The Gonzo Daily: Tony Kaye discusses his scary Yes Album-era injury: ‘We hit a car head on’

Monday, 2 March 2015

Tony Kaye discusses his scary Yes Album-era injury: ‘We hit a car head on’

The Yes Album, released in February 1971, finds Yes on the cusp of all of its looming greatness— though a few key elements are still missing.

Not least of them was album-cover artist Roger Dean, who would echo and bolster Yes’ sound with a series of remarkable images, beginning on the subsequent Fragile project. Instead, The Yes Album appears to feature something far more conventional: a band photo.

Look more closely, though. There was one element of The Yes Album cover that continues to intrigue. Tony Kaye is wearing a cast, the result of a horrifying November 1970 crash on the way home from a performance at Basingstoke, UK. In fact, everyone in Yes was lucky to have not been badly injured.

“We were actually on our way back, in a rainstorm, and [stalwart Yes bassist] Chris [Squire] did a lot of the driving,” Tony Kaye tells us, in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “There were three accidents involved with his driving [laughs], and I think that was the first one. We were driving back, and I was in the front with the rest of the band in the back. We thought we were on a four-lane highway, but the other two lanes were closed down. We were overtaking a tractor trailer, in a driving rain — I mean, you couldn’t really see anything — and we hit a car head on.”

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