Five Per Cent for Nothing

"Five Per Cent for Nothing" is an instrumental by the English progressive rock group Yes from their 1971 album Fragile. One of five tracks on the album that were meant to showcase individual members’ talents, it was composed by the band's drummer, Bill Bruford. At 35 seconds in length, it is the shortest song Yes has ever recorded and their only song credited solely to Bruford.^[2]

The band did not play it live until 2014, when it played Fragile in full. Despite its brevity, guitarist Steve Howe says it was the most challenging Yes song to perform from this album.^{[3]: 83, 286–87} Critics have seen it as anticipating the musical directions Bruford would take after he left Yes a year later, in his work with King Crimson and as a solo performer. Bruford himself sees it primarily as a "naïve" first attempt at songwriting.

The song was renamed from Bruford's original title, "Suddenly It's Wednesday", to spite Roy Flynn, the band's original manager, whose relationship with Yes ended during rehearsals for The Yes Album, Fragile's predecessor. The band were bitter that he had, as a condition of his departure, negotiated a deal that gave him five per cent of the band's earnings in perpetuity. Flynn said he never got any of the money he should have received from that deal, even as Yes became extremely successful in the wake of his departure.^[4] Several years later Flynn sued, eventually settling for a far smaller sum than he had asked for.