Music Arcades: Yes: Tormato

This is the first Yes album I bought, and the one I probably still listen to most often (about once a year). The first version I got, either just before or just after Christmas 1978, was on cassette, and then I must have bought this LP copy a couple of years later.

I don't think Tormato is popular even among Yes fans, but I like extra discipline and conciseness it has. I also count this as the last proper Yes album: the later incarnations with Trevor Horne and Trevor Rabin seemed to be completely different entities, and even when both Jon Anderson and Steve Howe were back on board, I was past taking them seriously. I heard that Magnification was good, but I haven't heard it, and it seems implausible.

At different times over the years, different songs on the album came into focus for me. I always loved the exuberant way the album kicks off with Future Times and Rejoice — great drumming on Future Times; and that's not something I say often. I liked Don't Kill the Whale to start off with, but went off it ages ago. I used to think Madrigal was annoying and fey, until the time I was living in Munich in 1983 with no music to listen to apart from Radio Luxembourg. One day I heard a snatch of music through a car door on the street. I didn't recognise what it was at first, but played it through in my head and realised it was Madrigal. I sang it to myself for weeks afterwards. Even Circus of Heaven and On the Silent Wings of Freedom have caught my ear at some point, notwithstanding the cringe-inducing appearance of Jon Anderson's four- or five-year-old son Damian on the former. Damian, now 30-ish, was in the audience at the Jon Anderson gig I went to last year, and there was some refreshingly robust and un-mystical banter between father and son between the songs.