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90125 by Released7 November 1983RecordedNovember 1982 – July 1983Studio and 
(, England) Length44:49 Yes ("" only)  chronology
(1981)90125
(1983)
(1985) from 90125 ""
Released: October 1983 ""
Released: February 1984 ""
Released: June 1984 ""
Released: November 1984

90125 is the eleventh  by the English  band , released on 7 November 1983 by . Its title was chosen to match the label catalog number for the release. After the group disbanded in 1981 after touring their previous album,  (1980), bassist  and drummer  formed  with guitarist and singer  and original Yes keyboardist  who had left in 1971. The group adopted a more commercial and pop-oriented direction as the result of their new material, much of it derived from Rabin's demos, with former Yes singer  as their producer. At the mixing stage, former Yes singer , who had left in 1980, returned to record the lead vocals, leading Cinema to change their name to Yes.

90125 was released to a generally positive reception and helped introduce the band to a new generation of fans. It reached No. 5 on the US  and No. 16 on the , and remains their best selling album with over 3 million copies sold in the US. Of the album's four singles, "" was the most successful and is their only song to top the US Billboard  and  charts. "" earned the group a  for . Yes toured the album in 1984 and 1985 which included two headline shows at the inaugural  festival. The album was remastered in 2004 with previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Background

In December 1980, Yes completed their tour of North America and the UK in support of their tenth album  (1980), with the short lived formation of , , , , and . The group disbanded soon after; Horn became a full-time record producer and Howe and Downes co-formed . Squire and White stuck together and continued to write material, including their 1981 Christmas single "". The two entered sessions with  with the aim of forming a  named , but the project was shelved.

By 1982, South African guitarist, singer-songwriter and producer  had moved to  and sent a tape with several demos to record labels with the intent of releasing a fourth solo album. During this time,  manager , a long time fan and associate of Yes, sought for new musicians to work with Squire and White, was introduced to Rabin by producer , with whom Rabin used to work as a . Carson invited Rabin to meet and play with Squire and White in London; Rabin recalled the first sessions "didn't sound great but it felt good ... there was a lot of potential", causing him to turn down an offer from  as he wished to work with a "great rhythm section". The three began to develop songs for an album using most of Rabin's demos. His songs, including "", "", and "", were more commercial and pop-oriented and less complex in structure. With such a direction, Squire recruited original Yes keyboardist , who had left in 1971, feeling Kaye's simpler style of playing was more suitable to their new music. Horn followed suit as a potential lead singer, but after unsuccessful rehearsals, opted to become their producer.

Wishing to establish a new identity and distance themselves from their Yes past, the four named themselves  and began to record an album in 1982. Roughly six months in, however, clashes between Horn and Kaye resulted in the latter's exit. Rabin saw it as "a mutual parting" as Kaye resisted to learn modern keyboard technology that they were using which left Rabin to handle the majority of keyboard parts. To complicate matters, Squire and Rabin's lead vocals were declared not distinctive enough, leading to Carson's suggestion of bringing former Yes singer  back into the fold. Squire had been in contact with Anderson since late 1982, the first time in years, and asked him to hear a tape of their music. Anderson, who returned to England in April 1983 after working in , listened to their songs in Squire's car outside his home due to past acrimony between the pair's wives. Anderson took a liking to the new music and recorded his vocals, making minor changes to the lyrics and arrangements to the music. By this time, the album had cost £300,000 to make, which included £150,000 of Carson's own money. With no more funds left to finish the album, Carson flew to  and presented it to , founder of  that also signed Yes in the 1970s. Ertegun liked the music and paid the remaining costs.

With the album complete, it was given the provisional title The New Yes Album. However, the group opted for a more minimalist approach and used its allocated catalogue number from the their label , a subsidiary of Atlantic. Its number was 90104 at first, but an error in the system led to its change to 90125. "It was going to be called 90124," sleeve designer Garry Mouat explained to . "But, because they couldn't get consistency worldwide with that number, it got changed to 90125. I've still got some rough tour t-shirts and sleeves with the original number."

 announced Cinema, but threats of legal action from groups with the same name prompted a rethink. With Anderson adding to the already-present Squire, Kaye, White, and Rabin – bringing the number of Yes musicians to four – Carson suggested that they name themselves Yes; something that concerned Rabin as he wished the album to be judged in its own right. But with Rabin persuaded, work began on promotion and rehearsals with keyboardist , formerly of  and , who appeared in the video for "Owner of a Lonely Heart". However, seeking to consolidate the band's legal identity as Yes, management came to an agreement with Kaye, hence his return after a tour with . Unimpressed with the change, "political problems" within the group, and a lack of interest in sharing live duties with Kaye, Jobson left.

Production Recording

Recording began in November 1982 at  in London while the group was known as Cinema, with Horn as producer; "Hold On" was produced by Horn and Yes. Production was assisted by and , both of whom also worked on Drama, with Stuart Bruce and Keith Finney.

