This Day in Music History: Yes/Going for the One (07/22)

On this day in 1977, Yes released their eighth studio album, Going for the One. Produced after each member of the group released a solo record, the album marks the return of keyboardist Rick Wakeman (RW!), who departed in 1974 over musical differences in Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973). The band returned to producing shorter songs, unlike Tales and Relayer where the tracks range from nine to almost 22 minutes.

After their extended break, the band regrouped in Switzerland in late 1976. After constructing epic tracks for the last few years, Yes felt inspired to scale things back a bit and recorded some of their most direct and concise material since Fragile. Wakeman also varied his sound by using the new polyphonic synthesizer out from Moog at the time, and using church pipe organ on "Parallels" and the extended track, "Awaken".

"Parallels" was originally intended for use on Chris Squire's solo album Fish Out of Water, but left out due to a combination of space constraints and a sense that the song didn't quite fit in.

After many successive album covers with Roger Dean, Yes (who also produced the album entirely by themselves) instead commissioned Hipgnosis (known for designing album covers for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin) to create the artwork for Going for the One. However, Dean's Yes logo was retained. The album cover features the Century Plaza Towers in Los Angeles, also known locally as the Twin Towers. Personally, I think Yes and Roger Dean go together and this was a bad decision.

I have previously covered this album in more depth here: Side One, Side Two.

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