Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: Yes, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”
31 years ago today, Yes made the sort of comeback that rarely comes around anymore, taking more than a decade’s worth of history as prog-rock superstars, setting those aspects slightly to the side, and transforming their sound so successfully to match current musical trends that they secured the first – and, to date, only – #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Owner of a Lonely Heart” was predominantly – but not exclusively – a Trevor Rabin composition, with frontman Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, and producer (and former Yes member) Trevor Horn making additional contributions to the final version of the song. Rabin, formerly of the band Rabbitt, was a new addition to the Yes lineup, having first crossed paths with Squire and drummer Alan White in 1980 while Yes was…well, let’s just say they were on a hiatus, shall we? The three started working together under the name Cinema in early ’82, bringing in another former Yes member, keyboardist Tony Kaye, to assist them on concert dates. Between Rabin’s material and some stuff that Squire and White had brought along from an aborted project called XYZ which had temporarily teamed them with Jimmy Page, Cinema soon had enough tunes for an album, which Horn helped them put together. Unfortunately, Horn and Kaye didn’t really get along, so Kaye left, leaving Rabin to pick up much of the keyboard work, and since neither Rabin nor Squire were really the most distinctive of vocalists, Squire decided to reach out to Jon Anderson, and…well, you can probably figure out what happened next.
Although “Owner of a Lonely Heart” started out as a four-track demo by Rabin, one which was dismissed by several record companies, including Arista. Indeed, Rabin revealed in an interview with Something Else! that “Clive Davis mentioned that the song was too strange and would not be a hit, (and) he suggested that I write stuff more like Foreigner and then come back.” He never did, of course, but that decision worked out well, as it turned out, although Horn has claimed that he’s actually the one who saved the song, saying that he heard a hit chorus but that the original song “was so awful that I was convinced that if we didn’t put loads of whizz-bangs and gags all over the verse that no-one would ever listen to it.”
Horn certainly whizz-banged and gagged it up, that much is certain, but there are millions who would argue that it was a wise decision that he did so.
