Released 4 January 1972 (US) Recorded 1971 | Format 7" Genre Progressive rock | |
B-side "Long Distance Runaround" Length 8:29 (Album version)
4:54 (TM Gold Disc version)
3:27 (Single edit)
8:33 (Early rough mix)
8:11 (Rehearsal Take) | ||
"Roundabout" is a song by the English rock band Yes from their fourth studio album Fragile, released in November 1971. It was written by singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe and produced by the band and Eddy Offord. The song originated when the band were on tour and travelled from Aberdeen to Glasgow, and went through many roundabouts on the way.
Contents
The song was released as an edited single in the US in January 1972 with "Long Distance Runaround", another track from Fragile, as the B-side. It peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 10 on the Cash Box Top 100 singles charts. In 1973, Anderson and Howe won a BMI Award for writing the song.
Background and recording
In August 1971, Yes started to prepare material for their fourth album, Fragile. During this time, their organist Tony Kaye left the group and was replaced by Rick Wakeman. The group then moved to Advision Studios to record Fragile with audio engineer Eddy Offord as their co-producer. They decided to record four group songs with five solo tracks written and arranged by each member. "Roundabout" is one of such collaborative tracks.
The song originated when the band were on tour, travelling from Aberdeen to Glasgow. They encountered many roundabouts on the way; Anderson claimed "maybe 40 or so", which inspired Anderson and Howe to write a song about the journey as they sat in the back of the band's transit van, and include the roundabouts and the surrounding mountains into the lyrics. Anderson added: "It was a cloudy day, we couldn't see the top of the mountains. We could only see the clouds because it was sheer straight up ... I remember saying, "Oh, the mountains–look! They're coming out of the sky! So we wrote that down". Within 24 hours, the band had arrived back home in London where Anderson reunited with his then wife Jennifer, which inspired the song's lyric "Twenty-four before my love and I'll be there". A lake they passed as they neared Glasgow became the idea behind the line "In and around the lake".
Howe recalled the track was originally "a guitar instrumental suite" and had a basic outline worked out when he first developed it. "All the ingredients are there—all that's missing is the song. "Roundabout" was a bit like that; there was a structure, a melody and a few lines." In 1994, former Yes guitarist Peter Banks who Howe replaced in 1970, claimed he had originally come up with the song's main riff several years prior to the band recording it. The song was recorded in sections in a series of tape edits, a method of recording that was still relatively new to the group. They had played it through in rehearsal several times, but Squire recalled the group would make sure to "get the first two verses really good" and record from there. Its introduction was achieved by Wakeman playing a note on the piano that was recorded and played backwards. Offord recalled a considerable amount of time was spent to get it right in the studio because it involved a lengthy process of picking the right note to use, and editing it correctly. Howe thought the piano added a sense of drama, intensity, and colour to the song. Squire played his bass guitar parts with an overdub that was one octave higher using Howe's Gibson jazz guitar and mixed with his bass track. Anderson noted the music has a "Scottish feel" to it and described the solo part as like a reel, a traditional Scottish country dance. At the end of the song Anderson, Squire and Howe perform three-part harmonies that is repeated eight times, during which they also sing a second harmony part that Anderson said resembles the main melody to the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice".
Release
An edited version was released as a single in 1972, with "Long Distance Runaround", another group written track on Fragile, on the B-side. It peaked at No. 13 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and reached No. 23 on the Dutch Top 40. Billboard ranked it as the No. 91 song for 1972. The full-length, album version was used as a B-side in 1973 and a live version was released as a bonus single in copies of Classic Yes in 1981.
In June 1973, Anderson and Howe won a BMI Award for the top songwriting and publishing awards held by Broadcast Music, Inc. for 1972.
Legacy
"Roundabout" has become one of the best-known Yes songs; it has been performed at nearly every concert since November 1971 and is their most played song live. It was used as the theme music for BBC concert programme Sounds for Saturday. "Roundabout" was used in the 1999 film Outside Providence. In 2003, on the DVD commentary of School of Rock, actor Jack Black states that Wakeman's solo is his personal favourite keyboard solo. "Roundabout" is a playable track in the music game Rock Band 3, but has an extra harmonic at the beginning of the song. The song is referenced in the Season 4 episode of The Venture Bros. "Perchance to Dean", in which a similar melody is played like the ending to the actual track. In 2012, "Roundabout" was used as the ending theme song for the first season of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime series. According to the director, "Roundabout" was one of many songs JoJo creator Hirohiko Araki listened to when he wrote the original manga. The usage of "Roundabout" within JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has additionally led to both it and the series' "To Be Continued" insert becoming a collective internet meme, in which videos feature the song's introductory bass riff before coinciding with the "To Be Continued" insert. "Roundabout" was featured on the re-released version of Grand Theft Auto V's Los Santos Rock Radio radio station.