3/7/2008 3:34 AM Email this article Print this article  

Anderson ready to help teach on another School of Rock tour



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Give a 14-year-old boy an electric guitar and he's bound to have at least one moment where he imagines he's up onstage in front of a sweaty, fist-pumping throng.

The lights are making sweat drip off his brow. The drums are reverberating in his chest. And then comes the moment when the singer nods his way and he spits out a solo worthy of Jimmy Page. It brings an ear-splitting roar from the packed house.

For most teenage boys, that daydream never goes much beyond the garage or the basement. But on Saturday, some teenage boys - and some teenage girls, too - will have the chance to get that exhilarating rock-star rush when they perform behind Yes lead singer Jon Anderson at Mr. Small's Theatre in Millvale.


The teenagers are the cream of the crop from the Paul Green School of Rock Music, the rock 'n' roll academy with branches across the country. In all, 25 students between the ages of 13 and 16 are participating, and they'll be backing Anderson in four separate shifts as he belts songs from Yes' four-decade career.

"These kids are pretty cool," Anderson said from his California home last week. "And they're very, very dedicated to making music, and that's why I'm touring with them."

Anderson and the Paul Green students are due to hit only five cities on this tour - they started Tuesday in Philadelphia and continued through New York and Rochester. They'll be wrapping up in Fairfield, Conn., on Sunday. This is the second time Anderson has gone out on the road with the Paul Green School of Rock Music, and he's one of several well-known names, including Eddie Vedder and Peter Frampton, who have been "guest professors" with the school.

Though Anderson said the students have been practicing Yes' relatively complex songs for weeks, Anderson was due to join them last weekend and "try to corral them into tempo and (get them) listening to each other and things like that."

"You don't expect it to be perfect. You expect them to be in tune with each other, and be energized to work with each other. And that's the teaching I can bring."

And, yes, there are other adults traveling along on the tour so the 63-year-old Anderson won't have to do double-duty as a chaperone.


"I'll talk to everybody," he explained. "The last time, we were just about to go onstage, and this girl was crying. Her grandmother had just died. So I just said, 'Look, the first song, we're going to dedicate to your grandmother. Let's go onstage and let's do it.'"

Anderson will follow this tour with a two-week solo tour of Canada. The native of northern England has a whole host of other projects in the works: he's cooking up some dance music he plans on sending free of charge to clubs; working on an opera based on the Brazilian novel "The Alchemist"; and writing songs for an upcoming Yes album and tour.

"I'm just happily getting on with stuff," he said. "I'm doing a zillion things with the Internet and with a dozen musicians around the world on a dozen projects."

A self-described earlyriser, Anderson says he gets out of bed every morning to meditate and then start work. One thing that doesn't disturb his sleep is the fact that Yes has not yet been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "I don't invest much energy into it," he said.

"We had a management company a couple of years ago that said, 'We're going to put you in the Hall of Fame.' And two years later, 'We're going to put you in the Hall of Fame.' I said, 'Forget about it. Stop telling me what you're going to do and it doesn't happen.'

"If it happens, hopefully I'll still be alive."

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The show starts at 8 p.m. For information call 866-468-3401 or go online to www.ticketweb.com.


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