Yes

The first thing I'm curious about when heading to a Yes concert is discovering which line-up will take the stage. Of the classic quintet, three are present on this cool, damp autumn evening: Chris Squire, the band's founding bassist; Steve Howe, the guitarist who joined starting with the third album but who was an extraordinary protagonist of the band's entire golden era; and finally Alan White, the drummer who stepped in for the talented Bill Bruford right after the recording of "Close To The Edge" and was immediately thrown into the promotional tour for that very monumental album. Rounding out the line-up on stage is Oliver Wakeman, none other than the son of Rick, the dazzling keyboardist who in the early '70s vied with Keith Emerson (leader of Emerson Lake & Palmer) for the title of best rock keyboardist, and someone who can fairly be called a "clone" singer, the Canadian Davis Benoit, poached from a Yes tribute band and, at times, a genuinely convincing photocopy of Jon Anderson, the English band's angelic, historic voice.

The second point of curiosity concerns the audience, which packs the 2,400 seats of the Arcimboldi, the prestigious Milan venue that, once a temple of opera, has increasingly been repurposed — with the backing of local institutions — to host every form of popular entertainment, from pop to rock, from musicals to spectacular dance. The crowd is mostly middle-aged, probably at least in part the same fans from the early days, still loyal to so-called "progressive" music, which exploded in the late '60s and reached its artistic and, soon after, popular peak up until the mid-'70s, before undergoing an inexorable and sudden decline. It's an attentive, composed audience tonight, one that I'd describe — more than by age — by an attitude geared toward a cerebral kind of listening. I'm struck by the fact that during the show few spectators keep time with their feet, clap their hands, or even sway their shoulders to be carried along by what is, at times, a genuine rhythmic fury. Little physical or sensory abandon, then, counterbalanced instead, presumably, by immersion in the fantastical, visionary world conjured by Yes's music — an intimate, deep, exquisitely intellectual way of experiencing the music.

The third curiosity, sticking with the theme of the fantastical, concerns how the band's iconography comes across on stage. It's soon explained: through a sober, elegant set that evokes the whole surreal, delicate visionary world of Yes. Behind the drum kit looms the band's famous logo, echoed also on the bass drum head; suspended above the instruments, with a wonderful sense of lightness, are four three-dimensional fabric sculptures that recall the "spatial" artwork of Roger Dean, the artist behind the band's historic, evocative LP covers. Beyond that, it's just the instruments on stage, with a very soft light show casting monochrome beams ranging from green to lilac to pale blue. Just enough to finally leave room for the great music of one of the most representative bands of the entire progressive movement — and perhaps the most "paradigmatic" one when it comes to striking a balance among the genre's defining traits: the structural complexity of the songs (often over 10 minutes long); the skill, if not outright technical virtuosity; the epic, baroque-leaning vocation of the orchestrations.

And balance is precisely the key word of the evening, a balance resting on a musical centre of gravity with a first and last name: Chris Squire. The formidable bassist — one of the most devastating players of the four-string electric instrument I have ever seen at a rock concert — is, if I may borrow some football jargon, the metronome of midfield, the true centre of gravity of the band, holding things in balance on one side between the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic sections, and on the other between accompaniment and soloing. With a highly personal, ever-present style, Squire's picking weaves in and out of the compositional dynamics, moving from a driving, razor-precise rhythmic sense to a versatility that operates in both harmonic and melodic terms. It's the bass that binds the Yes sound together — now rock-solid in rhythmic accompaniment alongside White, now ready to counterpoint the great Howe's guitar or Wakeman junior's keyboards, now capable of wandering off into soloing territory. But what's truly astonishing is his ability to do all of this at once, within the space of a single bar or turnaround; and always with a robust, present, pointed sound, bordering on aggressive I'd say, rich in effects but never degenerating into distortion for its own sake. Pure spectacle for anyone who loves the instrument!

Around Squire, Howe is the great guitarist we all know, a beacon of progressive six-string playing, a musician still capable of embroidering wholly original parts; blistering in his solo sections and invaluable in the unexpected nooks of Yes's complex musical architecture. As expected, Howe carves out a brief acoustic solo spot during the evening, just enough time to run through his evergreen classics, "Mood For A Day" and "The Clap". Alan White — the drummer who, according to legend, learned the entire Yes repertoire in just three days after Bruford's departure (which, even if only half true, would say a great deal about his calibre as a musician) — lacks, to my mind, a strongly defined stylistic character on the instrument, the kind that, say, a Phil Collins had in Genesis or Bruford himself had in Yes. Oliver Wakeman, for his part, stays in the background. Despite a strong resemblance to his father, accentuated by the same flowing hair and priestly bearing, he delivers a rather timid performance, in which the choice not to (or perhaps not being able to) emulate his father's virtuosity seems to prevail. This approach works in favour of the overall instrumental balance, but on the whole limits that epic quality so emphasised in its day by Rick Wakeman's keyboards — an epic quality that could, at times, risk tipping into kitsch and self-indulgence (which, to my mind, represent the worst pitfalls for this noble musical genre).

Vocalist Davis Benoit acquits himself well, no question about it. The voice is there, as is certainly the love and the ability to inhabit the repertoire that once belonged to Jon Anderson. After an academic-style performance, Benoit sheds the "clone" mask and breaks ranks at the end of the evening, during the only encore granted, "Roundabout". The singer comes back on stage, after being called back by the crowd, wearing the Italian national football team shirt (memories inevitably go to 1982, with Mick Jagger at the Comunale in Turin sporting the blue jersey of a freshly crowned world champion Italy), and with great energy manages to get the composed audience on its feet, sweeping them up in the final ovation. The evening's setlist mirrors, for two thirds of its length, that of the 1973 triple live album "Yessongs", underlining the centrality, within the band's output, of the trilogy formed by "The Yes Album", "Fragile" and "Close To The Edge". Among the most convincing moments of the evening, I noted the opening with "Siberian Khatru", "Yours Is No Disgrace", "And You And I", "I've Seen All Good People" and the astonishing "Heart Of The Sunrise", where, after a solo intro dedicated to Squire's bass, the song explodes into instrumental runs that raise goosebumps.

Interesting to see the return of "Astral Traveller", from the second album "Time And A Word", whose beautiful, dreamy verse seems to urge us to float through the surreal landscapes painted by Roger Dean. While the performance of the hit "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", the band's fleeting moment of 80s glory, is inevitable, the inclusion of not one but two songs from the album "Drama" ("Tempus Fugit" and "Machine Messiah"), as well as "Onward", taken from "Tormato", feels a touch forced. There remains, however, a bit of disappointment at not getting to hear the suite "Close To The Edge", probably the band's masterpiece.

Without ever flagging, the concert closes after 2 hours and 20 minutes of great music. Truly an incentive to go back and revisit some of the best that progressive has to offer.

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