Yes is arguably the most successful, popular, and longest-running progressive rock group in history. While groups like the Moody Blues and Jethro Tull have had equal success, they have explored other musical sounds. King Crimson has also been around for a long time and released an enormous amount of music, including a large number of fulsome reissues and archival material, but has never achieved much in the way of popular success. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer are a group that rivals Yes in many ways, but their heyday was short-lived. Although they have released a healthy number of reissues and archival material, there haven’t been nearly as many mammoth releases with vinyl as Yes or the amount that has come from Tull and King Crimson.
Over the past couple of years, bespoke reissues of what many considered the group’s zenith—The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close to the Edge—came out. This roundup will focus on those three releases and the group’s most recent live Record Store Day release, Live at the Rainbow, London, England 12/16/1972.
All of the reissues of the classic studio albums are multi-disc sets. The Yes Album (2023) and Fragile (2024) sets are 1 vinyl album/4 CD/1 Blu-ray sets. The Close to the Edge (2025) set is a 1 vinyl album/5CD/1 Blu-ray set. All three sets come in a sturdy gatefold package, with the vinyl albums housed in poly-lined sleeves. The Yes Album comes with an album-sized 12-page booklet.
The Fragile set comes with a 16-page album-sized booklet and debuts the iconic album art of Roger Dean. Dean has gone on to have a long, fruitful career as an album art designer, but is most associated with Yes. The Close to the Edge set also comes with a 12-page album-sized booklet. They all also come with a Blu-ray that includes at least a new Dolby Atmos mix by Steven Wilson, along with a 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound mix and a Hi-Res stereo mix. All of the sets come with a plethora of bonus material which will be detailed below.
The Yes Album was the third album from Yes and came out in 1971. The lineup of the first three albums was Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Bill Buford, and Tony Kaye. Fragile was Kaye’s last with the group. This is the album that fully established Yes as a force and solidified its Prog sound. While “Yours Is No Disgrace,” “Starship Trooper,” and “I’ve Seen All Good People” in particular received generous FM airplay, other tracks were played and the entire album became a Prog classic.
It may be one of the group’s two best albums and is a defining album of the early ’70s. Kaye supplied more of an atmospheric keyboard approach than would future Prog god Rick Wakeman on upcoming Yes albums and left just as the band exploded. The songs, musicianship, and Anderson’s unmistakable vocal style prove the heights Prog could reach years before the whole sound became too overblown and ponderous.
This is the album where engineer Eddie Offord became more than just an engineer and served as a production partner with the group. It’s great hearing some of these tracks as they were intended, instead of the radio mixes that were played on FM radio at the time. The mix of the original album here is much more organic and subdued than much of what was played on FM radio, but also sometimes misses the punch of the original album.
The Steven Wilson mixes tend to have their fans and detractors, but there is no questioning his credentials as the king of Prog remixing, and he has great knowledge of the music and a deep respect for it. His remix of the album from 2014 and of various instrumentals takes up all of the second CD. CD three includes rarities. CD four, which is excellent, is of selections from a concert from January 21, 1971 in Sweden and from the Yale Bowl in Connecticut on July 24, 1971.
CD one and the vinyl LP (pressed in Germany) have the original mix of the album. The Blu-ray includes a new Dolby Atmos mix by Steven Wilson, along with a 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound mix and a Hi-Res stereo mix. This is a must-have reissue for Yes fans, and it is hard to imagine it could have been done any better in most respects.
With Fragile, the group’s second release in 1971, Yes takes another step forward by introducing keyboardist Rick Wakeman into the group. This is about the equivalent of when Neil Young joined CSN and Joe Walsh joined the Eagles. You have a band that is essentially already a supergroup bringing in another superstar with an outsized personality to match.
On his first outing with Yes, as great as this album is, the results are mixed. Wakeman is a little tentative in spots, and his fit with the group is clearly coming along gradually, which ultimately for the health of the band was a good thing. “Roundabout” was the only track here that received considerable airplay at that time, and while the album is very unified and conceptual, not all of the pieces fit together seamlessly all the time.
Still, it’s an outstanding effort and yet another classic, essential Yes album and Prog album. Again, there are both a CD and a vinyl album of the original LP mix as well as a CD of Steven Wilson’s remix of the album and instrumentals. There’s a CD of rarities, that includes the group’s cover of “America,” from Simon and Garfunkel, which came out first on an Atlantic Records 1972 compilation album and then was released in 1975 on the group’s Yesterdays compilation album.
There is also a CD of more rarities, but only three live tracks. The Blu-ray here includes a new Dolby Atmos mix by Steven Wilson, along with a 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound mix and a Hi-Res stereo mix, but also comes with a remastered stereo mix and an instrumental mix. All of the remixes were done in 2024.
The newest release is Close to the Edge, which came out in 1972. It is here where Rick Wakeman is fully integrated as a member of the group, Eddie Offord is truly the group’s co-producer, and Roger Dean’s artwork was essential to the visual presentation of the group’s music and would remain so for years to come.
Essentially three long, fully realized song suites, with the title suite taking up all of side one, this is the mountain-top of a ’70s Prog album. Expansive, dream-like, and lyrically imaginative, the album, for all its grandiose music and themes, is concise, accessible, and timeless. I don’t think anyone can name an album by a group from the past 10 years where all the members collectively have created a piece of music of such musicianship with a singular vision as brilliant as this classic early-’70s album.
Like on the previous sets, there are both a vinyl album and a CD of the original mix and a CD of Steven Wilson’s new mix of the album and new instrumental mixes. The rarities mix includes two more versions of “America” and single versions of various songs, a promotional radio edit, a studio run-through of “Siberian Khatru,” a rough mix of the entire “Close to the Edge” side and an alternative mix of “And You And I,” along with some new Steven Wilson edits, among other rare gems.
CDs four and five are of a concert from December 16, 1972 from the Rainbow in London. The set even includes excerpts from Rick Wakeman’s The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, which Wakeman had finished recording in October and which would be his second solo album, released in January 1973, and another Prog classic which many feel was his real proper solo debut album. It’s also important to note that the Rainbow recordings would feature Alan White replacing Bill Buford on drums, with White remaining the group’s drummer until his death in May 2022.
The Blu ray contains 2025 mixes, including a Steven Wlson Atmos Mix, a Steve Wilson 5.1 DTS -HD MA mix, Steven Wilson stereo remixes, Steven Wilson instrumental mixes and the 2025 remaster of the original album.
I can’t think of any self-respecting Yes or Prog fan who would not seek to have these three near perfect reissues in their collection.
The group’s most recent release is the live 2025 Record Store Day album Live at the Rainbow, London, England 12/16/1972. This is the same as what’s on the concert CDs included on the Close to the Edge reissue. This release, however, is a Record Store Day Exclusive, limited-edition, triple-album vinyl set housed in poly-lined sleeves with an etching on the sixth side. The look and feel of the release is very much in keeping with bootlegs of the day, except the sound quality is quite good.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
The Yes Album (Super Deluxe Edition)
A+
Fragile (Super Deluxe Edition)
A
Close To The Edge (Super Deluxe Edition)
A+
Live at the Rainbow, London, England 12/16/1972
B+
