Big Generator

Big Generator is the twelfth studio album by progressive rock band Yes. It was released in 1987 on Atlantic Records’ Atco subsidiary label (Yes’ last studio album for Atlantic) and was the follow-up to the massively successful 90125 album.

A laborious album to make, Big Generator’s sessions dragged on for two years, largely due to creative differences. Guitarist Trevor Rabin was aiming to progress beyond 90125, while founding lead vocalist Jon Anderson was beginning to yearn for more traditional Yes music.

The result was an album that was successful commercially, with two songs reaching the US Top 40: “Love Will Find a Way” (also a #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart) and “Rhythm of Love” (their last US Top 40 hit). The album was not as popular as 90125, and feeling that the band was going in a direction he didn’t want to pursue, Jon Anderson began working on other projects at the conclusion of the Big Generator tour in 1988 including a partial reformation with his Yes bandmates from the 1970s.

It is unclear if the album will ever be reissued by Rhino Records with additional bonus tracks as all previous Atlantic studio releases have been. While new additional material has not been available, unreleased demos may be pulled from the Warner vaults, or live material from 1988 used on the box set, Yesyears.

Missing from the Yes “expanded and remastered” 2003/2004 series by Rhino/Warner, (like Yessongs, Yesshows and 9012Live), Big Generator was finally remastered (with inverted stereo image) and expanded in 2009 by Isao Kikuchi, the album was published by Warner Music Japan as part of their “Yes SHM-CD Papersleeve” series.