Early Yes
In 1974 Roger travelled with Yes, and from time to time, did what we all do, record his adventures in photographs. These are a sample of some of the photographs that he took.
In their twenties, Yes were already playing to audiences of tens of thousands in massive auditoriums, sometimes more than twice a day in the United States.
The stage sets, lighting equipment, instruments, engineers and support staff came to form an airborne caravanserai from the UK. Landing in the US, Yes were welcomed in this far off place and invited to perform their magic, which they did, to great acclaim.
The first Yes show I ever attended was the opening night of Tales at Gainesville FL. We arrived early in the day and went in and watched the stage setup. I went outside at one point and saw a gentleman who I believe was Mr. Dean touching up the fiberglass pieces with an airbrush outside of the stadium. After the show we got backstage and met Jon and Steve and have a couple of photos of them. One of my greatest memories!
What about that shoulder bag in the last photo. I’d love to know where that is
Roger and other members of the band saw them in an open air market in San Francisco. They were leather and someone had made them with different pictures carved and stained into the leather. Roger had one with Tales on it, they weren’t made for the band, i’ve checked this out with him and unfortunately he doesn’t know what happened to his, it might have gone adrift in a house move. He doesn’t know about the bag in the photograph. I hope this goes some way to answering your question.
I Recall the incredible stage sets for all of the YES Shows. I specifically remember the Tale of Topographic Oceans Tour Stage. I can still remember being blown away> When Allen White got into his Solo drum Off during the song Nous Sommes Du Soleil And the entire Drum stage set up just lit up in what appears to be in Sync with his incredible drum solo….. WOW.. That was back in 1974 but WOW… IT just blew this boy away.
All of the sets were incredible, but Tales was to me the best. Thanks to Roger Dean, I understood that he had designed the set for the band. Thanks ! mr. Dean.
Thank you very much for your comments. The first half a dozen concerts of the Tales Tour were filmed, there was a full film crew, but sadly no one seems to know what happened to the footage. If anyone knows what happened to this it would be of great interest to many
AWESOME
12 March 1974 was my first Yesshow, in Albuquerque, NM. I remember this stage well. Yes became my favorite band that night, and have remained so ever since.
The Topographic Oceans tour is one of the great missing links in Yes history. There is no recordings of the tour, no film, and few pictures. I would love to see ALL the pictures you took from this tour!
Hi Sun Fellow, we are working on it at the moment. We have many photo’s but they need digitising, ordering and cataloguing. These were put up as a sample really just to jog people’s memories.
We are going to put up more soon.