Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

When started to listen Yes from the 70's, my friend lent me Tormato - he thought that it would be a nice mid term to start with...
That was when I started to appreciate some Yessongs. I recorded the vinyl LP to a cassete... all of it? No... I didn't care too much for 2 songs that were not so "beautiful" or "melodic"... indeed they seemed to me only noisy and disjointed. Those were "Release, Release" and "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" (would you believe?).... So... perspective and tastes will always change - always irrationally - and while some songs we enjoy at first listen and start getting tired of them, others spend years before we start to like them, but once we get the picture - our own picture - it will stay forever.

This is an old recording from 2000 that I transformed into a video clip, because I'm short of time for now but I'd still like to make something for my own and for those of you who like to watch my videos.

... starting countdown for San Francisco, where I go on work

Thanks for watching!

Miguel
http://www.miguelbass.com

Great timing, Miguel. I just pulled out the Yes Tor(mato) CD and listened to it en route to a job, a day before you posted this.

I prefer to refer to this CD by the original name, btw. The whole "tomato on the cover' thing, I just don't get. They should re-release this with a new Roger Dean design, IMO. I've even condidered doing it myself with a montage of other Dean paintings and an actual photo of the real Yes Tor in Devon.

I feel, while this album did suffer slightly from a lack of a solid producer, that it has many fine moments and never deserved the harsh treatment it has received over the years from certain critics. Its not FRAGILE, nor was it meant to be. Even arriving UFO, my least favorite track on the disc, has some great experimental sounds coming from both Chris and Steve's rigs, doing more than a fair job of keep up with Wakeman in the "music as FX" department. Chris really liked the harmonized flange / chorus sound of his Ric, so much that by the next album, Drama, he was using the Electra MPC bass with the onboard flanger. And Release Release is flat out rock & rool, Yes style!

Thanks again, Miguel!

Miguel, great job (as usual)! As with Jim I too was listening to the CD while gathering supplies for my youngest graduation party... great adaption.

Jim - I agree the cover never settled with me all that well either. I wonder if Roger Dean ever did anything with tomatoes as a center? Will need to check the archives.

Wow, Miguel, wow.....

Oh, and I gotta get me a Thunderbird....

I have very fond memories of Tormato... or "Yes Tor" for Jim

Back then, being the first album that my friend shown me, to try to get me into Yes... I had no references other than OOaLH. I think this was around the time Big Generator came out... I thought the album was quite nice but felt "irregular". For me, Future Times/Rejoice symbolized the style of Yes. Maybe it was the track they produced better and it comes in the beginning of the album. Like I said, OtSWoF sounded harsh to my ears and still today I can hear that it doesn't have the same more refined production of FT/Rejoice... I still very much like Tormato as it is... and the cover may represent some of the feelings that may have been felt by the band. On one hand "Yes Tor" - trying to continue the message from the early 70's... but a certain frustration of how those aesthetics were being bashed after prog was not so hip anymore and Yes were starting to be regarded as the next "dinosaurs" and "old farts"... even a certain auto-criticism or anger - "screw the Yes-Tor and let's throw a to(r)mato and boo ourselves"... we give up. So... Today I think the cover reflects what was Yes at that period... it really couldn't be a beautiful RD nice painting... the band wasn't that... and the music wasn't that... "harmony"... On a second thought (and I am making up all these thoughts as I write)... in DRAMA - I think the return of Roger Dean once again is in "harmony" or "in the harmony" the band was living at the time - The textures, colours and lines of Drama reveal the unstable balance the band was going through. For sure it re-enforces the album's title (Which is a itself statement - not taken from any song title or text). When I see the cover of Drama, I feel something like "troubled waters", instability, windy/stormy... This time - reflected on the musical/lyrical messages rather than in the production aspects (which came out very strong).

Getting back to Tor... One thing I never understood was - not the tomato - but, why that photo?

Miguel
http://www.miguelbass.com

P.S. thank you for your comments regarding the clip!

By the way, I arrived in San Francisco. It's so nice to be in the U.S.
Special greetings to my American friends at RR!

Miguel

i'm waving hello to you from about 375 miles up the coast,Miguel! hope you have a great stay in San Fran!

woodyng wrote:i'm waving hello to you from about 375 miles up the coast,Miguel! hope you have a great stay in San Fran!

Good morning Woody! Thanks! Waving hello to you!

Welcome, Miguel, I'm just a mere 2500 miles or so due east - Drop in if you're in the neighborhood!

just_bassics wrote:Welcome, Miguel, I'm just a mere 2500 miles or so due east - Drop in if you're in the neighborhood!

One day I'd love to make a vacation in the U.S. to get to know you, Jim, and all many members of the forum.
I hope to meet up today with Paul Wilczynski

Miguel

Legend has it Rick Wakeman hated the test pressing of the album cover and threw a tomato at it and voila, Yes history is made.

Yea, well, I don't think so...

But feel free to quote a reference if you have one... didn't think so

08 Ric 4003 wrote:Legend has it Rick Wakeman hated the test pressing of the album cover and threw a tomato at it and voila, Yes history is made.

just_bassics wrote:Yea, well, I don't think so...

But feel free to quote a reference if you have one... didn't think so

Well, how about:

The original album title was to be Yes Tor, referring to a geological formation in southern England. The photographs taken by Hipgnosis for the album cover were seen as so unimpressive that Rick Wakeman, in frustration, threw a tomato at the pictures. The cover and title were adjusted accordingly.[3] [4]

From "Wikipedia":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tormato

With the citations [3] and [4] being:
3. ^ [|Wright, Jeb] (May 2002). "Rick Wakeman of Yes". Classic Rock Revisited. Archived from the original on January 6, 2004. Retrieved October 24 2009.
4. ^ [|Tiano, Mike] (September 3 2008). "Conversation with Roger Dean [nfte #308"]. Notes From the Edge. Retrieved October 24 2009.

Thanks for the reference, never heard that story in all my reading of Yes material, although I did hear it joked about quite a bit. But, Wikipedia??? Sorry, that site is not my first or last source on anything, although nice for some general info, I'd never quote that site myself. Just me...

Actually I'd read it was the Artist that threw a tomato, but it always sounded like a stretch. Steve Howe has gone on record several times about his disdain for the change of the album name and the artwork, as I believe Yes Tor was his idea originally. (See Chris Welch's "Close to the Edge" for reference on Steve's comments)

I've read that interview with Roger Dean, can't find where he relates this story (maybe just going blind here) but since he was out of the picture at that point as far as Yes album artwork was concerned, wouldn't he also just be repeating second hand knowledge?

Safe to say, for me anyway, that Tormato's cover was not well received by the band as a whole. The return of Roger Dean on DRAMA was a welcome relief and that artwork, with the three cats chasing the two swans taking flight, was about the most realistic of Dean's otherwise surreal paintings.

Don't even get me started on GFTO artwork, at least the outer cover. No cover more poorly reflected the music content more that that one. I wonder what Dean would have painted for GFTO had he been commisioned?

I was close. Read the same on wiki a while back but in my old age the memory has slipped. On The Silent Wings Of Freedom is the best cut on the album.