With a career spanning almost 60 years, Rick Wakeman is certainly not short of material when it comes to talking about his life in music.
The keyboard genius, best known for his cape-wearing days with Yes and working with artists including David Bowie, Marc Bolan and Lou Reed, has put some of his favourite stories into a new book - The Wizard of Prog - which is out tomorrow.
“There’s a lot of pages, but as the chap who wrote it with me said, ‘well, that’s because you’re old’,” said the 77-year-old maestro. That’s why there’s so many pages, but I would like to do more.”
As a solo artist Rick has been responsible for some classic prog rock albums including The Six Wives Of Henry VIII in 1973 and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth the following year.
He memorably performed what is arguably the most ‘prog’ live show of all time, staging The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on ice at the Empire Pool at Wembley in 1975. Complete with 19 international ice skaters, a bespoke sound system and elaborate sets it was, at the time, one of the most ambitious live concerts ever attempted.
Ironically, Wakeman wrote the album while in hospital recovering from a heart attack.
If London-born Wakeman, who now lives in Suffolk, had listened to the advice of doctors, who told him to retire after suffering three heart attacks by the age of 25, including one which happened shortly after a gig, he may well have been looking back on a much shorter career.
“Terrifying, isn’t it?” Wakeman replies when asked what it was like to look back on a nearly six-decade career which began in the late 1960s.
“I mean, there was no way that I was ever going to retire and give up, and I told them that at the time, I said, ‘you’ve got to be joking’.
“I’ve had some quite serious health issues in my life, but it’s like when everybody says, ‘how are you?’, I go, ‘above ground, and that’s where I intend to stay’.
“I mean, I enjoy life, and the interesting thing is that I don’t ever want to wake up thinking I’ve got nothing to do.”
The star explains that his morning routine involves him waking up early and performing How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? on the piano to his three rescue dogs, after feeding his cats.
Performing is clearly in Wakeman’s blood, and he says he would love to reprise his best-known show by returning to Wembley for more jousting knights on ice.
“I’d love to do it again, but it cost a lot of money,” Wakeman says of a second King Arthur On Ice show some 50 years later.
“It would need, well, serious underwriting, I wouldn’t say sponsorship, would need underwriting to do, it could be done, it definitely could be done, and done better than it was back in 1975.
“Technically, you can do so much now with ice than we could do, I’d love to do it again, it was just such great fun.
“I always believe that prog rock, as well as being musical, could be entertaining as well, and I’ve always felt that the two go really well together.”
You can never accuse Rick of standing still. His Free The Final Bears concert in September saw him support Animals Asia in raising awareness of a further 125 bears who remain trapped in bile farms in Vietnam, despite the government banning bear bile farming in 2005, with one bear even standing up to get a better view during the gig.
“I’d love to be involved with what I call a musical book about the bears (at the Animals Asia sanctuary), which is a story of some of the bears with music,” he said. If it comes off, it would certainly make yet another interesting chapter in his life story.
In The Wizard of Prog, Rick looks at his early days playing with the Strawbs, which saw him kick a particularly famous fan off stage without realising who he was during a 1970 gig in Paris.
“It was a bizarre situation,” Wakeman laughs. “I had one little solo to do on my little electric piano back then in 1970, and this chap sort of wandered on and started waving his stick around, and I thought somebody will throw him off whoever it is.
“They didn’t so I just went up and I thought I’ll assist him on his way, a gentle nudge shall we say, and off the stage he went.
“It was afterwards that the late Dave Cousins who was the leader of Strawbs, said to me, ‘do you know who that was?’, I went, ‘no, some old sod, he sounded like he was spouting away in Spanish, I don’t know’.
“He said, ‘Salvador Dali’, I said, ‘oh, I like his work, but I don’t like him wandering on stage and ruining my solo’.
“But I never got to meet him, and he probably, after I’d given him a shove shall we say, he probably wouldn’t have liked to have met me either. I’d like one of his paintings on my wall, that’s for sure.”
A year later in 1971, Wakeman performed on the number one single Get It On from T-Rex’s legendary Electric Warrior album, having also played on Bowie’s Hunky Dory that year, and was part of a group of musicians who unveiled a blue plaque in tribute to Bolan at his former house in September last year.
“I was very honoured (when) I unveiled the plaque, the blue plaque recently in Maida Vale,” Wakeman says of his late friend, who died in 1977 aged 29, when a car driven by his wife Gloria Jones collided with a tree in south west London.
“Marc was great, he was a real character, there was quite a lot of Bowie in Marc, not musically, but certainly in attitude to life.
“He wanted to be who he wanted to be, and not who somebody else wanted him to be, he was very kind.
“I did quite a few bits and pieces with Marc over the years, and I just, I loved him to bits.
“I have one incredibly fond memory of Marc, which was I did a concert at the Royal Festival Hall when I was in the band and orchestra that were accompanying John Williams, the wonderful guitar player, classical guitar player.
“And after the concert, we all went back to, well I say all, about half a dozen of us, went back to John Williams’ house in Maida Vale, which was very close, just around the corner from Marc Bolan’s house.
“Marc and John obviously knew each other, they were friends, Marc turned up at the house, this is like midnight, and came in, and Marc got a guitar, started playing songs.
“John got his classical guitar out and started playing classical riffs and lines around Marc’s songs, whilst the other half a dozen of us just sat there and listened.
“I mean, I’m not a great advocate of video phones, but I wish I’d had one then, it was a magical half an hour.
“I mean, people just wouldn’t think Marc Bolan and John Williams played together, it was magical. So that’s my big memory of Marc.”
The Wizard of Prog is out today. Rick Wakeman will be at Blackpool Winter Gardens tomorrow night talking about the book. Details from www.eventim.co.uk. The Wizard of Prog Ultimate Concert Tour is at Manchester Opera House on February 24
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