Time And A Word

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. To their credit, the strings (including quotes of Gustav Holst's "Jupiter") work better here than on other albums from the era, thanks in part to Tony Colton's up-front production. The album has a huge sound, relentlessly propelled by the Squire and Bruford rhythm team. But the star of the album is the grinding organ of Tony Kaye; classic in tone and always in the right place, whether anchored to the rhythm, counterpoint to Peter Banks's guitar or at its best, to the fore. The band still aren't 100 percent on original tunes, as capable covers of Richie Havens and Stephen Stills songs comprise half of the first side. The Jon Anderson-penned "Then" is particularly satisfying, while his "Clear Days" benefits from Cox's "Eleanor Rigby"-style arrangement. Anderson's lyrics tackle some cosmic themes for the first time on "Astral Traveller," something he'd return to on subsequent albums. With his old mate in The Warriors, David Foster, they co-wrote both "Time and a Word" and "Sweet Dreams," two great pop songs that would crop up in Yes' live set over the next decade. The album managed to crack the UK charts, rising to No. 45. Banks left the band just after the album was released; so soon that it's his replacement, Steve Howe, who appears on the album's US cover.