I know I am not alone in first discovering Yes when they released the now classic 90125 album on 7 November 1983. They had managed to revamp their sound for the 1980s, making themselves relevant and likeable to a new, young generation of music fans. It is still their most successful and most critically acclaimed album, even winning a Grammy (Best Rock Instrumental Performance for the track Cinema).
I was 11 when I first heard Owner of A Lonely Heart on the radio, where it got a fair bit of circulation in the Norselands. I thought it was great and was keen to hear more. It would take a few years, but I ended up trading my cassette tape of Europe’s The Final Countdown with a neighbour for his tape of 90125. We both came out of that exchange feeling like we got the better deal.
I was aware that Yes was a band with a bit of history, and had a feeling I would be investigating further at a later point. Everybody has to start somewhere, though, and 90125 was it for me. I devoured that cassette. As much as old fans see it as a streamlining of their sound, it primarily is a new approach to sound and arrangement. That transition had started on Drama (1980), which was the first step away from the swirling and orchestral soundscapes of the 1970s towards a more concise but still adventurous sound, still breaking new ground, just with the focus now being on the emerging 1980s flavours. Trevor Horn from Buggles was the vocalist on that album. For 90125 he was the producer, and he brought a wonderous arsenal of updated sounds and approaches.
The album features strong melodies and immediate hooks that struck a chord far beyond the normal prog audience, which made many older hardcore fans and self-proclaimed prog aficionados dismiss the band as hit-chasers. “As successful as Owner and the album was,” says songwriter Trevor Rabin in a 1995 interview with Tim Morse, “it has always been frustrating to me to be perceived as the guy who just writes the hit songs. Since the album and the single was so successful they have almost been equated with commercialism, rather than people just liking the album and buying it. You get a lot of credibility when things don’t sell.”
Without the burden of expectations or anything from the past to live up to, 90125 was and is an absolute revelation – an incredible feat of songwriting, performance and innovative arrangements. The musicality blew me away. In many ways, this was the album that opened the door to what has become a life-long love affair with progressive rock music.
Some songs are more progressive-minded than others. The album has plenty of hooks. There are many moments of instrumental brilliance. It manages to set a great number of moods. Some things sound like nothing I’d heard before. One of the best songs on the album has all of the above.
Changes was one of several songs that Trevor Rabin brought into the project. “I was looking for a record deal,” Trevor said in an interview with Keyboard Magazine In 1994. “I had written most of the 90125 album and I wanted to record these songs. I got some responses from various record companies, Arista included, that stated the stuff was far too left-field and wouldn’t make it in the market today. Consequently it became a number-one album. […] I sent tapes out and one bit of interest came from Atlantic Records. It came in the way of, ‘We’ve got a couple of bands together. Chris Squire and Alan White, and Jack Bruce and Keith Emerson.’ So there were two options. From a selfish point of view, I thought, ‘What I really need is a great rhythm section.’ So I got together with Chris and Alan.”
After some rehearsals as a three-piece, they contacted Tony Kaye to fill out the keyboard parts. He turned out to be a great fit both musically and personally, and the four of them set about rehearsing and finalising Trevor’s demos with an eye to record them for an album.
“The enthusiasm that we all felt for [the project] was really what you were listening to when you heard 90125,” said drummer Alan White in the Yesyears video (1991). “We spent eight months rehearsing all of that material. A lot of the success of that album came from dedication to a new kind of sound.”
Tony Kaye expanded on that in an interview with Keyboard Magazine: “We knew that the album would have to be somewhat simple. So we kept it dimensionally sparse. We wanted it to be more modern-sounding, we wanted to appeal to an audience that the Police or the new Genesis would appeal to. It couldn’t just be old Yes and the same old dirge, yet at the same time we knew that it mustn’t sound like Styx of Journey, those kind of American bands with vague English roots.”
Changes was initially written during a difficult time for Rabin. He had just moved to America from his home country of South Africa, where he experienced huge levels of success early on with hordes of screaming fans wherever he went. He wanted to remove himself from that and was optimistic about all the things he wanted to do. Speaking with Tim Morse in 1995, he said “I was with Geffen Records on a development deal and they just wanted me to form a rock’n’roll band and I was really trying to do something different. In a meeting I went to they played Foreigner to me and they said, ‘You’ve got to write stuff like Foreigner.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to, but thanks anyway.’ I thought I’m going through all of these changes, it’s very strange. And consequently I think that’s when that song started coming to me. It’s kind of a melancholy song.”
Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes
The initial lyrics were later rewritten with a relationship angle, focusing on two people who find that the love they used to share has disappeared, and growing feelings of alienation. The song’s initial feeling of melancholy would fortunately be retained in the lyrics. It sits so beautifully in the music and would be a shame to lose.
The song would benefit from two significant additions to Rabin’s initial demo. The first one ended up almost defining the entire song, and it is indeed impossible to talk about Changes without its intricate keyboard-played intro, filled with shifting minimalistic rhythmic figures and melodies. This part was created by Alan White.
“I wrote the lick at the beginning of Changes,” White told Tim Morse in 1995. “Trevor wrote the song and I wrote the bit at the beginning. Later on, I was in a mall in Japan and I heard the dun-dun-dun-da-dun-da-dun-da incessantly [on repeat] and it’s the only piece they used. So I kept saying to one of the managers ‘You know, I should be getting royalties for this!’ So It came up and I said to Trevor, ‘You know I wrote the beginning’ and he said, ‘Oh, I forgot about that, you did, didn’t you!’”
The second big addition to the song came from Jon Anderson. The original Yes vocalist had not been part of this project for most of its inception, but just as the band had recorded new band demos of the songs and were starting final recording sessions he reappeared. Rabin remembers it well: “Chris happened to play Jon a track at a party or something. Jon loved it, and came in to sing on a couple of tracks – which I was very excited about. I listened to it and thought, ‘God it sounds amazing.’ So we asked if he would like to join the band, which he did.”
Jon did not have the time to make a huge contribution to the songs on the album as they were already mostly ready, but he did make a few suggestions that were incorporated. One of those would appear on Changes, where Jon added a distinctive middle section which goes:
One word from you
One word from me
A clear design on your liberty
Who could believe when love has gone
How we move on like everyone
Only such fools
Only such jealous hearts
Only through love changes come
That section adds a huge emotional apropos to the rest of the song and is very effective.
The song (and album) was hard work, mainly due to the perfectionistic nature of the individuals (and producer) involved. Rabin told Relayer fanzine in 1985: “It was a difficult album because nothing was left untouched. A lot of times you think, ‘Well that’ll do.’ But not here. Every time someone wanted to do that, someone else would say, ‘No bullshit.’ And Trevor Horn is a very demanding producer, which is great. It’s the way I work. And besides guitar and vocals, I really enjoyed doing keyboards with him. After Tony had gone back to L.A. I did a lot of keyboards. And it was great fun working with him.”
Changes would go on to become a live favourite for this incarnation of the band, being prominently featured on the 9012Live concert film as well as its companion EP 9012Live: The Solos. It was prominently featured on the tours for 90125, Big Generator, Union and Talk. After Rabin’s departure from the band in 1996 the song was permanently dropped from the Yes setlist.
The song would however get a second life when Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman got together for the Yes featuring ARW project (2010-2018), when it would once again become a mainstay at their shows to the delight of 90125 fans everywhere.
Facebook Comments