Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman reflects on his musical highlights, friendship with David Bowie and Ozzy Osbourne and his March/April 2022 British tour with the English Rock Ensemble. This is a transcript of his Strange Brew Podcast audio interview with Jason Barnard.

Rick Wakeman

Hello. It’s Jason here.

Hello mate. How are you?

I’m fantastic. Obviously it would be great to talk about your very imminent tour.

Yeah. Very short tour but it’s gonna be busy that’s for sure. Yeah.

So, am I right that it’s been about 20 years since you’ve done a show of this kind?

It’s, gosh, you know. It’s not far off it, yeah. About 2002 was the last time I was out with the band although I have been with the band in South America since then. Yeah, we’ve done a few shows in South America just with the band but basically in the UK, well in fact outside of South America, that’s very much it. Yes. It’s like 20 odd years. We’re all a little bit older.

The format of the English Rock Ensemble enables you to bring out more of that progressive side of your work, do you think?

Oh yeah. It does. Definitely. Also the English Rock Ensemble’s been around since 1975 and I’ve what I call a pool of musicians that I can draw from to suit the line-up depending on what show it is that we’re going to be putting together, which is really useful to be able to do. And this time around I wanted to do some pieces that I don’t often get the chance to do, as well as some of the old standards, shall we say, and so this is why I’ve brought in a girl singer, Hayley Sanderson, this time around. So she can do some of the stuff that Chrissie Hammond used to do and Chaka Khan did which opens up more options to us. Also there’s an interesting thing about male and female singers. Female singers pretty much in general can sing all the male stuff because they have such a wider voice range whereas it’s not that easy for male singers to sing female ranges [chuckles] unless they want to have a couple of things removed.

It’s great timing as well because your most recent album The Red Planet had a similar sort of progressive feel as well.

Yeah. We love doing The Red Planet. That was tremendous fun and we’ll be doing a track from that as well as other stuff. Yeah, absolutely. It was a great opportunity. It just felt the time was right and also the type of music I was writing at that time just suited it perfectly. I was very, very pleased with The Red Planet.

It was really well received as well by all quarters and tracks like ‘The North Plain’ which start off quite evocatively and then diverge into more funky sounds were a great way of expressing a broad range of sounds.

Yeah. I went back to the old way of recording, almost back to how I put Six Wives together. I had all these different sounds and things that I wanted to do but I wanted to have clarity. I didn’t want to have just big block sounds. I wanted… if somebody wanted to be able to hear the parts, shall we say, you know hear all the contributions. I wanted to have the time changes. I wanted to have the mood changes within the pieces, which is very much how I worked with The Six Wives and with the musicians there. I sort of call it, for me, a 21st century 1970s prog album.

Space is a theme that you’ve come back to with The Red Planet. Was it Out There where you also had a similar theme?

Yeah. Out There was all about a question that I’m often asked which is ‘Where does the music come from? Where do the compositions come from?’ I’m great friends with a lot of people at NASA and a lot of astronauts and other friends that I’ve got. They’ve asked me as well. I’ve said, ‘Well. It comes from out there – somewhere.’ And then I just thought, wouldn’t it be good if we just have a mythical big cathedral in the sky where all the music poured down and the musicians, if they were tuned into it, could pick it up. It was a simple idea and I thought it worked well. I was very pleased with the album but it’s a lot different from The Red Planet inasmuch as it was a very full-on album – Out There. It was using every ingredient, a lot at the same time. It was very busy. Red Planet had more space so that, in that way, they did differ. But two albums I like very much.

You also brought the English Rock Ensemble together pre-pandemic to celebrate your 70th birthday to play A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. So you do convene the Ensemble occasionally?

Yeah. They were part of the orchestra for that. It wasn’t just me and the band. That was my 70th birthday present to myself to take Journey back to the Royal Festival Hall. We did two nights there. An extended version, adding a lot of the music that was never there in the first place adding some guest singers and I had Hayley on board as well as Ashley [Holt] and Alfie Boe came in and sang a track which was great. And I had Ian Lavender come in as narrator. It was great. It was a lovely birthday – two days birthday. The audiences were amazing. Absolutely amazing. They lifted us to another degree. It’s hard to put into words but it was amazing.

What was it like playing back with Ashley after all those years – the same music in the same venue? It must have been a great feeling.

It was. It was really quite emotional in many ways because you’re quite right, it was a long time since I’d been there. It was quite emotional. One of the strange things was I walked down the corridor from my dressing room and there on the wall, along with lots of other photographs, was a framed cover of Journey to the Centre of the Earth on the wall and I said to one of the people “Did he just put that up?” They said, “No. That’s been there since 1974.” and I went “Wow.” The whole thing was very emotional, I have to say, but the performances from the band, the orchestra, the choir and the guests was just out of this world. I couldn’t have asked for any more.

