Product Description

Music of Yes examines the work of one of the most creative groups from the progressive rock period, Yes.

Unlike most books on rock music, Music of Yes does not focus on personalities, but instead on musical structures, lyrical vision, and cultural and historical context. The author situates Yes within the utopian ideals of the sixties and the experimental trend in rock music initiated by the Beatles and also taken up by groups such as King Crimson. Martin demonstrates the power of Yes's romantic, utopian, "Blakean", ecological, multicultural, and feminist perspective, showing how this vision is developed through

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #714717 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

From Library Journal
"Long-winded" and "pompous" are derisions routinely leveled against Yes, the kings of "avant-rock," and they often apply to this examination of the band's music by social theorist Martin (philosophy, DePaul Univ.). The author fulfills the dream of any Yes-fanatic by waxing philosophic about the group's entire recorded output, focusing on their "main sequence" of albums from The Yes Album (1971) through Going for the One (1977). Martin goes to great pains to explain the importance of Yes's "vision" and argues his own interpretations of their music and lyrics in excruciating detail. Unfortunately, he offers little external evidence to support his musings; nor is the coverage broad enough to be a useful work on the progressive rock movement as a whole. Having little appeal to those not Yes-obsessed, this book is unnecessary for all but the largest popular music collections. General readers may be more tempted by Yesstories: Yes in Their Own Words (St. Martin's, 1996).?Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Yes fans (Yes-persons?) will flock to this paean to the world of 1960s "art rock." Yes always engendered extreme reactions: either devotion because of the group's lofty aesthetic standards or dismissal as a band of musically flatulent poseurs. Philosopher and semiotician Martin displays an affinity for Yes and tends to overanalyze pop-cultural minutiae but valuably assesses a time when capital-R Rock music was thought to matter deeply in the ultimate scheme of the universe. This makes for some tedium, but Martin's points about the artistic aspirations of '60s and '70s "progressive" music are thought-provoking. Perhaps Martin fails to adequately factor in that "what it was about Yes that allowed it to be such a force for the people who experienced the music" may have been simply the fact that its fans were teenagers when that music was new. After all, to some, the music of Little Richard ("A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom") is deeply moving and fraught with metaphysical portent. For serious rockers only. Mike Tribby

Midwest Book Review
Rock music historians and enthusiasts will relish this in-depth survey of the 60s group Yes, which moved from a classic rock to a visionary band in the 1970s. This differs from most music books in that it focuses upon musical structures and history rather than biographical sketches of music personalities, benefiting from an author who is both a social theorist and musician, who's been following the career of Yes for over 25 years.

Customer Reviews

A Waste of Time
The title of this book uses the name of its subject primarily as a marketing tactic. The author is not a musicologist and the book contains no musical analysis worthy of the name. This book is an excuse for the author to present irrelevant philosophical opinions and attach them, no matter how unrelated, to the music - particularly the lyrics - of Yes.

If you enjoy untangling contorted prose - and numerous parenthetical qualifiers to such prose - buy this book; otherwise leave it where found and spend your time and money on something worthwhile.

This books gets one star only because it is not possible to assign it 0 stars.

Self-hampered criticism
Martin is good when he confines himself to considering music. He is himself a musician and understands nuances that have usually escaped the average rock critic over the years when they look at Yes music; those critics were often not real musicians.

The problem with Martin's book is he apparently has little or no comprehension to the messages that Yes music has projected through most of their life as a band: the outlook being communicated to the listeners besides the presentation of sound itself in what YES did. To make up for this, or perhaps because he has no other way of doing it, Martin looks at the lyrical product of Yes through the eyes of a Marxist economic philosopher. Viewing the Yes message of positive spiritual seeking in terms of such a materialistic and political philosophy is just not a compatible enterprise. And so it becomes apparent that Martin has never understood what Jon Anderson or Steve Howe or Chris Squire were talking about when they put pen to paper. As part and parcel of this we get Martin's predictable (it is predictable once one understands he is a Marxist) view that the music industry is criminally dominated by "market forces" which are evil and poisonous to music. In Martin's summary, then, Yes and other groups like Genesis attained success by virtue of a fluke atmosphere which prevailed in the late 60s and early 70s (almost like Yes 'fell through the cracks' of the market forces' roadblock to popular acclaim) and they have been fighting against those forces ever since 1973 or so. (When Acually, the cross which Yes has been bearing is that of getting reviewed constantly by rock and pop critics who should not be reviewing anything that has a musical validity beyond 12 bars or three chords).

But for a Yes fan, the book is worth it, because when Martin does confine himself to the substance of the music sound and the performance of it he has some good insights.

Yes, Squire, and "Das Kapital"
After buying the Rhino Yes re-issues, I was pleased by more than their superior sound quality -- I found myself charmed by the liner notes, written by one Bill Martin. It didn't take long until I ordered a copy of his book.

In "Music of Yes," Bill Martin makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of "serious" prog rock criticism. An analyses of their music from "Yes" to "Talk," the book focuses on "the main sequence," the series of remarkable albums from "The Yes Album" to "Going for the One." Martin's song-by-song look at these works forms the heart of the book, and his comments are generally both enlightening and enjoyable.

However, sad to say, his book as a whole suffers under several burdens. The first and foremost is Martin's political agenda. A committed Marxist, Martin can't help but see the music of Yes -- and the entire recording industry as well -- through a Marxist viewpoint. His constant tirades against capitalism, while certainly containing some thought-provoking critique, begin to grow tiresome very quickly. For the most part, the reader may just chuckle at Martin's tendentious attempts to shoehorn Yes into a Marxist mold; but when he begins to quote Mao and Lenin -- without irony! -- it's more difficult to indulge his polemical approach. Secondly, Martin feels the need to bring his topic under the full battery of modern academia. While I feel that the music of Yes is clearly worthy of critical discussion, Martin's attempt to drag Derrida, Benjamin and Kant into the analyses is often labored to the point of ridiculousness. (Though his comments regarding Blake and the English Romantics seem more on-target.) Finally, all too often, Martin comes across like yet another nostalgic and cranky Boomer, pining for the glory days of rock and roll while viewing the modern world with a school-marm's scorn. Endlessly lamenting the death of vinyl, Martin seems blissfully unaware of how silly he sounds at times, especially when he admonishes rappers with a sentence like "You can't change the world by dissin' the sisters."

If one is willing to overlook the many flaws and idiosyncrasies of the work, however, Martin does have some useful things to say, and his passion for his subject is beyond question. While I don't always agree to his interpretations of Anderson's lyrics, it's refreshing to hear them treated like something other than "nonsense." Being a bassist himself, Martin grants Chris Squire the lion's share of attention -- but then again, he makes a good case for the unique genius of Squire. While his apologies for Trevor Rabin left me baffled, I think Martin has a pretty good overall grasp on what works -- and what doesn't work -- in the important music of Yes.