[Dean Roddey]

I think that Yes made probably the greatest popular music ever made, in the form of "And You and I", "I've Seen All Good People", "Closer to the Edge", "Yours is No Disgrace", "Starship Trooper", "Long Distance Runaround", and "Heart of the Sunrise". To me, this is completely obvious for numerous reasons. And, though I don't use the word genius really, I think that my version of that is saying that they made the best in their particular category of music. If I were the genius assigning type of person, I'd call them geniuses of popular music. They are the Mozarts of popular music to me.

I'm sure that many folks here disagree with that, and therefore clearly genius is an opinion, not an attribute. I could argue till I'm blue in the face why I think they are 'geniuses', and it wouldn't be accepted by most people. And of course, as evidenced by what they did later (IMO), if they'd have been born into a different time/place, I'd quite possibley not remotely consider them to be geniuses at all. They made that music because of where and when they were born, and a huge number of chance accidents that brought them together.