And that also seems to be one of themes of your career is touching base with different things that teenagers and children love a lot and being inspired so Journey to the Centre of the Earth, obviously based on Jules Verne. So you seem to be going back to some of the wonder and excitement of growing up.

Well, yeah. You’re dead right about being young and children. The tragedy about children is that adults make them grow up. I never wanted to grow up, really. You’re right. There’s so much wonderful stuff out there and I love telling stories to music hence with King Arthur and Journey and I think it’s a magical art form and one that I hope I can continue until the good Lord above or the bad one below decide that my time’s up.

And just over 20 years ago you made Return to the Centre of the Earth and that also featured Ozzy Osbourne on ‘Buried Alive’ which, for many people, was a bold choice but that works really well.

Yeah. That was great fun to do. I wanted to have different guests on that and I spoke to Ozzy about it. I said, “Look, I’ve got a song called ‘Buried Alive’ that I think has got, shall we say, metal stamped all over it.” and he came and said, “Let me hear the song.” So I sent him the song, but only with the band, not with the orchestra, which is really quite a raunchy version and he loved it he said, “Yeah. I’d love to do that.” So he did it in Los Angeles, sent it back and I didn’t tell him that the orchestra and choir were going on it afterwards. We then put the orchestra and choir on and I said to him “Listen. I’ve added a few musicians. I’ve added the London Symphony Orchestra and the English Chamber Choir.” and he exclaimed words to the effect of “Bless my soul, that sounds good.” I sent it to him and I can put my hand on my heart and say he absolutely loved it, loves it. In fact my son Adam who plays with him a lot, as you know, for the last 20 odd years, he’s spoken to Adam about it a few times and has been known to play it in his dressing room with things around. It is amazing. It just shows how music can mix and match, it really can. And it was well received by Ozzy fans and Sabbath fans too.

Absolutely. And your friendship and your work with Ozzy and also Black Sabbath, that goes back way back to the early 70s doesn’t it?

It does go back to 1970, when I first met them. We are good friends. I have so much respect for Ozzy and Tony Iommi [Black Sabbath guitarist] and Geezer [Terence “Geezer“ Butler, Black Sabbath’s bass guitarist and lyricist] and Bill [Ward, their drummer], when he was with the band. Very special guy. I love people who are good at what they do and love what they do and Sabbath are good at what they do and they love what they do. It doesn’t get any better than that.

And the forthcoming shows, English Rock Ensemble, also feature, I understand, some material from The Six Wives of Henry VIII ?

There are certain things… I always try and list what people write to the website and people who come to concerts. It’s the old thing that there’s certain things that most people would very much like to hear. I mean if you go to, if he was still alive, a Frank Sinatra concert and he didn’t sing ‘My Way’, you’d go home disappointed. So we do look at a bit like a team sheet for a football manager. You do know what’s got to go on the sheet. So I’ll do a track from Six Wives, we’ll do some bits from Journey, do some bits from Arthur and then the rest might be the odd surprise here and there. And I’ll do a Yes piece as well. [with tongue firmly in cheek] I don’t know why. They never play any of mine. [both chuckle]

But The Six Wives… People might not know it now but that album and the material that you were making was such a departure from other artists, even in the prog world. You seem to really, really kind of have a vision for something and follow it through.

I like trying to. I learnt quite a lot from my dear departed friend David Bowie. Bowie said “If you’ve got an idea, a musical idea, and you’ve got something that you really want to do,” he said, “don’t take any advice. Just do it because then it stands and falls by you and not by other people.” And that was very much The Six Wives. I listened to nobody. Obviously, when the musicians came in, they had a lot of freedom of what they wanted to play, how they wanted to play it, which was great and that gave them something different from normal working with other musicians and other things because they had a bit of a freedom that they’d never had before.

Talking about that Bowie link, it’s amazing to think how young you were when you were doing those sessions in the late Sixties with the likes of Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti and  that led on to you know an incredible work with David.

You’re right. The interesting thing is I was young but, in a strange way, I’d been doing nothing really but music my whole life since I was five, so there’d been 15 years of music being my life so it wasn’t that I just sort of started when I was 15 or 16 or even 18 or 19. I managed through fabulous teachers and professors and people I’d worked with. I’d been playing in a band since I was 13 and learning from musicians and things all the way around and picking up good things so, yeah, I was young but I had quite a lot of musical experience already which grew enormously when I started doing sessions because by the time I did Hunky Dory [David Bowie’s 1971 album] I’d played on about 2,000 tracks and I’d learnt a lot from producers and I’d learnt a lot from different artists and different musicians – good and bad, what to do and what not to do. So I’d actually gained a lot of experience by that time which I think helped tremendously.

