The Yes Album That Changed How Popular Music Could Be Approached: Fragile Helped Introduce Prog-Rock to the Mainstream

Get Inspired with This Out-of-Print Collectible Version: Mobile Fidelity's Numbered-Edition Gold CD Presents 1971 Classic in Rich Audiophile Sound

"I wanted to hear something inspiring." With Fragile, Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's desire was fulfilled to an extent even he likely couldn't have imagined. The band's breakthrough album marks a number of important firsts not just for the group but for how popular music could be approached. It also represents the all-important debut of keyboardist Rick Wakeman, a complete rethinking of the relationship between classical devices, idyllic fantasies, and traditional structures, and the arrival of progressive rock as a mainstream force.

Fragile also opened the door to the quintet's long-term partnership with illustrator Roger Dean, whose cover painting and gatefold-sleeve artwork remains as cherished by music lovers as the audiophile-quality production. Speaking of the latter, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition Gold CD delivers this 1971 classic in tremendous sound. Meticulous reproduction of critical aural traits – focus, pace, crispness, imaging, balance, depth, weight, scale – bring you face-to-face with the songs' daredevil complexities and emerge in abundance.

Writer and Yes scholar Bill Martin didn't miss the significance of "Roundabout," which holds the key to unlocking all the adventures that follow on the album. In the liner notes to the record's long-ago deluxe CD reissue, he observes, "All of the Yes elements are here: inventiveness, sweetness, and wistfulness, bright colors that are more Sibelius and Stravinsky than 'pop,' and not without an edge."

Such combinations of alluring symphonies and jagged drive repeatedly surface on Fragile, no more obviously than on "South Side of the Sky," an epic about a tragic polar expedition the quintet plays with a riveting intensity, impeccable control, and staggered progression that renders the narrative's otherworldly landscapes in technicolor. Or witness the similarly beloved "Long Distance Runaround," a spring-loaded escapade that in addition to its concision, weds jazz, classical, psychedelic, arena rock, and cerebral aural and literary forms together in a mesmerizing whole.

Fragile is further boosted by five solo-conceived works – one per member – that double as stitching within the larger group-conceived canvas. Each composition emerges as a showcase for visionary conceptions and staggering performance ability. Squire's "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" stands as an archetypal example of prog prowess as well as a creation that takes the bass guitar into realms still demanding further exploration. Steve Howe's warm, vibrant "Mood for a Day" is its equal, and a guitar workout that dovetails with Wakeman's "Cans and Brahms" – an evocative piano-based adaptation of Brahms' Symphony No. 4.