Friday, November 26, 1971

Yes released Fragile

Fragile

Yes

Released: November 26, 1971

Peak: 4 US, 7 UK, 6 CN, 29 AU, 1³ DF Click for codes to charts.

Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.3 UK, 2.3 world (includes US and UK)

Genre: progressive rock

Tracks:

Click on a song title for more details.

Roundabout [8:29]
Cans and Brahms [1:35]
We Have Heaven [1:30]
South Side of the Sky [8:04]
Five Per Cent for Nothing [0:35]
Long Distance Runaround [3:33]
The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) [2:35]
Mood for a Day [2:57]
Heart of the Sunrise [10:34]

Total Running Time: 39:52

The Players:

Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion)
Chris Squire (bass, vocals)
Steve Howe (guitar)
Rick Wakeman (keyboards)
Bill Bruford (drums, percussion)

Rating:

4.474 out of 5.00 (average of 18 ratings)

Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

About the Album

Fragile is considered Yes’ “breakthrough album.” ^AM The band “established themselves as one of the most progressive rock bands on the scene.” ^AZ “Dominated by science-fiction and fantasy elements,” ^AM the band “raised their innovative brand of music to even dizzier heights.” ^AZ

After the album was released, Yes were, “for the first time…a major headlining act.” ^TM Lead singer Jon Anderson said the album signaled, “Yes are a people’s band,” ^RD “albeit people with a love of the music at its most complex.” ^RD

Rick Wakeman

For their fourth album, Yes parted ways with keyboardist Tony Kaye for “personal and professional reasons.” ^TM “Anderson and Chris Squire sought to develop the band’s sound with newfangled synthesizers. Tony Kaye’s preference for Hammonds (and arguments with roommate Steve Howe) led to his exit.” ^RD

Kaye was replaced by the “towering, silver-caped Rick Wakeman” ^AZ who brought “Yes a whole new level of virtuosity and showmanship.” ^RD His “proficiency and classical leanings were the final piece in the jigsaw.” ^AD His “organ, synthesizers, Mellotrons, and other keyboard exotica added a larger-than-life element,” ^AM to the group and helping Yes toward “creating the kind of music they’d always had in their minds.” ^AD

Individual Parts

“In addition to the four major compositions on this record, Yes decided that each band member would have the opportunity to showcase his talents on an individual solo track.” ^TM AllMusic.com, however, says the album “was a patchwork job, hastily assembled in order to cover the cost of Wakeman’s array of instruments.” ^AM In a truly prog-rock kind of move, much of the album served as solo showcases for the band.

Roge Dean

This was the first album cover Roger Dean did for the band. His “sleeve artwork encapsulates the fractured world at the heart of the album’s concept.” ^RD He would go on to provide the group with “some of the most famous album artwork of all time.” ^AD “Their music and his exotic, surreal landscapes became irrevocably associated with each other over the years.” ^TM

Reissues

A 2003 reissue added the band’s cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” and an early mix of “Roundabout.” A 2005 reissue added alternate versions of “Roundabout,” “We Have Heaven,” “South Side of the Sky,” “Mood for a Day,” and the song “All Fighters Past.”

The Songs

Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

Roundabout

Yes

Writer(s): Jon Anderson, Steve Howe (see lyrics here)

Released: single (1/4/1972), Fragile (1971)

B-side: “Long Distance Runaround”

Peak: 13 BB, 10 CB, 7 GR, 11 HR, 9 CN, 1 CL Click for codes to charts.

Sales (in millions): --

Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 14.90 video, 156.24 streaming

Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

About the Song:

The highlight of the Fragile album came with the opening track, “the ecstatic ‘Roundabout,’” ^RD which featured “sweet surging, rifled keys and guitar.” ^RD The song served up “an AM-radio sucker-punch, aimed at all of those other progressive bands who eschewed the notion of hit singles.” ^AM “the single clicked” ^AM and “pulled in millions of young kids who’d never heard them before.” ^AM “and the band was made.” ^AM “If you are wondering how to introduce Yes to a friend…then just play them this song.” ^AD

The album version ran eight and a half minutes, but five minutes were trimmed for the single. It was the band’s most popular song until 1983’s #1 hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Yes have played the song at nearly every concert since its release. ^WK Anderson and Howe won a BMI Award for the song. It is “still a standard on classic rock playlists.” ^AZ

Anderson and Howe wrote the song while the band was on tour promoting The Yes Album. While traveling from Aberdeen to Glasgow, Scotland, they encountered numerous roundabouts which inspired the pair to write a song about their journey while sitting in the band’s transit van. ^WK