It clearly did because when you look at some of the material from that period, to provide the levels of complexity with material like ‘Life On Mars’. Was it that David just took an acoustic guitar and you had to bring that to life with the piano?

He played it to me in his house in Beckenham [Haddon Hall, 42 Southend Road, Beckenham – since demolished]. Before we went into the studio he played me all the songs from Hunky Dory on his old 12-string guitar and I sat at his beautiful piano that he had there with manuscript paper and a pencil, made loads and loads of notes. Basically David always gave freedom to the musicians to use and it was a great line he said to me after he’d played me ‘Life On Mars’. “OK. Play it back on the piano as a piano thing.” and I said “How would you like me to play it?“ and he said, “You know how I want you to play it.” I thought, “You haven’t told me.” He said, “You know. Just play it.” So I played it and he said, “Yeah. That’s how I want you to play it.” He always had this thing – pick the musicians that understand what you want to do and let him get on with it. I mean, he was remarkable. I learnt so much from that man.

And in that period you were playing with Strawbs and there’s one particular track that I’d like to ask you about, something penned by Dave Cousins and that’s ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’. That’s a wonderful track. The sound and feel of that has got a real church hymnal feel.

There’s a few pieces at that time that were when Dave was absolutely at his peak both beautiful, lyrically and musically. ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’ he wrote. He had a house in Devon and I think it was it was either Sidmouth or Seaton, I can’t tell you which one it is, but he was up on the cliffs. He had a caravan there and he sat on the cliffs and looked out around him out to sea and back over the hillside and everything and then that’s where he wrote ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’. I’ve actually been there and sat there. I used to say to people “Go in your car. Drive up there and play the track.” It’s beautiful. The hillside was a patchwork quilt. It was just beautiful. In fact I must do it again. I must check with Dave. I can’t remember whether it was Sidmouth or Seaton but it was perfect and that was David at his heart and it’s a beautiful track.

Absolutely. And in terms of moving on from Strawbs you had that moment where you had the offer to work with David and you had the offer to work with Yes and you chose the Yes option.

Yeah it was. David always said it was the right option because, much as I love David’s music, much as I could have happily played it for the rest of my life, in a band there would be a limit to how far I could go because obviously always playing David’s music, there is a ceiling as to where your input can be and also David, of course, changes his bands a lot because, as I mentioned earlier, he picks musicians that are ideal for the music and changes all the time. So I don’t think it would have lasted very long anyway. But the thing with Yes, David was miles bigger than Yes at the time but Yes, were – I’d seen Yes play. I’d listened to The Yes Album and also Time and a Word and it was interesting. I thought this is a band that I feel has an orchestral rock feel to it but it needs that orchestral bit and I always felt that I could, perhaps, add that other little link and also have the chance to make suggestions on how the music was put together, which became my job really of linking all the different parts and that together, which I thoroughly enjoyed. David and I were neighbours in Switzerland for many years in the late 70s – 76 to 1980 really – and we used to meet in a little club in Montreux and chat about the world and he always said it was. He said “You made absolutely the right decision.”

You can hear that listening to Close To The Edge. That feels like a band that are really pooling resources and everyone’s bringing something to the table.

Yeah. Close To The Edge was very, very special. I always say it was the last of the true prog rock album because it was the last time that Yes and, in fact any other band almost, was ahead of technology. There wasn’t the technology there to enable us to do a lot of things so we had to find ways of doing it. The musician was ahead of the game.

I think as well with the tour you’ll also be featuring some material from The Myths and Legends of King Arthur?

Yeah. We always do a bit from King Arthur. Yeah.

And, again, does that hark back to your childhood and the stories?

Yeah. I was taken to Tintagel. I was about, oh crikey, I wasn’t very old. Six? Six years old? Maybe seven at the most. I stayed with some friends of my parents on their little farm and I was taken one day to Tintagel and it I just it was magical. I couldn’t believe it was just fantastic and I was given some books on King Arthur, some children’s books on King Arthur, which I still have somewhere, and that always stayed with me. I just thought it was just so magical and, as you know, I love myths, legends and stories and history and it stayed with me. In fact when I was doing Journey I was already planning on King Arthur. I knew what I wanted to do but it’s such a some great mythical stories and it’s just lovely and that’s a big part of me.

That sort of personal feel of some of the stories comes out in tracks like ‘Sir Lancelot and the Black Knight’ and ‘Guinevere’. You really trying to embody those myths there.

