This album was going to be called Yes Tor, after a hill in Devon. Somebody threw a tomato at the artwork, the splatter stayed on the cover, and the title became Tormato. Three members of the band have told three different stories about who threw it and why, and none of them agree. That is roughly the level of coordination on display throughout: the last record by the classic line-up, made by five men who could not settle on a direction, a producer or a sound, and who spent 1978 competing for space instead of leaving each other some.

The short version

Tormato is Yes’s ninth studio album, released on 22 September 1978 on Atlantic, self-produced. The line-up is Jon Anderson on vocals, Steve Howe on guitars, Chris Squire on bass, Rick Wakeman on keyboards, Alan White on drums — the first time since Close to the Edge that Yes made two albums in a row with the same five people, and the last album with Anderson and Wakeman before both left. Recorded at Advision and RAK in London between February and June 1978. Eight tracks, none of them long. Squire uses bass pedal effects throughout and Wakeman plays a Birotron. Hipgnosis did the sleeve, keeping Roger Dean’s logo. It reached number 8 in Britain and 10 in America and went platinum.

Who threw the tomato

Howe pitched the title Yes Tor, after the second-highest point on Dartmoor — the same Devon moorland where the band had written The Yes Album eight years earlier. Hipgnosis built a photographic composition around the hill, with the band’s faces surfacing from the ground like root vegetables and a stormy sky behind, which made the finished title a double pun on tornado and tomato. Then the accounts diverge. Wakeman says the band felt they had been overcharged for artwork they all disliked, and that he picked up a tomato and threw it. Howe says someone at Hipgnosis threw it deliberately, and that he found this insulting. White remembers Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis taking the prototype home, deciding it was not working, and throwing the tomato himself. The splatter was kept. The band, incidentally, were never photographed on Yes Tor at all — that picture was taken in Regent’s Park.

The sound

The most argued-about production in the catalogue, and the complaint is not really about the songs. Yes came off the Going for the One tour and back into London in February 1978 without agreeing on a direction, a producer, or what the record should sound like, and it shows: the mix is compressed and dull, and Wakeman himself has been among its loudest critics. The deeper problem is arrangement rather than engineering. These five musicians compete for space instead of complementing each other, and the timbral choices are strange — the Birotron gives some genuinely cheesy sounds, and the Polymoog gets pushed into places it does not belong. Howe plays superbly throughout and is frequently buried. There are no epics; the songs are short, accessible and new-wave-adjacent, which in 1978 was a reasonable read of the room and a betrayal to anyone who wanted a sequel to Awaken.

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The songs

Future Times and Rejoice run together and open the record strongly. Don’t Kill the Whale is Anderson and Squire’s, went to number 36 in Britain, and is the most played live of anything here — an environmental song with no real chorus that some hear as late Beatles and others cannot stand. Madrigal is two minutes of harpsichord and delicacy and splits opinion violently. Release, Release is the rocker, and White’s drumming on it is flawless. Arriving UFO is where the keyboards go furthest out; it has five-star defenders and people who never want to hear it again. Circus of Heaven is the whimsical one. Onward is Squire’s ballad with strings, one of the best things he ever wrote, and the second most played live from the album. On the Silent Wings of Freedom closes with Squire and Howe at full stretch and is almost universally rated the peak.

Reception and legacy

Mixed to hostile reviews, and a commercial success anyway: top ten in both countries, platinum in America, and a 1978 tour that was their first performed in the round on a revolving stage. Then it went to the bargain bins for twenty years. Its defenders have grown steadily and their argument is straightforward — side one is a genuinely strong run of songs, the hate is disproportionate, and Tormato is an oddity in the Yes discography in a catalogue where every album is an oddity. The critics’ verdict has settled into something calmer: Wakeman over the top, the band too frantic, informed fans disappointed. Anderson and Wakeman were both gone within months, and Yes came back as a different group entirely on Drama.

The verdict

For people who already know this band, and considerably better than its reputation. On the Silent Wings of Freedom first, which nobody argues about. Then Onward, for Squire. Then Don’t Kill the Whale. Then Release, Release, loud. Then decide about Arriving UFO for yourself, because nobody else can help you there. Close to the Edge is where you begin and Going for the One is the one this was supposed to follow and could not. But the tomato has done more damage to this record than the music ever did, and a band that everyone agrees was falling apart still turned in a side of vinyl their defenders will die on.

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