When the band settled into Morgan Studios, Lane and Anderson proceeded to decorate the studio like a farmyard. Squire believed Lane did so as a joke on Anderson as he wished to record in the country. Anderson brought in flowers, pots of greenery, and cut out cows and sheep to make the studio resemble a garden as a typical studio did not "push the envelope about what you're trying to create musically". Wakeman recalled the addition of white picket fences and his keyboards and amplifiers placed on stacks of hay. At the time of recording, heavy metal group Black Sabbath were recording "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" (1973) in the adjacent studio. Singer Ozzy Osbourne recalled the Yes studio also had a model cow with electronic udders fitted and a small barn to give the room an "earthy" feel. "About halfway through the album", said Offord, "The cows were covered in graffiti and all the plants had died. That just kind of sums up that whole album". At one point during the recording stage, Anderson wished for a "bathroom sound" effect on his vocals and asked the band's lighting engineer, Michael Tait, to build him a plywood box with tiles stuck onto it. After Tait explained to Anderson that the idea would not work, Tait "built it anyway". Sound engineer Nigel Luby recalled that tiles would fall off the box during recording takes.