Close to the Edge: The Story of Yes

TL;DR: the book starts strong with the Yes prog years but becomes sparse, vague, and biased halfway through. It paints some band members in a negative light, so read if you don’t mind the ugly truth.

I got into Yes about 2 years ago. I go through obsessions with bands that last at least a year and I read up on any trivia and history I can. The Who, Rush, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, I read up on them all. Sometimes though, the band members are shown to be jerks which can spoil enjoyment of the music, which happens here. My favorite band Rush, delivered a nearly flawless career with them remaining best friends, so my bar for inter band harmony is as high as it ever will go.

Anyway, to the point. I loved the start of the book dealing with the early days and how creative the sessions were for the 60’s and 70’s classic albums. What knocked the book down a star automatically is that the author strangely praises every album in their catalog except my favorite Yes album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, which as you can imagine is frustrating. He is so clearly biases and claims Yes did well by not going this route. RANT: Hey author, you are a band biographer! You shouldn’t analyze musical direction if you are this one sided and can’t write a middle of the road analysis. Tell us the bands story instead of making this about your opinions.

The years with Trevor Rabin are vary sparse and there is noticeably less information on the recording and business of the band. After that they go into a decent amount of detail about why ABWH and Union was a disaster, which won’t inspire me to try to get into that album. It’s also funny to read about how much they are praising keyboardist Igor Koroshev from the late 90’s when he would get arrested at their shows for beating someone up. Yeah, really cool guy, and it’s funny to see him not mentioned in the updated section. So props to a part of the book being funny.

This book also convinced me Steve Howe has the biggest ego. One quote has him basically say that Yes was only good when he was in it. Combine this with the fact he is touring the pale imitation of Yes now, shows he thinks it is all about him, so his playing doesn’t awe me anymore and he lost his legend status in my eyes.

Anyway, if you can’t tell, this book shattered the rose spectacles I looked through at the band. Compared to other band biographies I read, this book is largely interesting, but it feels more like a fragmented collection of quotes than anything. I understand that the fact Yes rotates members, the legal and business issues they have must keep the whole story from getting out, so at least we got something, but what we get, hints at chaos in the band. Maybe they should have called the band No? 4/5

This is a hard book to pin down. On the one hand Welch has plenty of quotes from members of the band, primarily Rick, Jon and Steve, and a little less from Chris. On the other hand, these quotes go on and on, and while they may be interesting to a degree, this slows down the pace. Another dichotomy was that some albums and songs were dissected nicely while others were surprisingly glossed over. At least one spot, where Welch discusses the late phase wife of the band, he employs a strange chronological flow, going back-and-forth a bit. While not hard to follow, it is a strange choice.

But overall the key milestones of the band are well explained and now I have a better understanding of this very creative and unique band. I assume the formatting of the e-book caused numerous typos, such as words running together. If that's in the original, Welch needs an editor.