Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman0:00

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Speaker 20:01

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Rick Wakeman0:01

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Speaker 20:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Speaker 20:13

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Speaker 20:41

My castaway this week is the musician and composer Rick Wakeman. Celebrated as a member of the Prague Rock Titans, yes, his on-stage presence was marked by a sequined cape, shoulder-length blonde hair, and terraces of multiple keyboards. It was, after all, the 1970s. In his years as a highly sought-after session musician, he lent his talents to everything from Cat Stevens' Morning Has Broken to Get It On by T. Rex. The landmark David Bowie album Hunky Dory is underpinned by his piano playing. My castaway's solo musical projects, from the six wives of Henry VIII to the myths of King Arthur, have been complex orchestral affairs with multi-layered chordal arrangements and the dry ice machine turned up to eleven. His off-stage antics have also had a tendency towards the extreme. By the time he was twenty-six, he'd had three heart attacks. By his forties, he'd made and lost bundles of cash in spectacular fashion. And now, in spite of being a grandfather many times over, he's married to a glamorous fourth wife, twenty-five years his junior, and is still touring. He says if they slice me in half, you would find over the top written through me, everything in my life has been excess. Welcome, Rick Wakeman. Thank you, Rose. So you like to live life with a flourish, and I'm wondering.

Speaker 11:55

Mm

Speaker 21:59

You know, to be proper rock and roll when you're just at you're nudging seventy a couple of years away. How how tricky is that?

Rick Wakeman2:05

Sixty was a tricky one. Mind you, so was fifty. I'm extraordinarily fortunate to be doing a call it a job, if you like, of what I love, which is music and entertainment. And I think that if you really love what you do, it does help to keep you young. I mean, I can't see myself ever stopping. I'd like to slow down a bit. I m I must admit, there are days when you go

Rick Wakeman2:26

Oh, I wouldn't mind a game of golf. But no, I'm not frightened of 70. I'm not frightened of 80 and 90. I just want to get there.

Speaker 22:34

I mentioned there, Rick Wakeman, in the introduction, it was sort of bastardized spinal tap reference. I said the ice machine turned up to eleven. And I I hope you didn't mind about that. Were they really on about yes? I mean, you know, you've done all the sort of plastic dinosaurs and the pods coming up out of the stage and the King Arthur on ice and so on.

Speaker 12:42

That he

Rick Wakeman2:43

Nothing at all.

Rick Wakeman2:50

There were a few bands that were involved, and I've got a lot from the horse's mouth. Harry Shearer is a great friend of mine. Yes, certainly the pods do relate to the Roger Dean stages that we have with Yes. And then the Spinal Tap film, there was where the bass band gets stuck in this pod, and I have to break him open. Well, we had a giant clam made. I'm trying to make it sound serious. This is a serious program, waiting. This giant clam, which our drummer Alan White was in. And basically, as we started playing, the clam would open with all the lights and everything inside. But it had to be reasonably quick because there's no air in there. And I can't remember exactly where it was, but there was the night that it just didn't open. It just jammed. And eventually the crew are on stage. We're still playing, trying to prize it open. Then they came out with fire axes. And meanwhile, Alan's suffering from a lack of oxygen. And his drumming's going all over the place because he doesn't know what the hell's going on. And eventually they smashed it open and he came out and the audience went nuts. They thought it was part of the

Speaker 13:06

Yeah.

Speaker 13:17

And basically

Speaker 23:48

Part of the Act.

Speaker 23:49

Let us go to the music Rick Wakeman and tell me about this first one. What have you chosen?

Rick Wakeman3:54

I've chosen Still Love You All by Kenny Ball because in the late 50s my father worked for a building company in London called Nichols and Clarks and one of the reps who worked with the company was called David Jones and in his part-time he was a semi-professional musician playing the clarinet for Kenny Ball and his jazzmen. David Jones came around the house and I'm a sort of a nine, ten year old and it was great here's somebody who's actually made a record and in fact at the school I was at we formed a trad jazz band. Every band had a uniform back then and we couldn't afford a uniform, we were only 11, 12 so we turned our blazers and shirts around and became Brother Wakeman and the clergyman and we did try and play Still Love You All, failed miserably because it was much too hard for the trumpet player.

