Okay, okay! Let’s deal with the elephant in the room.
Hello? Dublin Zoo? Yeah, I think I have one of your animals - what? Of course it’s yours. Who else would own a - what’s that? You’ll see me in where? Well! That’s charming I must sa - hello? Hello? Dammit! Hello? Peanut delivery? Yeah it’s me again. I know! I know! You have any idea how much an elephant eats a day? What? No you don’t have a crossed line! I did in fact say ele - hello? Hello?
Well, I’ll with that later I guess. Look, this is the very last time, all right? I’ve listened to this so-called “perfect prog” album about four times now. It’s never impressed me as being any more than a very very good prog album. My disinterest in, if not to say disdain for seventies Yes may feed into that, but I have tried, and it just won’t click with me. I see it constantly at the top of lists like Best Prog Albums Ever and Prog Classics, and that’s fine. All of that is okay. I have my own opinions. Genesis? Their best album? As Captain Redbeard Rum said in
Blackadder II, opinion is divided on the subject. Everyone else says it’s
Selling England by the Pound, I say it isn’t.
But this is not about Genesis. This is almost in fact not about Yes, as such. This is about an album that has reached such heights and levels of praise and renown that, somewhat like perhaps
Sgt. Peppers or
Dark Side of the Moon, it’s attained an almost sense of unassailability, and the idea that if you don’t think it’s the paragon child of prog, there’s something wrong with you.
Well, maybe there is something wrong with me, because I don’t see it. Never have. The first time I played it, in concert with most seventies Yes I’ve listened to, I was bored. The second time I played it I was bored. The third time… well, you see where this is going. So don’t expect any sudden epiphany, or for me to see the light. I really don’t think I will. My opinion would certainly light up the “Unpopular Music Opinions” thread in heated debate, but as they say, that’s how it is. I’m not about to change my opinion just to suit the masses. Listen: I’d be happy to change my view of the album if it gave me a reason to, but after three or four listens, so far it has not. And I doubt this is going to be any different. But it is the last time because I am sick of trying to justify and explain, not my dislike of this album, but my disbelief that it is held in such high regard. Besides, I want to get on to the albums after it.
In deference to those who are reading this and who do love the album, though I reviewed it extensively last year in my Fortress of Prog, I’m not going to take the easy way out and repost that review. This will be another - as I say, the last (other than when I get to 1972 in my
History of Prog journal, damn: forgot about that!) attempt to, not understand or “get” the album, but to give it one more proper listen through and then explain why I think it’s only a great album, and nothing more. Not the Second Coming of Prog Jesus, not fuel for furtive under-the-cover prog wanking at night, not a fitting subject for building prog altars to and bowing down before. Again, I like the album, but I don’t love it, and I don’t get the reverence that it attracts. Will I ever? Probably not.
But let’s do this one more time, and after this we shall never speak of it again.
Well, we will speak of it one more time after that.
But then, that's it.
Really.
I'm serious.
Album title: Close to the Edge
Year: 1972
Personnel: Jon Anderson (Vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Rick Wakeman (Organ, piano, Hammond, Mellotron, MiniMoog, Harpsichord), Bill Bruford (Drums, percussion), Steve Howe (Guitars, Electric sitar, Steel guitar)
Track by track:
“Close to the Edge”
What I like about this: Organ work and keyboard work is great, not enough of it though. Vocal harmonies as ever are excellent.
What I don’t like about this: Can’t follow it, very disjointed to me. Bored.
“And You and I”
What I like about this: Nice intro on the acoustic guitar, great work on the keys.
What I don’t like about this: Another one I find hard to follow, just not interested.
“Siberian Khatru”
What I like about this: Not much
What I don’t like about this: Never really liked this
Bonus Tracks
The only one I see which isn’t either one I’ve already heard on other albums or an alternate version of one of the tracks is one called
“Mass Retain”
Okay scratch that: seems to just be a rewritten part of the title track. Not listening to that again. I’m done then.
Note: Again in deference to its fans, I'm going to try to approach this album and write as if I had never heard it before. So I won't be saying "as happened the last time" and so on; although I have certainly heard it, I will attempt, as best I can, to forget all that and really try to come at it fresh. I doubt it will make any difference but hey, I'll give it a go. Can't say fairer than that.
Comments: It might seem odd, as a prog head, for me to say this but one of the fundamental reasons I find it hard to get into this album is the paucity of tracks, and the length of them. We’re talking three in all, and while I like my prog epics, for me, not enough happens in the longer tracks to make them worthy of being that length. Not only that: they’re both cut up into four sections, but not measured, so there’s no way, that I can see, to differentiate between the separate, as it were, movements, so I have to take each as a full and complete piece of music. The title track comes in slowly and in a sort of ambient way, then bursts into a flurry of guitar from Howe and some pretty powerful drumming from Bruford, shimmering keys from Wakeman as everyone gets in on the act, Anderson letting loose a bit of
vocalise in the second minute, but other than that we’re talking an instrumental introduction that runs for four, settling in on a nice guitar line before Anderson comes in with the vocal proper.
