Close to the Edge by Yes

Close to the Edge, Yes's fifth album, came out on Atlantic in September 1972, and it's the sound of a band deciding that three songs are plenty to fill an LP. Back at Advision Studios in London with Eddy Offord, Jon Anderson and Steve Howe pieced together sketches written on the road, and the band assembled them section by section, all of them getting a vote. The title track swallows the first side: an 18-minute suite in four movements, its words drawn from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, with Rick Wakeman's Mellotron and church organ swelling underneath like weather. Side two offers the pastoral folk glow of "And You and I" and the hard charge of "Siberian Khatru", Chris Squire's bass shoving it along.

The painstaking sessions wore Bill Bruford down, and he left for King Crimson before the record was even in the shops, handing the drum stool to Alan White for the tour. Roger Dean's green sleeve introduced the bubble logo, and the album went platinum in America.

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