Music of Yes examines the work of one of the most creative groups from the progressive rock period, Yes. Formed in 1968, in the early 1970s Yes evolved into a visionary and virtuoso band, presenting a series of difficult and adventurous works, such as Fragile , Close to the Edge (both 1972), and the controversial Tales from Topographic Oceans (1974). Unlike most books on rock music, Music of Yes does not focus on personalities, but instead on musical structures, lyrical vision and cultural and historical context. Bill Martin situates Yes within the utopian ideals of the 1960s and the experimental trend in rock music initiatied by the Beatles and also taken up by groups such as King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, and others. Against seemingly entrenched cynicism and blues orthodoxy among rock music commentators, Martin demonstrates the power of Yes’s romantic, utopian, Blakean , ecological, multicultural and feminist perspective, showing how this vision is developed through extended, sophisticated musical works.
Music of Yes is generally affirmative of Yes’s vision and musical work and, from a social theoretical perspective, seeks to defend and extend that work against the prevailing cynicism of the post-1960s era. However, the book is not an exercise in hagiography, but instead a critical study that takes its inspiration from social critics such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, combining attention to musical form with arguments about how experiments with form emerge from and engage with the larger culture and society. Music of Yes discusses the group from the time of its formation until the present, but focuses especially on what the author calls Yes’s main sequence , from The Yes Album (1971) to Going for the One (1977).