Imagine That!
With A Gallery Of The Imagination due for release at the end of February, Rick Wakeman reflects on childhood memories, climate change and some of the best advice he’s received. Plus he puts paid to those rumours of ongoing friction in the Yes camp.
To move forwards we must sometimes look over our shoulders. During the preparation of his latest solo album, A Gallery Of The Imagination, Rick Wakeman found himself dwelling upon a piece of advice offered almost a lifetime ago by his first piano teacher. Evolving into adulthood, many of us are fortunate to meet their own counterpart of the lady known as Mrs Symes; somebody astute and caring enough to spot an early glimmer of inspiration, gently moulding that promise into a talent that becomes a career. Symes taught Wakeman from the age of five until he enrolled at the Royal College Of Music 14 years later, his heart set on becoming a concert pianist – though that plan changed a little, of course.
“Mrs Symes was so sought-after as a teacher that my dad put me on her waiting list when I was three years old,” Wakeman recalls. “After Dad passed away, I found out that my lessons had cost 7/6d, and I took two per week plus theory classes. My parents didn’t have much money back in the 50s. Factoring in other things like ensuring the piano was tuned, that accounted for nearly half of his wages. So I have a lot to thank him for.”
An inaugural lesson at Mrs Symes’ place in Sudbury Hill, Greater London, remains etched upon Wakeman’s mind. “She arrived through a side door and her first words were: ‘Now then, Richard, let’s talk about music,’” he recounts fondly. “‘Music is painting pictures. That’s what we do. It’s not just for listening, it’s for visualising.’ She taught me to read music, to memorise it and, finally, to play it with my eyes closed. Even today, for 90 per cent of the time my eyes are shut.”
It was at a mildly frustrating moment during the stockpiling of ideas that Symes’ words of wisdom recently returned to Wakeman.
“Unlike my previous album, The Red Planet, which had been completely geared to prog in every respect, these new tracks were more song-orientated: not your standard verse-chorus-versechorus-out type of things, but coming from a storytelling slant,” he explains.
Along with his faithful backing troupe The English Rock Ensemble, Wakeman had intentionally returned to his prog roots with 2020’s The Red Planet, a first album in the genre for 17 years, since 2003’s equally extraterrestrially themed Out There. In making it, Wakeman had revisited earlier releases to examine what made them tick. This time he worked far more intuitively.
“Lee Pomeroy said to me: ‘There’s a lot of prog in this album,’ and he’s quite right,” Rick reveals, referring to the bassist of the Ensemble, who also worked with the Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Wakeman-run incarnation of Yes (aka ARW), plus It Bites, Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Steve Hackett, Headspace and, er, Take That.
It’s a fair statement. We can quibble over boundaries and descriptions all day long but, as readers of this
“One of the best things David Bowie told me was: ‘Always use musicians who understand what you are trying to achieve.’ And he couldn’t have been more correct. I will admit that in the past, on occasion, it’s not something I’ve always done.”
magazine would probably agree, prog fans just want to hear music that’s interesting. Rick couldn’t agree more.
“I’ve said it for years: prog is all about breaking rules,” he smiles. “This album is full of songs, but they have what I like to call ‘digesting moments’.”
These include the keyboard wizardry of My Moonlight Dream, but also two solo piano pieces (The Creek and Just A Memory) that bookend a variety of styles and flavours. The first track written by Wakeman actually ended up closing the record. With its telling lines: ‘The world does not belong to me/ But soon my responsibility’, The Eyes Of A Child proposes that each of us should do our bit when it comes to fixing the world for future generations.
“It was inspired by my grandkids. I’ve got 13 of them – God, I hate Christmas,” he deadpans. “Kids of today are unbelievably wise and I love their innocence. We [adults] are the people that ruin kids. They ask us: ‘Why are people fighting in Ukraine?’ and we reply: ‘Because another country wants to take it over.’ Who can blame them when they ask again: ‘Why?’”
Another early selection was The Dinner Party, intended originally as part of a musical that Wakeman and his good friend Sir Tim Rice were basing around Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture Of Dorian Gray until its financial backers learned of not one but two rival productions and got cold feet, pulling out of the venture.
“That was galling as they both died on their arses, so we could’ve done ours anyway,” Rick sighs. “A lot of the work had been done and much of the music was written. There are a lot of dinner parties in …Dorian Gray, and The Dinner Party was meant for our musical. I didn’t want to waste it, so we recorded it as an instrumental without having to bring in Sir Tim for his forte, lyrics.”
It was as Wakeman weighed up the benefits of reclaiming the song that the penny dropped: why not present various pieces of music as an aural exhibition? “The Dinner Party was so different to The Eyes Of A Child,” he recalls. “And that’s where Mrs Symes came in, with her talk of painting with pictures. I found myself thinking, as Del Boy Trotter [from UK sitcom Only Fools And Horses] might have said: ‘The world is my lobster.’ I didn’t have to stick within just one genre. It took 68 years, Mrs Symes, but I’m finally doing an album for you.”
The material arrived slowly but surely. Another important moment came as Rick sat on a bench overlooking the Suffolk coast at Southwold. A Day Spent On The Pier harks back to helterskelters, candyfloss, ice cream and fish and chips in a newspaper.
“I started remembering childhood summers spent with Mum and Dad,” he comments. “The pier at Southwold doesn’t have a helter-skelter, but that’s just poetic licence.”
