Short Reviews [Yes - 2018 - "Fly From Here. Return Trip"]

Everyone surely knows the story about the original album by now. Chris Squire re-discovered the song “Fly From Here” from the ‘Drama’ sessions, and was talking to Trevor Horn about it. They agreed to record the song with the current line-up, with Horn producing, but when they commenced doing a full album, a decision was made to replace keyboard player Oliver Wakeman and bring back Geoffrey Downes as he was closer to the original material. In other words, it was the ‘Drama’ line-up except with Benoit David on vocals. For some fans, such as myself, this was the best album the band had released in many years, and actually became the first I spent a lot of time listening to since ‘Drama’ itself, which I always felt was a massively overlooked and castigated release. In many ways it is no surprise that we now have this new version, and there must have been conversations at the time of having Horn sing lead vocals and fully resurrecting the ‘Drama’ line-up, but given this would have been toured, something which Horn could not commit to, then this would be why they struck with David. I have been a fan of Mystery since before David joined that band, so had followed his career with the Canadians, and always felt he was a great fit with Yes and certainly much better than Jon Davidson. Anyway, apart from Horn’s vocals taking over from David’s, we have some slightly remixed tracks, the addition of an unreleased Steve Howe vocal track “Don't Take No For An Answer”, and an extended version of “Hour Of Need”. The question must be “why bother?”, as there is only the need for one of the albums, and Squire signed off on the original mixes and he is not around now to make suggestions or alterations. Being a cynic at heart, possibly someone suggested it might be an idea to come out with a different version of their most well-received album in years given the glowing (NOT!) reaction to ‘Heaven and Earth’. I cannot be the only Yes fan who is not actually looking forward to hearing ‘The Quest’. If you are a fan of Yes then you will already have the original, and many will get this for completeness (guilty), but of the two I will return to the original and I am sure many will play this once and then do the same.