Album: Tales From Topographic Oceans
Artist: Yes
1973 Atlantic
CD: 82683-2 (remastered) 2 CDs
Band Members:
Jon Anderson: vocals
Steve Howe: guitars, vocals
Chris Squire: bass, vocals
Rick Wakeman: keyboards
Alan White: drums, percussion
Produced by Yes and Eddie Offord
Lyrics by Anderson/Howe
Music by Anderson/Howe/Squire/Wakeman/White
Tracks:
1. The Revealing Science of God- Dance of the Dawn (20:27)
2. The Remembering- High the Memory (20:38)
3. The Ancient- Giants Under the Sun (18:34)
4. Ritual- Nous Sommes du Soleil (21:35)
Comments: (****) This is Yes' love it or hate it album. Although
the album made #1 in the UK and the US top ten, it also made the
top ten in a book devoted to the top fifty worst albums in history
(joining 1989's "Anderson Bruford Wakeman
Howe"). The album was the brainchild of Jon Anderson and is based on the
Shastric scriptures mentioned in a footnore of the cult book
"Autobiography of Yogi", a present to Anderson from Jamie Muir of
King Crimson. Many Yes fans regard this as the greatest Yes album
ever made. However, it caused much controversy, even within the
band itself, leading to Rick Wakeman
departing the band (for the first time) after the tour to support
the album.
Asked in a February 2010 interview whether the band "went too
far" with Tales...,
Squire answered:
You're talking to the wrong
person because personally I do think we did. I would have had an
album more based on the "Fragile" "Close to the Edge" model
instead of that album but I was sort of outvoted. Everyone
wanted to go on this one track per side sort of a vague theme,
with the lyrical guiding content. I didn't think it was Yes'
best move. But having said that, I think it also contributed in
the long run to giving Yes such a long career because it was
such a bold out of the box move. I think it gave us credibility
as we carried on. And then it enabled us in the 80s to do
simpler things, more a rockier side of Yes because we had
already established a pattern of doing things outside of what
Yes was perceived as…It's all good, it's all been a great
learning curve for me.
On a Sirius XM interview on the Feb 2017 Cruise to the Edge,
White was asked about the drum part in "Ritual" and how it was put
together: "basically the whole thing was kind of constructed by
Jon Anderson and myself". He described how he and Anderson
performed the recording. (HP, 12 Feb 2017)