the band "was breakable" at the time. While the band were recording, Wakeman remembered children being brought into the studio to watch them play. Songs Fragile contains nine tracks; four are "group arranged and performed" with the remaining five being "the individual ideas, personally arranged and organised" by the five members, as described in the liner notes. Squire reasoned that this approach was necessary in part to save time and reduce studio costs: "We have a lot of mouths to feed. Rick ... had to buy a vast amount of new equipment when he joined, and it all costs much more money than people seem to imagine." According to Bruford: "There was this endless discussion about how the band could be used ... I felt we could use all five musicians differently ... So I said—brightly—'Why don't we do some individual things, whereby we all use the group for our own musical fantasy? I'll be the director, conductor, and maestro for the day, then you do your track, and so on.'" Wakeman commented on the album's structure: "Some critics thought this was just being flash. The thinking behind this was that we realised there would be a lot of new listeners coming to the band. They could find out where each individual player's contribution lay." Side one "Roundabout" was written by Anderson and Howe and has become an iconic track and is one of Yes's best-known songs. Howe recalled that the track was originally "a guitar instrumental suite ... I sort of write a song without a song. All the ingredients are there—all that's missing is the song. "Roundabout" was a bit like that; there was a structure, a melody and a few lines." The introduction was created by two piano chords played backwards, and Howe recorded the acoustic guitar part in the studio corridor as the recording room made it "sound too dead". "Cans and Brahms" is Wakeman's adaptation of an excerpt of the third movement of Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms, with an electric piano used for the string section, grand piano for the woodwinds, organ for the brass, electric harpsichord for reeds, and synthesizer as contrabassoon. Wakeman said the piece took an estimated 15 hours to create in the studio, and said it was most likely Bruford who inspired its title from looking at Wakeman playing each section while wearing his headphones. He