Yes –

It’s an odd thing to do, to write a lengthy analysis of a song that was recorded 30 years ago.  Typically in the field of rock music, songs get written about only when they are first released, and the writing is a particular type: a review for the purpose of letting the reader know whether it’s worth buying the music.  At the risk of stating the obvious, this is not a review.  It’s just an essay on what a particular song means to me.  The fact that it is 30 years old is immaterial, nor does it have much to do with the question of whether the listener would like it or not.  But the fact that I still listen to it often, and it still has tremendous power for me, is what it’s all about.

CONTEXT:

By the fall of 1974, Yes had been enjoying success for several years.  Beginning with The Yes Album in 1971, they were very popular. Never a band to pay much attention to the rules, they began to push the boundaries of what a rock song could be (in part because they never considered themselves a rock band – they simply ignored the question of genre and played whatever they wanted to).  The most obvious sign of this was the growing length of their songs, from the 3-minute more traditional pop songs from their 1969 and 1970 albums, to 8- to 10-minute pieces on The Yes Album and Fragile, to the 20-minute song “Close To The Edge” in 1972 (the shortest song on that album was 8:57).  What is most amazing to listeners like myself is to hear them talk about the somewhat haphazard way in which they pieced together these lengthy pieces: they did not go into the studio thinking, “Let’s make a 20-minute symphony with 4 movements.”  Instead, they would record a segment, leave the studio, come backand say, “What can we add on to that piece?” until they had reached the 20-minute limit of an LP side.  The reason it is so hard for us to believe that description is because those long pieces have such incredibly symmetry and wholeness.

In “Tales from Topographic Oceans,” they continued the trend even further, recording four side-long songs, each one in the 18- to 20-minute range, much of it downright weird.  Not only was the music “really out there,” but the lyrics were getting far outside the mainstream, delving into the depths of eastern mystic religion and words in unknown languages (side 3 includes this lyric sequence: “Sol, dhoop, sun, ilios, naytheet, ah kin, saule, tonatiuh, qurax, gunes, grian, surie, ir, samse”).  Clearly they didn’t spend one minute worrying about getting radio airplay or turning off the less open-minded fans.  One person they did turn off, however, was their own keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and he quit, to be replaced by Swiss keyboard whiz Patrick Moraz.  They wasted no time in recording their next album, “Relayer,” which was just as adventurous as their previous few albums, and once again featured no songs shorter than 9 minutes.  (The word “relayer” was used as a chorus in their previousalbum, although no explanation is given of what it means.)  It should be noted that their popularity did not wane, however, and when they went on tour to perform Relayer live, they played to huge audiences, including a crowd of over 100,000 people in Philadelphia.

It should also be noted that this is where I came in.  I became a Yes fan shortly after I turned 14, thanks to my older brother giving me “The Yes Album” as a Christmas present in 1974.  It was intimidating music, to say the least, but it lit a fire under me that spread quickly and I began to seek out other Yes albums.  Keep in mind that I was broke, so purchasing a new record album was something I could do only rarely and with great trepidation.  Yes music was so unusual that before I bought a new album I wanted some assurances that it would be something I could tolerate, and eventually learn to like.  But in 1975, I made a discovery that changed my life: I discovered that public libraries have record albums in addition to books.  I remember coming home from the library, with my plastic-sheathed library copy of “Relayer” under my arm, chanting to myself: “I beat the system! I beat the system!”  I put that record on our cheesy old fold-up record player, and let it take me away.  Or, todescribe it more accurately, I began the rather long and somewhat taxing process of learning to understand the music.

Not easy.

Thirty years later, I own every Yes album (in one form or another), have seen them in concert eight times, have read numerous books about the band, own quite a few concert and interview videos/DVDs, visit their website frequently, and still listen to their music more than any of the other 400 CDs in my collection.  And “Relayer” is still my favourite, despite the fact that it is not “easy listening.”  It works best when you can give it undivided attention for 40 minutes, and that doesn’t happen every day.

But it’s worth the attention. Especially the longest song, the 22-minute epic “Gates of Delirium.”  In my analysis, I will refer to interviews and commentary from several sources: Tim Morse’s 1996 interview collection “Yesstories: Yes In Their Own Words,” Chris Welch’s 1999 biography “Close To The Edge: The Story Of Yes,” and Billy Martin’s 1996 academic analysis of the band’s music and lyrics, “Music of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rock.”  I will also be referring to other versions of the song: the live version from Yesshows (1980), an unfinished “studio run-through” that was released in 2003, and the live version backed by an orchestra from 2002.

