Music of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rock [Paperback]

So one could hope to understand the veritable desert that existed when Martin's book hit the scene. This would - I think - explain the rather puzzling praise "Music of Yes" has garnered in certain circles: finally, Yes fans had something - anything - to read about their favorite band. Fans somehow were able to forgive the obvious flaws of this book.

Those flaws are glaring, and have succeeded in making "Music of Yes" practically unreadable.

Let's start with the prose. Martin is a cloistered academic, vehemently pro-Marxist, and his writing style is more suited to the stuffy papers with which like-minded folks regale themselves in the name of "research". Unless one is familiar with this style of writing - pedantic, halting, self-indulgent - it is very difficult to figure out where Martin is heading in his work; even within the confines of a single paragraph! One comes away with the impression that Martin himself doesn't know his path, and often founders for something coherent to say.

Reading is therefore a chore: you have to force yourself through the book with a will. As you do so, you notice three things: 1. "Music of Yes" is entirely subjective and offers no new information about Yes - only Martin's opinion, 2. Martin has very little knowledge of music theory on which to pin his conclusions (he talks a great deal about counterpoint, but very little about anything else), and 3. His pro-Marxist leanings often get in the way and color his conclusions.

This book seems to be more a polemic about Marxism than about Yes. Martin takes every opportunity he can to not only trash capitalism, but to equate Yes' ideology with his dogma in the process (he desperately wants Yes to be about Marxism, but no matter how hard he tries to wedge them into that box, they just don't fit). Talking about the "jaded, cynical world of post-modern capitalism," he often digresses wildly from the topic at hand to deliver a whining broadside to western culture; a broadside that usually misses its mark.

He even manages to drag the Gulf War into the book! I had a difficult time figuring out what that had to do with Yes, but Martin never expostulates: his political ideals, which litter the book like cast-off socks, often hang without any visible means of support.

One comes away from this book with the impression that Martin is out of his depth in writing about music. It's too bad this attempt had to be made in the name of Yes.

In "Music of Yes," Bill Martin makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of "serious" prog rock criticism. An analyses of their music from "Yes" to "Talk," the book focuses on "the main sequence," the series of remarkable albums from "The Yes Album" to "Going for the One." Martin's song-by-song look at these works forms the heart of the book, and his comments are generally both enlightening and enjoyable.

However, sad to say, his book as a whole suffers under several burdens. The first and foremost is Martin's political agenda. A committed Marxist, Martin can't help but see the music of Yes -- and the entire recording industry as well -- through a Marxist viewpoint. His constant tirades against capitalism, while certainly containing some thought-provoking critique, begin to grow tiresome very quickly. For the most part, the reader may just chuckle at Martin's tendentious attempts to shoehorn Yes into a Marxist mold; but when he begins to quote Mao and Lenin -- without irony! -- it's more difficult to indulge his polemical approach. Secondly, Martin feels the need to bring his topic under the full battery of modern academia. While I feel that the music of Yes is clearly worthy of critical discussion, Martin's attempt to drag Derrida, Benjamin and Kant into the analyses is often labored to the point of ridiculousness. (Though his comments regarding Blake and the English Romantics seem more on-target.) Finally, all too often, Martin comes across like yet another nostalgic and cranky Boomer, pining for the glory days of rock and roll while viewing the modern world with a school-marm's scorn. Endlessly lamenting the death of vinyl, Martin seems blissfully unaware of how silly he sounds at times, especially when he admonishes rappers with a sentence like "You can't change the world by dissin' the sisters."

If one is willing to overlook the many flaws and idiosyncrasies of the work, however, Martin does have some useful things to say, and his passion for his subject is beyond question. While I don't always agree to his interpretations of Anderson's lyrics, it's refreshing to hear them treated like something other than "nonsense." Being a bassist himself, Martin grants Chris Squire the lion's share of attention -- but then again, he makes a good case for the unique genius of Squire. While his apologies for Trevor Rabin left me baffled, I think Martin has a pretty good overall grasp on what works -- and what doesn't work -- in the important music of Yes.