Much of the melody is then based on a Hammond line with some powerful bass and guitar, with something (guitar?) making a sound that reminds me of morse code. Yeah. Good vocal harmonies, as you might expect, but as per usual I’m just not interested. Anderson is singing “I get up, I get down”, which is the title of the third part, so I don’t know if we’re there already or whether this just runs as some sort of continuing motif through the track; I would imagine the latter as we still have more than half the track to go. Some nice funky guitar from Howe, though I would say that at the moment, for a track that runs for eighteen minutes, I don’t hear enough of Wakeman here. He’s coming in now with a sort of organ sound, but I feel that up to now the track has been mostly driven on Steve Howe’s guitar.
Slowing down now in the ninth minute, getting quite relaxed and ambient, surely going into another long instrumental passage, a sequence there which reminds me of Peter Gabriel’s later “San Jacinto”, at least the closing section, now Wakeman’s keys are tapping back in and Anderson’s voice is low and almost muffled as he returns to the song, again crooning about getting up and also getting down. There’s a nice little melody about this piece, but as usual I know for a fact if anyone asked me to sing any part of this track even a minute after it’s ended I would have to shrug. It just does not appeal to me or hold my attention at all. We’re now in the twelfth minute, and it is nice to hear it all slide back to a nice restrained pace and the buildup to what I assume is another burst of guitar is nice, presaged by a heavy, sonorous church organ giving the piece a very dramatic, almost sepulchral feel.
I guess you could say Wakeman is perhaps making up for lost time, or at least lost contribution here as he starts to somewhat take over the track in its latter stages, and it’s good to hear, but for me this epic does not flow in the same way as, say “Supper’s Ready” or “Grendel” or even “This Green and Pleasant Land” does. It seems disjointed, disconnected, and again for me this is one of the problems I have with Yes: their music never seems to follow any real sort of pattern. I know DriveYourCar noted that they are more based on a jazz ethic than a rock one, and maybe that’s a point, because - newsflash! - I don’t like jazz. But I think it’s more than that. No matter how I TRY to like this, to see the genius in it or the lasting effect on prog rock (well I guess I can see that) or the reason why people cream their pants over it, I just can’t. It’s not for the want of trying, but I do have to admit that at this time I’ve become tired of trying, and I’m pretty much done with those efforts.
So now we’re at the end of the track and I feel no different. The second track is another epic, not quite as long - only ten minutes - also broken into four sections, also impossible for me to divide them up and know what’s what. “And You and I” begins on a lovely acoustic guitar passage, which immediately grabs me more than the behemoth title track that has just finished. Anderson’s vocal then is pleasant, and the harmonies are as always really well done. The powerful rush of keys is really effective, a slow, stately march that has almost orchestral tones about it, Howe adding some fine flourishes of his own. Again though, good as it is - perhaps even great - I find it hard to thread any sort of path through the tune and hook it all together. It’s almost like a few disparate and separate pieces of music with little resemblance to one other, rather than parts of the same suite.
Now we have what appears to be a sort of semi-country beat on the guitar as the tempo picks up a little, and we’re into the seventh minute. This turns into a march of sorts, the percussion slow and measured, guitar sounding a little discordant to me, Wakeman’s keys all over this, and then in the last minutes it slows down in quite an atmospheric, dramatic manner, the vocal dropping out and I think it may go full instrumental to the end. No, we have a short vocal piece to end. Okay. So that’s what, twenty-eight minutes of music and I’ll be honest: I could not pick out one piece of the melody I could sing afterwards. Hey, maybe it’s just me.
I’ve never had any time for “Siberian Khatru”, and I don’t see that changing. A lot of you cite this as your favourite track on the album, and that’s cool. You do you. In my case, if there was one track (yeah, out of three) on the album I liked least, it would have to be this. Rockier than anything that has gone before, very much guitar-driven and with the close vocal harmonies, it should probably impress me, but it doesn’t. Meh. What can do you? Nothing, that’s what. And that’s what I’m doing: nothing. Nothing more. I’ll review it briefly for the History of Prog, because I have to, but I’m done with this now. I don’t get it. I probably never will.
Now, everyone f
uck off and leave me alone. This is my last word on this. I do NOT want to be shown the error of my ways. I do NOT want to be convinced of how great this album is. I do NOT want to be told I need to listen to it 100 times before I can “get” it.
I.
am
done.
Thank you, and goodnight.
Rating: 8/10 (I’ll give it its due: it is a good album) but
Yes or No? No
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNkWac-Nm0A