of several million it became Yes’s biggest success. In the long run, the success of the album was not necessarily good for Yes, or at least not for all members of the band. Some members fell into a cycle of endless partying and Yes as a whole wasted too much time in the future chasing their tails and trying to repeat the success of ”Owner Of A Lonely Heart” and 90125.

90125 also became a burden in the sense that it divided the band’s fans strongly. Some love the album, but at least as many passionate prog flag wavers hate it deeply. Listeners like myself who appreciate both the band’s 70s prog albums and 90125 in almost equal measure are in the minority, I think.

So who should be thanked for the success of 90125? The greatest credit must go to the two Trevor’s. Rabin brought to the table a bunch of catchy melodies and choruses which Horn enhanced with his brilliant production and sounds that still sound great today. But it would be wrong to forget the contribution of the other Yes men in the arrangements (Squire also excels as a composer on a few songs that are among the best on the album) that take the songs in a much more interesting direction than Rabin’s original demos suggested. Rabin has to some extent shot himself in the foot by releasing the demos on the 90124 album and on that basis the songs were in great danger of becoming trite and clichéd mid-range arena rock. In the hands of Yes and Horn, the song material rises to a completely different level. Of course, the crowning glory is the idiosyncratic vocals of Jon Anderson, who was really on great form throughout the album.

Unfortunately, Yes lost the huge momentum they gained with 90125 by touring for too long and dragging their feet on their next album. Finally, Big Generator, released in 1987, was recorded in a contentious atmosphere. The album eventually took over two years to complete and a staggering amount of money in endlessly escalating studio costs. Put together on a huge budget, Big Generator sold well by mere mortal standards, but only a fraction of the number of 90125. In the end, the power struggle between Rabin and Anderson was inevitable.

While the failure of Big Generator can be thought of as the start of a long and confusing period for Yes, full of strange twists and turns, the near-perfect pop album 90125 can equally be seen as the culmination of Yes’ almost 15-year victorious run.

Best tracks ”Changes”, ”It Can Happen”, ”Cinema”, ”Leave It”, ”Hearts”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Tracks

  1. ”Owner of a Lonely Heart” 4:27
  2. ”Hold On” 5:15
  3. ”It Can Happen” 5:39
  4. ”Changes” 6:16
  5. ”Cinema” 2:09
  6. ”Leave It” 4:10
  7. ”Our Song” 4:16
  8. ”City of Love” 4:48
  9. ”Hearts” 7:34

Yes

Jon Anderson: vocals Chris Squire: bass guitars, vocals Trevor Rabin: guitars, keyboards, vocals Alan White: drums, percussion, backing vocals, Fairlight CMI Tony Kaye: keyboards

Guests

Deepak Khazanchi: sitar and kitara (3) Graham Preskett: violin (6)

Producer: Trevor Horn

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