The Word is Live is a live box set by progressive rock band Yes and was released in 2005 through Rhino Records.
Considered the live companion to 2002's studio In a Word: Yes (1969 - ) box set, The Word is Live serves to document the band's live story from early BBC recordings in 1970 with Peter Banks to 1988 shows for Big Generator. All but the first two tracks were previously unreleased.
Many of the tracks were originally broadcast on radio shows and have been bootlegged extensively. In these, it is often the case that the radio show's final mix was the only mix available so few improvements in quality could be done for the release. While a few of the recordings (mostly those from the 1980 tour) do feature a less-than-polished quality to them, The Word is Live is still considered a fine document of Yes in a concert setting.
The box set also comes with a 52 page book containing images and stories by Yes fans and praising retroperspectives from artists such as John Frusciante from Red Hot Chili Peppers. The opening for the book was written by Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
The set includes several pieces not originally released as studio recordings by Yes, including "It's Love", an extended cover of a song by The Young Rascals, and "Go Through This" and "We Can Fly From Here" from the tour to support Drama, but which were not released on this album. The later would eventually be reworked and released thirty-one years later in the album Fly from Here.
The title is presumably an alteration of the lyric "The word is love" from the song "Time and a Word".
Read more about The Word Is Live: Chart Position
Famous quotes containing the words the word, word and/or live:
“Powerful, yes, that is the word that I constantly rolled on my tongue, I dreamed of absolute power, the kind that forces others to kneel, that forces the enemy to capitulate, finally converting him, and the more the enemy is blind, cruel, sure of himself, buried in his conviction, the more his admission proclaims the royalty of he who has brought on his defeat.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers? By the Rood
Where are now the warring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)