The year is 1972. An ominous backward piano chord emanates from the FM radio airwaves. Suddenly, an eerie mood is punctuated by a melancholic classical guitar. A sense of anticipation quickly begins to build. A baroque-sounding guitar fill is leading somewhere . . . A slight pause, then, a hypnotically serpentine bass line kicks the music into high gear. “I’ll be the Roundabout . . . the words will make you out and out.”
Catchy, cryptic, and instantly classic, Roundabout leapt out of the airwaves like panther pouncing on its prey. The instrumentation and arrangement seemed partly classical, but the music really rocked. Natural harmonics, a counterpart chorus coda, newfangled synthesizers, exotic multilayered percussion, and a rock singer who sounded like he belonged in a choir, these were just some of the striking elements that swept listeners off their feet some 40 true summers ago.
“I will remember you. Your silhouette will charge the view of distant atmosphere.” Roundabout dazzled lyrically as well as musically. But most of all, this was music that seemed to paint pictures with sound. Yes – composed from Chris Squire’s volcanic bass, Steve Howe’s angular fretwork, Bill Bruford’s deft percussion, Rick Wakeman’s incredibly florid keyboards, and Jon Anderson’s ethereal vocals -- marked a new development in rock. Yes was a rock band that aimed to have the same aesthetic impact as classical composers and symphony orchestras.
Roundabout conjured up imagery with sound. The tempestuous middle section (“Along the drifting cloud the eagle searching down on the land”) is as intense and imagistic as anything in rock. Chris Squire’s thunderous bass, Rick Wakeman’s lightning fast keyboards, Bill Bruford’s mesmerizing percussion, and Steve Howe’s tightly-coiled guitar work are woven together to create an atmospheric tapestry of sound, which listeners can embroider with their own imaginations.
Roundabout seems tailor-made for imaginative interpretations. Bassist Chris Squire has always been reluctant to discuss the meaning of Roundabout because he believes listeners should approach the song with their own perspectives. To paraphrase the novelist Umberto Eco, art should be inexhaustible. That is, good art, poetry, and music will always yield fresh new interpretations and sources of meaning.
In a recent interview, Anderson and Wakeman relate how they wanted to create music that would be of interest and relevance decades hence. Well, it has been forty years since Roundabout hit the airwaves, but in many ways the song still seems timeless. In fact, the Times of London once wagered that Yes was the one rock band that people would be listening to centuries from now. It’s an astonishing thought, but then phase that began with Roundabout, and which includes Close to the Edge, The Gates of Delirium, and Tales from Topographic Oceans constitutes some pretty astonishing music.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Roundabout and the Uroboros Motif
Yes is a musical supernova. For more than forty years the British progressive rock stars that constitute Yes have brightened the musical horizons with their eclectic compositions. Yes music can be explosive, heavenly, really far-out, but Yes music is also like the North Star which guides wayward travelers home.
Why rhapsodize about Yes music? Compositions like Close to the Edge, Ritual, Machine Messiah, The Gates of Delirium, Fly From Here, and Roundabout are ambitious pieces of music which exhibit “structure and vision” in the words of the philosopher Bill Martin.
Martin was the first philosopher to grapple with Yes music in a serious way. He recognized what many fans intuited; namely, that Yes music deals with some weighty issues, often in a profound way.
Yes’ lyrics are renowned for being cryptic and mystical, which has led many critics to dismiss the band’s work as pretentious and rationally unintelligible. What exactly is a Roundabout, after all?
Anderson has claimed that lyrics to the band’s signature track were inspired by a traffic roundabout he encountered on the way the recording studio. But Jon is too much of a poet for this rather pedestrian interpretation to suffice. As it happens, there is a lot going on in the song to suggest that the term “roundabout” refers to a cosmic process symbolized by the mythical Uroboros, the snake that consumes its own tail.
