When Yes released their twelfth studio album Big Generator on 21 September 1987, it started a debate amongst fans that is still going on to this day.
The album performed extremely well. It went on to be a certified platinum seller with solid performances on album and singles charts. The tour for the album was triumphant, with shows that were more or less sold out everywhere.
On the other hand, some quarters of the press and fan base were not happy with the album, and some reviews were negative. This was the start of a still ongoing narrative that Big Generator is a flawed release.
This can be viewed on several levels. A big part of the debate relates to how people feel about the album as a follow-up to their widely successful 1983 album 90125.
Following up an album like 90125 was always going to be a challenge. It was after all one of the huge albums of the 1980s, signaling a rebirth for the band as well as their commercial peak. The stars had aligned (for a change), and they were riding a gigantic wave. Yes happened to be in fashion for probably their first and only time. How can a follow-up album compete with that? Even if the next album had been Close To the Edge, or any other of their classic albums, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. In 1987, any Yes album – even classics of the past – would have failed to live up to the pinnacle of success that was 90125 and the expectations it created.
To be clear, I am a gigantic fan of 90125 myself. I was also huge fan of Big Generator, but it is easy to see why people would flock to the former in particular. 90125 happens to be on a level that few other albums can reach. The songs are incredible, combining a melodic sensibility with intriguing – yet not too complex – arrangements. The band managed to make it accessible to the masses without compromising what they wanted to do. Big Generator has some songs like that – melodic and accessible – but also far more complex and diverse songs which would have challenged pop listeners to a much higher degree. While this is to be expected from a band like Yes, unfortunately for Big Generator, it is that album’s cross to bear that it gets particular scrutiny as ‘the follow-up album.’
Which is better? Ultimately it all comes down to personal taste, as well as nostalgia and personal significance. 90125 will always have a very special place in my musical heart. Not just for its quality alone, but for being the gate opener as far as making me delve into the world of progressive music. Ironically, this is the album where they toned down that ‘progginess’ quite a bit in the name of accessibility, but perhaps by doing that they made it easier for more folks to take those first steps into that universe and start exploring further.
90125 may have opened the door to the prog realm, but Big Generator pushed me further in, opening yet another door to how diverse a prog album could be. It was a much better showcase for the breadth of music that could be found in the genre.
Perhaps the band felt that people were ready to experience more diverse music with Big Generator? Clearly a lot of people were, myself included, although a lot of people also wanted them to stay within the slicker, established 90125 expression. To those people, Big Generator was probably not what they hoped for.
Taking a step back from the albums surrounding it might perhaps make it easier to see that Big Generator is an awesome album with several stone cold classics on it. It is much less streamlined as an album, containing a wider range of musical influences. It contains material that is more progressive than anything on 90125 – just check out I’m Running, which I personally believe to be one of the band’s masterpieces. At the same time, the band become more radio friendly than ever before with the AOR song Love Will Find A Way – a song Trevor Rabin initially wrote for Stevie Nicks, and she had even started looking closer at it when Rabin was convinced by his bandmates to pull it back and put it on the Yes album instead. Almost Like Love bounces along accompanied by a horn section (too much for some to take, which I understand – but I love it!), while the title track effortlessly combines ambient verses with heavy choruses, mixing things up even within the same song.
In the context of Yes, Big Generator is not a particularly challenging album, but the general pop/rock crowds who had come on board with 90125 definitely had their work cut out for them. Digging into the negative feedback is an indication – people were especially having a go at the wider range of styles and how they clashed, the changes in direction (why do they have to be so difficult!), as well as – fair enough – picking on a track that don’t hit the same level as the rest. Almost Like Love seems to be frequently singled out – personally I think Holy Lamb could have benefitted from more work to make it sound more like Yes rather than a Jon Anderson solo track.
Big Generator is definitely more all over the place stylistically than 90125. Does that make it a lesser album? I’ve never been able to see it that way, especially from the perspective of looking at how it sits in the band’s overall catalogue rather than just in relation to the album that preceded it. But this is obviously all in the eye of the beholder.
The band’s own perspectives are always interesting, although they will often be coloured by memories related to the recording experience itself. In that regard they might be on the side of the detractors.
Big Generator was a difficult album to record. We know this because vocalist Jon Anderson has said “Big Generator was a difficult album to record.” Books could be written about everything that happened (or should have happened) during the recording of this album.
