The album's 1972-1973 tour comprised over 90 dates worldwide and marked the debut of drummer Alan White, who joined the band three days before it started.

Close to the Edge has since received widespread critical acclaim; in 2020, it was ranked 445th on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

[6] By late 1971, Yes's line-up comprised lead vocalist Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Bill Bruford, guitarist Steve Howe, and keyboardist Rick Wakeman.

The album became their biggest commercial and critical hit since their formation, helped by the track "Roundabout" receiving considerable airplay on American radio.

On 1 and 2 February 1972, during one of the tour's rest periods, the band booked time at Advision Studios in London to put down some tracks for a follow-up record.

[8] Although some arrangements were worked out and put onto tape during this time,[9] none of the tracks were fully written at this stage, leaving the group to devise the rest of the songs in the studio and learn to play them through afterwards.

[12] Eddy Offord, who had worked with Yes since Time and a Word (1970) and had mixed their live sound on the Fragile tour, assumed his role as audio engineer and producer, sharing his production duties with the band.

He broke down in tears upon arriving, because he decided that he could "officially call myself a musician now", and wrote it on the occupation section of his passport which he had previously left blank until that point.

[14] During their month at Advision, Melody Maker reporter and band biographer Chris Welch paid a visit to observe the group at work.

Welch described a stressful atmosphere, coupled with "outbursts of anarchy" from Bruford, Howe, and Wakeman and disagreement from each member after one mix of a song section was complete.

[12] Welch sensed that the band were not a cohesive unit, with Anderson and Howe the only ones who knew what direction the album was to take, leaving the rest adding bits and pieces "to a vast jigsaw of sound", to which Squire and Offord were the two who helped put their idea into shape.

He heard a dull thud, to find that Offord had fallen asleep on top of the mixing console from exhaustion, "leaving music from the spinning tape deck blaring at an intolerable level".

[16] Bruford found Close to the Edge particularly difficult to write and record with the rest of the band, calling the process torturous and like "climbing Mount Everest".

Anderson gained initial inspiration from a moment in his hotel room during the Fragile Tour when he was reading The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien while listening to Symphony Nos.

The seventh struck Anderson the most as he noticed that its main theme was introduced some time in the composition which influenced how "Close to the Edge" was shaped.

[8] Anderson was inspired to include the bird sounds, and the instrumental section in "I Get Up, I Get Down", from hearing Sonic Seasonings (1972), an electronic ambient album by Wendy Carlos.

[33] In its original form, the song had an extended ending that Welch described as "a shattering climax", but its popularity amongst the band decreased over time, leading to their decision to cut it from the final version.

[34][13] In a newspaper review of a Yes show in August 1972, the writer paraphrased that Anderson calls the song "a tale of the search for truth and purity between two people".

He did not have the entire track worked out, so the rest of the group took the sections he needed help with and discussed what riffs best suited it as it lacked one strong enough to carry the song.

[23] Howe said the group were inspired by Igor Stravinsky when it came to the end of the song, "by having that staccato pounding and at the same time throwing those accents on voice and drums and having me driving through it with that constant guitar motif.

It marked the first appearance of the band's bubble logotype, placed on top of a simple front cover design of a linear colour gradient from black to green.

[1] In his original design, Dean wanted the album to resemble the quality of a gold embossed book and have a leather texture as he had owned many leather-bound sketchbooks.

"[41] The sleeve includes pictures of the group and Offord that were photographed by Dean and Martyn Adelman, who had played with Squire in the late 1960s as a member of The Syn.

He thought the group were "not just close to the edge, they've gone right over it", though they "played their God-damned guts out" on the album which he called "an attempt to overwhelm us which resulted in only unmemorable meaninglessness".

The sound tapestries they weave are dainty fragments, glimpses of destinies yet to be formed, times that fade like dew drops in the blurriness of desires half-remembered.

He called the title track a "virtual sound trip", moving "quickly, loudly, in a frenzy" that "contrasts brilliantly" during "I Get Up, I Get Down", and praises the vocals during the section.

[67] For the San Mateo Times, Peter J. Barsocchini thought the album is "good in concept and performance", with the title track "quite likely the best piece of music" the band had recorded in its career.

[55] Paul Stump's 1997 History of Progressive Rock asserted that Close to the Edge, with its equal measures of ambition and heartfelt playing, "even today draws grudging respect from Yes's most trenchant critics.

Included were two previously unreleased tracks: an alternate version of "And You and I", an early run-through of "Siberian Khatru", and Yes's 1972 single "America" with its b-side, an edit of "Total Mass Retain".

As he played on Close to the Edge but left before the subsequent tour, Bruford was obliged by management to share his album royalties with White and claims that Lane enforced a compensation payment of $10,000 from him for leaving.