Arranged Excitement — Índice e Introducción
Last revised: 25 October 2026
Contents
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Yes · 1969
Side one: Beyond and Before · I See You · Yesterday and Today · Looking Around
Side two: Harold Land · Every Little Thing · Sweetness · Survival
CHAPTER TWO
Time and a Word · 1970
Side one: No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed · Then · Everydays · Sweet Dreams
Side two: The Prophet · Clear Days · Astral Traveller · Time and a Word
CHAPTER THREE
The Yes Album · 1971
Side one: Yours Is No Disgrace · Clap · Starship Trooper
Side two: I've Seen All Good People · A Venture · Perpetual Change
CHAPTER FOUR
Fragile · 1971
Side one: Roundabout · Cans and Brahms · We Have Heaven · South Side of the Sky
Side two: Five Per Cent for Nothing · Long Distance Runaround · The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) · Mood for a Day · Heart of the Sunrise
CHAPTER FIVE
Close to the Edge · 1972
Side one: Close to the Edge
Side two: And You and I · Siberian Khatru
CHAPTER SIX
Tales from Topographic Oceans · 1973
Side one: The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn)
Side two: The Remembering (High the Memory)
Side three: The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)
Side four: Ritual (Nous sommes du soleil)
CHAPTER SEVEN
Relayer · 1974
Side one: The Gates of Delirium
Side two: Sound Chaser · To Be Over
CHAPTER EIGHT
Going for the One · 1977
Side one: Going for the One · Turn of the Century · Parallels
Side two: Wonderous Stories · Awaken
CHAPTER NINE
Tormato · 1978
Side one: Future Times / Rejoice · Don't Kill the Whale · Madrigal · Release, Release
Side two: Arriving UFO · Circus of Heaven · Onward · On the Silent Wings of Freedom
CHAPTER TEN
Drama · 1980
Side one: Machine Messiah · White Car · Does It Really Happen?
Side two: Into the Lens · Run Through the Light · Tempus Fugit
ARRANGED EXCITEMENT · A MUSICAL HISTORY OF YES
Introduction
This is a musical history of Yes. It is not a biography of the band, and it does not try to tell, once again, the story of its line-up changes, its tours, its contracts or its quarrels. Those things appear here only when they explain something we can hear: why a song took the shape it did, who brought it into the room, what happened to it between the first rehearsal and the finished record. The book follows Yes through its first ten studio albums, from Yes (1969) to Drama (1980), and it does so one song at a time.
By “music” this book means the union of words and sound. Lyrics and instrumentation are treated as a single fabric, not as two layers to be described separately: a vocal line is also an instrumental line, and an arrangement is also a statement about what a song means. For that reason the reading of the lyrics is not an appendix to the musical analysis; it is part of it. The title, Arranged Excitement, is a phrase of Jon Anderson's, and it names the tension the book keeps returning to: the energy of a rock band held inside forms that were composed, rehearsed and built with unusual care.
Scope
The subject is the ten studio albums Yes released between 1969 and 1980: Yes, Time and a Word, The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans, Relayer, Going for the One, Tormato and Drama. Together they hold sixty tracks in their original running order, and each of them receives its own entry. The period has natural edges. It opens with a young band signed to Atlantic, still recording other people's songs alongside its own, and it closes with Drama, made without Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman and followed by the band's break-up at the start of 1981. In between lies the whole arc of what Yes became.
Live albums, compilations and the members' solo records are not treated as subjects in their own right, nor are the bonus tracks added to later reissues. They are brought in whenever they shed light on a song: an early version, a live arrangement that grew after the record, a piece that migrated from a solo project. Depth varies from entry to entry. Some songs carry a great deal of history and argument; others say what they have to say quickly, and the book lets them.
Four registers
Each song is approached through four registers, and the book keeps them clearly apart, because they make different kinds of claim and deserve to be weighed differently.
Documented history. How the song came to be: who wrote it and from what, what inspired it, how and where it was recorded, when it was released and when it was first played live. Every statement in this register rests on a traceable source, with its date and place of publication, and the text marks the difference between what is documented and what belongs to legend. Where accounts disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than quietly resolved.
Meaning. What the song is about, read through what the members of Yes themselves said about it, when and to whom. Their statements are the anchor; interpretation is offered only where it can be tied back to them.
Lyric notes. A close reading of the words as part of the music: imagery, sources, the way a phrase sits on a melody or against a rhythm. The full line-by-line analysis lives on the book's companion website, and each entry links to it.
A personal view. The author's own musical judgement, written in the first person and signed as such. It is the one register that makes no claim to objectivity, and it is kept separate so the reader always knows when opinion begins.
How the book is organised
Each chapter is one album, in order of release: Chapter One is Yes, Chapter Ten is Drama. A chapter opens with the record's release dates, label, producers and studios, and its track list by side; the songs then follow in their running order, each with the four registers in sequence. Sources are cited in numbered footnotes, and statements by the musicians are quoted in their original English.
The book can be read straight through, as the story of a band discovering what it could do and then testing the limits of it, or opened at any song. Either way, the invitation is the same: to listen again, with the words and the music heard as one thing.