Speaker 34:46

Marie Michelle Nanette I remember your kisses so well Louise Lucille Jeannette Every gay was a gay carousel

Speaker 25:05

I still love you all, Kenny Ball and his jazzmen. I mean, it was actually shamefully unknown to me how many important bits of music that you had played on as a session musician. What are the skills that a session music, you know, I think of you as a man with presence and a man with, I'm sure, in common with many people who have been stars in the rock music world, an ego. But as a.

Speaker 25:28

I don't well maybe we'll explore that later. But but as a session musician you have to sort of, I presume, sublimate all of that. You have to go in and do what's required.

Rick Wakeman5:36

I never planned to go into sessions. After I left the Royal College of Music, I just found myself doing a load. And the main criteria for doing sessions back in the late sixties and early seventies was being able to sight read well, sight read music well. I mean, you could be doing Scylla Black one minute, Clive Dunn the next, Black Sabbath the next minute. And it was the most wonderful apprenticeship course.

Speaker 25:55

David Bowie's Hunky Dory, considered by many people as one of the seminal albums of the last fifty years. When did you first hear the tracks you were going to play on, and what did you make of them in the beginning?

Rick Wakeman6:04

I'd already done space oddity with David, and then he called me up.

Rick Wakeman6:08

And I was living in a little house in West Harrow, and he said, Come around to my house, I want to play you some songs. And he lived in Beckenham in Kent. This house to me was huge. I called it Beckenham Palace. We went in there, and he had a minstrel's gallery with a nice grand piano. And he took out a battered old 12-string and said, Listen to these songs. He said, Make some notes if you want. He said, All the albums up to now have been guitar-based, because he was a folk singer originally. And he said, They've been guitar-based. I want this album to come very much from the piano. And he was playing through, and it's great songs, songs one after the other. And then he played Life on Mars. And I can remember sort of sitting back from the piano store and going, David, that is an amazing song.

Rick Wakeman6:49

And he said, Yeah, I'm pleased with it. Can you think of it sort of as a piano solo and we can all work around? I said, Absolutely. It's such a clever piece in every respect. And that's exactly what we did. I mean, a lot of people have said the piano that you did on Life on Mars, you must have spent hours working that out. Truth of the matter is, everybody had to work around me, so it was a wonderful thing to do. And David was very generous. He'd just say, you do what you feel to this piece.

Speaker 27:16

And how much did you keep it?

Rick Wakeman7:16

I lived in Switzerland from 1976 till 1980 and David was also there in Switzerland. There was a lot of English people over there. I mean Charlie Chaplin was over there. It was ridiculous. I was the only person there I didn't know. And David and I were as quick neighbours. I mean we lived on the same mountain. And we used to meet in this little club in Montreux called the Museum Club. And we would put the world to rights. And we used to meet up quite regularly when he was back from Torrey and I was back from Torrey.

Speaker 27:48

Your own compositions are marked out by the multilayered nature of their complexity and inventiveness. Are you ever defeated by your own musical ambition, I wonder?

Rick Wakeman7:59

I have admittedly written some stuff, especially orchestral stuff, that have turned out to be.

Rick Wakeman8:07

I won't say unplayable, but close to it.

Rick Wakeman8:10

There was one particular piece I wrote called Return to the Centre of the Earth where I did uh all the orchestrations for the London Symphony Orchestra, and I wrote some piccolo trumpet parts. And uh one of the players, well I won't name very, very fine players, he said to me, Rick, there's just the one problem. He said, It is playable, but we have to breathe.

Rick Wakeman8:30

I went, That's a very good point. Rick, Wakeman, it's time for your second day.

Speaker 28:34

Uh

Rick Wakeman8:34

Uh

Speaker 28:34

Just tell me a bit about

Rick Wakeman8:34

Okay.

