Yes lyrics, does anybody understand these?
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Topic: Yes lyrics, does anybody understand these?
Posted By: HaroldLand
Subject: Yes lyrics, does anybody understand these?
Date Posted: August 03 2008 at 22:58
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It kind of occurred to me recently that as much as I've listened to Yes, and as much as I currently listen to Yes, I've never really understood any of the lyrics, and frankly, find them quite cryptic. But honestly, I realized that I've never even cared. Yes for me is 100 percent the music. The vocals are a huge part of that, but the words are somewhat meaningless to me.
Does anyone actually read into Yes lyrics, and are Yes' lyrics something that particularly stand out to some people enough to be a main reason why they listen to Yes? |
Replies:
Posted By: ghost_of_morphy
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 03:15
| Jon has gone through about four phazes of lyric construction. Phaze one (Yes and A Time and a Word) is easily understandable. Phaze four (90125 onwards) is not much more difficult. Phaze three (GFTO and Tormato) can be understood with a bit of work. Phaze two (TYA through Relayer) is inscrutable. |
Posted By: Kim Ankara
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 04:51
Are you sure? There are probably a few lyrics from that era that are indeed inscrutable, but Your Move and Gates of Delirium both are easy to figure out with some effort (being about chess and war, in my understanding). ------------- "I'm a dinosaur" - Adrian Belew "I am a camera" - Trevor Horn "I am yourself" - Keith Emerson |
ghost_of_morphy wrote:Posted By: micky
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 05:25
nope... and never tried... it's part of the charm of prog. Much like Italian prog... I know for a fact I could never enjoy Concerto della Menti if I understood what he was 'singing' about.  Life is too short for wasting brain-cells trying to figure the stuff out. Listen to music ... for the music. The times when you aren't, or can't, is when you should be trying to figure out the grand meanings of life.
------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Roj
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 06:06
| Harold, I'm pretty much in total agreement with you. I love the sound of Jon Anderson's voice and even sing along myself but for the most part know not what he is singing about. It's part of the magic though isn't it? I catch his drift on Don't Kill The Whale, but that's about it!! |
Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 07:57
Agreed, Gates isn't that hard to understand. Anderson has admitted that he picks words for their sound rather than meaning so I wouldn't read too much into them. I still don't know what a "seasoned witch" is, presumably one that has been liberally laced with salt and pepper?
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Posted By: Slartibartfast
Date Posted: August 04 2008 at 13:09
Don't make me have to rearrange your liver. 
------------- Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened... 
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Posted By: el böthy
Date Posted: August 05 2008 at 12:34
And so is Tales of topographic oceans! ------------- "You want me to play what, Robert?" 
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Posted By: el böthy
Date Posted: August 05 2008 at 12:35
Wow, great advice for today kids! ------------- "You want me to play what, Robert?"
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Posted By: jammun
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 22:17
A "seasoned witch" is probably a stream of consciousness reference to Donovan's Season of the Witch. I'm sure we could parse most of the lyrics similarly.
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Posted By: yesman1972
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 22:28
| Speaking of Yes lyrics, can anyone please tell me what is being sung at the end of To Be Over? Are there even lyrics or are these just sounds? Thank you. |
Posted By: peskypesky
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 22:48
Wow! Never thought of that. I just thought he meant an old witch. In any case, Jon's greatest period of lyric-writing for me is that inscrutable period. He was just in a zone, mystically freed of any constraints, letting the music inspire cascades of poetry that perfectly matched said music. "Hot colour melting the anger to stone..." ------------- Prog fan since 1974. |
Posted By: Henry Plainview
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 22:59
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I don't think anyone does because they don't make any sense at all. ------------- if you own a sodastream i hate you |
Posted By: HaroldLand
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 23:10
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i have to agree with jammun. regarding looking into them and figuring them out, honestly for me it doesn't even matter. the words just sound musical and fit seamlessly into the melodies they're singing. and it was always the yes music that inspired me the most, never the words. i just posed this question because I realized having listened to yes for so long, i've never paid any attention to the words. but this little thread pretty much just affirms my feeling that the words don't really even matter that much. if you can understand them, and take something from them, great, that's a bonus. but if not, they do absolutely nothing to detract from the beauty of yes. i've always loved "coming quickly to terms of all expression laid, emotion revealed as the ocean maid. as the movement regained and regarded both the same, all complete in the sight of seeds of life with you." honestly, though, what a beautiful passage, right? doesn't mean much to me, and probably makes a lot more sense in the greater context of the piece, but yeah... whatever. sounds good. |
Posted By: tszirmay
Date Posted: August 07 2008 at 23:16
Hannibal Lecter? Here? Now? Why?  ------------- I never post anything anywhere without doing more than basic research, often in depth. |
Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: August 08 2008 at 08:01
I assume you mean the bit where they "sing" the opening riff in the background. It sounds like a non-English language to me but I couldn't say which one.
