Yes
Owner of a Lonely Heart (Mystery Dutch Extended Mix?) (Right click to download!)
A long time ago, when I first started this blog and was sharing countless out-of-print remixes and B-sides, there was some thrill behind it. I would think “without me, no one would ever be able to hear this song on their computer, I’M MAKING PEOPLE’S LIVES BETTER BY EXPOSING THEM TO THE DUB MIX OF JOE STRUMMER’S “LOVE KILLS.”
Of course, a lot has changed over the past 20 years, and now nearly every previously hard-to-find and out-of-print remix, edit, single, b-side and rarity is easily available. Either they’ve been gathered and re-released in extensive box sets, put on official streaming services like Spotify (blugh) or some other yahoo went ahead and uploaded them to their YouTube channel with the words FAIR USE FAIR USE FAIR USE in the description.
Nowadays, when I share something that I’m sure has never been made widely available online, it’s usually something incredibly obscure and bizarre, like those jingles records from a few months back, or that Hailey’s comet record. That’s still fun, but let’s be honest, way fewer people care about obscure Japanese techno-pop than, let’s say, Madonna. Which, y’know, fair.
But tonight’s post is a rare exception. A genuinely rare, incredibly hard-to-find remix that is still out-of-print, will probably forever be out-of-print, and is by an artist that people actually care about, I mean, they’re still putting out music and people are buying it, at least (maybe they shouldn’t be, but that’s not the point of today’s post).
Ladies and gentlemen (and everyone else, this is an inclusive, safe space) I present to you…the mysterious unnamed Dutch extended remix of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes.
Okay, so I’ll explain.
I bought two really odd compilations last week at Disk Union, my favorite chain of record stores in Japan. They’re both titled Back To The 80s: The Long Versions. The tracklistings from both are stacked with giant songs by massive artists. Queen’s “Who Wants To Live Forever,” “The Final Countdown” by Europe. Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.” Sure, there are some seriously…European tracks sprinkled about (Cock Robin? Sniff ‘N’ the Tears? Time Bandits?). It’s not all killer no filler, but it’s a damn good smattering of 80s goodness.
But I bought it mostly because it was so weird. There’s a long version of “Who Wants To Live Forever?” There’s an even longer mix of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” that I haven’t already discovered, really?
Actually, no there isn’t.
The title is kind of a misnomer, or maybe just a lie. Most of these are just album versions of songs that had shorter single edits. There is no extended remix of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” it’s just that more people are familiar with the single edit, and that’s the one that made its way onto most 80s compilations. Which is a goddamn shame, because the single edit of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is for COWARDS.
RIP Bonnie.
The Discogs pages for these releases (which are both four freakin’ CDs, by the way) proved to be very useful, and they allowed me to properly tag the MP3s. The Discogs page is also how I discovered that this Yes remix is, somehow, 100% unique and original to this compilation, shout out to 12-year-old comments in the review section for making me aware of that fact. I would have never had the idea to compare this extended version to other extended versions of the song. It’s not like I have every second of the official extended version of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” memorized, after all.
But it only takes one back-to-back listening of this remix and the official extended version to understand that they are drastically different beasts.
The extended version of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” that you can find online as part for the expanded version of 90125 is really more of a dub mix, and has a lot in common with the similarly beat and sound effect heavy “Red & Blue Mix.” Those mixes, incidentally, were done by Trevor Horn, JJ Jeczalik, Gary Langan, and Ann Dudley – aka The Art of Noise. The experimentation done on those mixes led to their decision to make an entire album of music that sounded like that, which is probably one reason why “Close (To The Edit)” is a play on “Close To The Edge” and that first album also samples “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”
But I’m not here to talk about those mixes, I’m here to talk about this mix. It has a lot of the same tricks and gags that the other remixes have; samples are broken down and mixed, there are loops a plenty, all that jazz. But it has one big difference – it has fucking verses.
Jon Anderson’s voice only shows up in the other “Lonely Heart” remixes to drop the chorus, or parts of the chorus, as his vocals are often chopped up and re-arranged. But this extended version is a proper extended version, with extended instrumental breakdowns and interludes that make the song longer, while generally keeping the overall flow of the original mix. And it still has the solo, which is good because that solo shreds.
In some ways, it’s a much simpler mix than the eventual official remixes, but that makes it an easier listen too. While I love the other mixes for the brazen weirdness, I also like to hear Anderson sing, dangit.
So what is this version? And how the heck did it end up on a Dutch compilation some 20 years later?
Well, I think it’s a rough draft that Horn and company did before they remixed it further for the other mixes. It’s weird and takes some left-turns, but it’s still structured like a proper song…for the most part, the ending is something else. I think this was them finding their footing before taking the brave step to deconstruct the song even more for the other mixes.
Or maybe it was the reverse, and the record label asked them to make a more mainstream mix for clubs, and it just never pressed to vinyl. Who’s to say? Well, probably Trevor Horn, but I don’t have his number, do you?
As for how the hell it ended up on this compilation 20 years later? Fuck if I know. It I had to guess, I bet it was a mistake. I imagine someone at Sony was working on this quickie budget compilation, asked for an extended remix of the Yes song, and someone else just sent them the wrong dang file. It wouldn’t be the first time. The most famous example of this happening that I can think of is that weird Australian 12” single for David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” which is over nine minutes long, three minutes longer than any other version. That version still has never been re-released on any compilation, meaning it was most likely put there as a mistake. The nine-plus minute version was never intended to see the light of day, just like this.
Thank God for Dutch music supervisors who weren’t paying enough attention. Enjoy the Fairlights. And the Synclavier, people always forget that this song uses a Synclavier too.