A major name in British progressive rock, Yes are among the very first artists to have worked at Mountain Studios, shortly after it opened. The band recorded “Going for the One” there, released in 1977, the album that marked keyboard player Rick Wakeman’s return to the line-up. On stage, only one appearance is known, on 14 July 2003 at the Auditorium Stravinski.
Yes arrived at Mountain Studios in October 1976 and stayed until April 1977. Six months for one album, and the first time the band had worked outside the United Kingdom.
The stay began with an upheaval. During rehearsals, keyboard player Patrick Moraz left the band. Rick Wakeman, who had walked away three years earlier after the disagreements around “Tales from Topographic Oceans”, came back to take his place. So it was in Montreux that a reunion awaited since 1973 finally happened.
“Going for the One” breaks with the previous concept albums: the songs are shorter and more direct. Except one. “Awaken” runs fifteen minutes and closes the record.
For that piece, Rick Wakeman did not want a studio organ. He needed a church instrument, with the volume of air and the reverberation that come with it. So the band went down to the Temple Saint-Martin de Vevey, whose organ was linked up to Mountain Studios for the duration of the recording. Wakeman also wrote the choral arrangements of the piece.
The result ranks among the peaks of progressive rock, and it carries in its scale the acoustics of a church in the Vaud. The Riviera left a second trace on the record: inside the sleeve is a photograph of the Île de Peilz, offshore from Villeneuve, the only natural island in Lake Geneva.
The only natural island in Lake Geneva, a few dozen square metres and a plane tree: it appears inside the sleeve of “Going for the One”, the album Yes were recording in Montreux.
Music recorded in Montreux
1977
Going for the One
Yes settled in Montreux for months to record this album marked by Rick Wakeman’s return on keyboards, notably with “Awaken”, one of the peaks of progressive rock.
