Luca Benporath

The second time of Yes in Italy during the 80's (the band had played in Milano on 84 after a long 10 years absence from the peninsula!) was with the ABWH line-up. Unfortunately, the italian dates were set at the end of the tour and I remember a very cold winter back in 1989. When Jon came onstage with Steve to perform the first couple of acoustic tracks on a medley, everyone could note that his voice was absolutely bad. He just couldn't reach high notes, so he had to manage to sing on a lower register. Nevertheless, the show was quite good and the other musicians seemed to have fun. The audience reacted very well but Jon just couldn't do it. Because of Jon's illness, several songs were dropped from the setlist, notably Close To The Edge. Actually the setlist was shortened more and more during the italian tour: CTTE was dropped in Torino and Milano, while in Roma many more tracks were dropped; Jon was seriously ill! Jon was very professional and, with the whole audience asking for CTTE, he even consulted Steve to check if it was not possible to drop other tracks in favour of it. I clearly remember seeing Steve staring at Jon saying that it was not possible, so the band had to carry on with Heart of the sunrise. Jon did an extra effort to comeback onstage for the last encore, Sweet Dreams but at the end he was exhausted. After Rome, all the rest of the tour was cancelled and the date in Modena was not played on the 1990 tour.