Fly from here

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Fly from here
Studio album by Yes

Publication
(s)

2011

Label (s) Frontiers Records

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

Pop, AOR , art rock

Title (number)

6th

running time

47:28

occupation

production

Trevor Horn

chronology
Magnification
(studio album 2001) 		Fly from here Heaven & Earth
(studio album 2014)

Fly from Here is the twenty-first studio album by the progressive rock band Yes , released in 2011. After Drama (1980), it is the second album that Yes recorded without singer and founding member Jon Anderson .

Emergence

Prehistory (1980)

1980 Yes ( Steve Howe , Chris Squire and Alan White ) worked on the album Drama , but without a singer and without a keyboard player. The Buggles , Trevor Horn (bass, vocals) and Geoff Downes (keyboards), who just had a worldwide hit with their pop song Video Killed the Radio Star from their album The Age of Plastic , and with the same manager ( Brian Lane ) were under contract happened to be writing new songs in the same studio as Howe, Squire and White at the time. As big Yes fans, they watched the three musicians at work and Horn tried to sell them a track called We Can Fly from Here . Squire liked the track, and it was later played live by Yes, but didn't find its way onto the album.

The collaboration with Downes and Horn gave Yes the opportunity to fill the vacant positions in the band and the two became band members.

After breaking up with Yes in 1981, the Buggles returned to the studio to continue working on the songs from their second album and recording new demos , including We Can Fly from Here , We Can Fly from Here Part 2 and Riding a Tide . These three pieces were released in 2010 as bonus tracks on the extended version of the Buggles album Adventures in Modern Recording , We Can Fly from Here and in a live version played by Yes as part of the Yes box set The Word Is Live .

2009-2011

In 2009 the band consisted of the musicians Benoît David (vocals), Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (electric bass), Alan White (drums) and Oliver Wakeman (keyboards). Work on the album Fly from Here began in September of this year with Squire, Howe and Wakeman exchanging CDs with initial ideas for new songs. In March of the following year the three musicians met at Howe's house in Devon to discuss how to proceed. A month later, the whole band finally gathered for a ten-day session in Phoenix, Arizona . This was where new ideas were tried out and the first songs were written, including Into the Storm.

Now the discussions began about which producer to hire. The idea arose to ask ex-Yes member Trevor Horn , now a well-known and very successful producer. Horn agreed to work with the band and suggested recording the song We Can Fly from Here , which was left over from the 1980 drama sessions , but initially only wanted to produce this one track and, if necessary, work on the rest of the album supervise. At this point in time, Tim Weidner was scheduled to produce further pieces (he had already produced the previous album Magnification ). It wasn't until the end of the year that Horn decided to produce the entire album, and Weidner worked as a sound engineer from then on .

Horn thus took over the management of the entire project: In addition to We Can Fly from Here , the previously unpublished Buggles song We Can Fly from Here Part 2 (later Sad Night at the Airfield ) should now be recorded. At the end of 2010, Horn suggested that To let his former Buggles colleague and drama keyboarder Geoffrey Downes play a few passages of this material, Oliver Wakeman was quickly replaced by Downes: The reason was that Downes' much better known name would lead to better sales figures. Wakeman did not leave the band voluntarily and later commented on the Facebook page of his Oliver Wakeman band.

The recordings were made in three phases: From October 3 to November 12, 2010, the songs Into the Storm, The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be and Hour of Need were recorded in the Sarm West Coast Studios in Los Angeles . In addition, work began on We Can Fly (from Here), which at the time was not yet part of the long suite that would eventually be heard on the album. In winter Yes played a few concerts in South America (still with Oliver Wakeman) before the band went back to the studio in January.

From mid-January to February 2011 the band continued to work in the Sarm West Coast Studios. In January Downes came to Los Angeles, where Yes just recorded We Can Fly (from Here) , and contributed the first keyboard passages. In the second half of February he then worked again with the band. At this point Oliver Wakeman was no longer a member of the band. Downes ended up playing the lion's share of the keyboards on Fly from Here.

Since, in addition to We Can Fly (from Here), they also recorded Sad Night at the Airfield , which goes back to a Buggles demo called We Can Fly from Here Part 2 and was therefore planned as a kind of continuation of the former from the start, now came the Idea to combine it with We Can Fly . A third part from the Buggles era, the Madman at the Screens, based on a (previously unreleased) Horn / Downes demo , was added in February. Finally Howe contributed his Bumpy Ride . However, even at this point it was not yet clear in what form the pieces should be connected to one another. Also in February, the Life on a Film Set , which also goes back to an old Buggles demo called Riding a Tide , was recorded.

In March, the band went on tour again (still with Oliver Wakeman, who by then already knew that he was no longer a member of the band), while Downes in London's Sarm West Studios except for a few remains (on We Can Fly, We Can Fly (reprise) and Hour of Need ) replaced Wakeman's keyboard parts.

In the course of a third and final recording phase in April 2011 in London some additional vocal passages, Luís Jardim's percussion and some guitar overdubs were recorded and the album was finally mixed. Until the final mix of the album, it wasn't clear whether Fly from Here should be made into a loose sequence of individual songs or a closed suite. Finally Trevor Horn decided to group the individual pieces into a loose suite. Horn also had the final say on the entire song selection: at least one other track, Corner of the World, was not included on the album.