The Uroboros is one of the most potent images in the mythic imagination. Artwork and jewelry depicting the Uroboros date to earliest antiquity. Descriptions of the Uroboros appear in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Plato’s philosophy, and in the Hindu Upanishads. The Uroboros was a frequently used motif in alchemy; the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung believed the Uroboros symbolically represented the psyche; and the chemist Kekule dreamt of a Uroboros shortly before discovering that the structure of the benzene molecule resembled a snake eating its own tail!
Yes fans, of course, are familiar with the Uroboros motif; Roger Dean’s Yes logo endlessly feeds into itself just as the mythical Uroboros does. You can see this most explicitly with Dean’s Yes logo on the inner booklet on the Fly From Here album, where the Yes logo is depicted as a snake consuming itself. But the motif actually crops up a lot in Yes’ work. For instance, Chris Squire’s phase-delayed bass in Roundabout seems to double back on itself, like a snake eating it own tail. And Roundabout is a song that explicitly comes full circle: the ending recapitulates with the same acoustic guitar motif that began the song.
What is the significance of the Uroboros motif and the song Roundabout? To learn more check out my e-book “Yes and Philosophy: the Spiritual and Philosophical Dimensions of Yes Music.”
Why rhapsodize about Yes music? Compositions like Close to the Edge, Ritual, Machine Messiah, The Gates of Delirium, Fly From Here, and Roundabout are ambitious pieces of music which exhibit “structure and vision” in the words of the philosopher Bill Martin.
Martin was the first philosopher to grapple with Yes music in a serious way. He recognized what many fans intuited; namely, that Yes music deals with some weighty issues, often in a profound way.
Yes’ lyrics are renowned for being cryptic and mystical, which has led many critics to dismiss the band’s work as pretentious and rationally unintelligible. What exactly is a Roundabout, after all?
Anderson has claimed that lyrics to the band’s signature track were inspired by a traffic roundabout he encountered on the way the recording studio. But Jon is too much of a poet for this rather pedestrian interpretation to suffice. As it happens, there is a lot going on in the song to suggest that the term “roundabout” refers to a cosmic process symbolized by the mythical Uroboros, the snake that consumes its own tail.
The Uroboros is one of the most potent images in the mythic imagination. Artwork and jewelry depicting the Uroboros date to earliest antiquity. Descriptions of the Uroboros appear in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Plato’s philosophy, and in the Hindu Upanishads. The Uroboros was a frequently used motif in alchemy; the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung believed the Uroboros symbolically represented the psyche; and the chemist Kekule dreamt of a Uroboros shortly before discovering that the structure of the benzene molecule resembled a snake eating its own tail!
Yes fans, of course, are familiar with the Uroboros motif; Roger Dean’s Yes logo endlessly feeds into itself just as the mythical Uroboros does. You can see this most explicitly with Dean’s Yes logo on the inner booklet on the Fly From Here album, where the Yes logo is depicted as a snake consuming itself. But the motif actually crops up a lot in Yes’ work. For instance, Chris Squire’s phase-delayed bass in Roundabout seems to double back on itself, like a snake eating it own tail. And Roundabout is a song that explicitly comes full circle: the ending recapitulates with the same acoustic guitar motif that began the song.
What is the significance of the Uroboros motif and the song Roundabout? To learn more check out my e-book “Yes and Philosophy: the Spiritual and Philosophical Dimensions of Yes Music.”
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Art of Roger Dean
Roger Dean’s visionary artwork kindles the human spirit. Through his brushstrokes, boulders levitate, dwellings sprout from the earth, and pathways beckon into landscapes where the physical and the spiritual become one.
Roger’s art has a paradoxical affect; it transports us into an imaginative realm but it can also make us feel at home in the physical world we inhabit. Like many Yes fans, I became enchanted by Roger’s work as a teen growing up in the 1970’s. Roger’s fantastical landscapes were the perfect complement to the ethereal soundscapes Yes were creating in their heyday.