I will also take advantage of modern technology to talk about the song in a very specific way that previous music technology didn’t allow: I will refer to the specific minute and second in which changes occur (i.e. “the chord change at 02:34”), so the reader can follow exactly what portion I’m talking about.

Despite reading many interviews in which this song has been discussed, I have never heard any explanation of what the title means.  I will just say, for those not familiar with Jon Anderson’s unusual lyrics, that I generally find his words to be a mixture of profound, beautiful thoughts, and lyrics that … well, don’t always make sense.  He has admitted that his lyric choices are sometimes driven by phonetic rather than semantic concerns (i.e. sometimes his lyrics are just syllables that sound good rather than make logical sense in a straightforward way).  Printing his lyrics on the page, I can see that his phrases, including the most meaningful to me, are sometimes laced with spare words that I am used to overlooking when thinking about the meaning of the lyrics.  Those extra words and phrases, however, do make his lyrics less than conversational.

Still, everyone is clear on what this song is all about: “it’s a war song, a battle scene” (Jon Anderson, Yesstories), and is, according to Chris Welch, inspired by Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  Billy Martin wrote nearly 3,000 words on the philosophical view of war that the song espouses, citing Jean-Peal Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Theodor Adorno, Karl Marx and Plato in his discussion.

I think it is about more than war.  Perhaps it is because I am a religious person by nature, perhaps because of the overt religious references in Yes’ previous album and later works, but I see it in spiritual terms.  To me it is about an internal battle, what Emanuel Swedenborg calls spiritual tests or temptation.  In my religion, these times of spiritual battle are the core of our spiritual growth, the key events in our progress to heaven.

And the song, despite its extreme complexity and length, has a simple message: these spiritual battles are not easy.  Billy Martin (musician and philosophy professor) discusses the optimism underlying the band (the name of the band is, after all, the most positive word there is), but points out that their songs “are not quite the flower-power anthems that some would make them out to be. The undercurrent is … a recognition that accomplishing something in this world, especially creating significance itself, requires hard work and commitment, and there is no simple, straightforward road toward a redeemed world” (p. 34).  Yessongs are primarily about spiritual growth, in my view, but the core message is that such growth is difficult.  That is why the music is complex – because the process it is ultimately describing, the process of becoming an angel, is complex.  Yes music is rarely “simple, straightforward,” and in that way it supports that lyrical theme.  To me, the message isrepresented nowhere more clearly than in “The Gates of Delirium.”

What do I mean by spiritual growth?  Perhaps the best place to start, since I am writing this on December 30th, is with new year’s resolutions.  “I will be a better person.”  It starts with the recognition of the need for improvement – there is something not so great about me, and I need to change.  The simple impulse is to say that it’s easy: pick a bad habit, and quit doing it.  “I will quit smoking”; “I will stop being critical of others”; “I will control my anger.”  By mid-January, most people have abandoned those resolutions, and no progress has been made.  Why is life so difficult?  Because, as is made clear in Swedenborg’s Writings, if life is simple and easy, nothing ever changes.  But just how hard the process of change can be is worth exploring in a long musical journey.

Gates of Delirium is also a very vertical song.  All of the musical themes revolve around ascending and descending lines.  Despite the phenomenal complexity, much of the song revolves around simple scales – going up, going down.  Martin talks about the cover painting for the album, showing warriors on horseback, “descending into the Earth” (p. 163).  It is also worth noting that the primary visual element in that cover painting is not the soldiers, but the impossibly steep cliffs towering over them.

The song begins with that new year’s eve optimism.  The opening sounds are light as a feather, swirling fireflies: both the bass guitarist (Chris Squire) and the lead guitarist (Steve Howe) are playing harmonics – the kind of note you produce by just resting your fingers lightly on the string instead of pushing down against the fingerboard.  Playing chords on a bass guitar is unusual, and here Squire gets away with it because they are harmonic chords (reminiscent of the opening harmonic chords from the intro to Yes’ most famous song to date, Roundabout).  Their new keyboard player, Patrick Moraz, is using the newly developed synthesizer technology to create thin clouds of sound hovering above, and the drummer Alan White is tinkling lightly all over the cymbals at top speed.