Rick Wakeman8:36

I can't tell you exactly, but I think I was about eight years old.

Rick Wakeman8:39

And my father took me to Ealing Town Hall, where they used to do free concerts. This particular one is the first one my father took me to, and they played Peter and the Wolf, and I sat there in absolute I was in raptures. Here was something completely different. Here was somebody telling a story to music.

Rick Wakeman8:59

On that day, I came home and I said, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 19:02

I want to write stories to music. Early one morning, Peter opened the gate and went out into the big green meadow.

Speaker 210:02

That was an extract from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and the narrator there, Rick Wakeman, was your friend and one time collaborator, David Bowie, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormondy. So let's go back a bit, Rick Wakeman. Born in nineteen forty nine, it was. You were brought up an only child in Northolt, in north west London.

Speaker 110:12

Moment.

Speaker 210:20

Tell me more about your parents.

Rick Wakeman10:22

My father was a a good musician. He was a fine piano player. During the war years he was stationed out in Italy in the army, but occasionally he would get hauled in to go and play at various concerts for different people. And I know that he did some accompanying for Harry Seacomb, the late Harry Seacomb. And he had a Bexton upright piano at home, which is the one I learnt to play on and I still have. And he had with my mother a concert party.

Rick Wakeman10:50

Playing village halls and church halls and little theatres. And there was my father played the piano. Uncle Stan played the banjo and did George Formby songs. Uncle Laurie was the comedian. Aunt Esther, Aunt Olive, and my mother used to sing. And they were known as the Wakeans. And they used to, on a Sunday night round our tiny little house, how they fitted in, they used to relive those evenings. And I used to climb out of bed, aged about three. I can remember to come down the little stairs and sit at the bottom and listen and think, this is wonderful. That's quite intoxicating. Oh, it was unbelievable. And my father sent me off to piano when I was five to a wonderful teacher called Mrs. Simes, who I stayed with forever. Between a third and a half of my father's income went on my piano lessons, which was astonishing when I look back. I mean, I found much of this out long after he passed away. And it really did. It hurt because you just want to go, look, can I just say a big thank you? He was an amazing influence on me, my father.

Speaker 211:48

Yeah.

Speaker 211:52

Aside from the music, what do you think his abiding influence on you has been then?

Rick Wakeman11:56

Like all growing teenagers and and children.

Rick Wakeman12:00

You don't really listen to your parents. No. So my father died in 1980. But...

Speaker 212:02

No.

Rick Wakeman12:06

I would say he talks to me and I talk to him more than we ever did now. Every now and then I would do this and I go, oh yeah, Dad said that. He was dead right. And as I come down the the stairs in our house, there's a picture of a lot of the family as I'm sort of coming down. And there's my father there. And I talk to him every morning and every night. He's been an amazing man.

Speaker 212:28

Time for some more music, Rick Wakeman. Tell me about your next one. It's your third.

Rick Wakeman12:32

We're going back to the to the fifties, early sixties again, late fifties, early sixties, and I got a Dancet major record player. I had three records. By that time I had Still Love You All from Kenny Ball.

Rick Wakeman12:45

This particular record, which is Have a Drink on Me and a record called Snow Coach by Russ Conway.

Rick Wakeman12:52

And I used to play them in rotation with did

Rick Wakeman12:56

Drive everybody a bit nuts.

Speaker 312:58

Well, he reined in his mule and he hitched him to the rail, and he said, old feller, it's the end of the trail.

Speaker 313:08

Well, he ambled down to the old saloon. He said, I know it's early and it ain't quite noon. But hey, hey, everybody drink on me. Everybody drink.

Speaker 113:08

Early M

Speaker 313:18

Yeah.

Speaker 313:20

Help me.

Speaker 313:21

Everybody have a dick on me. Hey, hey, everybody dang on.

Speaker 213:27

Lonnie Donegan, have a drink on me. Rick Wakeman, it was 1968, I think, when you began your studies at the Royal College of Music.

Rick Wakeman13:33

Yeah.

Speaker 213:34

How did it suit you?