While the album was being mixed, Steve Howe contributed his solo piece Solitaire . It was recorded at Langley Studios (Devon) and Schwartz Studios ( Sussex ). With Solitaire , the number of guitar pieces was continued on The Yes Album (1971) with Clap had begun.

Track list

  1. Fly from here
    1. Overture (Horn / Downes) - 1:53
    2. Pt I - We Can Fly (Horn / Downes / Squire) - 6:00
    3. Pt II - Sad Night at the Airfield (Horn / Downes) - 6:41
    4. Pt III - Madman at the Screens (Horn / Downes) - 5:16
    5. Pt IV - Bumpy Ride (Howe) - 2:15
    6. Pt V - We Can Fly (reprise) (Horn / Downes / Squire) - 1:44
  2. The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be (Squire / Johnson / Sessler) - 5:07
  3. Life on a Film Set (Horn / Downes) - 5:01
  4. Hour of Need (Howe) - 3:07
  5. Solitaire (Howe) - 3:30
  6. Into the Storm (Squire / Wakeman / Howe / Horn / David / White) - 6:54

Remarks:

  • The arrangement of the songs on the CD is reminiscent of that of a vinyl album: with the Fly from Here suite on the A side and the remaining songs on the B side.
  • Pt I - We Can Fly goes back to the Buggles demo We Can Fly from Here from 1980.
  • Pt II - Sad Night at the Airfield goes back to the Buggles demo We Can Fly from Here Part 2 from 1980.
  • The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be dates from around 2006/7 when Chris Squire was working on a solo album with Gerard Johnson (like Squire Ex- The Syn and Simon Sessler) . After Can You Imagine from the previous album Magnification, it is only the second Yes song with Squire as lead singer .
  • Life on a Film Set goes back to the Buggles demo Riding a Tide from around 1980.
  • Hour of Need comes from Steve Howe, but is not identical to the track of the same name from his solo album Spectrum . A 6:46 long version can be heard as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of Fly from Here . The additional music is inspired by Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez .
  • Solitaire is an instrumental piece by Steve Howes for acoustic guitar.
  • A song called Corner of the World (presumably by Squire and Howe) was played with Downes, but ultimately not recorded.
  • A song called Aliens Are Only Us from the Future was performed live by Yes in 2008, but it was later decided that the song would appear on an album that Chris Squire wanted to record with former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett . The song finally appeared on this album called Squackett in 2012 .

occupation

With

Cover

The album shows many references to the successful past of the band: The song arrangement is reminiscent of that of a vinyl album, numerous songs go back to around 1980, the bass sound on Into the Storm is reminiscent of that of the album Tormato and Solitaire The series of Howes guitar pieces continued on Yes albums. In order to tie in with the design of the classic Yes albums, the fantasy artist Roger Dean was hired again, who has been responsible for many Yes album covers since the 1970s . The overall idea goes back to an unfinished picture from 1970. With two birds flying through a landscape in shades of green, Dean symbolized the title of the album, Fly from Here , a black panther in the background alludes to the cover of the Yes album Drama , also designed by him , which was recorded in 1980 with a similar cast has been.

Single releases

An abridged version of Fly from Here Pt I - We Can Fly was released on June 13, 2011 under the title We Can Fly as a digital-only single . The accompanying music video was shot by Trevor Horn's brother Ken Horn .

Chart successes

Fly from Here reached number 16 in the German, number 30 in the English and number 36 in the American charts . By the end of November 2011, 72,000 copies had been sold worldwide. Thus, Fly from Here the most successful Yes album since Talk (1994)

Review

Fly from Here was the most successful Yes album since 1994 and was received quite positively overall. Above all, it was emphasized that the band had succeeded in presenting another album after 44 years, which all in all can be considered a successful melodic rock album. The singing of Benoît Davids was also praised, which is more reminiscent of the Trevor Horns on Drama than of the singing style of the regular singer Jon Anderson. Horn's production was also praised.

Two points in particular were criticized:

1. Since the eponymous suite as well as Life on a Film Set were largely penned by the Buggles and largely date back to around and after 1980, The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be is from a solo project Squires and Solitaire is a solo piece by Howes is, with Hour of Need and Into the Storm only two songs remain that can be considered genuine Yes songs (and beyond that, new).

2. The second point of criticism related to the suite , which consists largely of finished songs that were simply joined together with a few keyboard chords and cross fades . In fact, apart from their tonality and lyrical references , some parts have hardly any compositional similarities, especially Overture , Pt I - We Can Fly , Pt II - Sad Night at the Airfield and Pt IV - Bumpy Ride . In addition, the suite always ends unnecessarily when one of these sections ends: this can be heard particularly clearly at the end of the first three pieces. In other places, however, musical themes introduced earlier are taken up again: Part III: Madman at the Screens is an extended paraphrase of Overture .

live

In 2011 the band played the entire Fly from Here suite with the line-up Squire / Downes / Howe / David / White and also Life on a Film Set , Solitaire and Into the Storm .

Sources and web links