Happy Anniversary: Yes, RELAYER

42 years ago today, Yes released their seventh studio album, an endeavor which found them carrying on without Rick Wakeman but might well have featured a future Academy Award winner as his replacement if the winds of change had blown a different way.

Following Yes’s tour behind TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, Wakeman made the decision to depart the ranks of Yes, and for once the phrase “musical differences” definitely applied: he hadn’t really wrapped his head around the concept of the previous album and he wasn’t particularly happen with the direction in which the band was heading. While Yes was in the process of auditioning musicians to fill Wakeman’s spot in the lineup, one of those who came in for a tryout was none other than future Chariots of Fire composer Vangelis. In the end, his efforts came to naught, but less for his musical abilities than for the fact that – per Phil Carson of Atlantic Records – “Vangelis wouldn’t get on a plane and wouldn’t fly anywhere, and Yes were about to go on tour.”

By the time Yes entered the studio at Chris Squire’s home in Virginia Water, Surrey to record Relayer, they’d settled on Patrick Moraz as their new keyboardist. One thing they had not done, however, was shorten their songs: not unlike CLOSE TO THE EDGE, the RELAYER album features a single song on Side 1 (“The Gates of Delirium,” which clocks in at almost 22 minutes) and two tracks filling Side 2 (“Sound Chaser” and “To Be Over,” each lasting more than nine minutes). While this might have indirectly helped lead to the beginning of the punk movement, it still clearly made the band’s fans very happy, as RELAYER proved to be a top-5 album in both the US and the UK.