Rick Wakeman13:36

While looking back.

Rick Wakeman13:38

It suited me well in many ways, but at the time I was a little bit gutted because I'd spent my life doing music, nothing else but music. So I arrived at the college and I'd sort of been one of the top guys in my area to get the scholarship into the college. I can remember walking down the practice room corridor and there was one girl who was playing and the door was open and I went and said hello and she said hello and she was just amazing. And I said, how long do you practice a day? I was doing three hours, something like that. And she said, all day.

Rick Wakeman14:13

And how long have you been practising all day? She said, Always. I went

Rick Wakeman14:18

Right, okay. And I remember coming out, and then I was on a performance course, and I thought.

Rick Wakeman14:24

A, I can't compete with this. And also, I don't want to dedicate myself to one particular type of music or one particular kind of of composer, which was the norm then if you were going to go into performing, concert performing.

Speaker 114:26

Oh.

Speaker 214:37

And so is that why because I you know, I see looking at all the dates here, it was by nineteen seventy that you were in the Straubs and that you were yeah, you decided that actually

Rick Wakeman14:43

Yeah

Speaker 214:45

Finishing that classical music training was indeed not for you, and it wasn't where your future lay.

Rick Wakeman14:51

I was helped tremendously by my clarinet professor, Basil Tchaikov. Clarinet was my second study. And I'd already started getting sessions and getting session work, so I was starting to miss lectures and things and I only got a thirty-two pound a year grant which didn't even buy the first book. So sessions really helped to

Speaker 215:09

What would you get paid typically for a session back then?

Rick Wakeman15:11

Uh nine pounds.

Speaker 215:12

Right.

Rick Wakeman15:12

I was along there one day for my clarinet lesson, and he said, I know you're doing these sessions. And I said, Yeah. And he said,

Rick Wakeman15:19

If I were you, I'd go down to your locker, empty it,

Rick Wakeman15:23

Walk out the main doors walk across and you walk up the steps of the Royal Albert Hall. He said, Don't look back, but look at the Albert Hall and go, That's where I want to be.

Rick Wakeman15:32

He said, then walk round the other side. He said, and don't come back.

Rick Wakeman15:37

And that's exactly what I did. And it was many, many years later I met him when Michael Aspel collared me for the This Is Your Life and Basil was one of the guests. And I spoke to him after I said, Can I ask you, sir, question? He said, Yeah. I said, Why with you as a professor of the college did you

Rick Wakeman15:54

Tell me to leave, or recommend for me to leave.

Rick Wakeman15:57

He said sometimes you don't have to finish the course to finish the course.

Rick Wakeman16:02

He said and you'd finished it.

Rick Wakeman16:04

And amazingly enough, forty seven years after that particular date, Colin Lawson, who was the principal of the college and Prince Charles, gave me my fellowship, which was just a big punch in the air moment for me.

Speaker 216:17

Let's have some more music, Rick Wakeman. We're going to hear your fourth now. Tell me a little bit about this choice.

Rick Wakeman16:23

Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, I love Schubert, and my father had an old 78, well series of 78 of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which he used to play on his old 78 record player. The opening is incredibly quiet, and there was more surface noise on the record than there were. I actually always thought that it was... I wondered how what instrument made that amazing noise of all the when you put it on.

Speaker 217:45

That was part of the first movement from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, performed there by the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted by Sir George Schulte. 1971, it strikes me, Rick Wakeman, was a pretty pivotal year for you. You got two of the most brilliant job offers at one time. You got one from David Bowie and the other from Yes.

Speaker 118:03

Uh

Rick Wakeman18:03

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman18:08

Yeah.

Speaker 218:08

I mean, what was it that decided you and how do you look back on that choice now?

Rick Wakeman18:12

What had happened was I'd got a call from John Anderson and Chris Squire from Yes, look, we want to change a lot of things, want to go more orchestral. How does that sound to you? And I said, Well, yeah.