Best enjoyed with a tall glass of dark rum and a slice of lime, the Calypsolite feel of Cuban Carnival offers a completely different twist. “Hahaha, yeah,” smiles Rick. “I was one of the first artists to play in Cuba, having been invited by Fidel [Castro, the country’s leader from 1959 to 2008]. You can’t help but love that place and its people. There are a lot of hardships, but they have so much fun. Cubans seem to have a party gene.”
Far weightier is the album’s tearjerker, Only When I Cry, a beautiful piano-based ballad sung to crystalline perfection by Hayley Sanderson.
“That was inspired by the terrible losses that went on during lockdown,” Wakeman explains. “In a personal sense, my wife lost her dad. I think we added up 14 people that we knew, a lot of them in the music business. It asks: ‘How can we cry anymore?’ I’m not away with the fairies but I do believe in guardian angels, and they come along when you need them. That’s the premise of the song.”
Peterborough-born Sanderson has been involved with Wakeman since 2014 when she sang on his 40th anniversary tour for Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, though she’s bestknown as a lead vocalist on Strictly Come Dancing. Her performance is exemplary throughout and on The Visitation she hits notes straight out of Kate Bush’s territory. “When I sent her that song she simply said: ‘Yeah, I can do that,’ and did so,” Wakeman nods sagely. “Hayley is just incredible. She really gets what I’m trying to do.”
When asked why he used a female voice on the record, as opposed to male or even a combination of both, Rick smiles. “Hearing Hayley’s voice on that first track [The Eyes Of A Child] was what convinced me. After that, there wasn’t one song that I could envisage in the hands of a male vocalist.”
Rick had sent Sanderson a set of instrumental demos. “I didn’t want to sing on them myself and make her sick or anything,” he quips, “and she
worked her magic over those bare bones. Hayley delivered all that
I wanted from her and more.”
The album was made over the course of more than a year, with gaps inserted deliberately to allow for digestion and assessment. Anything that Wakeman considered sub-par was either reworked or binned. Its final stages were conducted in lockdown, with the rest of The English Rock Ensemble – completed by guitarist Dave Colquhoun and drummer Ash Soan – supplying their parts remotely.
“I wasn’t worried about that at all,” insists Rick casually. “I know all of these guys so well, and they know me, so there was mutual understanding on both sides. We didn’t have to be in a studio together.”
Among the many peaks of Wakeman’s career was playing Mellotron on David Bowie’s 1969 smash Space Oddity (for the princely sum of nine quid). Rick quotes his late friend when referencing The English Rock Ensemble. “One of the best things David told me was: ‘Always use musicians who understand what you are trying to achieve.’ And he couldn’t have been more correct. I will admit that in the past, on occasion, it’s not something I’ve always done. But with these guys… I’m not a dictator, I send the tracks in very basic form and there’s almost total freedom to do what they want.”
Should A Gallery Of The Imagination become as successful as he hopes, Wakeman is already making plans for a special type of promotion. “In keeping with the theme of music as visuals, I’d like to hire an art gallery and we can hang the pictures on the wall and even play the songs,” he says. “If the band are available, they can play too. That would be great. It’s something we could take around the country.”
Meanwhile, Wakeman’s diary remains pleasingly full. Back in December, while on tour, thieves broke into a van carrying keyboards, flight cases, cables and other equipment, and for a while it looked as though he might have to cancel not only the remainder of his festive dates but a pair of shows at London’s Palladium on February 22 and 23, though this turned out not to be so.
“The robbery really upset me,” he fumes. “There used to be a so-called honour among thieves: you don’t take away somebody’s livelihood. The serial numbers of all the keyboards were logged which means they can’t be sold, so it can only have gone abroad. These items are no use to man or beast, except to me. I wouldn’t like you to print what should happen to those responsible.”
Among those to step up was none other than Geoff Downes of Yes, who offered some of his own equipment.
“I had lost a thing called a Sycologic [a vintage MIDI router], which is a very rare piece of kit that’s absolutely crucial for me, and Geoff very quickly stepped in,” Wakeman says. “Some of the rumours you hear about the two camps of Yes being at loggerheads are completely untrue. Steve [Howe] and I have been intending to have lunch for a while but never seem to get around to it. There’s a lot of mutual respect between us all.”
So if Howe was to call and ask you to make a guest appearance with Yes at the Royal Albert Hall, that’s something you would consider?
“You know what?” Rick replies, after a short pause. “I probably would, though I’m not sure politically it would be the thing to do. They’ve got their own setup and I’ve got mine. But never say never.”
Regrettably, however, the passing of time seems to render any further activity from Wakeman and former
Yes bandmates Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin all the more unlikely.
“Nothing has changed on that, though the three of us are still great friends,” Wakeman explains. “We all believed that ARW deserved a final send-off [with a studio album], but in the end, as is his right, Jon said: ‘I want to do other things.’ I’ve no problem with that, just as I’d hope that Jon and Trev would feel the same had I made such a decision. Trev is so busy with his soundtracks, though the two of us have decided that we’d like to do something together in the future.”
At the age of 73, and with a CBE at the end of his name, Rick has carved an idyllic career. He can go out on the road and play the class clown at Christmas, then for the remainder of the year make precisely the music that he wants to.
“That’s true,” he replies, chuckling at the reference to clowning around. “I’ve still got loads of things to accomplish. There’s a project that involves children of all ages, and I’ve got to organise and tidy up my sheet music. It would take me 30 years to do that, so I’d need to live to be at least 103.”
“Some of the rumours you hear about the two camps of Yes being at loggerheads are completely untrue. Steve [Howe] and I have been intending to have lunch for a while. There’s a lot of mutual respect between us all.”
A Gallery Of The Imagination is out on February 24 via Madfish/Snapper. See www.rwcc.com for more information.