RELAYER

Inspired by Tolstoy's "War and Peace," what more applicable composition exists than "The Gates of Delirium," both lyrically and musically, to the present mess we call "The Human Condition?" In "Sound Chaser," Anderson, Howe, Moraz, Squire, and White present an aesthetic in search of the foundations of musical expression. With "To Be Over," the band further develops its explorations of death begun in "Close to the Edge." Born from the lyrics of "The Remembering" from "Tales from Topographic Oceans," 'Relayer" encapsulates a high regard for human history and a piercing honesty regarding the "double-edged sword" we call humanity.

My first exposure to "Relayer" came in the summer of 1975 during a one day stint painting the inside of a clinic in Downtown New Orleans. A professor with Tulane's Medical School, one of our best friend's father had hired a group of us soon-to-be high school juniors to spend a day painting. I don't recall how well we painted, but I do remember the fascination I had hearing what I would learn to be the climactic battle passage of "The Gates of Delirium."

Not "to put the cart before the horse," but the "Gate" towards which "Delirium" moves could very well be the soundtrack to the climax of "The Lord of the Rings" in "The Return of the King" when Sauron realizes the one ring of power not only has been, "under his nose," in Mordor, but also has descended to its destruction with Gollum into the fires of Mount Orodruin. The interplay between Moraz's synthesizers and Howe's Telecaster and steel guitars captures the potency of any triumphant, military breakthrough. Surely, the rhythm section of Squire and White provides the bastion upon which this feverish apex occurs.

The listener passes through this "Gate" into an almost ethereal, transcendent resolution to the profligacies of war. Although Anderson's vocals and Howe's steel guitar preside over this resolution, Moraz's backing synthesizer accompaniment girded by Squire and White's bass and drums solidify the sublimity of this passage.

If only the relatively linear journey of "The Gates of Delirium" could intimate a solution to the nefarious invasion of Ukraine by the daemonic "leader" of Russia.

At this point during the 70's, one would flip the LP of Relayer to side two, and enter the jazz inflected, forward looking "Sound Chaser." In the 1970's greater New Orleans area, WRNO-FM was the "rock" of the Crescent City. The management of this station chose Moraz's opening electric piano line supported by White's tuned percussion from "Sound Chaser" as its signature theme, never mind that the actual music of "Relayer" was too "dense" for airplay on this supposed "album oriented" station. However, in all fairness, WRNO was the home of what we would consider most "classic" rock.

Succinctly, "Sound Chaser" embodies the imaginative power of "Relayer" in words and musical action. Of all of Yes' music, "Sound Chaser" may be the piece in which the lyrics and music are truly intertwined. The focal point for the band is to perceive the look in its listeners' eyes. I wouldn't mind the band seeing the look in my eyes in response to Howe's landmark steel guitar solo towards the end of the piece. Moraz's frantic, jazz-inflected synthesizer follows. And, earlier Howe delivers what would be something like "Mood for a Day" on his Fender Telecaster. White's percussion is, to put it mildly, "muscular." And, the "skeleton" of the song is Squire's bass.

The final third of "Sound Chaser's" lyrics could be an autobiography of the band:

From the moment I reached out to hold, I felt a/sound, And what touches our soul slowly moves as touch rebounds./ And to know that tempo will continue/ Lost in trance of dances as rhythm takes another turn, / As is my want, I only reach to look in your eyes.

I am loath to assert one can ascertain one interpretation of its lyrics, but "To Be Over" advances a powerful equanimity in the face of human finitude:

After all your soul will still surrender. / After all don't doubt your part, / Be ready to be loved.

And, leading up to the above quotation is one of Steve Howe's most convincing steel guitar and guitar solos. "Childlike soul dreamer . . . ." might just sum up the thrust of the majority of Jon Anderson's lyrics and Yes' music. The goal requires we be "childlike" without being "childish." We have the power imaginatively to envision "better solutions to the realities of 'The Human Condition.'"

Most regrettably, the maze of human propensities lurches towards an end far more sobering, than even "childish" would intimate . . . .

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