Rick Wakeman18:22

And we'd rehearsed during the day and I said, look, I've got to be away by six o'clock because I'm meeting David Bowie and Mick Ronson. So we finished and they said, look, do you want to join? And I said, yeah, look, I think this could be really good. And so I had no idea what David, I thought David might be about doing a new album. And I went and met him and he said, look, I want this band, Spartus Remorse. I want to put it together and I want you and Mick to sort of front it and run it.

Rick Wakeman18:46

I went, oh.

Rick Wakeman18:48

And I love David Bowie. He's the most influential person I've ever worked with. But musically, I've got to be relatively selfish. Go, how far can I go? And the answer is, I can only go as far as what David's music will allow me to go. There will be a ceiling. Whereas with a band like Yes, which was growing, and David was miles bigger than Yes at the time, I've got a chance to take it on its journey. So I phoned up David and told him, and his actual words to me was, it's absolutely the right decision. When did the Cape Thing start? Cape Thing started in 1971 in America. There'd been a review that said Wakeman played extremely well, but looked somewhat like a demented spider with legs and arms going everywhere trying to reach keyboards and pedals.

Rick Wakeman19:34

I never thought about it. And then we played that particular evening and I realized that to reach pedals I was, you know, I mean I couldn't do it now, but I was lifting legs at sort of 90 degree angles and arms and things. And I thought, oh, crikey, this does look weird. And we played Hartford, Connecticut at a festival. And the local DJ was on there doing it and he was wearing a cape, a three-quarter length cape, black with a star on it. I've still got it. And I thought... That is interesting. I didn't really think about it until he turned around. When he turned around to walk off, he was about 25 stone. And I thought, that covers a multitude of sins. And I had 10 $20 bills in my back pocket. And he came on and I said, I want to buy your cape. And I put it on and went on and played. And we had a wonderful, probably the most famous lighting man there is now called Michael Tate who was to work for us. And he came back after he said, you've found the solution.

Rick Wakeman20:26

But the cape's wrong. It needs to be sparkly, it needs to be full of things so that the lights can work with it, and it needs to be full length to cover all your legs and arms. And he said, and I know somebody who can make them for you. Thank you very much. It's interesting, when I go to some countries, South America in particular, they write it in the contract that I will wear one of the classic capes. It's a deal breaker otherwise.

Speaker 220:45

Does it feel fine to still be wearing it now? I mean, I understand it was the seventies, the rules were different then. You were in your early twenties.

Rick Wakeman20:52

People expect it as well. John Anderson and Trevor Abbey just as we've just been out touring, and before even the tour started we were rehearsing, John and Trevor said, You are bringing a couple of capes, aren't you? And I said, Absolutely, but thank goodness for that

Speaker 221:03

We're going to have to fit in the music, Rick Wicken. I've got so much to ask you, and I can't believe we talked for so long about capes, but actually, it was very interesting. Tell me about this next piece of music then. What are we going to hear now?

Rick Wakeman21:05

So much stuff.

Rick Wakeman21:12

In the 60s, I played in a 17-piece soul band at the Top Ramp Boream in Reading. And we used to do all the Otis Rennie stuff, all the stack stuff, and I loved all of that. And Hard to Handle was just a great track. So when I saw on a playlist at Planet Rock when I was doing my very irreverent Saturday morning show that it was there on the playlist, Hard to Handle, I went, oh great, Otis Rennie. Oh no, no, no, it's the Black Cross. And we put it on and played it. I thought, if it's going to be a cover version of something, every band should go, can we make it different or better than the original? And they've certainly made it so different from the original.

Speaker 321:48

He right now I'm a man on the scene

Speaker 321:51

I can give you what you want, but you got to come home with me I just got some good old lover and I got some more in store

Speaker 322:00

When I get so forward and only you got to come back for more roll Boy them things will come by the dozen I ain't done for drunk, no love Hey little thing, let me light your candle Cause a mama I'm sure I'll dehand an adjust around

Speaker 222:17

The Black Crows and hard to handle. Rick Wakeman, long ago in the past you talked about touring, and I'm guessing these were, you know, the the big days of the Yes touring years, it being a lonely experience.

