Koldo Barroso

It was 1984, I was a teenager and Yes was EVERYTHING in my life, and they were playing Spain for the very first time. Although I used to go to rock concerts, my mother forbid to me to attend the Yes concert, knowing that how important was the band to me. So this was the first of many times I disappeared from home being "missing" to my family.

I remember it was an extremely hot summer day, and although the concert was in an open-air football stadium, Chris Squire caused the envy of the audience by refreshing himself mineral water bottles pouring down.

I think it was the most spectacular concert I've ever seen in my life, because the powerful look and sound of the band. I remember that everybody would tell so in Madrid, that they have never seem nothing so powerful and perfect like that, not even the Rolling Stones who used to have an impressive stage at the time. The sound was astounding, and the feeling of getting Chris Squire's bass from the floor through your guts was something unforgettable.

An absolutely unknown guitarist named Eduard Guardiola was the supporter playing Spanish guitar.

Before the show they would blast on the big screen a Bugs Bunny cartoon with the rabbit as a bullfighter in Mexico. It was a funny joke to warm the people up. I wonder if they did this cartoon thing in the other countries.

Although the new Yes stuff was dynamite, I think we all expected the old stuff because Yes has never played Spain before and we were willing to experience it live. So I think that were magical moments in the night : "Soon" was such a precious moment, and Jon Anderson introduced the song with this words : "Around the time songs like "And You and I", "Nous Sommes Du Soleil", songs like "Sound Chaser", the song in the album "Relayer" , the song is about the light, the light?, you blaze the laser, another laser can do -singing rhythmically like a hit-hat - zoom, zoom, zoom: laser light, space light, starlight, to travel...".

That I night I had to sleep for the first time in the back seat of a friend's car, cause I found no other place. It was a dark and tiny street in a creepy neighbourhood , and the drunks speech wouldn't allow me sleep, but anyway I just could think of "And You and I" , and "Hearts"...The day after I went back home and was welcomed with a slap, but you could see a smile in my face because I had seen Yes : I was in Heaven.