"Tales From Topographic Oceans" : YES' masterpiece

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Tales From Topographic Oceans began with a single conversation between two characters at very different ends of the musical spectrum. There, in Bill Bruford’s London flat in early March 1973, along with dozens of other friends, celebrating Bruford’s wedding earlier in the day, Jon Anderson sat perched on an open windowsill talking with Jamie Muir. “He was an unbelievable stage performer,” says Anderson of the eccentric King Crimson percussionist, “I wanted to know what made him do that, what had influenced him.”

Muir enthused about Autobiography Of A Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. The guru, who’d died in 1952, was well-known in esoteric circles, and had also made a more secular cameo appearance on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, wedged between HG Wells and James Joyce. Reading Yogananda’s words, Muir told the singer, had had a profound impact upon him. “He said to me, ‘Here, read it,’ and it started me off on the path of becoming aware that there was even a path,” says Anderson. “Jamie was like a messenger for me and came to me at the perfect time in my life… he changed my life.”

It was powerful stuff. Reading the book prompted Muir to quit music and become a Buddhist monk, and while the effect upon Anderson may not have been so extreme, it was the catalyst that took Yes into uncharted waters.

Discovering a reference to the different levels and divisions within Hindu scriptures in a footnote led to a ‘Eureka!’ moment for Anderson as the group toured Japan. Convinced he’d found the structural framework within which to place the large-scale ideas and concepts he’d been mulling over, he found a willing ally in Steve Howe. Having written Roundabout and Close To The Edge together, there was a real bond between the pair.

Over several post-gig evenings in candlelit hotel rooms, locked away from all the usual distractions from life on the road, they trawled through a huge accumulated array of musical sketches and motifs, searching for pieces to complement Anderson’s thematic ideas.

At the end of a marathon all-night writing session in Savannah, Georgia, the basic themes and broad outline of the next Yes project had finally coalesced.

With much of that puzzle now in place, albeit somewhat loosely, Yes transferred to Morgan Studios in Willesden. Its urban location, on a busy road with heavy traffic, was about as far away from the countryside idyll Jon Anderson had originally envisaged for the recording as you could get. However, on the plus side, it boasted a 24-track desk that was more than capable of containing the band’s expansive musical ambitions.

The album received a mixed critical reception and became a symbol of alleged progressive rock excess with its detailed concept and lengthy songs. However it was a commercial success, becoming the first UK album to reach gold certification solely based on pre-orders. It topped the UK Album Chart for two weeks and reached No. 6 in the US, where it went gold in 1974 for selling 500,000 copies. Yes supported the album with a five-month tour of Europe and North America, the largest in the band's history at the time, that featured the entire album performed live.