purchase [The Yes Album and Fragile ]
I don't recall having ever seen an album production credit for "bank loan arrangement" before. It equally stikes me as strange considering that the album where I saw it was produced immediately on the heels of an apparently successful tour supporting the release of The Yes Album that same year. Woulda thought they had made some money? One explanation is that they needed money to buy equipment for their newly added keyboard player, a man named Rick Wakeman.
So, in February, Yes released The Yes Album, in the summer, keyboardist Tony Kaye is removed from the band, Wakeman joins, and in November, they release >Fragile<.
The addition of Wakeman accomplished the band's intentions to give more prominence to electronic keyboards, and it was Kaye's reluctance to go down that path that led to his departure.
Of these two 1971 albums, my personal preference is for The Yes Album - Fragile, perhaps because it was a bit rushed into completion, perhaps because Wakeman was still new to the group - doesn't seem to have the cohesion of a "band", but a band that does actually come together on their next album, Close to the Edge. The Yes Album is the product of a group that is working together and on the verge of defining the prog rock genre. The Yes Album is the band's third and the first with guitarist Steve Howe (who appears above at far right in the photo on the album cover of the 2nd album without having actually played on it).
Shades of Genesis?