Songs are often described simply in terms of their chord sequence, as if to describe the chord structure is to describe the song.  The first real chord, the first musical statement with any gravity to it, occurs at 00:28.  This you could describe as the statement of promise: “I will be a better person, I will regenerate.”  It immediately reverts back to the light tones, but the statement returns again a few seconds later, longer this time.  It takes several tries to formulate the full statement – but it should be pointed out, even during those firefly sequences, Howe is flying over his strings at impossible speed.  Relayer is arguably Yes’ best “show-off” album, and it is clear from the onset that few other bands could play this kind of music.

At 01:24, a solid rhythm is introduced for the first time (doesn’t sound like it’s very far into the song, but keep in mind that your average radio tune would be half over by now).  But when I say “solid rhythm,” it is not straightforward.  The rhythm section of Squire and White often occupy the intersection of solidity and unpredictability.  There is a pattern there, but it’s not an easy pattern to learn (I should know, I’ve tried) – perhaps it’s spelling something in morse code?

The overall feel is of gathering strength.  As Billy Martin says, the army is being assembled.  In spiritual terms, you are steeling your will, determined to conquer the evil you see in yourself.  In the segment from 01:49 to 02:00, the sounds become steadily more aggressive, the chord statements more assertive: “Look at my impressive weapons; look how strong I am! I will conquer evil!”  It is turning into a hard rock song.  But then suddenly it backs off, back to the lighter tone of the intro and the instruments part way to make room for the vocals (accompanied only by a gentle acoustic guitar).

The lyrics are, right from the start, patently about war: the first words are “stand and fight.”  But they are at first all about the positive side of war, if there is such a thing: full of confidence, moral certitude, duty, honor.  They are about destroying oppression and defending good.  The army, as it were, is in good spirits, confident that the country is behind them, proud of them, confident they will win. The bass lines are bouncy, it’s in a major key – happy music.  Spiritually speaking, “I’m going to become a better person – I’ll really do it this time!”

Rhythmically, though, things are a bit strange.  One thing that neither Martin, Welch nor Morse comment on is the odd time signatures throughout the whole long song – almost nothing is in straight 4/4 time.  Where there are bars of 4/4, they are usually followed by a “short bar” with only 3 beats – nothing is quite complete, things are cut short in barely noticeable ways.

After a strange little interlude at 02:48, the tone changes. This is the first indicator (apart from the rhythm) that things are not quite as balanced and positive as they appear.  The music has grown darker, as though a cloud passed in front of the sun.  It has shifted to a minor key; the guitar has taken on a more angular tone.  The bass line is not as bouncy, but (in fitting with that theme of ascending and descending) it does circle around the root note, approach it from underneath and over top, but rarely hitting that note.

The lyrics have also shifted tone.  Rather than talking just about honor and defending, there are explicit references to killing.  This is going to get ugly.  Even statements of strength sound more ominous than boastful: my favourite line refers to goliaths “casting giant shadows of vast penetrating force,” a description I think of whenever I am in the shadow of a mountain.

It is interspersed with lighter interludes, such as the acoustic guitar break at 03:19.  Every battle has its little truces; every abusive relationship has nice moments; every addict has a good day now and then.  This is a very short interlude, but it’s worth discussing in detail.  And it’s one of those particularly vertical moments.  As the background singer sing “redeem,” the guitar (or perhaps mandolin?) soars high, in a simple, bright chord pattern.  But underneath, things are not settled – the bass wanders around under the guitar, not resting where it should.  In your typical boring rock song, the bass sits on the root note, slavishly following the guitar chords.  Here, Squire wanders, at first in fitting with the guitar chords, but then diverging.  He is not acting the “base” (bass) part; not providing the level ground on which everyone else can stand comfortably – here there is no level ground, nothing is quite at rest.  And the war begins anew.

Even uglier this time – now Anderson sings of “screams of anguish.”  But there is also glory, talk of freedom, there is still some confidence, some hope. The music grows steadily more aggressive, so that when that mandolin break returns at 4:30, now it is not light and cheerful at all.  The guitar part is the same, but the bass is digging deeper into the ground.  The angular electric guitar rises up, beginning an echo-laden solo.

This solo reinforces the vertical themes.  Unlike the high speed work Howe had already played, this is hardly a “solo” – it is primarily a simple ascending scale.  The bass, for once, is sitting on the root note, as solid as can be, but it soon grows more restless.

At 05:46, another pause in the action.  Anderson comes back in as the voice of reason, uttering the most helpful word in any conflict situation: “listen.”  In spiritual terms, one could see this as a call to not just try to stick to stubborn determination.  To survive this spiritual battle, you must pay attention to what is going on.  And soon he introduces the first call for help.  The person going through this process is beginning to realize not only that it will not be easy, but that they can’t do it alone.  Will is not enough; what’s called for now is prayer and humility.

