How ARE you still alive, Rick?
His wild partying led to three heart attacks and four wives. As rocker Rick Wakeman tells JANE FRYER he lost 42 friends last year, she asks ...
RICK WAKEMAN is enormous. Six foot three — and sort of half-man, half-hairy-walrus-in-a-wig, with a huge fleshy face, gigantic nostrils and impressive girth. above all, there’s the veteran pop legend’s golden locks. They’re shoulder-length, flyaway, lovingly washed and conditioned with John Frieda products — and regularly layered by Rick Howcroft, his hairdresser of more than 40 years.
‘I’m very, very lucky with my hair,’ he tells me. ‘I streak it in the winter, but it’s still actually yellow. My father always told me I’d be the only Wakeman in my generation who doesn’t go grey and he was right. I’m just grateful I’ve still got it.’
Wakeman — one of the world’s greatest keyboardists, on-off member of rock band yes, songwriter and TV personality — is a relentlessly upbeat chap and, at 67, still partial to schoolboy jokes, endless silliness and fun.
Which is a good thing, because he’d need bottomless pits of optimism to endure the emotional plundering he’s suffered lately. ‘We lost 42 friends last year — 42!’ he says. among them, magician Paul daniels (‘a lovely, lovely kind man’), Greg Lake (from rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer), actor andrew Sachs, broadcasters Jimmy young and dave Cash, comedienne Victoria Wood, Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, actress Liz Smith and of course, david Bowie. His list goes on and on.
‘It was shocking. Unbelievable. Terrible.’ This year has begun badly, too. already gone are ‘allo ‘allo! actor Gorden Kaye and Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt.
For years, Parfitt was Wakeman’s partner in heavy drinking crime.
The two Ricks were made to be friends. Reckless, excessive, long-haired hedonists who fell out of pubs (Wakeman), keeled unconscious off bar stools on live television (Parfitt) and matched each other — pint for pint — on endless drinking binges.
‘oh, we were bad boys — we had some hilarious times,’ says Wakeman.
The bereavements of other good friends have left huge holes. Particularly Bowie.
‘Though I hadn’t seen david for years, it was the closest to losing a relation.’
The pair got to know each other in 1969 when Rick played the Mellotron (an electronic tape replay keyboard) on Bowie’s new song, Space oddity, and hit it off. They worked together on and off for years and remained friends.
Wakeman was also one of the very few people who knew Bowie was ill.
Many might be surprised that Wakeman himself is still going strong.
over the decades, he’s suffered three heart attacks (all before he was 25), pleurisy, hepatitis, pneumonia, cirrhosis of the liver, a plane crash, near bankruptcy, a highspeed motorway smash and a nervous breakdown. In that time, he has also had four marriages, six children and ten grandchildren.
Today, he lives happily in Norfolk with his fourth wife Rachel Kaufman, a 42-year-old journalist he met when she was interviewing him for this paper. He grows runner beans and potatoes and tweets constantly about his rural life — on subjects ranging from his home-made soups to trapped wind and pets.
He has three rescue cats that fight for space in his and Rachel’s bed and a black asian bear called Cyril — though the latter is not part of the Norfolk menagerie.
Wakeman whips out his phone to show me some photos of Cyril in a sanctuary in China.
‘Look, he’s absolutely gorgeous!’ He then admits: ‘I’m not a crier — except for animals and children. I cry over them all the time. I’m a very soft target.’
after decades of crashing synthesizers with yes and playing brilliantly over-the-top symphonies using entire orchestras, his latest album — he thinks his 110th, or maybe 111th, he’s not sure — Piano Portraits, is just simple piano solos.
Next, he’ll be touring, popping up at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and then heading back into the studio. For all his gentle chat about cats and runner beans and bears, he’s fantastically busy.
He gets up at 5.30am, works seven days a week — writing, recording and appearing on TV show Grumpy old Men (grouching on topics such as the perils of Christmas day).
as ever, he’s keen to share his views on everything from Theresa May (‘speaking well so far’) to Remainers (he’s a staunch Brexiteer) who still struggle to accept the referendum result.
‘I’m all in favour of protest in general, but I’m not in favour of people protesting because a democratic vote didn’t go their way. What’s the point of a democracy otherwise?’
as for his own survival against the odds, he puts it down to the fact he’s never taken drugs.
‘In all those years, though Rick [Parfitt] did anything and everything, I never even popped a pill. Everything I do, I do to excess, so I’m bound to have killed myself.’
What, not even a puff of marijuana? or a line or two of coke during a five-day bender with no sleep just before he suffered his third heart attack in 1974?
‘Nothing,’ he says firmly. ‘That was just booze and adrenaline. and it nearly killed me anyway.’
Not that it affected his lifestyle much. It was another five years before he ditched his 30-a-day cigarette habit. Even then, he doggedly drank on.
‘I could just drink and drink, but no one could get me drunk. I could out-drink anyone and I didn’t get hangovers, so there was nothing to tell me to stop.’
