Taking some well earned time between band projects in 1975, the five members of the then current Yes embarked on solo ventures. As you’d expect, each release had elements which tipped the hat towards the mothership – especially strongly in the case of Chris Squire’s excellent ‘Fish Out of Water’ – but the freedom of writing alone and working with other musicians also brought a fresh angle. When heard as a whole volume of work, those five albums – Squire’s ‘Fish…’, Jon Anderson’s fanciful ‘Olias of Sunhillow’, Steve Howe’s underrated ‘Beginnings’, Patrick Moraz’s ‘I’ and Alan White’s ‘Ramshackled’ – make for an interesting listen. In some ways, the finest elements from each can be cobbled together to make a great Yes album that never was.

Predictably, the releases from Anderson, Squire and Howe all achieved UK success upon release, charting at #8, #25 and #22, respectively. Moraz’s rather complex ‘I’ has gained cult status over the passing decades, but White’s sole venture has often been considered the runt of the litter.

Let’s face it: if you didn’t buy ‘Ramshacked’ in 1976 and your only exposure to the record was seeing a brief clip of the ‘Silly Woman’ promo in the ‘YesYears’ documentary, you wouldn’t even feel particularly drawn towards the record. Chances are, you’d write it off as a bit of a dud. However, at its best, its an interesting curio – an album that’s sometimes, if not often, better than the reputation that precedes it. It would be a lie to call it a great work, especially given its close proximity to the essential ‘Fish Out of Water’, but it’s certainly a disc that the keener Yes fan should consider exploring, if they’ve not already done so.

Things get off to an interesting start with ‘Oooh Baby (Goin’ To Pieces)’, since musically, it has nothing in common with Yes. If you take a listen to ‘Hold Out Your Hand’ from Squire’s ‘Fish…’, or ‘Doors of Sleep’ from Howe’s ‘Beginnings’, the roots of the Yes “sound” are glaringly obvious. Here, there’s almost nothing. Building from an Afrobeat drum part, infused with a light calypso shuffle, the tune pulses and grumbles, working a huge bass sound, layers of organ and a soul drenched vocal. Occasionally, a couple of prog-ish tones bleed through the keys, and a little more so from a world music inspired lead guitar that sounds like a cut-price Howe tribute, but in the main, this really doesn’t pander to White’s usual audience. The arrangement, however, is as tight as hell, like discovering a piece of buried treasure from the Osibisa archive, circa 1975, and White’s own contribution showcases the talents of a man who was far more than a rock drummer, even if his Yes work sometimes seemed less fussy – and much less jazz oriented – than his predecessor’s, Bill Bruford, had often sounded.

From there, things remain just as interesting when ‘One Way Rag’ explores a funk oriented sound that pushes the bass and piano to the fore, and White’s assembled musicians – including future Ringo Starr sideman Kenny Craddock and Alan Hull collaborator Colin Gibson (both of whom had played with White in Griffin) = play up a storm. Without Gibson’s forthright bass sound, this number would be incredibly smooth, but as it stands, it shows off a pleasing contrast between adult pop, rock and a touch of jazz (notable in one of the solos), creating something that sounds like a bold extension of the Stretch universe. Is it what your average prog fan would’ve wanted in the mid 70s, from a Yes-adjacent release? Almost certainly not. Decades on, it plays like a superb piece of radio friendly pop-rock in its own right. Big and hooky, the song-centric approach benefits all concerned, creating an instant album highlight.

Delving into more complex terrain, ‘Avakak (aka Twelve Ways To Drink Meths)’ opens with some disjointed stabs of jazz piano before flowing notes suggest something a little grander. Craddock’s playing is a little more subtle than his Yes counterparts, but as White brings in the drums and the keys increase in volume, Kenny shows off a genuine confidence as he drops notes against a great rhythm. He’s soon outshone by some Zappa inspired brass, and indeed, the busier parts of this track appear to be strongly inspired by the Mothers, before everything slunks into a mellow groove where the jazz fusion appears to adopt a proto yacht rock vibe. In terms of drumming, the complex arrangement provides White with his strongest performance on his sole solo outing, but in many ways, this seven minute workout is stolen by Colin’s solid bass work and Lenny’s varied piano skills. Since seven of the ten album tracks were written by the pair, either separately or in tandem, and the other three were written by vocalist Pete Kirtley, this is the kind of performance that could make the listener wonder, retrospectively, whether Alan White was chosen as the figurehead for these recordings in the hope that it might give them some extra clout with the record buying public…

You’d think that enlisting Jon Anderson to provide vocals on the lovely ‘Song of Innocence’ would be a calculated ploy to give this album a little more commercial potential, but since ‘Oooh Baby’ and ‘One Way Rag’ were chosen as the singles, it seems that White (or the folks at Atlantic Records) had other ideas. Not that the track sounds too much like Yes beyond Jon’s typically angelic vocal. There are hints of melody that would later surface on ‘Going For The One’ and ‘Tormato’, but the overriding mood feels far more new age, a little closer to being a scaled back cousin to Anderson’s own ‘Olias of Sunhillow’, issued just a couple of months later. Naturally, Anderson sounds superb breathing melodies into a piece of William Blake’s poetry, but some very subtle electric guitar textures from a guesting Steve Howe sound equally cool – not to mention unmistakable in tone. A lack of Squire ensures it sounds very different to many of the Yes works from the era, but everything here is rather lovely. It’s almost dreamlike quality certainly provides ‘Ramshackled’ with its most essential listen.

