Jon Anderson – 013 – March 24th, 2007
A friend of mine brought to my attention that Jon Anderson was giving a workhop on the 24th of March in 013, Tilburg. There was only one slight problem: he told me this on the evening of the 23rd, and I had to rehearse with my band that evening so I could not arrange anything or call any friends to go. I didn’t even know if there were any tickets left for this workshop and I was very anxious to be a part of it!
The next day I called a couple of friends but they all had made other plans for the evening. The same counted for me actually, but I was willing to change my plans for this very special concert/workshop. 🙂
I called the venue to ask if there were any tickets left. Luckily there were, so I decided to take my car and a couple of CD’s and drive to Tilburg, which is a two hour drive from where I live. I played Olias of Sunhillow to get in the mood and after that I played the debut album from Pure Reason Revolution, which I can recommend to any progressive rock fan!
At the front door I met a guy that had an extra ticket with him because a friend of his got ill or changed his mind or something (I don’t recall the exact reason anymore). That was a nice chance for me to get a hold of a ticket before the doors opened so I could get in much quicker and make sure that I got a good seat. And boy, did I have a great seat! I was at the fourth or fifth row in the middle of the venue. Very nice!!
Then at 8:30PM the show began. Jon performed lots of songs from Yes and from his solo records. Because he played almost all the songs on only an acoustic guitar, he had created different arrangements for the songs. Nevertheless the songs sounded very nice. Not only because of the new arrangements of course but also because Jon’s voice was in very good shape, which is unbelievable if you consider he is 62 years old.
Between the songs Jon gave the audience a chance to ask questions. This was the first time that I was at a show where an artist would do such a thing, and I can tell you it was very cool! Jon is a vivid storyteller and a very funny one too! One guy in the audience asked:
I like you playing solo very much, but when will you be performing with Yes again?
On which Jon reacted: I will call you!
An other cool answer from Jon was to the question how they were able to create such long songs like Close To The Edge and Awaken. Jon’s answer was: Super glue! Then he went on telling a story about the writing and editing sessions for CTTE where they had sections of recorded tape hanging from the wall in a certain order, ready to be edited and glued together. But one evening the cleaning lady had accidentally taken one of the sections that had fallen on the floor and put in a garbage can. The next day, as a result Jon and Eddie Offord, their producer at that time, went almost insane and in the end found the missing piece of tape in a garbage can after looking everywhere in the studio!
One of the coolest moments was when a young guy asked if he was allowed to play a section of And You And I with Jon on stage. Jon didn’t have to think about that very long and asked the guy to climb on the stage to play! This was really amazing and a very nice gesture from Jon. Later on in the show an other guy tried his luck and asked Jon if he could play Heart of the Sunrise with him. And again Jon agreed! I figure that those two guys had the evening of their lives!
After the show Jon took the time for his fans to talk to him, sign their freshly bought CD’s and other items they had taken with them. He was very kind and very patient. Jon signed my Olias of Sunhillow CD and I bought his new live album Live from La La Land. La La Land stands for Los Angelos (California) in this case where he also performed solo at The Roxy. I can recommend this album to any Jon Anderson fan. The recording is very nice and the selection of songs again from his solo projects and from the Yes catalogue.
All in all it was an evening I won’t forget easily! Kudos to Marcel for bringing the show to my attention just the day before the show!
(Originally posted on my Last.fm journal)
Thanks for shriang. What a pleasure to read!