At 06:19, the “listen” theme continues, but the military march is reintroduced.  And the words get nasty.  This time, one could read it as coming from an entirely different source.  This is now the voice of doubt – the evil spirits trying to instill despair: “your friends have been broken.”  You’re going to lose – there is no hope for you.  And, of course, the verse ends with the most explicit acknowledgement of what is going on: the word hell.

The guitar and bass seem to be going strong, things are still okay.  But at 07:22, the tone shifts once again, the major key turns minor, and things plunge once more into the depths.  The A/C chord progression returns, but now, for the first time, the guitar has the traditional distorted rock and roll tone.  And everything is moving at once.  There are no stable elements, the rhythm is an odd time signature, and the lyrics turn even more bleak:  “our cries will shrill, the air will moan and crash into the dawn.”  And once again it ends with an explicit spiritual reference, this time not to hell but to the devil.

Those words, “pounding out the devil’s sermon,” are the last words out of Anderson’s mouth for over 9 minutes.  Now the battle is carried entirely by the instruments.  In their previous album, one of the recurring choruses was “Life seems like a fight.”  Here it is so obvious that they don’t need to say it.  With the clanging guitars at 08:00, the disorientation of battle truly begins.  I’m glad to hear that Billy Martin (a bass player like myself) has as much trouble interpreting the rhythm in the next segment as I do: “I’m not entirely sure how to count this, but I’ll venture a guess that it is alternating measures of 5/4 and 7/4” (Martin, p. 166).  Either way, it is profoundly unsettled.  Despite the fact that the drums and bass are playing strong pounding rhythms, somehow you can’t keep up with those rhythms and they seem to be going all over the place.  Howe’s guitar playing, particularly at points such as 08:21, is phenomenal – flailing, wailing, wild yet tightly controlled. I’ve seen Steve Howe perform live many times, and his face gets very peculiar when he’s playing intense passages like this: his jaw grinds, his lips work themselves around in an ever-moving grimace, and his eyes scowl.  This is war.

By 08:31, the guitar is now slashing across the aural spectrum in savage swashes.  It alternates with keyboard solos is an insistent yet disorienting tone.  And things just continue to descend into madness, deeper and deeper.  It is profoundly confusing music – impossible to dance to, nearly impossible to keep up with, swirling all around at breakneck speed.  Although you are not conscious of it at first, they also introduce sound effects – clangs, crashes, smashing sounds, animal wails.  It just hurtles.  At 09:57, Howe plays a long, extended riff that few guitarists alive could perform, winding at impossible speed higher and higher.

At 10:24, things shift gears once again, becoming in some ways more manageable, in some ways more insane.  By this point, it is clear why the song never became popular, probably never got played on the radio – this is not fun music to listen to anymore.  I think it reflects sides of ourselves that we’d rather not see.  The background noises are more obvious, the rhythm even stranger, and the primary “melody” is a low siren’s wail.  There is no foothold in this music, no peace to be found.  And if you think it can’t get any stranger, any more disorienting, it does.  At 12:05, it is little more than a swirl of dizziness and confusion.  The bass is still pumping furiously, but the guitar/keyboard line is an annoying buzz.  And at 12:28, they finally hit rock bottom.

This is the dark night of the soul.  The person undergoing the temptation has lost all control, all sense of purpose; the illusion that they have power is destroyed.  In Billy Martin’s words, “there is a strong feeling of a war and a violence that has taken on a life of its own and that cannot stop.”  Even though this is arguably the least listenable portion of the whole long song, it is actually my favourite part.

Why?  Because right now, at about 12:35, that true progress finally begins.  And it begins with the drums.  The drums have been pounding relentlessly for most of the song, but now they play the most important role.  Now, they have a message, and the message is “STOP!”  With a slowly decelerating but at the same time deepening boom, the drums call the madness to end.  Stop the world, I want to get off.  This is the prayer the Lord finally heeds.

The moment at precisely 12:48 is, for me, the most satisfying moment of any song ever recorded.  The energy has not abated, life is not notably easier, things are not exactly in a state of peace, but there is finally ORDER.  The synthesizer sound is still oddly disorienting, but the melody line, the simple ascending scale, is familiar.  The bass guitar, meanwhile, slowly winds down, this time not descending into madness but settling into order.  Squire is finding a path down the mountain to level ground.  By 13:06, he has found it.

