In 1979, manager Brian Lane resuscitated the brand name of Yes by injecting two musicians from a slightly different ilk to the core group of Chris Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White. As The Buggles, Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn had just scored a No. 1 single in the UK and elsewhere with "Video Killed the Radio Star" b/w "Kid Dynamo;" but as a studio-only project, they found themselves ensconced in the same studio space as Yes, languishing over a follow-up.

One look at the album cover and once again you'd have to figure something was different inside Yes' latest album. Recorded at London's RAK Studios, Tormato was another step away from the band's epic-length proportions, as it contained nine (count ‘em) songs. "Future Times" kicks in immediately and races along in fine Yes tradition; Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman trade leads, while Chris Squire delivers one rubbery bass. In fact, that bass tone would lend a unique signature to the album.

Having spent the previous two years getting solo albums out of their system, the individual members of Yes were now pressed with the task of being Yes again. First up was a move to Switzerland (for tax reasons) to record; and second, oddly enough, was to dump their Swiss keyboardist in favor of an old friend. Rick Wakeman had enjoyed a relatively successful solo career over the last three years, but was up to the call, bypassing a possible group with Bill Bruford and John Wetton. Absent from the album though were two other friends: Eddie Offord and Roger Dean.

Following Rick Wakeman's abrupt departure, Yes set out to find a replacement for him. Short-listed was Nick Glennie-Smith (Wally), Jean Roussel (Cat Stevens) and Greek keyboard wizard Vangelis, but the band accepted Swiss-born Patrick Moraz instead. The classically-trained Moraz had been in Mainhorse in the early 70s; and more recently, played in Refugee. The band retired to bassist Chris Squire's home, where he had recently finished building a recording studio. The result, in some ways, was Yes' most un-Yes like recording to date.

Tales From Topographic Oceans has the dubious distinction of being either the mother lode or motherf&#ker of all prog rock albums. The initial idea for the grandiose album came to Jon Anderson from a footnote regarding Shastric scriptures in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Evidently, this was the grand concept he'd been searching for (imagine that!), and it allowed his lyrics to blossom into full-blown biblical verse. Together with Steve Howe, they put most of the initial musical ideas down during the same tours of 1973 that generated the triple-album Yessongs.

If both prior Yes albums had any shortcomings (and they had very few), it was due to growing pains. The Yes Album brought out the extended, epic composition, but suffered, perhaps, in execution. Fragile was well-executed, but only contained a half-hour of music—solo tracks notwithstanding. However, by the time their next album was recorded, the band had remained stable for almost a year. In the interim, Yes issued a massive arrangement of Paul Simon's "America" (similar to that of the pre-Clouds band, 1-2-3).

Yes' second album didn't break much new ground for the band, but it did confirm what most already knew: that they were a force to be reckoned with. In the studio, Eddie Offord sat, fortuitously, at the engineer's desk for the first time with the band. Yet Time And A Word wouldn't be the quantum leap Yes needed to propel them into the big league. In fact, the only leap here was Tony Cox's orchestral arrangements, a rather de rigueur post-psychedelic ornamentation of the day.