Close to the Edge

Close to the Edge contains three songs. The first takes up the entire first side of the original vinyl record at eighteen minutes and forty-three seconds. Bill Bruford, the band's drummer, has said the album title reflected his honest assessment of what it felt like to be in Yes at the time of recording: the arrangements were so complex they had to tape every rehearsal because they were forgetting the music overnight. By the time the album was finished, Bruford had decided to leave the band and join King Crimson. He dropped the news on the last day of recording. Keyboardist Rick Wakeman said he did not have a clue until Bruford's bombshell that afternoon.

The title track was inspired by the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha, and its eighteen minutes move through four distinct movements built from Jon Anderson's cosmic vocals, Steve Howe's guitar lines running between jazz and classical and folk without settling in any of them, Chris Squire's bass locked in counterpoint to everything around it, and Wakeman's keyboards shifting between organ grandeur and chamber delicacy. The band had been writing and arranging it since February 1972, recording at Advision Studios in London across April through June. When it was done, Bruford left, his replacement Alan White had one rehearsal before the tour began, and Yes went out and played ninety-five concerts.

If you have never heard progressive rock and want to understand what it is and why it mattered, this is the album that answers both questions at once. The ambition is enormous and the execution matches it. There is nothing tentative about any second of this record, which is all the more remarkable given that it was made by a band that was quietly falling apart while making it.