Bass Player: Chris Squire

Those of us of a certain age remember hearing the news that, following the departure of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman from Yes, Chris Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White had teamed up with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes from The Buggles. THE BUGGLES??!!! |There was outrage. There were fears that the intriduction of the pop element to the band would result in a waterning down of the music and that there would be a thrust to become more commercial, a malady that confronted a lot of the Prog bands operating at that time. The end result was the album, ‘Drama’ which, whilst not perfect in any way, ended up with some strong performances.

The follow up was the album ‘90125’ which saw Jon Anderson’s return along with Tony Kaye from the original Yes line up in the late 1960s. The problem was that the introduction of guitarist Trevor Rabin did what The Buggles incident failed to do which was bring in an element of commercial pop into the Yes stable, resulting in their biggest selling single, ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’. Old Yes fans like Bilbo never really got over it. Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly moments of delight on ‘90125’ and some great reading challenges such as the alternating 7:8 and 5:4 bars that open and close this transcription of the tune ‘Changes’.