[atlantaprog] Rick Wakeman

Dear Atlanta Proggers:

Several people have asked me for my impression of the Rick Wakeman solo  
concert at the Variety Playhouse on Wednesday, October 22. Here goes.

It was magical. It was like Rick invited you and just a few other  
friends to his living room, and you were all sitting round, kicking  
back and drinking tea. He told hilarious story after story from his  
many years in the entertainment biz, and every now and then he'd wander  
over to the piano and BLOW YOUR MIND.

I managed to be there behind the theater at 6:30 for the soundcheck. I  
was empty-handed but lots of people brought their LP sleeves from Six  
Wives, King Arthur, or No Earthly Connection for him to autograph, and  
he was gracious. One guy had a program from the 1974 Madison Square  
Garden performance of Journey to the Center of the Earth (with full  
orchestra and choir). Me, well, the first time I saw Yes was 1979 at  
the Omni (I was 14) and I have never had the pleasure of seeing Rick  
solo before (who in Atlanta has?).

There were about 800 people in the Variety Playhouse, and they were  
rapturously attentive.

Despite Rick Wakeman's being a household name and television celebrity  
in England, and having sold not only tens of millions of albums with  
Yes but also tens of millions of solo albums, Wakeman seems perpetually  
broke. He has had three failed marriages, owns no house, and had a  
decade of bad investments resulting in felonious tax judgements that  
make him the Willie Nelson of the British Isles. He could make a  
totally factual "Spinal Tap II" movie composed entirely of personal  
experiences touring with Yes, solo and the English Rock Ensemble, and  
he shared some of these stories with us at the show. Every  
side-splitting vignette was so memorable I could quote it to you almost  
word for word, but I won't, because you just had to be there.

In between stories Rick played solo. Sometimes he was sitting at an  
acoustic baby-grand piano, and sometimes he was standing at a rig of  
four 88-key electronic keyboards, some triggering a rack of about four  
synths and samplers. Generally he played abridged solo arrangements and  
medleys from his recordings, but he also played some legit classical  
stuff. No singers or lyrics.

Here's a set list from an earlier show contributed by a fan at Rick's  
web site. The pieces and order were almost the same for the show I saw.  
I have added my annotations in brackets.

First set:
  1. Canon in D [Pachabel. Rick walking on in the middle of the playing  
of an orchestral recording and sitting down to improvise along on the  
piano]
  2. Buy A Broom [piano, don't ask]
  3. Elgin Mansions [piano, Silent Nights]
  4. 'Drunk on stage in Seattle ' story
  5. Wondrous Stories [synths, Yes, Going for the One] /The Meeting  
[synths, Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe]
  6. Nursery Rhyme Concerto [piano, medley of nursery rhymes played in  
the style of various famous composers for humorous effect]
  7. 'Yes member' story
  8. Catherine Howard [synths, The Six Wives of Henry VIII]
  9. Recollection/Dance Of 1000 Lights [piano and synth, Return to the  
Center of the Earth; performance along with prerecorded orchestra and  
choir--the only performance of the night to any kind of backing track.  
I was thrilled and the rest of the audience leapt to their feet in  
applause at the conclusion.]
  10. Merlin The Magician [synths and piano, The Myths and Legends of  
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table]

Second set:
  1. 'KGB uniform' story [a visit to the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s]
  2. Children of Chernobyl [piano, soundtrack piece from a documentary]
  3. 'Mother and old folks' story [relating to the concert performances  
of "1984", the album he composed with Sir Tim Rice]
  4. The Hymn/And You And I [synth, 1984 and Yes, Close to the Edge]
  5. 'Cat Stevens' story
  6. Morning Has Broken

[piano, Cat Stevens single and on Teaser and the Firecat, composed by  
Farjeon and Bunessan. Rick explained that he was never paid the  
approximately US$12 he was owed for the 20 minute session in 1971, and  
he got no royalties for what is surely one of the biggest-selling and  
most heavily broadcast singles of the 1970s. Neither he nor Cat Stevens  
wrote the song, but Rick did some amazing on-the-spot arranging and  
composing for the piano, transforming this 1:30 church hymn into a nice  
3:00 single. Sadly, this event, when Rick was about 18, seems to have  
set the tone for Rick's entire career with regard to the relationship  
between his commercial success and his financial reward.]

  7. 'Indian food/DUI arrest' story
  8. Jane Seymour [synth playing samples of the actual church pipe organ  
used in the recording, The Six Wives of Henry VIII]
  9. Help/Eleanor Rigby

[synth, arrangements of Beatles tunes taking extreme artistic license,  
which I honestly didn't enjoy due to their unsettling departure from  
the spirit and intent of the original tunes. He transformed "Help" into  
an ethereal, elegaic New Age piece with a great deal of melodic  
counterpoint. He transfromed "Eleanor Rigby" "in the style of  
Prokofiev" into a hard-edged virtuosic shredder with an orchestral  
concerto arrangement along with orchestral synth patches and samples]

Encore:
  1. Clair De Lune [piano, Debussy, somewhat abridged]

Below my review I have appended the description of the tour from Rick  
Wakeman's web site.

Sincerely,

Wheat Williams

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---
http://rwcc.com/rwcc/code/live.asp

On Tour

The Other Side of Rick Wakeman

As many UK fans will know, Rick has had a pretty successful "other  
career" as a raconteur/stand up comedian both on television and in  
theatres with his one man show which was a mixture of music and pretty  
hilarious accounts of his life both on and off the road.

The one man show has up until now, never been performed outside of the  
UK, quite simply because Rick did not believe it would "travel", and  
then a very strange thing happened.

Whilst doing some promotion back in March of this year in America he  
performed a one hour special for XM radio based on the one man show  
formula that had been so successful in the UK. He also followed this up  
with a one off two hour performance in Annapolis, just outside of  
Washington. To Rick's genuine astonishment the reception for this very  
"British" evening was fantastic and immediately he was asked by  
promoters and agents to consider doing some more selected shows in  
America. Rick agreed on the condition that it was all arranged through  
the same agent as the one used by YES so that there could be no  
confusion over free time and dates and also should something appear for  
YES, then solo stuff could easily be moved around. All this was agreed  
and achieved very easily.

The outcome is that from mid October, Rick will be touring the USA with  
his one man show which has been entitled, THE OTHER SIDE OF RICK  
WAKEMAN.

He will be taking with him just two or three keyboards and a grand  
piano and of course a microphone, (let Rick loose with a microphone and  
one reviewer wrote that it becomes a comic lethal weapon)! The show  
will be in two halves and in total just over two hours long. He plays  
music spanning 35 years of his life and as he is on his own, the  
arrangements are both different and intimate in nature. A DVD of the  
show has been       released in America to coincide with the tour  
entitled The Legend 2000.

If the tour proves successful then undoubtedly there will be a lot  
more, and if it's not ........well Rick will just be spending more time  
on the golf course!

There is no doubt that for all those who know him in America this is a  
completely different "Rick Wakeman", and so to all you Americans who  
brave one of the evenings, you'll either come away having had a great  
night or come away thinking that Rick needs to be mentally certified  
....but most likely ...... both!

Update

Rick has been really overwhelmed and embarrassed with all the kind  
offers of golf whilst on tour and even more embarrassing is that after  
looking at the final schedule of shows, interviews and travelling, it  
rather appears that the number of games he will be able to play is  
....well.......zero!

However, Rick has noted all the fantastic invites and really would like  
to take all of you up at some time with your offers....and to that  
extent is talking about a golf club tour....yes, he's being serious!  
Don't email us about it though, details will be on the site if and when  
it happens.

Other related posts: