Dan Hersch & Bill Inglot 2003 Stereo Remasters for Warner Music UK/USA

The band would check out the bar first and then in no particular order, the size of the stage, electric points and quick exit routes (just in case). It would be all hands on deck for a quick set up, carrying in six or eight speaker cabinets and about four amplifiers. If they were lucky, they may have had time for a tune up, a sound check, a quick practice, and maybe even a beer or two, but pulling the whole operation together would have been a last-minute job. For the fans themselves, attending a Yesshow way back in the beginning was a pretty basic event. The lighting was of a very simple nature and the only special effects used on stage were the oil projectors, the simple but effective device popular in the seventies that projected fluid images onto white sheets hung from amplifiers.

Roy Flynn’s next breakthrough was engineering YES‘ appearance of the year, playing Cream’s farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 26 November 1968. Cream were the first real supergroup at the time and they would be playing in front of 5,000 people that night, so it was easy to think that, finally, YES had hit the big time. It was a significant event for YES – from then on they were perceived as pioneers of progressive rock music, as if Cream were passing down the mantel to the band of the next decade. The press were right behind YES and, following the Albert Hall gig, maintained that they were the band to watch out for. Within a few months, in January 1969, YES had an offer to record sessions at the BBC for John Peel’s show Top Gear, which was aired on 23 February. Among the four numbers they performed was the one which became the first YES single, entitled ‘Sweetness’/’Something’s Coming’, released on 4 July 1969.

The early YES years between 1968-71 were documented by handbills for gigs where the band played as support. From 1973 onwards, YES had their own programmes and tour merchandise, pioneering the use of mass-produced rock-tour memorabilia. The earliest piece of YES live memorabilia is a flyer for their appearance, accompanied by the Nite People, at the Marquee on 5 August 1968. A YES gig in 1968-69 would be listed on the monthly club handbills or flyers, most likely to be A5 in size and cheaply produced. The Marquee flyers were double sided, black and white, and vaguely resembled the design layout of a newspaper. The front usually carried details of who was appearing in the coming month, admission prices, a review of last month’s gigs, any special events, membership details and a stop press section – very comprehensive for such a small flyer. The back stated the date and a complete monthly programme of all acts and support bands.

For the first six months of 1969, YES spent their time in residency at the Marquee Club, only venturing outside the UK on a couple of occasions. As the attention on the band increased, Roy negotiated and secured a record deal with Atlantic records. ‘The band was doing really well in London, getting a real good name for itself,’ explains Jon. ‘It toured England twice. We were ready to do some recording. We didn’t know very much at that time about getting the right engineer/producer so we went and just recorded for about three or four weeks… At that time, there was an internal decision that we wouldn’t specifically try for singles. There were enough people doing that. We wanted to formulate some style of music and package it as an album. That gives you a better chance of staying around.‘

YES‘ first venture into the studios for Atlantic wasn’t hugely successful, however. The band were a little taken back with Advision’s studio equipment and felt that, although the music they had was definitely worth recording, they desperately needed a producer to help them pull it together. The one they secured, Paul Clay, had produced film soundtracks but never produced a band before, so it was a learning experience for all concerned. The band recorded their set list from the previous months’ gigs and added some new compositions. It consisted of a good mixture of cover versions like Lennon and McCartney’s ‘Every Little Thing‘ and Roger McGuinn and David Crosby’s ‘I See You‘ complementing new tracks by Anderson, Squire, Bailey and Bruford. A couple of songs from the album – ‘Survival‘ and ‘Looking Around‘ – would become YES standards.

The self-titled first album Yes came packaged in a gatefold sleeve with the original YES logo emblazoned upon the front. Inside the liner notes, a leading journalist for Melody Maker, Tony Wilson, predicted that YES would become one of the most significant bands of 1969.

The album Yes and first single ‘Sweetness‘/’Something’s Coming‘, were released in July and received good reviews and the album didn’t even enter the charts due to lack of airtime exposure. Nevertheless, the band themselves were just happy to get their first album out to the public and to work hard to improve their playing, arrangements and writing. Although Yes was a tentative start, it cemented a real home for all the members of the band. Bill Bruford described the band as a warm and cosy place: ‘I was an eighteen year old virgin, she was my first girlfriend.‘

The band supported the album with more concert dates in the UK and then went to Switzerland and Germany later in the year to play clubs and festivals. For the most part, 1969 saw YES touring, establishing a following in London recording another session for the BBC and gaining encouraging reviews in the press.

Early praise for the band was featured on the front page of the March 1969 Marquee flyer, which commented: ‘Finally, a reminder that the original sound of YES can be heard on Wednesday evenings in March and should be meeting with bigger audiences than they have been getting of late.‘

Excerpted from David Watkinson’s ‘Perpetual Change‘.