New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Rick Wakeman, former YES band member, heads to Ridgefield
From actor and best-selling author to famed studio musician and veteran touring act, Rick Wakeman, 72, has done it all.
However, despite keeping busy during the pandemic, even releasing a new album, Wakeman said he missed touring.
“It’s like a sportsman. They can practice until they’re blue in the face. They can put all the hours into practice, but it is not like playing a game. When you go out to play a game, it’s a completely different thing,” Wakeman said.
“That’s where you get match fit. Because you haven’t been playing concerts, you’re not match fit.”
The former YES keyboardist, who served as a studio musician on over 2,000 albums since the late 1960s, is looking to get “match fit” when he heads back out on the road with his “The Even Grumpier Old Rock Star Tour,” which lands at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Oct. 30.
A follow-up to 2019’s “The Grumpy Old Rock Star Tour,” Wakeman thinks the tour name is lighthearted in the midst of a time of uncertainty.
“I think everybody has had a difficult couple of years and it continues in some ways. The title is not meant to make people unhappy,” Wakeman said. “It’s meant to put a smile on their face.”
Wakeman joked that he wanted to call the now four-time cancelled tour “The even more, impossibly grumpier than it could’ve been before it became grumpier in the first place tour,” but his agent told him that it would be “too much to put on the poster.”
Wakeman has been gearing up for his first tour in two years with pop-up club shows in London, but he anticipates an emotional return when he starts playing to sold-out audiences again.
“I think it’s going to be quite emotional,’’ Wakeman said. “It really occurred to me that we’re all the same, whether you’re on the stage or in the audience. You’re there for the same purpose.”
Having worked with the likes of Elton John, David Bowie and Black Sabbath, Wakeman’s upcoming 24city tour will draw on all aspects of his almost six-decades-long career in music.
This will also be Wakeman’s first tour since the release of his 2020 album, “The Red Planet.”
Inspired by his fascination with space, Wakeman crafted a “21st century prog album” that aims to transport listeners to the surface of Mars. Prog rock, also known as progressive rock, became popular in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s characterized by the fusion of symphonic rock and other genres.
“This is such a great idea for writing music,” Wakeman said he thought when first kicking around the idea for the album. “I got as many books as I could and read on the subject.”
Wakeman’s involvement with the Starmus Festival was a catalyst to heavily explore the themes of space on his latest album, even having conversations with the likes of Queen’s Brian May, Stephen Hawking, astronomer Garik Israelian and NASA.
Wakeman printed out pictures of Mars and covered his piano with them while he recorded music that he “associated with what I was watching.”
The prog rock icon brought in a number of musicians to fulfill his vision of a Mars-inspired album based on words that David Bowie once told him.
“When you start to do your own albums, make sure you always pick musicians that understand what you’re after. You can pick the best musicians in the world but if they don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve, you won’t achieve what you’re trying to.” Wakeman said Bowie once advised him.
After mixing the album, Wakeman said he told his engineer Erik Jordan, “I really hope that people like it, but if they don’t at least I can hold my head up high and say ‘this is exactly what I intended it to be.’”
Though prog rock is not quite at the stratospheric heights that YES achieved in the ’70s when Wakeman joined the band, he believes that prog rock still has a place in modern music.
“It’s there for people to discover. In many ways, [this] is what the early ’70s and late ’60s was like. A lot of it is down to word of mouth,” Wakeman said.
“I’d often argue that there is a bit of prog in almost every piece of music you hear on the radio. Very seldom do you hear any more of the intro, verse, chorus, verse, solo, chorus and fade. The format is gone and I think prog rock is to get the credit for that.”
Rick Wakeman will bring the “The Even Grumpier Old Rock Star Tour” to the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield on Saturday, Oct. 30, at 8 p.m.