The album that almost broke prog-rock band Yes: “We went to the ends of the Earth”
By the very nature of its name, progressive rock is meant to be progressive. This should be a good enough reason for bands within this world to see no limits to their ambitiousness, and not have members finding ways to criticise an overabundance of ideas.
While they would have been less bound to follow the definition of their own name, you’d still expect Yes, one of prog rock’s most celebrated acts, to have approached everything with a can-do attitude and a fearlessness that translated into wanting to push themselves.
On their first two records, the self-titled Yes and Time and a Word, the group were arguably still finding their feet, but after a couple of personnel changes, replacing guitarist Peter Banks with Steve Howe, and keyboard player Tony Kaye with Rick Wakeman, they went on a run of outstanding albums that set a benchmark for all other prog bands to aim for.
The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge, all released within a span of 19 months, are regularly considered to be masterpieces by fans and critics, but when you’ve released three ambitious records on the trot, the tiredness is inevitably going to start kicking in. While this may spur some people to take the ambitiousness to an even greater extent in an act of exhausted delirium, others are going to want to take the initiative to dial things back.
Drummer Bill Bruford left after recording Close to the Edge citing the difficult creation of the record, stating that he didn’t feel as though he could offer much more to the band. While subsequently joining King Crimson could be seen as something of a busman’s holiday, at least he took the initiative to leave the band before things went too far out of control, whereas Wakeman was stuck with a band he came to actively resent during the next album’s recording sessions.
Tales From Topographic Oceans suffers most from its own scope, with the band opting to write a concept album of four songs, all in the realm of 20 minutes in length. Taking themes from Hindu texts, frontman Jon Anderson and Howe worked on the majority of the ideas together, but Wakeman found the entire concept to be overblown and laborious to contribute to. It was certainly more ambitious than Close to the Edge was, but ultimately, there was no need for it to be. What Yes had ultimately done was teetered over the edge.
Despite the negative reception from fans and the rifts it created within the band itself, Howe still stands by the album in spite of its flaws. In a 2025 interview with Guitar Player, he reflected on the creation of the album, essentially confirming that he had no regrets about the lengths they went to to complete the album.
“It was a time of spreading our wings, a wonderful project where we went to the ends of the Earth to do it,” he explained. “I don’t think we’d be the same group without it.”
Yes would, of course, rethink their approach and recover on multiple occasions after the release of this divisive record, and while it’s not their most beloved record, at least Howe still sees it as being the sound of a band taking the progressive nature of prog rock to its logical conclusion.
