album, Fragile (1971). Dean's first piece of work for the group, the front cover depicts a tiny planet breaking apart and a glider escaping into space, which Anderson adapted into the story with additional inspiration from the novels The Finding of the Third Eye and The Initiation of the World by writer, painter, and mystic Vera Stanley Alder and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. The latter book by Alder describes the theory of four "nature tribes" that once lived on the planet: Negro, Oriental, Nordic, and Asian, which became the four tribes in Olias that were not of people, but "music consciousness tribes". On the first day of recording Anderson had yet to have a concrete story, but started to formulate one slowly from watching the sunrise that morning. He spent about a year on the story. Looking back on the album, Anderson thought it was "not that well mapped out" with "vague" interpretations of the different characters and settings. "I just thought of the story as three magicians coming out of space to take these tribes from one planet to another to save them from destruction. It's a very simple story [...] I hope it will be taken on a level without people thinking there are any hidden meanings." Anderson's growing desire to learn about musical structure and his own performing capabilities with various instruments made Olias of Sunhillow a platform for him to explore this with a self-taught approach, without help from other musicians. He had previously relied on his Yes bandmates for seeing his ideas for songs through. Despite his insecurities regarding his own instrumental abilities, he had collected multiple instruments during Yes tours and dabbled with them. Having considered spending time learning to play the piano with a teacher, he eventually decided against this, choosing instead to spend several months practising on everything within his instrument collection until he was satisfied that he'd progressed enough to record with them. Halfway through the album, it became clear to Anderson what he could and could not do: "You just find out where you're at in being able to express yourself. It was an intense period of time." Despite not being proficient with keyboards or percussion instruments at the time Anderson thought that "What I've pulled off attracts me and sounds right", and focused on the accuracy of expressing his ideas to tape rather than