90125 Mk 1

Lately I've been listening to bits and pieces of Trevor Rabin's 90124. At first, I approached it out of intellectual curiosity as I was eager to hear the demos he presented to his band members in Yes and to compare & contrast how they turned out as Yes songs. If I've lost you already, let me backtrack just a little.

By the start of 1981, Yes was a done deal. Bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White moved on and teamed up with Jimmy Page who was newly free after the dissolution of Led Zeppelin. They formed XYZ (for ex-Yes and Zeppelin). They wrote and recorded some demos in 1981 but the project never went anywhere and Page went on his own path while Squire & White looked around for another gig. (Among the demos XYZ did record is an instrumental version of what became "Fortune Hunter", a song Page recorded a few years later with The Firm.) They eventually met up with Rabin. With the addition of violin & keyboard prodigy Eddie Jobson (late of UK and Roxy Music),the band christened themselves Cinema and set about recording an album. Along the way, Squire met up with former Yes vocalist Jon Anderson and played him some of the music they were working on and, next thing you know, Anderson had been added as a member. Soon Jobson left and was replaced by former Yes member, Tony Kaye, on keys. (You can see bits of Jobson in the video for "Owner of a Lonely Heart".) At this point the band's name was changed to Yes and the album they released in 1983 was 90125. The Yes sound was dramatically different than the one they had during their 1970s heyday. Progressive rock fans cried foul while new fans latched onto the band with their hit single, "Owner of a Lonely Heart". Gone were the sweeping keyboards and Steve Howe's faux-Chet Atkins guitar sound; Squire's chugging Rickenbacker bass was absent or severely reined in; the songs were shorter and more direct; and the often surreal, airy-fairy lyrics of Yes in their prime were gone.

Much of the material on the album was based on demos that Rabin had written in 1981 and brought to Cinema. The original idea behind 90124 was to present these demos. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the album was modified to include demos for songs that appeared on the subsequent 3 Yes albums. Still, there are several songs here that are part of the 90125 era. Of this bunch are 3 songs that appear on the album: "Hold On", "Changes", and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" all appeared on 90125 with those names and are very much like the demos here. Of the tunes from that era that didn't appear on the album, two of the three were scavenged in some way or another. For instance, some of the keyboards and the angular rhythm from "Moving In" were transferred to "Hold On". "Don't Give In" was became the song "Make It Easy" which did not appear on the album but the opening instrumental section was appended to the beginning of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" when it was played live. Finally, "Would You Feel My Love" was left unused.

Listening to these songs, the first thing that comes to mind is Foreigner. Rabin's voice, the rousing choruses, and the intermittent rushes of synthesizers all bespeak of Foreigner. The melodies, some of the lyrics, and the basic rhythms were kept by Yes. And so listening to these demos, one can get a sense of just how much the band changed, how much Squire, Anderson, White, and Jobson/Kaye de-Foreignerized Rabin's source material. If you're a progressive rock fan who hates 90125, you can be thankful because it could have been much worse.

I'm not really sure who altered the lyrics – whether it was Anderson alone or the band together – but thank Christ he or they did. "Hold On" went from a cheesy plea from a man to his woman to hold on because he'll be home soon and she can have his love to a song about having optimism and perseverance to get through all the crap that life throws at you. I'm thinking that if the lyric contains "dark citadel", then Anderson at least had a hand in the re-writing of the lyrics. And now that I look, Anderson is given second writer's credit on the album. The version of "Owner…" on 90124 is a mish-mash of two demos. The first bit is just Rabin on acoustic guitar while he extemporizes the vocal melody. This then segues into a fleshed-out demo with a full band replete with cowbell and an annoying little synth line that makes is sound more like "Low Rider" than the version on 90125. The bridge was dropped completely by the band and producer Trevor Horn, himself a former member of Yes, added samples galore and took Rabin's take on 70s funk and made it into a catchy and thoroughly early 1980s piece of pop. Rabin's demo for "Changes" was basically used verbatim by the band but expanded greatly.

The original tracklisting for 90124 was:

"One Track Mind"
"Hold On"
"It's Enough"
"Changes"
"Love Ain't Easy"
"Moving In"
"Who Were You with Last Night?"
"Baby I'm Easy"
"Would You Feel My Love?"
"Tonight's Our Night"
"Owner of a Lonely Heart"
"I'm With You"
"Must be Love"
"Don't Give In"

If you can't listen to 90124 at the moment, then these titles should tell you what the rest of Yes were up against.

Hearing these demos has given me a new appreciation for 90125. I have never personally hated it as many prog fans do and now I can hear exactly what the band added, many of which are traditional elements of Yes. I think that Rabin's voice works well with Yes especially because Squire and Anderson's contrast so well with it. The vocal harmonies never left the band. Plus there are a bunch of little touches. First there's the samples I mentioned above but there's also the xylophone sound on "Hold On", the fiddle sound on "Leave It", and the sitar on "It Can Happen". None of these timbres featured on Rabin's demos, though the last two songs were not demoed by Rabin or, at least, don't appear on 90124. And, although Squire's bass is much more restrained here than it ever was in the 1970s, there are little flourishes here and there that are absent from Rabin's demos.

I don't mean to come across as a Rabin-hater here because I'm not. Rick Wakeman remarked in an interview 2 or 3 years ago that, had it not been for Rabin, the classic Yes line-up together now in 2006 would never have gotten back together. He credited Rabin with keeping the whole spirit of Yes alive. I personally like how 90125 sounds in some ways to be totally a product of the early 1980s and yet in other ways it still sounds very fresh and new. The demos on 90124 give Yes fans a new perspective on what it perhaps the band's most-despised album. The changes affected by the band are thrown into sharp relief when comparing the demos to the finished product. For me, they take the notion that the old Yes members had sold-out and kicks it out the door. And while Rabin's demos really aren't super impressive and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" has surely been played to death on the radio, but the guy could write a great melody. "Owner…" is just blatantly catchy.

90124 is required listening for all Yes fans.