Music Banter - Yes: Close to the Edge- 1972

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Quote:

I think the abstractness of the lyrics help prevent the album from turning into a complete cheesefest. I mean, just imagine if they were to tackle the subject in a more literal, straight-forward sense.

The idea that you can just sing words that carry some kind of association you want in your music without necessarily stringing them together to shape meaning in the form of complete sentences - as they do in Siberian Khatru - is a really cool idea, I think.

I think it would de-cheesify it if anything. I find the track And You and I to be especially annoying lyrically, the song is quite meaningless to my mind.

If I understand Herman Hesse's Siddartha correctly, the "river" is a river of life and being close to it is a metaphor for being close to the previous (and future) lifetimes your soul has lived .. You know, all reincarnation and mystic stuff. The inspiration for the album itself is just abstract or metaphorical and I can't imagine it would be less cheesy if the song tried to explain all this to us in literal detail.

So we may just have to agree to disagree on that.

I have this record on vinyl. I like the second side a bit more than the first side. And by that, I mean..."And You and I"