Until august 1985 when, finally, his whole body started to shut down and he had no choice.
despite all the boozing and carousing, Wakeman always had a bit more hinterland than most pop stars. Born in the West London suburbs in 1949, he was the only child to Cyril, a director of building suppliers, and Mildred, who worked for a removals company.
Without his knowledge, they spent a third of their weekly income on his piano lessons.
Happily, he won a place at the Royal College of Music in London with dreams of becoming a concert pianist. But when he changed direction and became a session musician, his parents didn’t flinch.
His dad even weathered the embarrassment of being chairman of the London Temperance meeting with a son whose drinking binges were recorded daily by the Press.
Booze, yes, and wives galore, but Wakeman could never be accused of being a womaniser. While yes were hugely successful, they were not sex symbols.
‘There were no groupies. I’d be more likely to be chased by a man who wanted to talk to me about his synthesizer manual,’ he says.
‘one-night stands were never my cup of tea. I always just wanted a girlfriend — a proper relationship. In fact, I only had about three before I got married for the first time.’
Nor did his band smash up hotel rooms. ‘No, no! I was more likely to redecorate them, if anything. So long as I could watch telly, I was happy as Larry.’
and he’s right about his tendency to excess — he’s never done anything by half.
AS FoR cars, he’s bought 22, including 11 Rolls-Royces. and musical equipment? He has performed with 32 keyboards while wearing vast sequined capes (he still has four pianos and more than 100 keyboards).
Indeed, he nearly bankrupted himself by putting on ridiculously extravagant shows with enormous inflatable dinosaurs, full orchestras, lasers and even performing on ice.
He left and rejoined yes so many times (six in total) that their relationship was likened to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. and while he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since august 1985 — ‘I just stopped, no withdrawal symptoms, no help and never craved a drink since’ — he now drinks so much tea, he’s constantly dashing to the loo.
‘I’ll be on the Tube and my bladder will say: “Quick message mate. you’re in serious trouble.”’
and, of course, there were all those wives. He saw his second wife, danielle Corminboeuf, recently — for the first time in years at their son’s wedding in Switzerland.
He jokes that she and his current wife Rachel got on so well that they exchanged notes about ‘what a pain in the a***’ he is.
He adores Rachel. despite the age gap, the fact that she goes to bed after midnight and he gets up before dawn and that their bed is always full of cats, it clearly works.
When Bowie died, he woke her up especially to tell her. ‘I wanted
her to hear it from me, not the radio,’ he says.
It was weird for him to have known Bowie personally but to see the extraordinary expressions of grief from people who didn’t.
‘It’s all very odd. Sort of grief hyperbole,’ he says. ‘I think maybe there’s an outpouring that comes from the initial shock — just like when Princess Diana died — that was absolutely utterly bonkers.’
But, of course, it was great business for record companies from the royalties of Bowie’s music being played.
Wakeman laughs darkly: ‘Don’t forget that old expression: Want a hit record? Then die. The posthumous album’s always the best seller.’
One might think he’d be concerned about his own mortality.
But no. He says: ‘My heart’s good. So’s my liver — amazingly!’
He has a well-equipped gym in his house, but says: ‘I’ve been in it twice in nine years. Once to have a look round and get my bearings. And again to stand on the treadmill and watch a Benny Hill DVD.’
Next time, he’s promised Rachel, he’ll turn the machine on!
Certainly, he has extraordinary presence and great charm.
These days, he’s often confused with lookalike rail union firebrand Tosh McDonald, who’s appeared on the news a lot recently because of the train strikes.
Wakeman says: ‘I can’t see it myself, but I suppose it’s the hair. I’m so lucky with my hair.’
And we’re back on to one of his favourite subjects — he says it’s only been short once.
That was in early Eighties, when he drank a couple of bottles of wine before going to his hairdresser and mumbling: ‘Take it all off, I’m sick of it.’ He duly fell asleep and woke up in shock to find he’d been given a short back and sides.
‘It was horrendous! Awful. We both agreed. He sent me straight off to buy a hat.’
The truth is that Wakeman is delightfully chatty. I suspect ‘sorry for banging on’ is one of his most used phrases.
But he’s interesting, thoughtful, and surprisingly well-informed on politics.
He’s spoken in both Houses of Parliament and the European Parliament on matters from copyright and royalties issues to the illegal cat fur trade and the protection of musicians in Libya and Syria.
HE WAS once asked to stand as an MEP (he’s a Conservative) but declined. He also spends an enormous amount of time quietly working for charities.
Would he like a gong? ‘Nah! Don’t be silly. I’d never get anything like that! It’s never occurred to me.
‘Because you shouldn’t get a gong just for selling lots of records, or winning four Olympic medals — you’re just doing your job.’
Referring to the recent controversy over David Beckham throwing a petulant hissy fit for not getting a knighthood, Wakeman says: ‘I don’t know David Beckham, but that did make me chuckle!’
In the meantime, he’s just happy to be alive.
‘At my age, just waking up in the morning is wild and risky,’ he says.
‘God I’m boring, aren’t it? But I like living. I enjoy it. And I’m good at it.’