My First Rock Concert.

I believe that thirty four years ago today, I became a full fledged teenager when I went to my first rock concert.

When I was a wee boy, I would see teenagers with shaggy hair parade around in school and on the street with T-shirts that were artifacts of live shows of bands they had seen:  Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Styx, Journey, Def Leppard, KISS, Rush, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Twisted Sister, and so forth.

In my first year at middle school, I saw a girl who wore a denim vest displaying the Union Jack on the back with the words "THE WHO" printed along the St. George's Cross segment of the flag.

I was curious about these wild shows they had gone to see.  It seemed out of my league.  Would a wimpy kid like myself ever have the experience of seeing a rock band play live?  Would I ever partake in this rite of passage into teenhood?

At the age of 12, I found a UHF music video channel called U68.  I had discovered a band that took me by storm.

Image Credit:  rogerdean.com

Naturally, I had heard their music before.  "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was in rotation on the Top 40 for several months.   But this time, I heard and watched a video called "Leave It."

"Leave It" was a master class in vocal acrobatics.   The combined voices of Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, and Trevor Rabin overlapped each other with laser precision.   The visual of the quintet suspended upside down and being folded and twisted by the latest computer effects had me spellbound.  For the first time in my life, I had a ecstatic experience...

My hairs were standing on end.

It was as if a mild electric current was being sent through the my scalp and forearms.  It was a sublime, profound sensation that no musical act had ever inflicted upon me.  It felt marvelous.  I wanted it to last forever.

A few months later, my mother and I were shopping at the Cross County Shopping Center in Westchester.  I happened upon a record store and begged my mother to let me search for a particular album.  The album on which I heard "Leave It."

Image Credit:  Gary Mouat

I genuinely thought that this album would be out of print and that I would never find it.  But there was the album cover in its gleaming shrink wrap.  I snatched it off the rack and ran to the cashier to purchase it.  Mom indulged me, so long as she could pick up a new copy of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

At home, I peeled off the shrink wrap, removed the vinyl disc with reverence, and placed it on the turntable.  I was unprepared for the waves of electric delight that arrived with each successive track.

Over the next two years, I learned that Yes wasn't some 80s new wave band.  They were part of a genre called "progressive rock" and their recording history stretched as far back as 1969!

Image Credit:  Theo Crosby / Alan Fletcher / Colin Forbes

I slowly went through any album I could find.  The earlier, the better.  On my14th birthday, I received as a gift the album that I considered their magnum opus.

Image Credits:  rogerdean.com

A few days later I had graduated from I.S. 181 Pablo Casals.  In September, I entered LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts as a freshman.  Around that time, to my delight, Yes had released a new album.

Image Credit:  Gary Mouat

An even greater delight arrived when I learned that Yes would be touring to promote the new album.

I was fourteen.  I didn't have a penny to call my own.  I didn't have a worker's permit.  I was completely dependent on my family.  So naturally, I BEGGED my parents to buy a ticket.

I had two more friends who wanted to check out the show:  Jay McMahon and Bobby DeHayes.  So two more tickets were purchased.  Three seats for a show on December 16, 1987 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey.

Image Credit:  nj.com

Close to the date, Bobby informed me that two of his friends had also purchased tickets for themselves and needed a ride:  Kevin McCarthy and Billy Cody.  None of us knew how to drive, so... MOM volunteered to drive us.

The evening of the 16th, Mom and I picked up my fellow concertgoers one by one:  Bob, Kevin, Billy and finally, Jay.  Jay lived on the west side of the Bronx while the rest of us lived in Co-op City on the east.  So we worked our way along the Cross Bronx Expressway to pick up our last passenger.

Jay lived on Ogden Avenue, an area that mom was not familiar with.  We wandered around and finally stopped in front of a bodega where two men were standing.  One of the two looked unmistakably high.  On what, I couldn't tell you.

The boys and I looked on nervously as mom politely the drug dazed fellow where Ogden Avenue was.

"Odd-gin A-ven-you?" he mumbled.  "Yeah, I can give your the right ri-deck-tions."

We all burst into laughter as mom smiled and nodded indulgently as the man rambled about which streets to turn on to and what landmarks to look out for.

Image Credit:  Unknown

Ultimately, we picked up our last passenger and headed out to the Brendan Byrne Arena, later known as the Continental Airlines Arena, later still known as the Izod Center.  It will always be the Brendan Byrne to me.

We arrived among a bustle of teenagers and adults who were teenagers when Yes were in their prime in the 1970s.  We left mom's white Ford Torino as she promised to pick us up two hours later.  She would be off to visit friends.

The five of us worked through the maze of corridors and levels to get to our seats.  Jay, Bob, and I worked out where we would meet up with Kevin and Billy after the show.  When I entered the arena, I was breathless.  Seat upon seat, row upon row, the venue was massive.  It was larger than the largest cathedral I had ever been in.  I knew this would be a spiritual experience for me.  Again, the electric sensation began to course through my scalp and arms.

Jay, Bob, and I waited impatiently for half an hour.  Finally the house lights went down, the stage lights blazed, and Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite heralded the band's arrival on stage.  The quintet strode out from behind the wings and the crowd erupted with joy.  I could swear I had shouted the loudest.

Yes launched into songs from the Big Generator album.  "Rhythm of Love," "Shoot High, Aim Low," and "I'm Running" washed over my outstretched arms as though I was at the beach.  However, what I was really there to hear was classic tracks from their glory days in the seventies.  Finally, they arrived.  "I've Seen All Good People" began with the familiar overlap of Anderson, Rabin, and Squires' vocals.  Finally it erupted with the jazzed up second segment.  I flailed around with the unrefined abandon only a teenager could have.  "And You and I" began softly and ebulliently and later radiated in monumental glory with the strains of a Mellotron and a clash of percussion.

Yes wrapped up their show with "Starship Trooper."  In the segment called "Würm," the audience banged our heads in slow motion to the pulse of Squire's Rickenbacker bass line.   I howled with rapture at the climax of the song.  The song ended with a snap.  No one stopped cheering until the house lights came up.  My evening had been fulfilled and there would be no other evening like it.

Mom gathered the five of us into the Torino and we returned toward the Bronx chattering about each note, each vocal, each guitar riff, each bass line, each glacial keyboard, every snap of the snare drum.  We all agreed that Yes were the geniuses of rock and roll.  At home, I stayed awake at the dining room table until two in the morning, allowing the ecstatic current of energy to ebb away.

In between December 16, 1987 and today, I have been to thousands of shows, from the greatest stadia to the smallest, smoky clubs.  I've listened to a dozen different genres in music in that time.   Over the years, the electric current I felt listening to Yes faded.  I looked high and low for a band that could create the same sensation.  I have not found it.

The sensation is unique and so is the first time you go to a live show.  The joy is irreplaceable, but it never fades from memory.

Image Credit:  Neil Dickson, Getty Images

- JJB