On the back of Rick Beato’s excellent interview with RW I had a quick look at his recent catalogue.
This was spurred by two things in particular, RW’s comments about hus current recording techniques, and some YouTube videos where he has done pop song piano transcriptions.
He has been a busy boy.
I have only listened to one album so far, a new version of ‘The Myths and Legends of the Round Table’.
This is an album I listen to every couple of months.
The new version is better, better recorded, better sung, and expanded.
Looking forward to working my way through the other albums.
If you’ve not seen Rick in concert, I can thoroughly recommend doing so. I’ve seen him four times, including an updated performance of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. His solo shows are very enjoyable too. Besides being a brilliant piano player, he also recounts tales from his long career and tells a good joke. Best of all though is when he plays a nursery rhyme tune in the style of the great composers, including Debussy, Rachmaninov and Dawson (Les).
I really like Myths and Legends of King Arthur, and have a long tradition of playing it on election days !
I’ll need to check out the new version, the original has awful tuning on the piano, but it’s how I know and love it and I’d miss that on the new version.
A remake of Journey to the Centre of the Earth is needed (maybe there is one?), I find it unlistenable due to all the trumpet splits, no doubt the lead trumpet was having a mare that night!
He played Cropredy last year, one of the highlights for me. Duelling keyboards with his son was hilarious (and great). It was a multi-generational set with Dave Pegg’s son in the band as well.
Watched the video. He is great as a raconteur, but at about the hour mark he gets on a Hammond, discussing and demonstrating his solo in “Roundabout”. Watch his fingers - he may be 75, but by God, he’s still “got it in spades”!
Which makes the demise of the other great keyboard player of their generation even sadder. I refer, of course to Keith Emerson.
I watched this last week. Rick W tells a great story and he obviously still has full mental capacity. Rick B couldn’t get a word in but that’s OK, let the talent talk
I confess to having been a long-term fan of “Yes”, and Mr. Wakeman has been a sometime member of that band. I have also had the very brief pleasure of meeting him, and concur that as “Grumpy old rock star’s” go, he is far from grumpy most of the time. If you were ever a fan of “Yes” during his association, or any other time for that matter, you could be forgiven for thinking they consisted of some average height people and a little vocalist, Jon Anderson. This is wrong. Jon Anderson is not even remotely vertically challenged, it’s just that the other guys are unusually tall!
The odd thing about Mr. Wakeman is that he invariably plays with his eyes closed. This of itself is not unheard of, but if you ever get the chance to see his hands close-to, you will notice that the width dimension of his fingers is only slightly smaller than the dimension of the white keys on a piano. How he gets his fingers in the middle of the key so often is remarkable. If you want to see how remarkable, I direct you to find his solo part in the video of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe, “An Evening of Yes music plus”, from 1993. Chris Squire was otherwise engaged, so they couldn’t bill it as a Yes concert. The solo starts with a rendition of “Gone But Not Forgotten” from The Six Wives album and then a moment comes when you just know he is going to do something else, and what he does makes you wonder if your eyes are working. At the concert in London, I was four rows back from the stage, and he was right in front of me. The only thing that gives the same impression is Guthrie Govan on Regret9, but that is a different moment of virtuosity.
