Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 – 1981

[This page is for the updated softcover edition of the original book, which was hardcover and came out in 2021. The chief mission is to showcase 350 images over the course of 224 full colour pages on sumptuous 100 lb. gloss paper. There’s also a fulsome band timeline with quotes that takes in all solo projects and underground releases.

As the back cover sez:

Through a confluence of grinding hard rock grooves, pioneering electronics and liquid lighting, Dave Brock and his assembled astronauts of mind and space have been defining for more than fifty years now what it means to be the ultimate cult band. Ripping into the public consciousness with the Space Ritual live album of 1973, Hawkwind have never looked back, discovering new ways to equate the subatomic with the infinite, the endless void of space with totality, using the exotic language of their ever-evolving yet complex musical language, one that defies genre classification, but perhaps creates a genre all its own, namely space rock.

Accompanying their more than thirty studio albums and myriad companion pieces along the way are the graphics thereof, visuals that further attempt to explain themes that are hard to articulate. Hawkwind: A Visual Biography concentrates the third eye on this part of the package, presenting pretty pictures of record covers, promo items, advertisements, ticket stubs, paper goods pertaining to side-projects and of course shots of Brock and crew resplendent in their live space, in hopes that the Hawk manifesto just might become a little more knowable. Aiding in that cause, Martin Popoff has provided a detailed timeline of the band’s complicated and dramatic career goings-on, helping to guide one’s way through each year and era, each hiring and firing and misfiring, each cluster of notions, audio magic potions, each sailing upon inter-stellar topographic oceans.

The ultimate aim is to send the next generation of blaster-offer back to the original scriptures, the studio albums serving as space-flung signposts, in search of the charming and astounding sounds that gave raise to the companion document confronting you now. ](Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 – 1981 is my weighty 1.65 kg, 8 ½” x 12” hardback coffee table book on Jon Anderson and Chris Squire and their minstrel buddies of Mensa rock madness.

The chief mission is to celebrate the first ten years of the band’s sublime career, utilizing a timeline and quotes format, putting back into service a revised version of the text used in my long out of print book, Yes: Time and a Word.

But that’s just the start. Besides the fully 90,000 words of academic timeline framing and commentary from the band in their own words, the book features fully 283 pictures, placed reverently upon 224 pages of sumptuous 100 lb. gloss paper.

As the publisher’s blurb attests (slight edit notwithstanding):

Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 – 1981 documents the progressive rock pioneer’s first 12 years from the release of their eponymous debut album through to 1980’s Drama. It’s a suitable label for a band whose career has been full of drama as documented in Popoff’s narrative, an action-packed treatise that charts Yes’s ups and downs as the band emerged from the ‘60s with a full-on assault on the ‘70s music scene that saw them become one of the biggest acts in the world, selling out venues from New York’s Madison Square Garden to London’s Wembley Arena.

Popoff takes you on a journey from the early days of the band with original members Chris Squire, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Peter Banks and Tony Kaye, to the hugely successful ‘70s when the likes of Steve Howe, Patrick Moraz, Rick Wakeman and Alan White all added their individual stamps on the band’s identity. Then we witness the surprise union with The Buggles that saw Yes enter the ‘80s a world apart from the way they had entered the ‘70s, while continuing to delight their legion of fans.

Throughout the book Popoff draws on his own interviews conducted with various band members throughout the last two decades, leaving much of the story to be told in their own words, along with a smattering of album reviews by the author and others.

Weighing in at over 1.5 kg, this large format coffee table book is fully illustrated throughout, documenting the story visually from the late ‘60s through to 1980. As well as an abundance of concert images, the stunning photographic content is topped off with many off-stage shots including a selection of photos taken at Morgan Studios in London during the recording of 1973’s audacious and extravagant Tales From Topographic Oceans. Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 – 1981 serves as a critical addition to any Yes fan’s collection.)