Speaker 222:27

And I'm thinking of groupies. I mean, it can't be that lonely, can it?

Rick Wakeman22:30

When you were a prog rock band, yeah. Most prog rock bands, the audience were 98% male. Basically, it was a weird period of time because after shows, I mean, I was a drinker back then. I mean, I've been to Total since 1985, but I was an Olympic-style drinker. I've read a

Speaker 222:46

I've read a couple of bottles of brandy a day and a couple

Rick Wakeman22:49

Well, yeah, I could mix brandy and port in a couple of bottles, and I used to drink port and brandy in pint glasses, which I thought was clever, but my liver didn't in the end. Is that what the

Speaker 222:57

Uh

Rick Wakeman22:57

Uh

Speaker 222:57

Three heart attacks in your twenties. I'm right about that, am I?

Rick Wakeman23:00

Yeah, I had three minor heart attacks. I spent nine weeks in Wexland Park Hospital, yeah.

Speaker 223:04

But you didn't stop drinking until a l quite a long time after.

Rick Wakeman23:06

No, I know. And I was also a smoker back then. I mean, my saving grace, I think, was I truly have never even popped a pillow, never taken any drugs in my life, never smoked a joint, never done anything.

Speaker 223:14

I mean why?

Rick Wakeman23:16

Because something you mentioned earlier, I have an excessive extreme personality, which is if I do something I have to go the whole hog with it. I mean when I used to smoke, I stopped in nineteen seventy nine, I would smoke thirty, thirty five a day. I couldn't have a glass of wine, it would have to be a bottle of wine, I couldn't have one keyboard, I had to have twenty. Everything was excessive. And how did you manage to kick the booze then?

Rick Wakeman23:38

It did finally catch up with me, and I had alcoholic hepatitis. And I had a very good doctor friend who said, That's it, your drinking days are over, and said, Do you want any help? Because you've been a heavy drinker to stop. And I went, Nope. I walked out of his surgery and went to the old Straws pub, which was the Duke of York in York Street in London. And I knew the landlord in there well, and he said, Pind a better and a large scotch, Rick? I said, No, I've a tomato, I don't drink anymore. And I can put my hand on my heart and say, I haven't had a drink since that day. And what it was was when the doctor actually said to me, and he was a good friend, he said, Rick, if we don't do something really quick, he said, I don't give you six months. And I think it was total fear. People say, what would you say hypothetically? If somebody said, if you don't stop that, you'll die. It doesn't work hypothetically. But when it's the real situation.

Rick Wakeman24:29

Yeah, then it hits home.

Speaker 224:30

I've seen photographs of you surrounded by I don't know how many, but countless vintage cars and all these hundreds of keyboards and all. What's your rela I mean, you came from humble beginnings.

Rick Wakeman24:36

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman24:40

Yeah.

Speaker 224:41

What is your relationship with money, how you spend it, when you spend it, why you spend it?

Rick Wakeman24:46

Huh.

Rick Wakeman24:47

I've been a a self-investor, which sometimes is a wise move and sometimes not a wise move.

Speaker 224:52

So that's funding big shows. Yeah, funding the big

Rick Wakeman24:53

Yeah, finding the big shows, which I've done, and sometimes it pays off, and sometimes it doesn't pay off. I used to play what we call double-up blackjack with music, which will always end in disaster because you make an album, the record company gives you X amount, but you add to it the money you made from the previous album to make an even bigger album and the concert. That's successful, so you use all the money from that for the next one. Sooner or later, you're going to make one that doesn't do that, that doesn't have that success. So suddenly you're back to zero again. And that's the way that I worked. And then, of course, you have to allow for the fact when the early 80s came, the sort of music that I was doing at the time was about as popular as putting condom machines in the Vatican. I mean, it was just no hope at all. You know, suddenly from selling hundreds of thousands and millions of records to nothing. And you go.

Speaker 225:16

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman25:39

Whoops. But I I've never let things things get me down. It's the I sh I sh probably should have chosen the old dust yourself off and start all over again.