Yeah and it was also an interesting time because a lot of the music I wrote while I was in hospital. I’d had some heart trouble and I was in hospital for nine weeks and I had some manuscript paper and pencils and I wrote a lot of the music while I was there. In fact one day when a consultant came round to my bed and my manager was there and my wife at the time and the consultant said, “I think Mr Wakeman can’t tour or do anything strenuous anymore. So I think that probably he’s going to have to look for a different career.” And I was, what, 24? Something like that. 25? And I remember him going and I said to my manager, “No way. If you’re going to take my music away, I might as well not be here.” And he said, “What do you want to do?” and I said, “Well, we’re recording King Arthur when I come out because I’m writing it now and I said I want you to book me a tour in America.” I said, “If I’m going to go down, I’ll go down fighting.” And, after he went, with my manuscript paper there and everything, I wrote ‘The Last Battle’ which is not really just the last battle of King Arthur but it was probably my last battle because I wasn’t going to give in.

I’d like to ask you about an album that that some people may not know of but it’s just a fantastic listen and that’s African Bach.

I loved African Bach.

That deserves a much broader hearing.

Yeah. The history of that. I was contacted by a group of businessmen who worked in South Africa and they were looking at people to make albums and they had funding. I mean, not a lot of funding, but they had funding and they came to me and asked and I said I would really, really like to do this and I would like to make it an album encompassing Africa. Encompassing all of the different races down there. The different sort of indigenous things that have gone on. Everything. I want to really encompass what it’s all about and they said, “Yeah. Fine. Go ahead.” So I wrote African Bach, which I really enjoyed writing. I found a black Baptist choir in South Africa who loved the idea of the project and they recorded the choir parts for me which were done outside of South Africa because it was all at the time of apartheid. I was just trying to help everybody down there, not do anything controversial but sometimes blanket laws make it really stupid. Anyway, they did a fantastic choir on it and then we recorded a video and everything for it and then I discovered that, in fact, the people who’d commissioned it, it was a tax loss. They were doing it as a tax loss. But then they had a problem. One of the guys involved, one of the main guys involved, he said, “We have a real problem because we love this album but we had no plans of anywhere to release it or what to do with it.” I couldn’t afford to buy it off them although I would have loved to and in the end they did a deal – nothing to do with me – with President Records, who I know very well. But the album then just disappeared and that for me was tragic because I think it’s one of the nicest and best albums I’ve ever put together. It means a lot. It has a great heritage to it, with the heritage of Africa, and also with the choir and, yeah, it disappeared without trace and you know, occasionally, that happens but that was saddening for me. Yeah.

And then, to close, I’ve read that Cat Stevens hearing an early version of ‘Catherine Howard’ inspired him to get you involved with ‘Morning Has Broken’. Is that right?

Yes and no. We went to do ‘Morning Has Broken’ and it was just the hymn, the song that we had and Steve wanted an introduction. And I’d been in the studio and I was playing, because I’d just started writing ‘Catherine Howard’, and I was playing the beginning bit, and he liked that a lot and he said “Can you…? That kind of style? Can we have something that is the opening and ending with key changes and things?” And so that’s what I did. He hadn’t heard it before. He just heard me play it in the studio.

Rick. I’m wishing you all the best with the forthcoming tour. I’ve seen that you already post on Twitter that the rehearsals are going well and hopefully everyone can get themselves along.

I hope so yeah. Rehearsals are great. It’s a quite a different line-up although the wonderful Lee Pomeroy [bass and backing vocals] and Dave Colquhoun [guitars and backing vocals] are there. Tony Fernandez is not with us this time. He’s in Portugal. He has businesses and things over there. And also with the restrictions and flight difficulties and whatever is, it was just impossible for him to come in and just do this and go back again so my son Adam, who’s also in the band, has got together Adam Faulkner, great drummer. He’s brilliant. And as I mentioned earlier, I have a pool of players because we wanted to do some different songs, some of the female songs from the past, so Hayley’s come in this time around. That’s the great thing. It’s a bit like a football team having a squad of players. The manager can pick who’s best for that particular game.

Absolutely. And you’ve got some great artists supporting you as well.

Yeah. It’s really good. I mean, obviously, Carl [Palmer]’s a great mate and I love what he’s done with his [ELP] Legacy band and very clever the way, I think, that he’s got guitarists playing a lot of themes and Keith [Emerson]’s parts. I think that was really a good idea and very well put together. Yeah. I’m very pleased. A very happy boy.

Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time Rick. It’s been a huge pleasure.

Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Acknowledgements and Further information

Transcript and extra research provided by Nigel Davis.