This, to me, is the most beautiful portion of the song.  The bass settles into the root note, finally providing the level base on which the rest of the music can rest.  Meanwhile, the keyboard repeats that beautiful ascending line – climbing, then slowly winding down back to the root; climbing once again, winding down once more.  Each time, the line ends with two strong falling notes in the shortened bar (3/4).  It reminds me of fireworks, shooting up into the sky, lazily dropping back to earth.  At 13:43, the guitar takes over, and the soaring tone is radiant.  Then he takes it even higher, going up an octave to repeat the climb.  Finally, at 14:20, instead of a climbing melody line there is a climbing chord pattern. It keeps soaring higher and higher, and when you think it can’t go any higher, it does.

At 14:47, the soaring is halted by what I like to think of as the Four Deep Breaths.  Our protagonist has survived the worst, is still alive and on his/her feet, but is beaten and bruised.  “A broken and contrite heart, Lord, thou will not despise.”  Although there is order and beauty, there is not yet peace.  So our hero takes a deep breath, and things calm down a little.  The music finally stops, and hovers for a second.  Is that it?  Is it over?

No, another deep breath is needed.  It has the same effect – bringing a moment of calm that may seem like things are finally over.  But they’re not.  A third deep breath.  Is that it?  Finally, after the fourth deep breath, something has genuinely changed.  Now, things really have stopped.  The music hovers, weightless, timeless – just long sustained organ chords with no beginning and no end.  But a gradual, peaceful ascent.

Then, at 16:07, the clouds part and a beam of sunlight shines through, in the form of a clear, high guitar line.  One of the many unusual guitar techniques that Steve Howe has mastered is his “decay only” method of playing guitar.  A plucked note is said to have two parts: the attack (the sound produced by the original impact of pick or finger against string), and the decay (the vibration of the string after the attack is over).  Howe plays with one finger wound around the volume knob on the guitar, so he can pluck the note with the volume all the way down, then turn it up quickly so you can hear the decay ringing out without the attack.  In this portion of the song, you can see that he can do it very rapidly.  The guitar is also loaded with echo so, like the organ tones that preceded it, the notes have no beginning and no end.  And there is true peace.

This is also the first portion of the song that is in a simple, straightforward rhythm: 4/4 time (although there are no drums).  Band members have described the central theme of Yes as being the contrast between darkness and light, positive and negative.  Here, in the space of a few minutes, they have gone from deep chaos to profound peace.  In later releases such as the box set YesYears, they made what I think is a big mistake: they released this last portion of the epic as a stand-alone song (entitled “Soon”).  It is, of course, very pleasant, palatable music – presenting none of the challenge that the battle sequence before it demands.  But it is, I think, missing the whole point.  The peace derives from the chaos before it; it is the peace of resolution, and if the song begins here, there is nothing to resolve.

And although the music speaks of true, deep peace, the lyrics do not speak of final resolution but only of promise.  It is still in the future tense:  “Soon, oh soon, the light – pass within and soothe this endless night.”  The state of mind is clear – the person has been beaten down, and has finally achieved what the Writings refer to as true innocence: the willingness to follow the Lord.  This is stated more or less explicitly in the final lines:  “The sun will lead us, our reason to be here.”  The peace is not just temporary relief now that the battle is over; it is peace that lasts.

The smooth electric guitar is joined by a gently strumming acoustic guitar and floating strings.  The bass is once again wandering, but not in a rootless, wandering kind of way – now it is playful.  With the line “set into rhyme” at 18:17, the bass settles into its rightful place.  But the music once again begins to climb, then descend, climb then descend.

The vocals go away once again, and the instruments strengthen.  Given Jon Anderson’s claim in the film Yesstories that he was the primary author of the song, very little of the 22 minutes is taken up with singing.

A hallmark of many great epics is symmetry – returning home to where you began, coming full circle.  Many of the great progressive English bands have perfected this technique (Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull), and Yes had done it previously in Close to the Edge and Tales From Topographic Oceans.  Here the echo of the introduction takes the form of plucked bass chords at 20:11 (not harmonics this time, though).

At the same time, the rhythm shifts to 6/8 time, and the ascent/descent theme comes in in a new way:  the high guitar lines slowly fall, the bass and keyboards climb underneath it.  There is one last hint of the return of struggle, a shift to a minor key, but it is just an echo.  Instead of developing into another battle, it resolves into the most beautiful ascending keyboard chord progression.  At the very end, the last soaring string chord turns from minor to major, and the song floats away into the clouds.