Speaker 225:47

But you haven't. But let's hear let's hear your next one. What's your sixth?

Rick Wakeman25:49

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman25:51

Yeah.

Speaker 225:51

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman25:51

Woodman, Woodman, Spare That Tree by Phil Harris. My father he had this wonderful collection of seventy eights and there was one was the one side was called the Darktown Poker Club and the other one was Woodman Spare That Tree. And I love the idea of a man sheltering away from his wife up a tree.

Speaker 326:07

There is a tree grows near our house. It's been there quite some time. Now the tree is a slippery elm tree, and awful hard to climb.

Speaker 326:18

But when my wife gets after me in that tree I always roost Why I can go right up it just like a healthy squirrel I don't never need no boost

Speaker 326:28

But the other day a woodman came round to chop my refuse down Kept mumbling somethin' by wanted to split it into kindling wood and then spread it around the town

Speaker 226:38

That was Phil Harris and Woodman Woodman Spare That Tree. Rick Wickman there was a point at which I mean you came and went several times from the Supergroup, yes. You went the first time at the very height of the success and fame that you'd all worked hard for. Are you something of a contrarian?

Rick Wakeman26:52

Hard.

Rick Wakeman26:55

I'd like to think of myself as honest. I mean I left yes in May 1974 for the first time. The album that we were about to do and the album that we'd just done wasn't particularly how I felt it should have ended up and how it should be. And music, if you're part of a band, I think it's really important. There's got to be an equal amount of give and take. And because I wasn't overwhelmingly happy with how the music was going, I felt that I couldn't give the amount that I wanted to give and certainly couldn't take from the music what I wanted to take. And then two years later, John called me and sent me some ideas and things that he'd got as regards the album which became going for the one and a great track called Awaken. And we'd sort of gone on a different route and ended up at the same place. So I hopped on a plane, went over to Switzerland and rejoined.

Speaker 227:43

Would you say you're a workaholic?

Rick Wakeman27:45

Yeah.

Speaker 227:46

What effect do you think that's had on your life?

Rick Wakeman27:49

I find it hard to say. You become quite selfish. I mean, I'm incredibly happily married. I've got a wonderful wife and wonderful kids and grandchildren and things. But music tends to rule my life.

Rick Wakeman28:07

In spite of the fact of marriage breakups and divorces, I think they would say that I did the best under all the circumstances. But for me, there are areas of parenting where I think I was disappointing, which it does affect me a bit. Should have done that, could have done that, could have. But we speak all the time, all of them, and I'm there for them all. And I like to think that parenting carries on for all of their lives. It's not just the early days. How did you meet your fourth wife, Rachel? Rachel came to interview me, and we had the interview, and she just said, Oh, if you're ever in town and fancy a coffee. I said, Great, okay. So met out and had coffee and the odd lunch. Once you'll kill me for saying this, one day she said, You know, ask me out properly.

Rick Wakeman28:53

And I said, You're quite a lot younger than me, so I'm not sure she said, Who cares? I don't care. And we just found that we got on fantastic and were extremely happy.

Speaker 229:02

It's an act of unbridled optimism of fourth marriage.

Rick Wakeman29:07

Well, you see, I have this view that I mean, I'm a great believer in marriage, I really am. And I've learnt to understand in life that we don't get everything right first time. And it just so happens it took me four times to find my soulmate who I love love dearly. So optimist, I think it's belief.

Rick Wakeman29:27

Let's have your next piece of music, Rick Wickman. We're on your seventh. Tell me about this. I'm a huge choir fanatic. Probably because my singing voice is so bad. I don't even sing in the shower. It's really bad. But I love hearing the human voice. And being a big opera buff as well, and loving Italy and the Italians, you can't really beat Verdi in the anvil chorus.

Rick Wakeman29:53

Oh yeah, that's a good

Speaker 230:49

That was the Anvil Chorus from Verdi's Il Travatore, with the Metropolitan Opera and Chorus conducted there by James Levine. Rick Wakeman, uh, you were you were baptized, I think, when you were nineteen, and and as we were listening to that, we were just uh talking during it about the the uplifting and and the spiritual nature of the choirs there.

