And You and I: Cord of Life / Eclipse / The Preacher The Teacher / Apocalypse

Zoo Freaks, lean back and let the Zoo Crew guide you through one of those journeys that only Yes could build. Right now the turntable is spinning “And You and I: Cord of Life / Eclipse / The Preacher The Teacher / Apocalypse,” the ten-minute centerpiece from Close to the Edge. It opens like a quiet walk through tall grass and ends like you have crossed an ocean of light, four movements locked together so the whole thing feels like one long breath. Jon Anderson has said the piece started as a simple, pretty folk song he and Steve Howe were sketching, just a couple of voices and an acoustic guitar. Then they decided it needed to be wrapped in big themes, the kind that lift a listener out of the room and set them down somewhere higher.

Anderson still talks about how much he loves singing it live. The line about a man who conceived a moment’s answers to the dream has stayed with him for decades. He explained the title itself begins with the word “And” because that is exactly how the melody arrived while he and Howe were writing: “And you and I climb over the sea to the valley.” The rhythm just felt right, and it stuck. When people ask who the “you” is, Anderson has answered that it is probably God, or maybe all of us together, the audience and the singer reaching for a clearer understanding of the beauty that is already around us. Rick Wakeman, who shaped the keyboard landscapes, once described the song as different movements that flow into one another, built to be everything the critics disliked and everything the fans embraced: pure, unfiltered emotion.

Steve Howe has recalled the long hours in the rehearsal room, circling the same ideas until the arrangement finally clicked. For the opening Cord of Life he used his Martin 00-18, the flattop he still calls the best acoustic he ever owned at that time, along with a Guild twelve-string that belonged to Chris Squire. Howe has said he was tempted to buy that Guild; the natural harmonics and the gentle three-chord progression in D major give the song its first steady heartbeat before the rest of the band expands it. Anderson has described the way they built the bridges, making each one feel completely different so that when the main theme returns it lands with extra weight. He would often record Wakeman while the keyboardist was inventing new figures, then pull those ideas into the larger structure. They assembled the whole piece in about a week; the Preacher The Teacher section, with its country-tinged guitar and Squire’s singing bass lines, came together in a single afternoon.

One memory Anderson returns to is the first time they played the song in front of a crowd at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. The room was so alive with the music that when the last notes faded the audience stood and cheered for fifteen full minutes. That kind of response was what the band lived for. They made records, but the real reason they wrote music was to stand under the lights and feel a room move together. A shortened edit of the opening sections was released as a single and reached number 42 in the United States, yet the full ten-minute version has remained a concert staple for more than fifty years. During the original sessions the working title was “The Protest Song,” and Anderson has called it a search for truth and purity between two people, almost a hymn that leaves you feeling secure because you know somebody is there, maybe God, maybe the person standing next to you.

The band that created this music began in the simplest way in London in 1968. Jon Anderson, who had sung with the Warriors and was sweeping floors at a club called La Chasse, met bassist Chris Squire, late of The Syn. They wrote “Sweetness” together that same night. Anderson soon joined Squire’s group Mabel Greer’s Toyshop, which already included Peter Banks. After a few personnel shifts, Banks suggested the short, direct name Yes, and it stuck. They rehearsed in the basement of the Lucky Horseshoe café on Shaftesbury Avenue, then stepped onto stages that included a last-minute fill-in at the Speakeasy Club and an opening slot for Cream’s farewell show at the Royal Albert Hall. From those early beat-scene roots, Anderson’s soaring voice and Squire’s distinctive bass lines grew into the progressive sound that would define Close to the Edge and the albums that followed.

By the time the classic lineup of Anderson, Squire, Howe, Wakeman, and Bill Bruford locked in, they were ready to write pieces that stretched across an entire side of a vinyl record. The final Apocalypse movement of “And You and I” is the shortest of the four, just a few lines carried by Howe’s guitars, climbing clearer toward the movement and calling over valleys of endless seas. It leaves the listener with the sense that something important has been crossed and that the journey continues. Zoo Freaks, this is the kind of deep, freeform rock that still feels fresh every time the needle drops, the same spirit we keep alive here at THE ZOO.

If you want to dig further into the band’s story and their continuing work, visit the official site at yesworld.com. You can also follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Fans still gather and share their own stories in the Yes Fan Page on Facebook. Keep the volume up, Zoo Freaks, and let this one carry you over the sea to the valley and beyond.