That was an interesting listen, thank you. Actually, the interview with Rabin and the demo confirms what I was saying - yes, Rabin wrote a lot of material, some of it before the project became a Yes project and maybe even earlier. But the album didn't become what it became until it was Yes. Rabin says in the interview that Squire and Anderson added to and changed what he had created and deserved the credits they got, he was mostly reacting against Trevor Horn claiming to have also co-written it. If you listen to the demo compared to the final, you can completely hear why. The lyrics are the demo are very "tangible," a song about an introverted guy who doesn't want to go clubbing. Sounds like something Foreigner would have done. The final lyrics still have that underlying theme but are much more abstract - "The eagle in the sky, how he dances one and only." That's pure Anderson, not Rabin. And the demo does NOT have Squire's bass line, if you listen - only the basic riff which Squire joins in, but none of the fills, and the rolling chorus bass line is completely absent. You can see how this demo is the seed of the final song but it wouldn't have been the same if it had remained a Trevor Rabin tune.
My understanding is that Trevor Rabin had been a pop star in South Africa and had gone to London hoping to break into the international music scene. Yes was at a watershed - Anderson had left, and then the Buggles had too (Horn and Downes), and Steve Howe went to join Asia. All that was left were Squire and White. Apparently there's been some contradiction in the interviews; White said that as far as he ever thought, they were just at a point where they had to rebuild Yes, and getting Tony Kaye back and bringing Rabin on were part of that plan from the beginning. Seems to me he must have just been oblivious and out of the loop. Squire and Horn say that Yes was done and they were looking to create a new project. They did demos with Jimmy Page for a project called XYZ (Ex-Yes and -Zeppelin) where Chris was going to sing lead as well, but the chemistry wasn't there and it didn't move forward (the demos are around, and they're not great). Then Horn hooked them up with Rabin for the "Cinema" project, which morphed back into Yes only when they called Anderson in. Howe was ticked when he heard about it because he had gone to Asia on the understanding that Yes was disbanded and now here they were putting an album out without him.
