Day After Day #301: Roundabout

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Roundabout (1971)

Some people have an extreme reaction to prog. As in, they can't stand it. It's just not everyone's bag. For me, it had more appeal when I was younger, but I can still appreciate the good stuff. Like Yes. I don't listen to them that much anymore, but when I was a kid listening to rock radio, they really did it for me.

Now that I'm older and more into indie and punk rock, I can see why Yes was anathema for those folks. The focus on virtuosity, the complicated time changes, the songs about elves and castles and shit...it's all pretty silly. And the 1970s were a perfect breeding ground for overstuffed albums, high-falutin' concepts and 17-minute songs about talking wood nymphs. 

Yes was formed in 1968 in London by singer Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye and drummer Bill Bruford. Their self-titled debut featured covers of songs by the Beatles and the Byrds and their follow-up, 1970's Time and a Word, had covers of Richie Havens and Crosby, Stills and Nash songs, but also featured a song accompanied by an orchestra. Banks left the band and was replaced by Steve Howe, and the band had their first real success with 1971's The Yes Album, which went to #4 in the U.K. and #40 on the Billboard 200. The album contains some classic Yes tracks, including "Yours is No Disgrace," "Starship Trooper" and "I've Seen All Good People." The band was already experimenting with longer songs; two were over 9 minutes long and one was just under that length.

Kaye left the band after the tour for The Yes Album, reluctant to play electronic keyboards. He was replaced by Rick Wakeman, who played electric piano, organ, Mellotron and Moog synthesizer; Wakeman had been offered a spot with David Bowie's touring band on the same day he was asked to join Yes, but he took the Yes gig for more artistic freedom. The band entered the studio in August 1971 and recorded Fragile fairly quickly. Four of the nine songs were arranged and performed by the group, while the other five were individually put together by the five members.

"Roundabout" was written by Anderson and Howe while the band was tour for their previous album in Scotland. They had to go through many traffic circles, or roundabouts, while there and Anderson and Howe got the idea to write a song based on that. The song begins with a dramatic recording of Wakeman on piano played in reverse, followed by Howe on acoustic guitar before the rest of the band kicks in.

"I'll be the roundabout/The words will make you out 'n out/I spend the day your way/Call it morning driving through the sound of/In and out the valley/The music dance and sing/They make the children really ring/I spend the day your way/Call it morning driving through the sound of/In and out the valley/In and around the lake/Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there/One mile over we'll be there and we'll see you/Ten true summers we'll be there and laughing too/Twenty-four before my love you'll see/I'll be there with you."

The song is powered by Squire's driving bass, while Wakeman's organ playing captures the 8-and-a-half-minute song's ups and downs. 

"Along the drifting cloud/The eagle searching down on the land/Catching the swirling wind/The sailor sees the rim of the land/The eagle's dancing wings/Create as weather spins out of hand/Go closer hold the land/Feel partly no more than grains of sand/We stand to lose all time/A thousand answers in our hand/Next to your deeper fears/We stand surrounded by a million years/I'll be the roundabout/The words will make you out 'n out."

Of course, there was a 3:27 single version of the song that was primarily played on the radio and it went to #13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It's one of the band's best-known songs and has been played at nearly every Yes show since, despite the band's revolving lineup over the decades. Yes became a huge touring act in the '70s, known for their epic-lengths songs as much as they were for their trippy album covers designed by artist Roger Dean. Bruford left in '72 and was replaced by Alan White. After 1980's Drama, on which Anderson and Wakeman were replaced by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, the band split up.

Two years later, Squire and White reformed Yes, with Anderson and Kaye returning and guitarist Trevor Rabin joining the band. Rabin pushed the band in a more pop direction on the album 90125, which featured Yes' only #1 song in "Owner of a Lonely Heart." They released another album in 1987 that did well. In 1989, Anderson was joined by former Yes members Bruford, Wakeman and Howe to release the law-firm-sounding Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe album; they then teamed with Squire, Kaye, White and Rabin to form an eight-member Yes lineup for the 1991 album Union and its tour. Over the last 30 years, there have been various configurations of the group. Squire and White died in 2015 and 2022, respectively. The current lineup of Yes features Howe, Downes (who was a founding member of Asia with Howe), Billy Sherwood, Jon Davison and Jay Schellen.

Yeah, prog can be pretty ridiculous at times, but on "Roundabout," it was also pretty great.