Yes: A Visual Biography II: 1982 – 2022

Yes: A Visual Biography II: 1982 – 2022 is my weighty 1.55 kg, 8 ½” x 12” hardback coffee table book on Jon Anderson and Chris Squire and their minstrel buddies of Mensa rock madness, but focusing on the last 40 years.

The chief mission is to celebrate the shiny 90125 years—and also all things Asia and GTR—plus all the success in the rest of the ‘80s through Big Generator and the records and tours beyond. Along the way, we get two post-Jon Anderson lead singers but also the fierce Anderson Rabin Wakeman band, touring at the same time as Yes. Marbled throughout are touchdowns onto all the solo projects and collaborations conducted by members of the sprawling Yes family, from which we get a sense of just how prolific these guys have been over the last four decades.

But that’s just the start. Besides the fully 53,845 words of academic timeline framing and commentary from the band in their own words, the book features fully 340 pictures, placed reverently upon sumptuous 100 lb. gloss paper.

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

Yes: A Visual Biography II: 1982 - 2022 documents the progressive rock pioneers’ career from the ‘80s to the present day. Popoff takes you on a journey built around his interviews with Anderson, Bruford, Howe, Squire, Wakeman, Downes, White and many others, as the tale unfolds via an exhaustive chronology designed to satisfy the most knowledgeable of Yes fans. Not content with charting the band’s history, Popoff covers the major projects outside of the Yes umbrella, such as Asia, GTR and Rick Wakeman’s extravaganzas, to paint the whole picture.

If you’ve been moved by albums such as Fly from Here and Heaven and Earth, you’ll love this book, which perfectly captures the spirit of progressive rock’s first and biggest and best act of crack musicians bent on bending your perceptions of what rock can be. Throughout the book Popoff draws on his own interviews conducted with various band members since the mid ‘90s, leaving much of the story to be told in their own words, along with a smattering of album reviews by the author and others. This large format coffee table book is fully illustrated throughout, documenting the story visually from 1982. As well as an abundance of concert images the stunning photographic content is topped off with many off-stage shots and pictures of record covers, 45 sleeves, ads, tour posters and backstage passes. Yes: A Visual Biography II: 1982 - 2022 will augment proudly any Yes fan’s collection.

Books will be signed by me to you unless you wave your arms wildly and tell me otherwise within like half an hour of ordering.