Rick Wakeman Is As Comfortable On The Telly As He Is Behind The Keyboards

By John Voket

Our attempts to corner world renowned keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman, arguably best known for his work with the group Yes, was both an exercise in patience and perseverance. Regular Enjoy readers will recall his scheduled appearance at the short-lived Premier Music Hall in Danbury, which was postponed in March at the last minute, along with the rest of early spring tour, due to a nasty respiratory illness.

With the closing of the Music Hall and the rescheduling of Mr Wakeman’s show to the more intimate and comfortable surroundings of the Ridgefield Playhouse, we thought our chance to chat with the talented tinkler was all but lost in the shuffle. But thanks to some fancy footwork, and the assistance of the staff at the Playhouse, we were able to sit down to not one, but two pre-performance chats.

And as you can see from the following Q&A, this affable musician spent very little time promoting his sold out tour, and loads of time pouring through stories extending from his most recent new age works, through his famous and infamous musical collaborations, all the way back to his very first childhood piano recital and an endearing piano teacher he refers to as his Miss Dorothy.

Newtown Bee: You were blessed to have the same piano teacher from the age of five until you were 18 years old. Tell me about how your dear Miss Dorothy helped guide you through the musical transitions as you found your talent for the instrument, while you transitioned from child to adolescent to becoming a highly sought-after young artist.

Rick Wakeman: I was more lucky than I actually realized until quite recently to have her for so long. She was magical – first of all, she used to celebrate her pupils by putting in for as many concerts and recitals as she could find. So from the age of five, I was playing in front of quite large audiences more than a dozen times a year. She always said to me, and I’ll never forget it, she said “Richard, music is to share. And you just happen to be the lucky one to be the one who gets to perform it.”

NB: I was fortunate to see you at Radio City Music Hall with Yes recently when you got to play a solo on the huge house organ that came rolling out from the wall beside the stage. And that got me thinking that you probably are always getting invited to play some quite unique and special old instruments as you make your way around the world as you do.

RW: I get some wonderful invitations – I’m almost embarrassed sometimes, a rock and roll star getting such access to these instruments.

I remember I was playing some solo shows in Poland right after the fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall came down, and I made quite a few friends there. And on one trip to Gdansk, and was invited to a church where the organ hadn’t been played since before the Second World War. Well they gave me the honor to be the first person to play it before the Communists took over. And it only played a few notes, but I felt so special to have the chance to play it.

A few years later, I was living on the Isle of Mann, and a little old man invited me to play a piano that he had acquired. So I went to his house and he showed me this beautiful piano which was literally roped off – and I said this looks really familiar, Chopin used to carry around a touring piano and this looks like a copy of Chopin’s touring piano.

And he said no, this is Chopin’s touring piano, won’t you have a try on it. These are just a couple of the many incredible instruments that I have been allowed to play.

NB: I recall the first time I saw you live on your own back in 1980, and as a Yes fan for several years before that, I had no idea of the kind of personality you bring to the stage when you’re not behind the keyboards. I guess it’s not really appropriate to showcase this hidden comedian and storyteller with a band like Yes, but I really think some folks who come to see you play will be really surprised to hear you on the microphone.

RW: It’s nice to be able to come out and tell stories, but it really is something you can do when you’re on your own. And this tour will be a perfect opportunity, just me and a grand piano and my stories. You know the concept of getting me out from behind the racks of keyboards and tell a bunch of silly stories from my 36 or 37 years on the road.

The idea came about literally by accident, because I was scheduled to do a one-man show in England, but because of a traffic accident on the highway, my keyboards didn’t show up. And we didn’t want to cancel the performance, so they rolled out a grand piano and I did the show in between telling some stories. The show came off so well, that they decided to make it a regular thing.

NB: You have some background with the Strawbs, but I was fascinated to see you had a relationship with David Bowie as well. Tell me a little about that experience.

RW: I first met David when I was asked to play on Space Oddity. And after that he invited me round to his house, and he played me all these wonderful songs on a 12-string guitar he said would be on an album called Hunky Dory. And he told me he wanted the songs to be very piano based, so I want you to learn the songs and play them like they were solo piano pieces, and I’ll get the band to work around you. And that was fantastic because I got to play whatever I liked. I was given complete freedom to play whatever I wanted on the piano, and that was fantastic.

NB: Some of your solo projects are virtually single songs taking up entire sides of albums, or even entire albums. And of course Yes is also known for some extremely long 20-minute-plus recordings as well. You really don’t get the same experience when you sit down and listen to a two or three-minute Stones, or Beatles or early Who ditty. There’s something to be said for a band that takes its listeners to that level of musical experience and creativity.

RW: That sort of music lets people really get into it, joining in creating your own feelings and moods and thoughts in the longer Yes pieces, which is really hard to do with a Beatles song, as fantastic as they are. It’s different – you can really join the journey on things like Dark Side of the Moon, for example.

I do the same, from the early days of King Crimson to early Genesis and early and recent Pink Floyd.

NB: It’s amazing when you look at your discography, to see you have nearly ten times the body of solo projects as any of your fellow members from Yes. But you are able to straddle the rock and new age markets very successfully, creating material that can appeal to really two completely different audiences.

RW: I was talking with (Yes singer) Jon Anderson about it on our last tour, and I never had a problem with it. We were talking about how you separate the solo material from the stuff you’re writing for the band.

For me it was easy, for me music just sort of happens for me, but as I am playing it I get an idea of what it is meant to be – I can say, maybe I’m going to offer this to Yes, or maybe this will be one for my band or a solo piece.

One of the great things about working with Yes, each member of the band gets hold of it and pulls it about. But every now and then you come up with something that you don’t want pulled about. Towards the end of the ‘70s it became a bit more difficult with everyone wanting to pull each other’s material about. I think about an album Yes did called Tormato, which had five producers. I talked to Jon and Steve about it recently, and I think that would be the one to pull out and remaster to see what would come out of it now.

NB: Who’d have thought that such a great talent on the concert stage would translate so well as a small screen television star. Before we say Good-Bye, tell me how on earth you became one of England’s most popular television stars.

RW: You know I tried very hard to get on TV about 20 years ago, and it was impossible. But more recently there was a guy called Danny Baker who had something like the Letterman Show. And Danny knew some of the great stories I used to tell, and he invited me on and said, “I’ve got ten seconds after your song to talk with you, but I want you to tell some of your stories.”

We were live so he just kept feeding me and we went on for nearly 20 minutes. When we got off I expected we would be absolutely castigated by the producers. But they said they were glad he broke all the rules.

Then the big surprise came on Monday morning when my agent called and asked if I had seen the papers. He said all the papers wrote reviews of The Danny Baker Show and I came off shining. Well that Monday, I had 34 television offers come in, and that’s what started it, really. Since then I’ve been on travel shows, quiz shows, chat shows – just today I was hosting a show called “Inside – Out.”

It’s really strange how hard I tried to get in, basically gave up, and by some strange quirk of fate – well I was talking about it with Danny later and he said it wasn’t luck, it was simply a case when preparation met opportunity!