Yes – Owner of a Lonely Heart (1983)
Some bands had their moments. Yes had their quarter-hours.
Verily, the excess must all have been Chris Squire’s fault. Until his death, he was the only common thread in a band that often finished playing a song with a different lineup than the one they started it with (not sure if that meant the churn was too fast or the songs were too long; probably both).
The early ‘80s were especially turbulent for them. At one point, even choirboy Jon Anderson had flown away, only to walk it back once he saw what ‘replaceable’ meant. On his return, he brought another Trevor with him (the first, Horn, replaced him three years earlier).
This one, Rabin, was a gorgeous, axe-shreddin’, hit-writin’ machine with a heldentenor voice and a commanding stage presence that made even the roadies swoon. So, naturally, he was the oddest sock that this troupe – itself a sock drawer – ever had.
His impact was explosive. In the band’s half-century history, it has had exactly one, one, North American hit single. This was it, and Trevor Rabin wrote it (mostly). A pithy four minutes, it had fully nothing whatever in common with any of Yes’ signature works, either in form, style, texture or spirit. Proximate to shit-kickin’ rock & roll, Owner of a Lonely Heart wasn’t close to the edge of anything.
If you were a musical noob in 1983 and this was the first Yessong you heard, the rest of your orientation was going to be music’s version of a root canal.
