28 years, 10 months and 14 days ago

Monday, March 4, 1996

San Luis Obispo, California

Edward's Fremont Theater

800 capacity

Announcer:
..sides. Well now sit back, relax and enjoy a very special evening with Yes.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. [???] During uh..during the course of this evening. We're going to take you. We're going to take ourselves on a journey of music we recorded many, many, many, many, many, moons ago. Sit back and enjoy. Please sing along. As you know we are recording everything we do.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you very much. [???] thank you. Sometimes it's very..like this when you..uh write a song or a lyric. You say, 'Why am I writing this lyric for god's sake?' You know. [???] betwixt two things you want to write a nice lyric and then why don't I write it this way. So this next song is a song I did a lyric for millions and millions of years ago [???] and eventually I started thinking it's really nice to sing this for myself because you'll hear as it go along how simple this song is. Like anything, the lyrics really mean a very simple thing. The maestro, Mr. Rick Wakeman.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. There was..uh a wonderful time were we first really started touring America many years ago and [???] many years ago [???]. But there was time were we really sorta locked in to some special feeling about the music were were writing and thinking about. Out of which came as you just heard, 'Close To The Edge'. It was a totally different way of conceiving music as far as we were concerned. It's was more to do with a spiritual stance, musical stance and feeling real good about what you do and one of the songs that came came around in that moment in time has lived with us as you know in many carnations but it's always wonderful and very great pleasure to sing it with this wonderful team and it started..and I remember..uh when we started to record this. It just sounded exactly like this because Steve was messing around and tuning up. Harmonics. Getting in tune. [???]

Jon Anderson:
Thank you. Thank you so much, thank you. Thank you. When we started rehearsal just over a month ago, Where one of the things that I was very adamant. I want to do this piece of music and little did I know just like to do it. You know we, we, we wrote it 23 years ago and then we performed it and we didn't do it anymore for a long time until just now and in some ways I wanted to shorten certain parts of it but Steve was very sure. I always feel when we're going to start this I want to take about a thousand deep breaths to get though it but believe me, it really is worth it. It really is.

Chris Squire:
Thank you. Thank you all.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much thank you. I can never remember what we're going to do next but soon as I remember or I'm told this is what we're going to do. It's like a travelogue. It feels like, you know get into a car and where were we be? 1975? 1976? [???] Well what happened was we went to Switzerland of all places in the mountains and it was kinda amazing being in the mountains and waking up every morning. Kinda like here. It's beautiful here. We just need a little bit more snow. So here's..uh sorta crazy, crazy mixture of..uh wild rock-and-roll. Shall we call it that? Wild rock and roll. It's..uh something to say. Does Alan White count this in? Mr. Alan White on drums here.

Jon Anderson:
So there I was in this bar. I used to test the drinks and..uh I went over to.. What happened? 'Simon and Garfunkle' so I had this sorta feeling like 'wow, lets do one of their songs. So eventually we did and interesting thing, we came to America, toured and stuff like that, we all feel in love with America, fell in love with everyone, you know, like you do and..uh as we rehearsed the song through the week. The words came through to me for the first time that we're all looking for America, the real America. Which is a multicultural America. So here we go and Alan is going to count it in?

Jon Anderson:
Thank you, thank you so much, thank you so much. Take a breath, take a breath. When Chris..uh wrote this next song and this..uh time where where we're going though, been on the road for 10 years. We hadn't even stopped to think about anything. We're getting very tired. This is one of the songs that came over so beautifully on the album and sometimes I'll get a letter from people who use this as part of their wedding ceremony and I now understand it a lot more as a song.