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I fully understand where you're coming from, but to me it just sounded like that they were getting inspiration to try and beef up their sound on that album and if it was the case there was certainly no better way for an untested lineup of a well known band than to actually get inspiration from a band who were seriously great musicians who knew how to blend their talents with what was happening. In a way, it was a compliment to the band surviving a very difficult situation and following up on a very weak album, you could sense a Do or Die situation which meant adapt or fizzle out. In this case, they adapted very well when most others would have fell right on their face!

I may have been harsh in my description/personal opinion on The Police, but to me they were a trio of great musicians who knew how to market themselves for the time although looking back on what I said I think a less critical word should have been used - maybe Wave Riders, which may be a term to describe New Wave era musicians that may not have been really part of the scene but who actually blended well with their surroundings. To my ears they were a good Rock band with seasoned musicians with strong diverse influences who were marketed as something else and something new to a mass who did not know nor care where they came from originally (To me, if there was any one band who REALLY deserved the term Faux, it would have to be The Knack - skinny ties on the outside, all well seasoned simplistic AOR on the inside but in shorter doses...although their third album was good. Or more accurately The Korgies...but I digress). In the long list of bands who rode on the wave, they were one of the very few who actually had a lot of good songs. You can hear where they can influenced a lot of Rockers who were trying to play catch up, some well and others not so...although thankfully that was in the music department as the bit about the bleaching the hair would not have worked on many. If anything, The Buggles themselves needed to really play catch up after sensing their one-hit-wonder status more than anything else - they were somewhere in the middle by being half Synth Pop (Horn) and half well taught musician riding on the wave looking for his place on the map (Downes)...Wave Riders - Starter Division.

With Drama, I feel that despite the first-impressions, it actually was a valuable chapter to all - putting the jumper cables to the musicians careers, especially that of Horn and Downes as the Yes musicians were still in good standing although in increasingly troubled waters. In fact, even if Horn was already an experienced Producer, he learned a lot more, and Downes had the Seasoned Musicians in New Clothes style right as he went onto Asia, who succeeded in that department. As for Yes, they finally found a way to fit in with The 80's, especially thanks to Horn's production on 90125. It could be called a cynical move by calling it a Yes album, but sometimes these things have to happen, although very rarely they actually create interesting albums like this.