Into the Lens - 2008 Remaster

Drama was the first Yes album without Jon Anderson on lead vocals. Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman had quit the group the previous year over various creative and financial disagreements. In their place stepped Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes - better known as principal members of the Buggles, of "Video Killed The Radio Star" fame. So, the incarnation of Yes that recorded this album and song was essentially a merger of the two groups.

The song's title is never mentioned in the lyrics; the chorus instead features the refrain, "I am a camera." The song is about memories - some vanish quickly but others are indelible, as if shot with a camera.

In a Songfacts interview with Geoff Downes, he said: "That was one of the songs we took into Yes when we first met up with them and they asked us to write some stuff. It was effectively just a small, four-minute pop song. And of course, they opened it up and treated it as an epic that became 'Into The Lens,' which is about 10 minutes long on the Drama album. It was quite fascinating to put a song like that in and see how those guys treated it, and how the sections developed."