26 years, 9 months and 28 days ago

Sunday, December 7, 1997

Universal City, California

Universal Amphitheater

6,251 capacity

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. It's great to be with you here in LA. Thanks for coming out. Universal Amphitheater. We've been traveling around America. North America, South America, Central America. America will find itself in the 21st Century very shortly and we're going to keep touring until then. Just keep going. Here's a great song from Paul Simon all about America.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you. Steve Howe on guitar there. Thank you so much thank you. Over the last year we've been writing..uh a lot of new songs and..uh we started doing..uh an album last year and..uh got into another album this year to go on tour and..uh one of the guys that we were working very closely. He's a great producer and a great musician and he's alright. We dragged him into the band and here he is Mr. Billy Sherwood. Over there Billy. Oh Billy. Woo! This one is for his mom. This is..it a song..uh which is the title of the new Yes album and it's a song called 'Open Your Eyes'.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. As you can see we are practicing the Beatle bow. Okay. It was many years ago, it was a Tuesday, No, it was Thursday afternoon. It's four o'clock. It's time for tea. We've been rehearsing the next song for about ten minutes. We were tired, exhausted and we needed some magical mint tea and Eddie Offord, our great engineer at that time, was getting..uh things ready as engineers do. They're rolling their tapes and stuff like that get everything. So this song really changed my life or was it for the tea? It's was a combination. Anyway, we were all quiet. It was Thursday afternoon in London and I heard in the corner of the studio some harmonic sounds and I said 'I can't hear anything'. Oh, there it is. I said 'Eddie quick, start recording now' So this is how it finished up.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Your wonderful. Wonderful.

Jon Anderson:
Chris Squire on bass guitar. Thank you very much. Thank you. As..uh I was saying earlier. We, we started recorded this summer an album to take on the road. You know and..uh I think one of the things that happens you know, you get together with each other and something just happens. A song comes out of nowhere and this is a little like that. I went over to see Steve at the hotel just before we went to the studio and we wrote this song and then recorded and that's how that happened. It's a song on the new album. It's called 'From The Balcony' and I have the words to prove [???].

Jon Anderson:
And now. Here's a song that..uh again is on a new record and..uh it originated from a poem that I wrote some fifteen, sixteen years ago and..uh we decided to record it. It's a song. I want to dedicate this to my soul mate Jane over there with her friends and all those wonderful people. She's wonderful, we travel around together. True soul mate. Here's a song called 'Children Of Light'.

Jon Anderson:
Again, thank you for coming out this evening. Wonderful. We'd like to take this..uh opportunity to thank a great great road crew, production crew, light and sound. Let's hear it for these wonderful people that travel with us all over. Hey. They're a great road crew. They know what to do. They're a great road crew. Know what to do and a. They're a great road crew. They know what to do and I think that's all I know. Yeow? We'll try to get then a song by the time we finish the tour and in a couple of years we'll be nearly there. We need you to sing along with this next song. Please do. Singing is good for you. We're going to try and get them a complete song by the end of the tour.