Part of the problem was that the process was long and drawn out, involving several studios across different continents. Rehearsals for the new album began in August 1985 in Hollywood, California with 90125 producer Trevor Horn once again behind the controls. The pressure was on to make another hit in the vein of Owner of a Lonely Heart, which the band resisted in favour of moving on and doing something different musically. Anderson in particular was so vehement about this that Horn, who represented the desire to not stray too far from the previous album’s formula, decided he should sit out the initial phase of songwriting. As we can imagine, Anderson did not take well to that.
At the suggestion of guitarist/vocalist Trevor Rabin, the band agreed to relocate to Lark Recording Studios. This facility was situated by a castle in Carimate, Italy. It seemed idyllic and like an adventure, but ultimately, this location didn’t work.
Bassist/vocalist Chris Squire in particular became very disenchanted with the location and started doubting the motivation for going there. “I realized – but certain other people didn’t – that going to Italy to save money was the start of doing it wrong,” he told Guitar World upon the album’s release in 1987. “Inevitably when you try to do anything to save money, it end up that because it’s cheaper it’s not the best place to be – and therefore you end up redoing it somewhere else.”
Rabin later denied that money was a motivation. “We weren’t going there to save money,” he told Tim Morse in 1995. “The reason I suggested going to Italy was I felt the band really needed to bond together. People were living in different places in the world and I thought we should almost be forced to be together to create music. This place in Italy was a luxurious castle, a beautiful old place for us to record. I felt it would bond us together. But it turned out that there was too much partying going on and we didn’t click. After three months, Trevor Horn rightly said ‘This is not working here. Let’s go back to London.’”
There were internal as well as creative challenges happening in Italy, which contributed to the production being moved to London. While this improved the sonic aspects of the project, there were other continuing problems creatively which led Trevor Horn to end his work with the band.
“There was a lot of strange technical arguments going on between engineers and producers,” Chris Squire recalled to Yes Magazine in 1992. “I think there was more time spent in control rooms discussing if anyone has tried the new “XR-3000Z+7 Discombobulator” than actually working on the music. There was tons of that going on.”
Trevor Rabin agreed, saying “Trevor Horn was pulling it in one direction, us in the other, and nothing ever got sorted out. We had a lot of trouble, and eventually – speaking for myself, but I think everybody felt this way – enough was enough.”
The band would then move base to Los Angeles in 1987 with Rabin and producer Paul DeVilliers taking the reins. The band had now ended up where they started rehearsals two years earlier. A lot of people probably shared Chris Squire’s sentiment, who told Guitar World at the time ”So we left Italy, had to redo stuff in London, and other people weren’t happy with Trevor Horn doing it either, so we ended up doing it in L.A.! The most sensible thing in the world would’ve been if we’d never left here in the first place; then the album would’ve been finished a year ago.”
“That’s why it took so long and took a lot of energy out of everybody,” Jon Anderson said about this situation to Yes Magazine in 1989. “It didn’t breathe the clear air that we all expected it to. However, it was a very exciting album to perform. It was just one of those things.”
While the Italy stay didn’t give the project the best start, it did yield at least one significant result. One of the highlights of the album is Shoot High, Aim Low, which came out of those sessions. The song features a natural ambience/reverb that was captured naturally from the castle’s acoustics rather than being added electronically after the fact in the studio. This adds something significant to how the song comes across. There are some fond memories of recording parts for that song in the chateau. Alan White has often spoken about setting up his drum kit in the room where the king used to eat his meals in front of the fire. The ambience of the place definitely helped colour the results.
White came up with the chords while he was playing along with the drum box in the rehearsal room. “It was just one of those songs that came out of nowhere,” he told Tim Morse in 1995. “Chris was late for rehearsal, but Trevor [Rabin] walked in and he said, ‘Keep playing that.’ I kept playing it and he started singing this melody over the top and that’s where the song came from.”
Musically, the song is majestic, sounding huge while also coming across as introspective. The rhythmic groove of the song is reassuring and spacey, which slots nicely into the atmospheric feel. The song is hazy, hypnotic, and sonically alluring. Despite its calm keyboard layers courtesy of Tony Kaye, there is plenty of stuff going on – from the chaotic ‘white noise’ of the orchestral warm-up to the Spanish-flavoured guitar interludes to the rich vocal harmonies.
It is the combination of music and lyrics that really makes this song feel poignant. On tour, Jon Anderson would introduce the song as being about war – specifically a future in which mankind will live beyond war. He would refer to the song’s first line “We hit the blue fields” and explain that ‘the blue fields’ refers to a place found in Nicaragua.
