Yes "Yessongs"

Yessongs is the first live album by the English rock band Yes, released in May 1973 on Atlantic Records. The album is a compilation of recordings taken from their Fragile (1971) and Close to the Edge (1972) tours between February and December 1972, from various locations in North America and the Rainbow Theatre in London. Two tracks feature Bill Bruford on drums; the remaining songs feature his replacement, Alan White.

Yessongs received a mostly positive critical reception, though much of its criticism was directed at its sound quality. However, the album was a commercial success for the band, reaching No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 12 on the U.S. Billboard 200. In 1998, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over one million copies. In 2015, several shows that were used for Yessongs were released in their entirety as Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two.

The album opens with the final section from Igor Stravinsky's orchestral work The Firebird, which has been a standard opening for the majority of Yes concerts since 1971. The two tracks from the Fragile tour — "Perpetual Change" and "Long Distance Runaround/The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" — feature Bill Bruford on drums. The remaining tracks have his successor, Alan White. Bruford performs a drum solo on "Perpetual Change", which is preceded by an extended guitar performance by Howe accompanied by Bruford and Squire. "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" is considerably longer than the studio version with bassist Chris Squire playing an extended solo. Keyboardist Rick Wakeman performs a medley of excerpts from his solo album The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Singer Jon Anderson sings a passage from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring before the medley. "Mood for a Day" is an unaccompanied guitar performance by Steve Howe, who also takes extended solos during "Yours Is No Disgrace" and at the end of "Starship Trooper".

The album was initially released on three discs in a fold-out package featuring artwork by Roger Dean. Inside are four individual panels by Dean which continue a theme that began with Fragile in 1971. On the back cover of Fragile is an image of a small planet breaking apart into several large pieces with a giant sailing spacecraft nearby. The first panel in Yessongs, titled "Escape", shows the craft apparently leading the planetary fragment through space. The second panel ("Arrival") depicts these fragments landing in the waters of a new world. In the third image ("Awakening") this new landscape becomes the habitat for various plant and animal species. The final image ("Pathways") depicts the emergence of civilisation (Dean's cat walked across this piece whilst still wet and its paw prints can be clearly seen, though Dean tried to disguise them as clouds). This theme is also the basis of the film Floating Islands. The sailing craft was used as a small logo on many of the band's subsequent albums, and the image sequence inspired Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's first solo album Olias of Sunhillow in 1976, although Roger Dean was not involved with that album's artwork.

The original Bob White plot for the RPG Ultima IX: Ascension compared the original ending of the game to Dean's artwork on Yessongs.

Yessongs was released on 18 May 1973. Its was originally set for release in February 1973 prior to the band's 1973 North American tour, but delays in printing its cover led to its release pushed back. It peaked at number 7 in the UK and number 12 in the US. The album was certified gold in 1973 and platinum in 1998 by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album was also certified Gold in Canada and in Germany.