Changes

Yes drummer Alan White wrote the passage at the beginning of this song, and lead singer Jon Anderson contributed some lyrics, but the song was primarily composed by Trevor Rabin, a South African songwriter/guitarist/producer who serendipitously became a member of Yes in 1982 when he teamed up with White and Chris Squire to form a band called Cinema. When they added Anderson to the lineup, they considered it a re-formed Yes, as White, Squire and Anderson were all former members. Rabin, however, had laid the foundation for many of the songs, including this one. "The lyric I wrote in a very depressed time," he told Tim Morse in 1995. "I had just moved to America and had these thoughts of doing wonderful things. I was with Geffen Records on a development deal and they just wanted me to form a Rock n' Roll band and I was really trying to do something different. In a meeting I went to they played Foreigner to me and they said, 'You've got to start writing stuff more like Foreigner.' I said, 'I'm not going to, but thanks anyway.' I thought, 'I'm going through all these changes, it's very strange. And consequently I think that's when that song started coming to me. It's kind of a melancholy song."