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Posted By: salmacis
Date Posted: August 08 2008 at 08:08
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'The Gates Of Delirium' is very much assisted by the music IMHO. Jon has explicitly stated it's a song about war and corruption and indeed the music goes along with that, and I've always taken 'Soon' to be a hopeful climax too- a sort of 'calm after the storm', a hope for peace if you will.
Honestly I've never been too worried about Jon's lyrics, at least not until the soppiness of his later stuff like 'If Only You Knew' and 'Soft As A Dove'.
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Posted By: yesman1972
Date Posted: August 11 2008 at 21:59
| Yes Chopper, you are probably right. Perhaps it's French again. Anyway, I would really love to know what they are singing. The restatnig of the opening melody with vocals is one of the best things they've recorded so far, and I want to completey understand it. |
Posted By: Sacred 22
Date Posted: August 11 2008 at 22:35
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Of course I know what the lyrics mean. The trouble is, it's my version and I would have quite a bit of trouble explaining it to you. The wonderful thing about Jon Anderson's lyrics is very simple and so often overlooked. The words are not cast in stone and as a result they can grab your imagination and take you off in thought somewhere. The next time you listen you find yourself off to some other place in your mind. Brilliant!!
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Posted By: Kestrel
Date Posted: August 12 2008 at 04:54
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Close to the Edge is based on Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, a book about a man trying to find enlightenment. I'm curious as to weather there is any meaning behind Siberian Khatru. I have a feeling it's random, but there's a reason Jon chose those words. Unless it's stream of conciousnes or something like that... which would perhaps lend itself to a psychological analysis? I don't know if any of that's been done for some of the more famous stream works though. |
Posted By: TGM: Orb
Date Posted: August 12 2008 at 06:30
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Siberian Khatru, as I see it, is about the development of the world and culture, gradually building up to its present or future state. Stuff I have a fairly full personalised interpretation of: South Side Of The Sky Heart Of The Sunrise Close To The Edge You And I Siberian Khatru The Ancient The Gates Of Delirium I have a vague idea about a few others, but am not interested enough to go through analytically or to clarify it. |
Posted By: meat puppet
Date Posted: August 14 2008 at 21:23
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I realised their lyrics did not make any sense about 30 years ago and gave up any pretension of understanding. One day a few years back 'Yes' did a documentary on TV. They spoke about Jon Andersons mad ideas of recording in a forest. They finally setttled on an old barn. Apparently, every recording session Rick Wakemen would end up with a keyboard full of bugs..........he was an angry guy back the........to simulate the country feel they had a couple of cardboard lifesize cows. Anderson was asked about his lyrics........he laughed and confirmed what I had always suspected........they mean nothing at all, he just strapped sentences and words together that sounded interestng to him. They were picked at random from books and magazines plus a few snippets of overheard conversations. So, I wouldn't get into trying to analyse them as Jon thought the lyrics were unimportant compared to the musical experience. |
Posted By: mothershabooboo
Date Posted: August 16 2008 at 09:48
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You know, I was thinking about the same thing after picking up 'Magnification'. All the lyrics were too straight forword removing the 'fun' of decodeing the lyrics. The lyrics on 'Close to the Edge' for instance are alittle complicated, but I figure it's a story of a journy one must take.
And 'Tales', as I remebered correctly was conseved when Jon was sitting in a hotell room looking through religus panflits and he found four similer things running through each of them, thus the four songs.
But I agree that the lyrics never really stood in the frunt ground so much that as Jon's singing. I always just pictured what he said in a cinimitogic way (is that even a word? If it isin't, it should be). For instance, 'Turn of the Century' I can just picuter a couple of star-crossed lovers meeting again in the street, barlie able to remeber the other, but simotaniously remebering the dance the two shaired high on a cloud at a mascerade ball with only their eyes to recognize. (Hopless romantic am I?)
I think that's what was missing so much in the Tormato and anything after Drama. The lyrics were way too straight forword leaving no room for the emagination to take hold.
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