After a strong first half, the record then takes a massive nosedive into a world of rather dubious quality. ‘Giddy’ shows some promise at first by flaunting a melody that sounds vaguely Allman Brothers-esque, but quickly sours with the “help” of a massively overwrought vocal, first utilising the soul influence from ‘Oooh Baby’ to lesser effect, and then trying too hard to impress with an ugly falsetto. To make matters worse, the songs narrative ploughs through a clichéd tale of wrong ’uns in a downtown bar where “the boys are boys and the women get down to business”. There are glimmers of musical interest when strings and a particularly prog-centric keyboard beef up the sound, but it doesn’t really detract from an iffy performance and a terrible lyric. At best, this could be likened to a mid 70s Labi Siffre tribute masterminded by the tone-deaf. Nevertheless, it’s an out and out masterpiece compared to ‘Silly Woman’, a frankly awful reggae/calypso hybrid, complete with culturally appropriated vocal performance and misogynistic lyrics. It makes Typically Tropical’s ‘Barbados’ seem subtle by comparison. Being (very) kind, it could be said that the track boasts a couple of very strong drum fills, but that doesn’t save it in the slightest, and even the featured steel drums are poorly arranged and half buried in a rather sorry arrangement. This might even be the worst track to be recorded by anyone with any ties to the Yes family… It’s that bad.

Luckily, ‘Ramshackled’ pulls to a strong finish. Craddock’s own ‘Marching Into A Bottle’ provides a strong instrumental interlude where medieval influences colour a folk number, and the marriage of acoustic guitar (approximating a lute style) and a world of flutes create something beautifully pastoral. It’s hard to imagine something like this appearing on the same album as ‘Silly Woman’, let alone sequenced immediately afterward. Having lulled the listener, or at least made them feel marginally less angry, ‘Everybody’ at first appears to cling onto the mellow vibe by opening with bell like percussion and soaring guitar. Then, in keeping with the sheer variety this album is keen to present, the track then breaks into a busy arrangement where jazz funk grooves collide with backmasked guitar sounds, more steel drums and an incessant bass. Although the vocals present a gruff edge, the melodic pull here is massive, and the mix of busy rhythms and tight musicianship owes a huge debt to the ‘Desatively Bonnaroo’ album by the legendary Dr. John. Again, whether Yes fans were – or even are – amenable to this on a musical levelis debatable, but it’s great in its own right.

In closing, the epic ‘Darkness (Parts 1-3)’ moves between heavy rhythm and blues, dominated by growled vocals and swirls of organ, busier jazz rock bridges and baroque elements where bright guitars battle against strong orchestration, before dropping into a landscape of new age piano and light vocals. The lighter second movement sounds more like something that had hopes of becoming part of a stage musical or rock opera, but despite having a melody that doesn’t stick so easily, the orchestrated elements are lovely, with some really tasteful jazz trumpet leading the way. White’s contributions aren’t at the forefront, but it’s a sophisticated piece, and a recording that really adds to this album’s overall quality.

‘Ramshackled’ is a curious mixed bag of styles and features no actual writing credits for Alan himself, but at its best, it’s an enjoyable record, and certainly one of the era’s more undervalued releases. There are a couple of duff tunes (to put it rather mildly), but most of White’s offerings on this platter are smarter and more accessible than side three of ‘Tales of Topographic Oceans’ – and it’s definitely worth picking up for ‘Avakak’ and ‘Song of Innocence’. If the listener also finds other stuff to enjoy, decades after the fact, that’s very much a plus. After issuing superb deluxe editions of Anderson’s ‘Olias of Sunhillow’ and Squire’s ‘Fish Out of Water’, it seemed inevitable that a subsidiary label of Cherry Red Records would eventually get around to giving ‘Ramshackled’ a reissue, but it’s almost inconceivable that this most cult of discs would finally get its first UK CD release before Steve Howe’s ‘Beginnings’ even got a look in. There’s actually something brilliantly perverse about that – it’s a pity Alan’s not around to witness it.

[The Esoteric Recordings CD release contains single edits of ‘Oooh Baby’ and ‘One Way Rag’ as bonus tracks.]

Buy the CD here: ALAN WHITE – Ramshackled

August/September 2025