A true progressive rock legend, keyboard maestro Rick Wakeman is bringing his one-man piano show to a series of concerts in North America this fall, including three stops in Canada.
Perhaps best know for his multiple, influential tenures with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, Yes, Wakeman’s pedigree goes back more than 50 years, and features not only his band collaborations but multiple, esoteric solo releases and studio appearances on a wide assortment of artists’ albums.
Before joining Yes, he was an in-demand session player, with his work appearing on a number of iconic records, including David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Cat Stevens’ Morning Has Broken and songs by the likes of Donovan, Marc Bolan of T-Rex, Lou Reed, Al Stewart, Black Sabbath, Elton John and film composer John Williams. Wakeman has penned two film scores for director Ken Russell and two for films starring Michael Caine, as well as many more. His overall career arc is so vast, it’s worthy of its own article.
Besides his incredible catalogue of recorded music, Wakeman’s amiable personality and quick wittedness has made him a regular on the stand-up circuit in the UK, and a popular guest and host on many British television and radio game shows and panel shows, including the venerable Countdown, as well as Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You and Watchdog. He appeared on every single episode of the series Grumpy Old Men, and has turned that into a personal brand, hence the name of his tour, as well titles of his two books – Grumpy Old Rock Star, and Further Adventures of A Grumpy Old Rock Star. A third book, Even More Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star is currently being written.
“Every day is fun, it’s just great fun. And I wake up – which is the most important thing – and I am like, ‘great, what am I doing today.’ And that’s what I really, really love. There’s always something to do. I would hate a day where I woke up and think, ‘oh, I have nothing to do today.’ I am really lucky because I get to do so many things. I just love the whole entertainment game. I have to be honest with you, there has to be something within me that goes back to the old variety days, because I do think like the old entertainers, in that whatever you do as a musician, you should always take an interest in all the other forms of entertainment,” he said.
Wakeman had been doing the solo piano shows in the U.K. for a number of years, because he is as well known as a television and radio personality as he is for his prodigious musical output. In North America, that side of him isn’t as well known, but to Wakeman’s own surprise, his U.S. agent was enthusiastic about booking, what is now the first ever North American version of The Grumpy Old Rock Star Tour.
“This show is a bit different from Yes and ARW and other things, because it is just myself and a piano with a lot of really stupid anecdotes in between all the pieces. I get a chance to play music that I have been involved in with Yes, the Strawbs, my solo work, plus other artist that I have been lucky enough to work with in the studio over the years. It’s like taking a lot of the gloss off so you can actually hear how a lot of the pieces and things come together. And, also, I love doing variations of songs and themes, so it’s a great opportunity for me to play around and do what I like. I have been doing it in the UK for a long time now and I have been lucky enough to have a couple of really successful piano albums to go alongside it [Piano Portraits in 2017 and Piano Odyssey in 2018] so doing these tours has been great,” Wakeman said, from his home in the UK.
“My agent from America came to see one of the shows on my last solo tour and said I had to bring it to North America. And that’s how it came about. And we will be doing shows in Canada as well, which is nice, because my wife loves Canada, so she is actually going to come over for the five or six days we are in Canada, which will be really nice. And for these shows, I have a lot more freedom and can change things up depending on how I feel and how the crowd is reacting. It’s a great advantage about being out there on your own. You can say, ‘oh, I think I will play a different piece now than the one I actually planned,’ and you can do it. And if a different story comes into my head, well then off I go, because I am a collector of stories, as you can tell, so I throw different ones in than I planned, and that’s really great fun.
“The only downside about being on your own is if you’re playing with a band or a group of musicians the focus isn’t on you all the time. There are times when there is a guitar solo going on, or whatever, and that’s where the audience is looking. Which means, for example, if you’ve got somewhere you want to scratch, you can scratch it because no one’s watching. When you’re on your own, you can’t do that, and then what happens is you try to work out a way where you can scratch it without anybody noticing when you can. It also means you have to be completely concentrated from start to finish. It’s completely different from doing a band show, but I love doing it, very much.”
Wakeman’s solo repertoire is as diverse as it is prolific, with 15 albums to his credit, including The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Country Airs, Return to the Centre of the Earth and the aforementioned Piano Portraits and Piano Odyssey. In between solo tours, over the last couple of years, since Yes’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Wakeman has joined forces with former Yes members Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin to play Yes music under the banner ARW or in some cases Yes, Featuring Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman. In 2018, they released an excellent CD/DVD package, Live at the Apollo.
“Jon and I had done an album together called The Living Tree [in 2010] which was almost semi-acoustic, and we did some touring for it with the idea of getting back to melody, which is what we wanted to do. And obviously all the time we were doing the album, which was over a period of about two or three years, we would talk about what we were going to do next. And that’s because a load of people were saying, ‘are you going to do another album, are you going to do another album?’ Jon and I were like, ‘no, we have done this. We have done what we really like and don’t think we can better it.’ We both agreed on that. But we both said we would like to play Yes music with a band, but in a way that we feel it should be played,” he explained.
“We sat down to talk about it and immediately said we needed to get Trevor Rabin involved. We got a hold of him and he jumped right in. The we got a bass player, who I think is the finest bass player around at the moment; he is just a prodigy and that is Lee Pomeroy and [long-time Yes bassist] Chris Squire was his idol. And then we got Lou Molino, who is a great friend of Trev’s on drums, and we knew from the first day we all got together that we’ve got something really special. Funny enough, the initial Yes management came on board and put it all together, including the promoters and agent and it sort of came together incredibly naturally, nothing was contrived.
