Tour Management: I have a great idea, let's have an outdoor concert in Houston Texas in freaking August.
People: Why would you do that to us?
Tour Management: Because Miller Beer is sponsoring the event.
My friend Dave was a huge Yes fan. He was positively giddy that we would get to go to this show. He was working for Miller beer at the time and scored some tickets as well as some "backstage party passes" or something. We got there early enough and made our way to the backstage party. They handed out posters and promised us the band members would show up and sign autographs. And they did. I still have the poster, signed by Tony Kaye, Alan White and the great Trevor Rabin. I wasn't all that interested in meeting anyone except for Trevor Rabin.
When I got his attention I said, "Hey man, we use the same guitar strings!" and pointed at my D'Addario strings t-shirt. At that time Trevor was endorsing D'Addario - I know this cause I saw in a guitar magazine. I'll never forget how gracious Trevor was - he looked at me and smiled as if his face was trying to decide what the heck this kid's problem was, laughed and said, "yeah they're great". I shook his hand and my 30 seconds were up. Dave was all about meeting Jon Anderson. I made a half-hearted attempt to get to Chris Squire but he was gone before I got his autograph - which wasn't a big deal to me because autographs are kind of stupid anyway. But Dave wanted to meet Jon so we had to hang out and wait. Dave had been told that Jon would make an appearance. And he did. Let me tell you, weird guy (Jon Anderson - not Dave - actually yeah, both of them come to think of it). He came out between a couple of big guys I could only view now as "handlers". Jon stood timidly at the party entrance - clearly uncomfortable, wringing his hands and waiting for a chance to bolt out of there. The room noticed he was there. And in my opinion it seemed like we were reluctant to approach due to the obvious "closed" body language. None of this could penetrate Dave's adoration for the man. He approached brazenly and seemed to startle Jon. I stood back and watched Dave's dream come true as he made the mistake so many of us do in trying to tell people we admire how much they mean to us and come off sounding like fanboys or clueless gits (see Trevor Rabin encounter above). I am not sure Jon signed anyone else's poster that day. He might have bolted immediately after the "close encounter of the Dave kind". After that we took our seats. It was a cool show. I knew enough about Yes to appreciate the show much more than when I saw them for Big Generator.
