Rick Wakeman
“In 1976, I was 14 and my dad bought me my first ever record: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. It absolutely changed my life.
There was an orchestra, a choir, a narrator, 14,000 keyboards! I loved the artwork, the gold lamé cape, the sheer scope of it. I went out and bought the sheet music and learned to play it, and Rick Wakeman became the most influential artist on me in my teens and early 20s.
“I devoured The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, No Earthly Connection, Rick Wakeman’s Criminal Record, and I must have gone through eight tape recorders while transcribing his solos, all that stopping and rewinding. It was painstaking work but incredibly rewarding, it really helped my ear training. I read he’d been in Yes so went straight out and bought all their records. That incredible piano intro to Awaken on Going For The One – everything he ever did around that time was really quite revolutionary. The title track on White Rock, two Minimoogs duelling over a blues, is one of the best instrumentals I know.
“Rick was the first ‘keyboard’ player I’d ever heard – all those Moogs, Mellotrons, electric pianos and clavinets. For me, he was first to use multi-keyboard setups, stacking up the synths and combining them to make something new. It was ground-breaking and people are still using those sounds.
“When you see him perform live you can sense his enjoyment, he really gets a kick out of it and it’s incredibly important for an audience to see that. Also when he plays you can see that he is listening to the rest of the band, and that’s reflected in his playing. He can be doing over-the-top stuff but it fits perfectly with what everyone is doing. His sense of timing is impeccable, which probably goes back to his classical training and his session days with Bowie, Al Stewart and the rest. He’s a musician first, his technique shines but it’s a means to his musical end.
“His larger-than-life persona has helped his cause, in later years especially. He’s really a character.
Along with Tony Banks and Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman is in my top three, the crème de la crème, but no other keyboardist has had such a huge impact with their band and their solo stuff as Rick. He influenced thousands of us in what we do and how we do it.” GRM