Music Music
The 2nd time I met YES was outrageously cool. A very unreal night. Jon had signed the above page of the Tour Program with his interesting scrawl as we sat in the Pfister Hotel in Downtown Milwaukee drinking a Michalob and talking in a sweetly lit section of the plush hotel piano bar. Here's the full story as it happened...
Steve Howe's autograph from the same tour program.
This was the last communication I received from Steve Howe and it was a wild one.
I had only heard rumors as to changes in the band but never thought that Anderson would really leave. But after Tormato, I must confess that I knew it was to be over. Tormato has its few fleeting moments but pales in a faded aura compared to what happened musically on Going For The One and all preceding work. How can you follow up Awaken? Which even Anderson admits was an incredible and unique peak in the bands life. Yes carried on and was still entertaining to a large degree. I totally enjoyed when they came back big time with 90125. I had to billow a loud "Hell Yeah!" But at the time of this message, I was hurt and sent a stinging letter of disapproval ...like it was somehow possible to make it all come back together as it once was again. (stupid kid!) The new music had grown away from the essence of what caught my ear in the beginning with Close to the Edge and my personal favorite Yes song 'And You And I' ...I was playing guitar in a rock band by then and working on my own music so it all passed kind of easily as the new Yes told me that they were a "camera".
Until I found all this old YESSTUFF buried away in closet boxes, I forgot how very cool the band was to me as perhaps their youngest fan and how inspired they made me feel with there communications. NO matter how I try, I can't seem to escape the impression that YES music made on my own passions and musical adventures. I see their colours draped across some of my own works. But somehow ...it still feels like it's mine ...it feels right! I believe it has progressed quite nicely.
What I have realized in reflection of my YES experience here is this (violins fade in) ...The ultimate positive power of human to human communication is not within efforts that influence but in those that inspire. As it is in that moment of inspiration, that the true spirit in us is summoned to the surface. This is where we find and share the very best in us all; When it is real and true.
...The end of a beautiful saga in progressive music history.
In closing, I've included the below album cover put together several years ago by me at the urging of a net guy from Japan to make available the Milwaukee April 26, 1979 bootleg tapes. A bit before that, I had been playing around in Photoshop and after twisting and flipping some computer generated images, I sat stunned when I realized that this strange elongated orb I had just created looked exactly like the First YES concert I ever saw. WOW! Perhaps Roger Dean thought with the power of modern computers when he made his designs for the Yes Shows of '74-'76. I had once entertained the thought of Roger Dean doing an album cover for me and contacted him. To finish off the cover below, I added the final touch of the lasers and was amazed to feel that beautiful vibe flow once again. (strains of Firebird Suite fade into mind) A pleasant accident that made me smile! I later added the logo and background to round it out for a cover. I never did release it to the guy from Japan though -we lost touch ...so here it is as an image to share with those of you who might care.
