Songs
Fragile contains nine tracks; four are “group arranged and performed” with the remaining five being “the individual ideas, personally arranged and organised” by the five members, as described in the liner notes.
Squire reasoned that this approach was necessary in part to save time and reduce studio costs: “We have a lot of mouths to feed. Rick … had to buy a vast amount of new equipment when he joined, and it all costs much more money than people seem to imagine.”
According to Bruford: “There was this endless discussion about how the band could be used … I felt we could use all five musicians differently … So I said—brightly—’Why don’t we do some individual things, whereby we all use the group for our own musical fantasy?
I’ll be the director, conductor, and maestro for the day, then you do your track, and so on.’” Wakeman commented on the album’s structure: “Some critics thought this was just being flash.
The thinking behind this was that we realised there would be a lot of new listeners coming to the band. They could find out where each individual player’s contribution lay.”
“Roundabout” was written by Anderson and Howe and has become an iconic track and is one of Yes’s best-known songs. Howe recalled that the track was originally “a guitar instrumental suite … I sort of write a song without a song. All the ingredients are there—all that’s missing is the song. “Roundabout” was a bit like that; there was a structure, a melody and a few lines.” The introduction was created by two piano chords played backwards, and Howe recorded the acoustic guitar part in the studio corridor as the recording room made it “sound too dead”.
“Cans and Brahms” is Wakeman’s adaptation of an excerpt of the third movement of Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms, with an electric piano used for the string section, grand piano for the woodwinds, organ for the brass, electric harpsichord for reeds, and synthesizer as contrabassoon. Wakeman said the piece took an estimated 15 hours to create in the studio, and said it was most likely Bruford who inspired its title from looking at Wakeman playing each section while wearing his headphones. He looked back on the piece as “dreadful”, as contractual problems with A&M Records, with whom he was signed as a solo artist, prevented him from writing a composition of his own.
Anderson described “We Have Heaven” as a “rolling idea of voices and things”, with its two main sets of chants containing the phrases “Tell the Moon dog, tell the March hare” and “He is here, to look around”. The track ends with the sound of a door closing followed by running footsteps, which segues into the atmospheric introduction to the next track, the group arranged “South Side of the Sky“. Wakeman contributed piano interludes to the track and “Heart of the Sunrise”, but did not receive credit because of publishing disputes with his two contracts. Although he was promised money by executives at Atlantic, he claims he never received it and avoided making a fuss because he was keen to be part of the music.
Side two opens with Bruford’s track, “Five per Cent for Nothing“. With a running time of thirty-five seconds, it is his “first attempt at composition—but we’ve all got to start somewhere”. According to Tait, its original title was “Suddenly It’s Wednesday”, but it was changed in reference to Yes paying off their former manager Roy Flynn with the deal of five percent of future royalties. Yes performed the track live in 2014 and 2016 on tours that featured Fragile performed in its entirety. Howe said the secret to playing it successfully was to finish together. During rehearsals he kept close track of the beat count and would cue the rest of the band to it by dropping his guitar’s headstock. Even with that, it took considerable practice for all musicians to end on the same beat.
Anderson’s lyrics to “Long Distance Runaround” address “the craziness of religion” and how people are “taught that Christianity is the only way”, which he called a “stupid doctrine”. The lyrics to the second verse were inspired by the Kent State shootings in 1970 and the US government’s crackdown on young people for criticising the Vietnam War. The song segues, after Howe plays a guitar run with an Echoplex delay effect, into Squire’s solo track, “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)”. Tait recalled that Anderson called him from Advision one evening and said, ‘I want the name of a prehistoric fish in eight syllables. Call me back in half an hour’”. Tait subsequently found Schindleria praematurus, a species of marine fish, in a copy of Guinness Book of Records. “Mood for a Day” is Howe’s solo track, which was his second acoustic guitar solo put on a Yes album, following “Clap”. He played a Conde flamenco guitar, but considers the album version substandard in comparison to how he learned to play it on stage years later.
Side A
A1. Roundabout – 8:30
A2. Cans and Brahms (Extracts from Brahms’ 4th Symphony in E Minor, Third Movement) – 1:38
A3. We Have Heaven – 1:40
A4. South Side of the Sky – 8:02
Side B
B1. Five Per Cent for Nothing – 0:35
B2. Long Distance Runaround – 3:30
B3. The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) – 2:39
B4. Mood for a Day – 3:00
B5. Heart of the Sunrise – 11:27
Yes
- Jon Anderson – lead and backing vocals
- Steve Howe – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals
- Chris Squire – bass guitars, backing vocals, additional electric guitar
- Rick Wakeman – Hammond organ, grand piano, RMI 368 Electra-Piano and Harpsichord, Mellotron, Minimoog synthesiser
- Bill Bruford – drums, percussion
Production
- Yes – production
- Eddy Offord – engineer, production
- Gary Martin – assistant engineer
- Roger Dean – artwork, photography
- David Wright – colour photo of Bruford on drums
- Brian Lane – bank loan arrangement
Vinyl: Goed (VG)
Cover: Goed (VG)
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