Speaker 231:08

And I wonder wh where is your faith now? Is it is it a is it a weekly and important, a daily part of your life?

Rick Wakeman31:13

No, it's the daily part. I have a very strong faith. Like a lot of people, I have question marks over the word religion. I sometimes wonder if religion's got anything to do with faith whatsoever. But yeah, no, I have a strong faith. When I was again a little lad, my father, who was a deacon at West End Baptist Church in London, because it was deemed too far to me to go, I was sent down to South Arrow Baptist Church. And my father basically said to me, He said, Richard, if you enjoy yourself down there, that's fine. If you don't enjoy it, you don't have to go. And I loved it. And in 1969, I decided that because I knew that my association with the church was about to end, because I'd be away touring, and also at one time there was never any shows or theatres on a Sunday. It was dark nights. That was changing. So Sundays were a working day. And I just thought, you know, I'd like to, I suppose, complete my own faith course.

Speaker 232:08

You're touring again now. I'm wondering what your backstage rider is these days, Rick Wakeman.

Rick Wakeman32:13

What do you demand? It's easy to make you happy. It's called tea and coffee, three bottles of still water, three bottles of sparkling water. It's not good, is it? I remember the days when my rider was, I've still got one somewhere, twenty-six pages long, all alcohol, and at the bottom it just read peanuts, optional, extra.

Speaker 232:14

What do you demand to make you happy?

Speaker 232:35

M

Speaker 232:36

How do you imagine your survival or not on this island? Are you a very practical person? I know you're a gardener, actually.

Rick Wakeman32:42

Oh yeah. My wife and I love our garden. She's she's the the great flower, shrub and tree person and I'm the veg man. This is what happens to old rockers, you see. We we grow vegetables. Yeah, I think I I think I would survive, yeah.

Speaker 232:55

Tell me about your fun.

Rick Wakeman32:55

My final track is The Who, which is My Generation. And I loved this record when it came out. And I became very, very close friends with the late John Entwistle. He told me a wonderful story about My Generation. It's got a bass solo in it. It was the first rock record ever to have a bass solo. And I said, it's great solo. He said, I just did it once on record. But the record became so huge that when they went to play it live, he said, I would do a solo. But obviously it wasn't the same as the record because it was a solo. People would come after me and saying, got it wrong. Got the bass part wrong. He said, no, I didn't. It's a solo. He said, and in the end, after about a year, he said, I gave up. He said, and I took the record into a hotel room with my bass and I learnt it.

Speaker 333:36

Don't try to put us to down Just because we get around my generation

Speaker 333:58

Say back generation baby Why don't you all f

Speaker 234:06

Law, my generation. It's time then, Rick, for me to give you the books. Every Castaway gets the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take one other book along with them. What is yours going to be?

Speaker 334:11

Uh

Rick Wakeman34:11

Uh

Rick Wakeman34:17

My Bible when I was at the Royal College of Music and also afterwards for all the orchestrations I do is a book called Principles of Orchestration by Rimpsky Korsakoff because it basically tells you how to break all the rules. And the thing that I learnt from that was breaking the rules is what makes music unique. But you've got to know what the rules are before to know how to break them properly.

Speaker 234:36

That's your You're allowed a luxury.

Rick Wakeman34:38

Yeah.

Rick Wakeman34:38

The luxury, there's only one this was which is a piano. Has to be.

Speaker 234:42

Of this list of eight, which one do you think is going to be the one that you would save from the waves? It would be the end.

Rick Wakeman34:48

Anvil chorus, because you can listen to the anvil chorus and either want to jump up and down and march along, or you can actually just lie back and reflect in the magnificence of the whole work. So it could cover quite a multitude of feelings.

Speaker 235:02

Okay, it's yours, Rick Wakewin. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desertanon discs.

Rick Wakeman35:06

You're very kind, thank you.

Speaker 235:07

Yeah.

Speaker 235:53

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Speaker 235:55

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4