The tour was already booked. That is the whole explanation. Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman had walked out in March 1980, the dates were sold, and Squire, Howe and White were rehearsing as a trio in a London studio where the Buggles happened to be working. Squire heard a demo. Six months later Yes had a new singer who had just written Video Killed the Radio Star, an album that rocks harder than anything they had ever made, and their highest British chart placing ever. Then the British audiences booed him off the stage.

The short version

Drama is Yes’s tenth studio album, released in August 1980 on Atlantic. It is the only Yes studio album with Trevor Horn on lead vocals and the first with Geoff Downes on keyboards — the two of them arriving together from the Buggles, who shared a management company with Yes. The rest is Steve Howe on guitar and mandolin, Chris Squire on bass, Alan White on drums. Six tracks, all written by all five. Roger Dean returned for the sleeve, his first Yes cover since 1974. It reached number 2 in Britain, their best placing ever there, and 18 in America — their first album since 1971 to miss gold certification, and their first to miss the American top ten since The Yes Album.

The tour was already booked

Tormato had landed badly and the follow-up sessions, first in Paris with Roy Thomas Baker and then in London, went nowhere. Squire, Howe and White wanted something heavier; Anderson and Wakeman did not, and at one point simply left the studio, having concluded that this was no longer the band they loved. The sessions collapsed properly when White cracked a bone in his ankle roller skating with Richard Branson in a nightclub and was out for six weeks. They regrouped after Christmas, failed again, and in March 1980 Anderson and Wakeman were gone. What made Drama happen was the calendar: the tour was sold and somebody had to play it. The Buggles were down the corridor, riding a worldwide hit, and one of the things that sold Squire was Horn’s singing on an unreleased song called We Can Fly from Here — which the band would finally record thirty-one years later as an album of that name.

The sound

It rocks harder than any other Yes record, and that is not a small claim. With Anderson’s airy conceptualism and Wakeman’s conservatoire flourishes both out of the room, Howe and Squire take over completely: Howe drops the acoustic rags and flamenco for sheets of metallic electric sound, and Squire plays with an aggression he had not shown in years, locked hard to White. Downes brings modern keyboards, textures rather than solos, and a vocoder. Horn is not Anderson and knows it, but the timbre is close enough that the shock is smaller than the legend suggests — and Squire and Howe singing either side of him does most of the rest. New wave sensibility, progressive architecture, more guitar than usual. Whether it is the last proper Yes prog album is arguable, and people do argue it.

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The songs

Machine Messiah opens at ten and a half minutes, and putting the longest track first was a deliberate message: the Buggles were not here to shorten anything. It is doom-laden and enormous, and Horn does not appear until a minute and a half in. White Car is a ninety-second interlude that started life as a Buggles song. Does It Really Happen? runs on a funky Squire bass riff and Hammond chops, and bridges the seventies and eighties versions of this band better than anything else here. Into the Lens was written for the second Buggles album, and Horn and Downes took it back a year later and re-cut it as I Am a Camera, which nearly went Top 40. Run Through the Light has Howe on Les Paul and mandolin, Squire on piano, and Horn on fretless bass — the first Yes song with anyone but Squire on the instrument; Horn did not want to do it and Squire talked him into it. And Tempus Fugit closes: Downes’s choppy organ, Squire flanged and flying, Howe chopping reggae, and the fan favourite of the whole record.

Reception and legacy

The reviews were mostly good and the American leg of the tour went well. Britain did not forgive: audiences booed and jeered Horn and Downes for the crime of not being the other two, and Yes disbanded in early 1981. Everyone landed on their feet. Horn became a producer, which led directly to him producing the next Yes album, 90125; Howe and Downes formed Asia; Squire and White chased XYZ with Jimmy Page and let it go. Anderson’s reluctance to sing this material meant Yes did not touch it live until he left in 2008, and the album was not performed in full until the 2016 European tour, with Horn coming up to sing Tempus Fugit at the Oxford and London shows. All five of them reunited in 2011 to finally make Fly from Here.

The verdict

Underrated for forty-five years and worth your time even if the idea offends you. Start with Machine Messiah, all ten minutes, and note that Howe has rarely played better. Then Tempus Fugit. Then Does It Really Happen? for Squire, who is the real star of this record. Then Into the Lens, which is good pop with excellent people playing it. Close to the Edge is where you begin and this is nowhere near it. But the band that made this were energised, angry and playing for their lives, and the notion that Yes without Anderson is not Yes has been quietly demolished by the fact that this thing still sounds terrific.

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