Rick Wakeman calls this album Onion, because it makes him cry. Most of the band have said publicly that they dislike it. Eight men are credited — the only time Yes were an octet — but they are really two rival bands who were recording on two continents and got glued together by a record company. Session musicians were brought in to replace parts that Howe and Wakeman had already played, on tracks Howe and Wakeman had written, without their agreement. It reached number 7 in Britain anyway.

The short version

Union is Yes’s thirteenth studio album, released in 1991 on Arista. It combines two separate projects: material for an unfinished second album by Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, cut in Europe, and songs by the Squire, Rabin, Kaye and White line-up, cut in Los Angeles. All eight men are credited as Yes. Jonathan Elias produced, with co-production from Howe, Rabin, Mark Mancina and engineer Eddy Offord, back after fourteen years. Anderson sings throughout; Squire is the only other man on both halves, adding backing vocals but no bass. Tony Levin plays bass on the ABWH tracks as a session player. It reached 7 in Britain and 15 in America.

Two bands in a trenchcoat

Anderson had left the Rabin version of Yes in September 1988 and formed ABWH with Howe, Wakeman, Bruford and Tony Levin. Squire still owned part of the Yes name and threatened legal action, which is why the new band had to go out under four surnames — one of the great indignities in this story. By 1990 ABWH were at Miraval in the south of France working on a second album and Yes were in Los Angeles working on theirs, and Arista and the management pushed to merge the two camps and put the Yes logo back on the result. Squire and Anderson agreed. What followed poisoned it: relations inside ABWH were already strained, and Anderson and Elias decided to bring in session players — Jimmy Haun re-recorded much of Howe’s guitar — and added overdubs the ABWH men had not authorised. The Yes camp had barely any material, so a Rabin solo demo and a Squire and Billy Sherwood track were repurposed.

The sound

Two shorter albums by different groups, clumsily melded into one, and you can tell which is which without a credit sheet. The ABWH tracks are the progressive half — complex, vocal-led, ambitious — except that a good deal of what you hear is not the men whose names are on it, which is precisely the objection. The Yes tracks are late-eighties Rabin rock, polished and radio-shaped, and they sit next to the others like a different record entirely. Elias’s production is the villain in most tellings, and there is a real cost: the original progressive character of the ABWH material was altered without full consent. What survives is scattered and incohesive, and the honest summary is that the individual parts are worth more than the whole. Howe plays well. Bruford plays well. Neither of them wanted this.

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The songs

I Would Have Waited Forever opens, an ABWH piece co-written by Elias, alternating driving rock with complex vocal-led sections, and it is one of the two strongest things here. Shock to the System is the other: a hard-edged rocker with Howe riffing properly and Bruford holding a straight beat, which he does not often do. Silent Talking is the third ABWH track and the most characteristic of what that band actually sounded like before the overdubs. The four Yes tracks — the Rabin and Squire material — are sequenced in among them, and the join is audible every time. There is also a solo Howe piece. The running order alternates the two camps rather than separating them, which was presumably meant to suggest a band and instead makes the seam impossible to ignore.

Reception and legacy

Decidedly mixed reviews, a commercial success by the standards of 1991, and near-total disowning by the people who made it. Wakeman’s nickname has stuck harder than the album has. The Union tour ran into 1992, put all eight men on stage, and was by most accounts the best thing to come out of the project. Then it ended and everyone left: every former ABWH member except Anderson departed, making this the last Yes album with founding drummer Bill Bruford and the last with Howe and Wakeman until 1995. What remained was the 90125 band, who went off and made Talk. Every incarnation of Yes is represented here except Peter Banks and Trevor Horn, which makes Union the most complete Yes photograph ever taken and one of the least happy.

The verdict

For completists, and approach with the story in mind. Shock to the System first, which is the one track everybody agrees on. Then I Would Have Waited Forever. Then Silent Talking. Close to the Edge is where you begin; 90125 is the eighties one; Talk is what this band made next and is better than this. Union is worth hearing as a document rather than a record — the sound of eight extremely talented people being assembled by a label rather than choosing each other, with the guitarist’s parts wiped and replayed by somebody else. The tour was magnificent. The album is an argument with a sleeve.

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