Anderson’s free-form, abstract lyrics “describe a psychedelic country life, with allusions to driving.” ^SF He described the mountains “coming out of the sky.” ^WK As he explained, “it was a cloudy day; we couldn’t see the top of the mountains. We could only see the clouds because it was sheer straight up.” ^WK According to Anderson, “everything was vivid and mystical” because he’d smoke marijuana during the trip. ^WK

Originally the song started off with acoustic guitar, but the group thought they needed a more dramatic opening. New keyboardist Rick Wakeman played “a note on the piano that was recorded and played backwards,” ^WK which Howe thought “added a sense of drama, intensity, and colour to the song.” ^WK

One of the group collaborations on the album is the oft-played Long Distance Runaround, “another fine piece of work.” ^AD

However, the group also “built effectively on the groundwork left by The Yes Album.” ^AM “Heart of the Sunrise” featured “varied constituents molded together perfectly” ^AZ such as a “dreamy, soaring vocal.” ^RD It has “a lengthy introduction that builds up with keyboards and bass guitar with Bill Bruford providing solid support underneath. Close to the two-minute mark, the guitar starts to prowl over the top of all of this before we enter an impossibly quickly taken section of instrumental music with everyone going full tilt…Three and a half minutes pass before we hear anything from Jon Anderson!...The song switches several times through it’s remaining half but always retains the listener’s interest.” ^AD

Resources/References:

^AM AllMusic.com review by Bruce Eder of Fragile
^AMG AllMusic.com review of “Roundabout” by Mike DeGagne
^AZ Amazon.com review by Paul Clark
^AD AdrianDenning.co.uk
^RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 234.
^CRS Tim Morse (1998). Classic Rock Stories: The Stories Behind the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. Page 193.
^SF Songfacts page for “Roundabout”
^WK Wikipedia page for “Roundabout”

Related DMDB Pages:

First posted 3/25/2008; last updated 9/17/2025.

Saturday, November 20, 1971

Isaac Hayes hit #1 with “Shaft”

Theme from Shaft

Isaac Hayes

Writer(s): Isaac Hayes (see lyrics here)

First Charted: September 24, 1971

Peak: 1² BB, 1² CB, 1² GR, 1² HR, 6 AC, 2 RB, 4 UK, 1¹ CN, 7 DF (Click for codes to charts.)

Sales (in millions): 1.0 US

Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 1.0 radio, 23.0 video, 61.88 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

“The blaxploitation movies of the ’70s…were cheap movies, made quickly…[but] a lot of the lead performances — the ones from Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson — are absolutely magnetic.” ^SG “But most of them are not pure cinematic wonders, except on one aspect. That aspect is music.” ^SG These “formulaic movies had soundtracks from straight-up black-pop geniuses, all working at or near their peaks.” ^SG

The best of them all may have been Shaft, a “tough and terse detective movie with a charismatic performance from the then-unknown Richard Roundtree” ^SG and a theme song from Isaac Hayes. He was “a self-taught visionary who was right in the midst of remaking soul music in his own image.” ^SG He “grew up dirt-poor in Tennessee,” ^SG eventually working as a keyboardist, arranger, and songwriter at Stax Records, the “sweaty, grimy alternative to what Motown was doing at the time.” ^SG

Hayes “established the blueprint for an influential new funky stew” ^TB in which R&B shifted “towards fun and towards a jazzier, blacker sound.” ^TC He dug up a cut he’d made a year earlier. ^TB The resulting “Theme from Shaft”was “a stunning and ambitious and deeply funky piece of beautiful silliness” ^SG in which Hayes was in on the joke. He “figured out how to communicate everything you needed to know…about the movie, about the character, and about the entire nascent genre of films.” ^SG

Musically, the song “keeps piling on new elements…it’s a groove that keeps expanding.” ^SG Lyrically, Hayes croons praises “in his rumbling bass voice” ^TC about “the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks,” ^SG knowing he’s being “both massively cool and deeply goofy.” ^SG “There’s a humor in his interplay with the backing singers, the ones who crow ‘shut your mouth’ when he starts to cuss.” ^SG

Resources:

DMDB encyclopedia entry for Isaac Hayes
^TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 812.
^DJ David Jasen (2002). A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-Loved and Remembered Songs (1899-1999). Routledge: Taylor & Francis, Inc. Page 193.
^SG Stereogum (2/12/2019). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan
^TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 131.

First posted 1/18/2024.