The sleeve credits a bank loan. That is not a joke — among the thanks on the packaging sits an acknowledgement that Brian Lane arranged the money, because Yes had to get a record out fast, Rick Wakeman had just bought a mountain of equipment to join, and a tour started on 24 September. Which is why five of these nine tracks are solo pieces, one per man, and why Wakeman had to arrange some Brahms instead of writing something. It should have been a disaster. Instead it produced Roundabout and Heart of the Sunrise.

The short version

Fragile is Yes’s fourth studio album, released in Britain in November 1971 and held back in America until January 1972 so it would not trip up The Yes Album, which was still climbing. It is the first with Rick Wakeman, who replaced Tony Kaye. The line-up is Jon Anderson on vocals, Steve Howe on guitars, Chris Squire on bass, Wakeman on keyboards, Bill Bruford on drums. Recorded at Advision in August and September 1971 on sixteen tracks, engineered and co-produced by Eddy Offord. Nine tracks: four are full band pieces, five are solo features. Roger Dean’s first Yes cover. It reached number 7 in Britain and 4 in America, where it has sold over two million.

A bank loan and five solo tracks

Kaye had rehearsed this album before he left — his own words — but he would not move past Hammond and piano, and Anderson and Squire asked him to go. Wakeman came from the Strawbs with a classical training, session credits for Cat Stevens and David Bowie, and no objection to any keyboard ever built. Told the band were about to tour America again he flatly refused, then realised he was turning down a good offer. He joined mid-rehearsal on Heart of the Sunrise, and by the end of his first day the basics of that song and Roundabout were down. He was also startled by how much the band argued, and briefly thought they were about to split. The solo pieces were Bruford’s idea — though he had pictured something closer to his own track, where he directed the others rather than playing alone — and the reason they survived is money and the calendar. Squire said as much at the time: they needed an album out fast, and there were a lot of mouths to feed.

The sound

The moment Yes became Yes. Wakeman does not merely replace Kaye, he changes what the band is capable of: Mellotron, Moog, grand piano, harpsichord, Hammond, all of it deployed with a real arranger’s judgement rather than for show. Howe is at his most inventive, Squire plays bass like a lead instrument, and Bruford is extraordinary throughout. Offord’s production is the unsung part — the separation is superb, guitar hard left, bass hard right, everything legible inside arrangements that should be mud. The knock is structural and fair: long pieces and short pieces sitting next to each other never quite cohere, the same charge levelled at Tarkus the same year. What redeems it is that the long pieces are among the best this band ever made and the short ones tell you exactly who these five people were.

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The songs

Roundabout was started by Howe and Anderson on tour, inspired by the roundabouts the bus kept going round; the backwards piano that opens it was made by flipping the master tape, cued by Howe’s guitar, and Wakeman’s organ solo went down live. Cans and Brahms is Wakeman rescoring a chunk of Brahms’s Fourth for keyboards, because his A and M solo contract forbade him writing anything of his own — the same contract kept his name off the songwriting credits he had earned elsewhere on the record. We Have Heaven is Anderson stacking chants. South Side of the Sky is the underrated one. Five Per Cent for Nothing is Bruford’s thirty-five seconds, and the title refers to Yes settling with their former manager for five per cent of future royalties. Long Distance Runaround runs into The Fish, for which Anderson rang the band’s biographer at ten at night wanting the name of prehistoric fish in eight syllables within half an hour. Mood for a Day is Howe alone on a Conde flamenco guitar. And Heart of the Sunrise closes it.

Reception and legacy

Mixed at the time and beloved since. Melody Maker complained it went nowhere and displayed nothing but technique until Heart of the Sunrise finally arrived; Rolling Stone praised the melodies, the arrangements and the playing while accusing the band of a show-off syndrome. Both objections are answered by the record’s durability: this is the album that made Yes a headline act in America, it sold two million there, and in 2014 the readers of Rhythm voted it the sixth greatest drumming album in progressive rock. Dean’s packaging deserves its own paragraph — a crumbling landmass outside, a booklet with a page per member including photographs of their wives and children, a poem from Anderson, and from Wakeman a list of thank-yous taking in Mozart, a pub in Hounslow and Brentford Football Club.

The verdict

Essential, and the second Yes album to own after Close to the Edge. Heart of the Sunrise first: Wakeman himself says that when anyone asks him what progressive rock actually is, that is the track he plays them. Then Roundabout, in full, not the radio edit. Then South Side of the Sky, which is the great overlooked Yes song. Then Mood for a Day for three quiet minutes of Howe. The short pieces are exactly what they look like — a band with no money and no time, filling a record — and they are still more interesting than most bands’ best work. The five men who made Close to the Edge assembled here, in a hurry, on borrowed money.

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