“We called ourselves ARW. I personally didn’t want to word Yes used apart from the fact that we were playing Yes music, because I wanted the band to create its own identify and be able to stand on its own. That’s how we did it for the first couple of tours. And then, for reasons which I still fail to understand, suddenly it became Yes Featuring ARW, and I always objected to that. We’re supposed to be going out next year and do some final shows, that’s the plan, and I shall push very hard for us to go out simply as ARW because I think as ARW we created an identity. I think people know exactly what we play, they know who we are and what we do. And I want to keep it that way.”
He also said there may be some original music coming from ARW, to perhaps tag onto another live album/DVD as bonus material.
Wakeman’s tenure with Yes (1971–1974, 1976–1980, 1990–1992, 1995–1996, 2002–2005, as well as a short time under the Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe name in 1988-90) led to some of the band’s best music, and he said he enjoyed every time he returned to the band over the decades. But he believes that the recent 50th anniversary celebrations, should perhaps have been the last for the name, leaving on the high of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and both the current Yes and the ARW lineups individual anniversary commemoration tours.
“I would leave mostly because of direction. The first time I left [in 1974] was because of direction; I didn’t like the route that it was going down. Music is about give and take and if you can’t give anything, then, you know, what’s the point. So, I pulled out, and then came back two years later when the direction was more to my liking. Jon called me and said, ‘listen, this is where we want to go,’ and I came back. And then Jon and I left together because musically it was a mess in 1980 [leading up to the Drama album]. It was an absolute mess, and Jon and I left together. I came back for the Union tour (in 1991) which was great fun. It was never going to last, because I knew it wasn’t. I was politely told when I went there that at the end of the tour that was that as far as the American management were concerned that were looking after the band. Bill Bruford, myself and Steve Howe would be superfluous to needs,” he said.
“Then there was the Keys to Ascension fiasco and it really was a total fiasco. That didn’t last. It was the wrong time, wrong idea, wrong pieces, wrong lineup probably. It was just trying to regenerate but it didn’t work for me. And then in 2002, I went back again, which I felt was the right time, because the band were playing great classic stuff, the band was playing really, really well. I was there from 2002 to the end of 2005 which was a great period and the band was superb. And of course, Jon then got ill, and when Jon got ill, Chris, Steve Howe and Alan [White] said they wanted to carry on and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to tour without Jon. For a start, I think it’s disrespectful; I mean, Jon was seriously ill, and I said we should wait and see how he recovers, but they didn’t want to do that. So, I said count me out.”
Wakeman said there was no spite or animosity at the time, just disappointment and a moral line that he was not willing to cross. Evidence for the lack of enmity was the fact that once his mind was made up, Squire asked Wakeman who he recommended as a fill in and he suggested his younger son, Oliver.
“I told him that both my sons could do it and then you don’t have to change the name on the t-shirt. But I said they couldn’t get Adam because he was with Ozzy for years and was with him at the time and he was very happy. I said Oliver could do the job, because he is also good friends with Steve Howe, so that works. If there was that bad a feeling as some people supposed, why did I help them get somebody to play keyboards on the tour, and my own son no less? So that was the end of it, for me, really,” he said, adding that he feels that Yes should have closed shop when Chris Squire died in June of 2015.
“That’s the moment, and I have said this before, that I felt that the name Yes should have stopped. Not Yes music, but that’s when the name should have been put to rest. There’s no reason, like we had done with ARW, that the old members and new members can’t go out and play Yes music. To me, with Chris being the only founding member who had been there the whole time, when he passed way, the name should have been buried with him. But there’s no reason why Steve, me, Jon, Alan and whoever want to go out and play Yes music, don’t do so. Fine, but I think the name should have ended with Chris, that’s my personal view.
“And as for me coming back to play with Yes, that’s not going to happen. We did the one Union tour and to try and repeat that would be a great error and would not work. People say, ‘do you speak to Steve, do you speak to Alan?’ and I say no. But it’s not because I don’t like them or anything, it’s just that I’ve got no reason to talk to them. If I were to pass Steve on the street, I would stop and have a chat and say hello, the same with Alan. I am sure that when I come over and do the tour in America and Canada, when I am around Seattle, if Alan is around, I am sure I will get to see him, because that’s what you do. It’s like with the Strawbs, I still occasionally speak to Dave Cousins when we meet up, and it’s the same with some of the other members. You don’t keep in constant contact, but that doesn’t mean to say that you’re not friendly or dislike them or anything.”
The 2019 Grumpy Old Rock Star North American Tour starts Sept. 21, in Annapolis, Maryland and wraps up Oct. 27 in Orlando, Florida. The three shows in Canada are Sept. 27 at Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, Sept. 28 at the Olympia Theatre in Montreal, and at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on Sept. 29.
“One of my favourite venues in Canada, of all time, was Maple Leaf Gardens. I loved that place. I was gutted when I heard it was all shut. That should have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum there because it was so fantastic. But you’ve got a lot of great venues of all sorts of shapes and sizes there. And I find Canadian audiences are – I wouldn’t say different – audiences around the world are pretty similar of they like what you do and pretty similar if they don’t like what you do, I guess, and it’s no different in Canada.”
Wakeman is also working on a new piano album with a distinctive holiday theme.
“There is going to be another piano album, and I started recording it this week. It’s a Christmas album called Christmas Portraits and it’s all Christmas pieces on the piano, in the same style as my Piano Portraits and Piano Odyssey albums, the same style by all Christmas pieces. It will be out in mid-November. It’s going to be traditional stuff, stuff that I would like to think people would recognize at least 90 per cent of and also maybe play it at home or in the car over Christmas,” he said.
For more information on The Grumpy Old Rock Star Tour, the forthcoming book and Christmas album, visit https://www.rwcc.com, or https://www.facebook.com/RickWakemanMusic.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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