For whatever reason, Yes’ veterans frequently allowed the band’s newer members to take the creative reins in the ’80s and ’90s. Calling the results mixed is being generous. 90125 is bizarre and awesome, because Trevor Horn is a genius. Big Generator and Union are not, because Trevor Rabin is not Trevor Horn. (Talk, while also dominated by Rabin, is significantly better.) In perhaps the worst example of creative abdication of their career, the band’s 1997 album, Open Your Eyes, was virtually handed over to new member Billy Sherwood, a multi-instrumentalist who’d previously worked with the group while Jon Anderson was busy with Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe; he never actually became a member of Yes at that point, though he did work with Chris Squire and Alan White in the Chris Squire Experiment. Jon Anderson liked what he heard of that project’s material, and the four of them tried to transform some of those songs into Yes material. (The Chris Squire Experiment changed its name to Conspiracy, and released its debut album — which included versions of “Open Your Eyes” and “Man In The Moon” — in 1999.)

Open Your Eyes sounds nothing like Yes, except for the presence of Jon Anderson’s vocals. “Fortune Seller” combines a plodding ’90s “funk-rock” groove with sub-’80s-Grateful Dead guitar noodling; “Man In The Moon” features a stabby keyboard line, punctuated by the cleanest distorted guitar you’ll ever hear; with different lyrics, it could be the theme to a Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond movie. The best track on the record is “From The Balcony,” which is an acoustic piece performed by Anderson and Steve Howe, and less than three minutes long. Everything else is slathered in the most dismally begging-for-airplay keyboards imaginable, and written at a child’s level of musical sophistication. It’s hard to even believe this is a Yes album.