Songs

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" was one of the songs from Rabin's set of demos. He wrote its bass line and its hook line while on the toilet. When the song was developed for the album, Squire replaced his original bridge. The song features a sample from the horn section of "Kool is Back" by  that Horn intended to use on an album by , which he was also producing. The sample was then stored onto his  and played by White. "Hold On" was originally titled "Moving In"; the final song was an amalgamation of two songs Rabin had written as they both had the same tempo. The chorus of "Hold On" was retained with its verses taken from "Moving In". "" was written on the piano by Squire, with its introduction put together by Rabin to go with his piano chords. "" was another song from Rabin's demos, with its introduction put together by White. Rabin developed it during a "depressed time", after a potential solo album deal with  fell through as they wished for him to join a band and play more "like ".

"" is an instrumental track recorded live at . Originally, the group developed an unreleased 20-minute song named "Time" and decided to include its two-minute opening on the final album."" developed from a bass line from Squire and a melody from Rabin. When it came to recording the song, the band were not satisfied with the drum sound they were getting in the studio, so they recorded the vocals first. However, one of the engineers had removed the song's  time references, causing various synchronisation problems. Rabin spent as much as three days re-doing the vocals onto a , but it "didn't feel completely right. So we redid the whole thing on top of the Synclavier stuff", a process that took several weeks. The lyrics to "" mentions the city of , itself a reference to the band's show at the  on their 1977 tour where the temperature on stage reached 126 °F (52 °C). The song received considerable radio airplay in the Toledo area. "City of Love" was inspired by Rabin's visit to  in  while on his way to a rehearsal with Foreigner. His taxi arrived at the wrong address to a more dangerous part of the area. Upon his return to Los Angeles, Rabin started to write an "ominous kind of thing" which came easy to him following the experience, "the idea of waiting for the night to come ... the derelicts came out of the sewers at nighttime to be thugs. Later Jon put his slant on it which made it more interesting". "Hearts" is the album's only track credited to the whole group. Rabin came up with the chorus and bridge a few months prior to meeting Squire and White for the first time. Kaye wrote its keyboard introduction, Rabin developed a melody from it, and Anderson developed its counter-melody.

Sleeve design

The album's logo was designed and created by Garry Mouat at Assorted Images on an  , and a variant would be used on Yes's next studio album . Trevor Rabin's 2003 album  uses the same cover design with colour and text variations.

"I became involved as I'd worked with Trevor Horn when he set up the  record label…" Mouat told . "At that point the band were called Cinema. The original design was similar to the eventual sleeve, but with the elliptical grey Y on its side and without the stick, to make it a C. But when Jon Anderson came back, they reverted to Yes… I know some fans think that sleeve was inappropriate, but Yes wanted something completely different to the  works, and were interested in using modern design technology, as it fitted the new techniques they were using."

Release

90125 was released on 7 November 1983. It reached No. 5 in the US and No. 16 in the UK.

Four singles were released from 90125; "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was released a month prior to the album and reached No. 1 on the   for two weeks and the . In 1984, "", "", and "" reached the top ten on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks.

In 1985, "" won a  for  and 90125 received a nomination for .

Reception Professional ratingsReview scoresSourceRating(7.8/10)

In 1984,  gave a mostly favourable review of 90125 for  magazine. He points out "Owner of a Lonely Heart" sounds "too hip, too street-smart for a band whose idea of a pop song was once something as rococo as "", yet credits the band's reinvention to Horn's production with "flashy pop sensibility" and his handling on the group's vocal harmonies. He thought "Cinema" and "Our Song" showed Yes displaying "old tricks" with such "overblown" tracks, though praises the record as a whole for its accessibility.  magazine praised 90125, thinking Yes' "dramatic rise from the ashes of rock's touring heaps" had created "some of the year's freshest, most un-dinosaur-like music" with its "stunning blend of pop, synthetics, fusion and classical music".

Critic and author  thought 90125 is the band's most "successful and sociable album" of their entire catalogue, comparing "Owner of a Lonely Heart" to a song by . He declared the record "a rich album experience with legs". In a retrospective review for , Paul Collins gave the album four-and-a-half out of five, calling 90125 "a stunning self-reinvention by a band that many had given up for dead" while complementing Horn's "slick" production work and Kaye's "crisp" synthesisers on "Changes". He also cites the vocal arrangements on "Leave It" and the "beautifully sprawling" "Hearts" as high points on the record, which "nary has any duff track".

Track listing Side oneNo.TitleWriter(s)VocalsLength1."", , , Anderson, Rabin4:272.""Rabin, Anderson, SquireAnderson, Squire5:153.""Squire, Anderson, RabinAnderson, Squire5:394.""Rabin, Anderson, Rabin, Anderson6:16Side twoNo.TitleWriter(s)VocalsLength1.""Squire, Rabin, White, Instrumental2:092.""Squire, Rabin, HornRabin, Anderson4:103.""Anderson, Squire, Rabin, WhiteAnderson4:164."City of Love"Rabin, AndersonAnderson4:485."Hearts"Anderson, Squire, Rabin, White, KayeAnderson, Rabin7:34