At the time the album was being worked on, a legal battle between the U.S. and Nicaragua had occurred over U.S. aid to anti-government guerrillas. Yes were always known for their abstract lyrics, but this made it feel like they looking firmly at world events and getting specific for a change.
We hit the blue fields
In the blue sedan we didn’t get much further
Just as the sun was rising in the mist
We were all alone we didn’t need much more
So fast this expedition
So vast this heavy load
With a touch of luck and a sense of need
Seeing the guns and their faces
We look around the open shore
Waiting for something
Shoot high break low
Aim high shoot low
Break high let go
Shoot high aim low
In order to understand these lyrics, it is important to know that the song contains two separate narratives. It is hard to separate them by just reading the words, but in listening to the song, you will hear that some lines are sung by Jon Anderson while others feature Trevor Rabin.
The song starts with Anderson singing “We hit the blue fields” and Rabin following with “In the blue sedan we couldn’t get much further.” We know that ‘the blue fields’ is in Nicaragua, but what about the different perspectives? As it turns out, Jon Anderson portrays a soldier swooping in on a deadly mission in wartime, while Trevor Rabin is the guy who drives to the same location with a girl years later.
There were at least two occasions when American Marines invaded Nicaragua, and one of them, in 1912, started at the port town called Bluefields. That’s the part of the song that Jon Anderson is singing about – soldiers about to enter a bloody war, with the battle taking place at that location.
Jon Anderson explained to Starship Trooper magazine in 1988: “I’m the guy in the helicopter going in at ninety miles per hour and I’m going to blow everybody up. A very sick sort of situation. The song is in a way a dedication to live beyond war and at the same time Trevor is singing the dream of love: in the car with a girl having fun.”
Anderson would also on some occasions explain that Rabin is singing in “dreamtime”, while Anderson is singing in real time.
It is clear that Rabin’s lines are about something else entirely. He is singing about sitting on a beach in a car with a girl, the two of them getting very friendly with each other. The twist being that the car is parked on the beach at Bluefields years after the assault. Rabin sings, “We sat for hours on the crimson sand,” the full significance of the crimson perhaps not being clear to him. People died there years ago, and now Trevor is basically singing about trying to do the most life-affirming thing that a person can do in that same spot where people died.
Which takes us to the title of the song. Suffice to say, the duality of narrative in the lyrics is likely reflected in the title Shoot High, Aim Low – which makes them quite a bit cheekier than I ever gave them credit for. Chris Squire was probably involved.
This was to be our last ride (Anderson)
With the steel guitar and the love you give me (Rabin)
Underneath the skin a feeling, a breakdown (Anderson)
Well we sat for hours on the crimson sand (Rabin)
Exchanges in the currency of humans bought and sold (Anderson)
And the leaders seem to lose control (Anderson)
The band struggled with several of the songs during the Italy sessions, but Shoot High, Aim Low turned out to be a real highlight, with the ambience of the location being extremely suitable. There have been many positive comments about that song from band members, Trevor Rabin even stating “Shoot High, Aim Low is probably my favourite song on the album.”
The track was not released as a commercial single, but was released to US radio where it reached position #11 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
The song was performed every night on the Big Generator tour, where it quickly became one of the poignant moments of every show. It would typically last for about eight and a half minutes, discounting announcements (which could also go on a bit for this song). The band would often take care to give it a proper build-up without rushing it, with a somewhat extended guitar solo by Rabin as well as a different end section.
“Live it was a great number,” Alan White told Tim Morse in 1995. “We changed the whole ending, we went into a whole series of chord changes. It really built up to the climax.”
The track is both a band and fan favourite, which is why it is interesting – but primarily disappointing – that it has never been played live by the band after the conclusion of the Big Generator tour. Too many songs to choose from, not enough time, surely. It is also a factor that songs from Rabin’s time in the band wouldn’t be played (except Owner of A Lonely Heart) after he left the band.
Songs from Big Generator was also severely underrepresented when the version of Yes featuring Anderson, Rabin, and Wakeman toured in the last half of the 2010s (Rhythm of Love being the lone selection from that album).
Shoot High, Aim Low was likely brought up in ARW setlist discussions as it certainly wasn’t forgotten. Anderson was extremely complimentary to it in a 2014 interview (right at the start of the ARW project), saying that it was “magical” in live performances, suggesting that for Yes the song represented a return to the band’s progressive rock roots.
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