Yours Is No Disgrace - Live From Lyon

The lyric in this song, "Caesar's Palace, morning glory, silly human race," helps explain the story behind it. Caesar's Palace is a casino in Las Vegas, and an interesting reference for a British band to make. When Songfacts asked Yes frontman/lyricist Jon Anderson about it, he explained: "I'd just been to Vegas and it was amazing how crazy the place was and how silly we are. Silly human race. It was something to do with how crazy we can be as a human race to be out there flittering money around and gambling, trying to earn that big payout, when actually that's not what life is truly about. Our life is truly about finding our divine connection with God, if you like. You know, that's why we live. And whenever I sing that song, it always comes back to me that I'm singing about that kind of Caesar's Palace, morning glory, sweet human race - it's on a sailing ship to nowhere, planet earth. The planet earth is not going anywhere. It's going around the sun, of course, but we're on this sailing ship to nowhere, leaving anyplace. It's like Earth Mother. So don't worry about stuff, it's not our fault if things go wrong."

The Vietnam War was an influence on this song. Governments fight wars, not men and women - therefore yours is no disgrace. The message is that war has no winners and no real meaning - as Jon Anderson has explained, the young people going off to fight the war had no say in the matter, and the war itself was certainly not their fault. "Death defying, mutilated armies scatter the earth, Crawling out of dirty holes, their morals, their morals disappear" - killing is brutal and cruel, but the disgrace falls not on the soldiers, but on those who orchestrated the war.

Steve Howe devised a completely new opening to this song specifically for the Yessongs live album, a decision that was made at the last minute.