Former Yes musician recalls his ‘wonderful’ David Bowie memories

Former Yes keyboardist Rick Wakemanhasrecalledthefirst time he heard David Bowie’s Life On Mars as he appeared on Desert Island Discs.

The veteran musician went on to play the piano on the acclaimed song and the whole of the Hunky Dory album.

Wakeman told the Radio 4 show’s presenter Kirsty Young: “I’d already done Space Oddity with David and then he called me up.

“And he lived in Beckenham in Kent ... his house was huge, I called it Beckenham palace.

“We went in there and he had minstrels’ gallery with a 0 Musician Rick Wakeman worked wuith David Bowie grand piano and he took out a battered old 12-string and said ‘listen to these songs, you can make some notes if you want’.”

He added: “And then he played Life On Mars and I can remember sitting back from the piano stool and going ‘David, that is an amazing song’.”

“And he said ‘yeah I’m pleased with it can you think of it sort of as a piano solo we can all work round it’. “I said ‘cor, absolutely’.” Wakeman added: “It was a wonderful thing to do ... David was very generous he just said you do what you feel.”

He also told Young about how he rejected Bowie’s request for him to join the singer’s Spiders From Mars backing band in favour of joining Yes and how the pair used to meet in a club in Switzerland to “put the world to rights” during the 1980s when they both lived in the country.