John Scott goes to see classic progressive rockers Yes at The Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

It has been more than forty years since John Scott last saw Yes.  Will he end up feeling fragile or close to the edge?  Read on to find out.  

In hindsight, Perpetual Change, a track from Yes’ 1971 The Yes Album seems like something of a prophecy.  Throughout the band’s history, members have come and gone.  Some have come and gone, come and gone, and come and gone again.  The current iteration of the band sees the longest-standing band member, guitarist Steve Howe, joined by keyboard player Geoff Downes who first joined the band in 1980 and has been in and out several times since; singer Jon Davidson; bassist Billy Sherwood, replacing original bass player Chris Squire who died in 2015 and drummer Jay Schellen, taking over from Alan White who died in 2022.

There are about half a dozen Yes albums that I like a lot but I haven’t really kept up with their output since the early eighties and I have to admit that I didn’t have particularly high expectations of tonight’s gig.  Fortunately, I was soon to be pleasantly surprised.  The set kicks off with the darkly- brooding Machine Messiah from 1981’s Drama album and it’s clear that this is a band that knows how to play well together and get a kick out of doing so.

Yes has often been derided for overlong, twiddly songs but at the heart of all the band’s best material is a cracking good tune and this is borne out time and again in tonight’s setlist.  It Will Be A Good Day (The River, from 1999, ) is a case in point as is Time And A Word from nearly thirty years earlier, the oldest track played tonight and pre-dating Howe’s time in the band.  Somewhat scarily, the time difference between the oldest and newest songs played tonight is 53 years.

The first half of the show is filled with fan favourites like Going For The One, featuring Howe on steel guitar and I’ve Seen All Good People.  Jon Davidson’s vocals prove to be a perfect replacement for Jon Anderson’s; close your eyes and it’s really hard to tell them apart.  An instrumental version of Simon and Garfunkel’s America seems to me to bear the barest resemblance to either S&G’s original or the band’s cover from 1975.  Howe clearly has a blast playing it though    Geoff Downes, surrounded by more equipment than you can shake a proggy stick at ( I counted ten keyboards, three laptops, two sets of bass pedals, three iPads, an ancient Akai sampler with a 3.5” disk drive and a mysterious box festooned with knobs) gets a chance to whiz round most of it during Don’t Kill The Whale. 

The second half of the show is opened by another classic, South Side Of The Sky from the Fragile album which is followed by what I thought was the only slightly lacklustre song of the evening, Cut From The Stars from the band’s newest album.  The centrepiece of the show is Tales From Topographic Oceans, presented in a 20-minute cut-down version.  I’ve always found the original to be a bit of a slog and I enjoyed it much more in its abridged arrangement, but I appreciate that diehard Yes fans may disagree.   It goes down well with the audience though and the band receives a rousing ovation at its conclusion.

The band return for a couple of obligatory encores.  Roundabout sees Billy Sherwood nailing Chris Squires’ fiendish bass parts, as he has throughout, and Jay Shellen deserves a special mention for simply getting on with job throughout the evening without the need for a drum solo.  Another classic from The Yes Album, Starship Trooper, produces another standing ovation from the audience and sends everyone home happy.

It has been great to see a band that was written off as dinosaurs in the seventies, and who has been through more than its fair share of internal turmoil over the years, seemingly rejuvenated and doing what they do best.  A case of plus ça change perpétuel as they probably don’t say in France?  Yes. 

John Scott

John Scott is the owner of UPSTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

Setlist

Machine Messiah
It Will Be a Good Day (The River)
Going for the One
I’ve Seen All Good People
America
Time and a Word
Don’t Kill the Whale
Turn of the Century
South Side of the Sky
Cut From the Stars
The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn) / The Remembering (High the Memory) / The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun) / Ritual (Nous sommes du soleil)
Roundabout
Starship Trooper