July 98 | Rick | Patrick | Trevor
hellay! i wanted to relay an incredible encounter with howe i still can't believe happened monday last in carmel, indiana, near the indy gig. the night before, i checked in to a hotel with two friends, paul and john, and were enjoying breakfast the morning after the show with a third fan/friend we'd met there, jen. steve came into the restuarant and said hello to the four of us as he passed and went to get some buffet breakfast. we giggled like giddy schoolkids and i gave the others updates on how well done steve liked his toast as he stood there with his arms folded, waiting for it to pop up. he eventually sat down not far from where we were. i hid my bacon underneath my toast so i wouldn't scare him off.
well. we left the guy alone and just enjoyed our own conversation, all of us smiling even more than we had done before steve appeared. when he was finished, he got up to go. he acknowledged us with a greeting once again as he neared us.
we asked him the name of a new song he'd played in his guitar set the night before. it was 'bareback' he said. "did you know," i asked him, " that if you happened to be riding bareback that you can sing 'wonderous stories' in perfect rhythm at the walking pace?" and i began singing it to him! steve is in fact a most warm and responsive person, relaxed and chatty, in the right circumstances, and truly appreciates the people who appreciate him. i couldn't help but point out to him: "you realize, steve, that, technically, it is *you* who is pestering *us* at this moment?" he pulled up a chair and proceeded to speak with us for TWO HOURS! no s! i can't remember everything we said, and some things were spoken in confidence, so i can't relate all i do remember.
i didn't waste any time asking him this. "so, in the show last night, jon was saying that the bunch of you would be writing and recording new material this winter, and that you will be touring again next summer -- great, btw! well, what *i* want to know is, will you be *PLAYING* the new music you write next summer???"
he hates playing 'owner' he said. no surprise, really, but it was kind of fun to hear him say 'hate.' ;) i told him that maybe he should take a stand, then, hold out on playing 'owner' until jon agreed to sing 'tempus fugit' and chris agreed to play 'silent talking.' he laughed and said thought that was fair! he spoke at length about how difficult it was, because of emotional attachments each of them had to playing certain songs, to agree on a setlist. when he was done i said it was amazing they came up with any songs at all!
we spoke about bootlegging, because the night before, one of us sitting there had been caught with recording equipment and had his dat tapes taken by a member of yes' security team. confiscation of the tapes is apparently yes' policy. the same guy had asked if he could search my bag for extra tapes, since i was with the 'taper'. he was pretty pompous, authoritative and i countered that with geniality. i said he was free to do that and assured him we were harmless, just had an inordinate amount of love for this music. what was hilarious is that as we sat speaking to steve, the same man approached *our* table to ask mr. howe if there was anything he needed, all obsequious-like. steve dismissed him and we sat there beaming! steve told us a story about a guy recording to disk that his wife discovered at one of their london shows last march. jan had approached him and said, "isn't that illegal?" and he didn't realize who she was. later the guy got backstage and was sstil harboring his equipment. steve laughed at the audacity. and they took the disk. he didn't express any 'ethical' problems with taping, though, because later, in discussing the Keys to Ascension tapings, he was saying how well he liked one of the boot videos, better that the official footage they'd shot. he liked its spontaneous quality.
i asked if he'd noticed the higher incidence of women in the audience last night (venue: deer creek) and he did. we speculated briefly why that wasn't a more common occurence. i said some things about most women being generally too addlebrained to appreciate yes' intricacies, which i could because i am a woman, and while jen laughed, the men in the crowd kept wisely silent.
he told us about his kids. he's got 2 sons and 2 daughters, the
youngest of which is 12. he and his wife sang to her when she was in uterus and when she was born she began singing and hasn't stopped yet. she has a beautiful voice, steve says.
paul asked him about guitarist john mclaughlin and steve told us about john's early days, siting first bands and such. paul would better remember this story, but he said at one point that his son, virgil, had gone to see john play, and got backstage afterward. his son failed to mention his relation to steve and so got a handshake and that was all. steve told virgil, "well why didn't you tell him who you were?!" it was fun hearing steve talk about backstage encounters with heros, you know?
steve was into archery once, but gave it up because of the strong forces exerted on his wrist.
he bought the farm they recorded TYA on.
he wasn't a big fan of soccer, which i asked because on the tv above cnn would ocassional show french types boisterously celebrating their world cup victory the day before. maybe he'd just lost interest when england was eliminated, though. ;)
he didn't care for *any* of OYE. "not even universal garden and fortune seller?!" i asked in disbelief. calmly, no, he said. after discussing it awhile, i think it's because he was asked to play on it after it was already hashed out and presented to him, to contribute later rather than be in on the invention of a new yessound. we all emphasized our wish that he be in on whatever was beginning next with yes!
um, um. what else? there is more, but i need contributions from the others who were with me to do them justice. jen? john? paul?
i asked how he accounted for the extreme devotion of some of us fans. he left on a tangent but made a kind of analogy to the gang of musicians who first hung out with charlie parker and how they all went of subsequently to invent jazz in a more cultural way. he felt yes was there at the beginning of a new musical movement and so the public appreciation and enthusiasm for this type of music came to be associated with them for many of us. i was after a more personal, psychological explanation, but i imagine jon might have had more ideas to share on that topic. steve is decidedly more musically adept, and thankfully so.
his contributions have always made jon's wonderful ideas more convincing in my mind, and heart.
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one of our party, john, had to be back at o'hare in chicago to catch a flight that afternoon, but he gladly missed it and risked flying standby to spend the time instead in steve's company!
the most wonderful thing happened when steve was done, er, detaining *us.* he stood and extended *his* hand for a hearty shake to each of us in turn, saying what a pleasure it was.
imagine.
we insisted, of course, that the pleasure was all ours. and it was. but we secretly hoped we'd shown steve a good