Yes is a band that paints pictures with sound, but their music is undoubtedly enhanced by Roger’s often sublimely serendipitous artwork. The music on albums like Fragile, Close to the Edge, Relayer, and Tales from Topographic Oceans can stand alone, but there is no doubt that Roger’s cover art for these albums fuses with the music to create a more total and encompassing aesthetic experience.
There is a timeless quality to Roger’s art, but in many ways his art seems way ahead of our times. The world of Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster, Avatar, seems like it was lifted directly from Roger’s imagination. The characters on Pandora tame winged dragons, which fly amidst gravity-defying island boulders sprouting trees. Images like these are familiar to Dean’s fans.
The inhabitants of Pandora exhibit a theme which permeates Roger’s artwork: namely, they are a people that live in close harmony with their natural environment. This motif has always made Roger’s artwork very attractive to me. The idea that homes and buildings could be an extension of the environment and blend in with it has always seemed to me an ideal worth realizing. Today, many architects are pursuing something along the lines of Dean’s visionary approach to architecture. For instance, the Metropol Parasol in Seville (Spain) and the Mediatheque Library in Tokyo (Japan) both utilizes tree like patterns to create environments that are as habitable psychologically as they are physically.
Much of modern architecture and our suburban and urban landscapes are alienating. Architects who utilize patterns and motifs from natural phenomenon like trees may be onto something, in so far as they create buildings that remind us of and reconnect us with the natural world. Roger has long voiced his belief that “journeying through a physical landscape can be a spiritual experience.” In a way, I believe that is the goal of art; to fuse the physical and the spiritual.
Roger’s artwork points in the direction of mankind living in harmony with the natural environment. His landscapes invite our imaginations to participate in worlds that are ideal, something more than real, but not quite impossible. Roger’s work is timeless because it can transport us into a future where art and reality become one.
Roger’s art has a paradoxical affect; it transports us into an imaginative realm but it can also make us feel at home in the physical world we inhabit. Like many Yes fans, I became enchanted by Roger’s work as a teen growing up in the 1970’s. Roger’s fantastical landscapes were the perfect complement to the ethereal soundscapes Yes were creating in their heyday.
Yes is a band that paints pictures with sound, but their music is undoubtedly enhanced by Roger’s often sublimely serendipitous artwork. The music on albums like Fragile, Close to the Edge, Relayer, and Tales from Topographic Oceans can stand alone, but there is no doubt that Roger’s cover art for these albums fuses with the music to create a more total and encompassing aesthetic experience.
There is a timeless quality to Roger’s art, but in many ways his art seems way ahead of our times. The world of Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster, Avatar, seems like it was lifted directly from Roger’s imagination. The characters on Pandora tame winged dragons, which fly amidst gravity-defying island boulders sprouting trees. Images like these are familiar to Dean’s fans.
The inhabitants of Pandora exhibit a theme which permeates Roger’s artwork: namely, they are a people that live in close harmony with their natural environment. This motif has always made Roger’s artwork very attractive to me. The idea that homes and buildings could be an extension of the environment and blend in with it has always seemed to me an ideal worth realizing. Today, many architects are pursuing something along the lines of Dean’s visionary approach to architecture. For instance, the Metropol Parasol in Seville (Spain) and the Mediatheque Library in Tokyo (Japan) both utilizes tree like patterns to create environments that are as habitable psychologically as they are physically.
Much of modern architecture and our suburban and urban landscapes are alienating. Architects who utilize patterns and motifs from natural phenomenon like trees may be onto something, in so far as they create buildings that remind us of and reconnect us with the natural world. Roger has long voiced his belief that “journeying through a physical landscape can be a spiritual experience.” In a way, I believe that is the goal of art; to fuse the physical and the spiritual.
Roger’s artwork points in the direction of mankind living in harmony with the natural environment. His landscapes invite our imaginations to participate in worlds that are ideal, something more than real, but not quite impossible. Roger’s work is timeless because it can transport us into a future where art and reality become one.
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