Rick Wakeman - Freely prog

Rick Wakeman is one of those artists who mean a great deal to me. As a teenager I never dreamed of becoming a guitar virtuoso, but I did dream of becoming a keyboard virtuoso, and that was thanks to Rick alone. Then my innate laziness kept me from following in his footsteps, leading me instead to express myself with a more punk musical attitude — an attitude that some, reading this interview, might be surprised to find is in some ways not so far removed from the musical vision of the blond wizard of the ivories. Rick never holds back: rivers of notes when he plays and rivers of words when he talks. In both cases, though, I could never get enough…

Hi Rick!

Hi Mickey, how are you doing?

Pretty well, we've been through a rough patch in Italy but we're hoping to get past it.

I hope so too, for the sake of music, musicians, theatres, venues, and all the people who love music and need live performances. If every kind of "industry" needs a vaccine to be helped, the music, arts and theatre industries need it most of all: without a vaccine, how can we ever fill theatres with people again? I had to cancel everything this year, absolutely everything — I had shows lined up everywhere: Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, America, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, the UK… all cancelled! It's so hard. I talk to a lot of people, and everyone misses live performances, going to concerts, seeing people to talk about music and records with: it's an important part of social life, especially in countries like the UK and Italy, such a musical nation. If you don't want to talk about football and music in Italy, you'd better move somewhere else!

Ha ha… true! Anyway, I wanted to tell you I'll also be interviewing Jon Anderson!

Fantastic, do say hi to him for me! I really should give him a call, actually…

I remember interviewing him about "The Living Tree" (recorded together with Rick Wakeman, ed.)…

Yes, that was a fun album that achieved pretty much everything it set out to do. For "The Living Tree", Jon and I actually talked for a long time before we started recording, because we both wanted to make a record that got back to melody. We felt that was important, because the Yes albums that had come out shortly before were more rhythm-based and that sort of thing, whereas the early Yes music of the Seventies was definitely built on melody: everything started with melodies. We both felt that side of things had been somewhat lost, so we decided to make a record that went back to basics — acoustic, just piano and voice — so we could return to melody and storytelling. We actually recorded more songs than ended up on the record, there should be another four or five, Jon would probably remember: we picked the ones we thought were the best and left the rest aside. It was really fun to make, and I think it achieved what we set out to do: to think about melody again.

Mars: what does it mean to you, and why did you decide to dedicate an album to the Red Planet?

You have to go back three or four years. It all started during one of the Anderson-Rabin-Wakeman tours in America: I really like meeting people and talking to folks at concerts, hearing what music lovers have to say. A lot of people asked me: "Why don't you make an instrumental prog record like 'The Six Wives' or 'Criminal Record', like you used to?". The thing is, when I make an instrumental prog concept album, I need a subject, and I can't just pick one and say, "OK, that'll do!". It has to get under my skin and inspire me, and only then would I probably do it. Then we did shows all across Europe and I kept getting asked the same question, plus I got mountains of emails asking why I didn't record an instrumental prog album. Then, around three years ago I think, the Starmus Festival came along, which was created by Stephen Hawking, Brian May and a gentleman named Garik Israelian, who discovered black holes. Brian May is also an astrophysicist, as you probably know, and he called me up and said: "Rick, we put on a festival every two years called Starmus, and we always tie it in with music, with bands. We have loads of astronauts who come to speak, physicists, it's a huge convention…". And he added: "I know you love space and that you've made albums like 'Out There', '2000 A.D. Into The Future' and 'No Earthly Connection', I know you're well versed in it and that NASA sent your music into space: why don't you come play the festival with the band?". I said yes, and that year it was held in Tenerife: we met fantastic people, I had a great time and got really involved musically, I played with Brian May, and while I was there Garik told me about the next festival, to be held in Zurich in 2019. He asked me to take part alongside Hans Zimmer, Brian May of course, and Steve Vai, saying he'd love for me to play with a big orchestra, and I said: "OK, is there a particular theme?". And he said: "Yes, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landing, and we'll have every astronaut still alive who walked on the Moon with us!". I thought that was fantastic, and I figured it would be hard to top that. But he also told me that the following edition, in 2021, would be dedicated to the anniversary of the first Rover landing on Mars. So I told him: "Thanks Garik, that's exactly what I needed! I know Mars pretty well, two million years ago it was a lot like Earth, with seas, rivers and water. I know quite a bit about it and I intend to dig deeper!". He asked me why, and I said: "Because that's going to be my next album!". "If you make it, when we do the next Starmus Festival in 2021, you'll come and play it!", he suggested. So we agreed right there and then. Once I got back home, I dove into books, and my friends at NASA sent me photos and information, on top of everything you can find online. I always take loads of notes on everything, and some of the photos I saw really inspired me — I printed a lot of them out and scattered them around the piano: a great source of inspiration! It took me about a year to write music that fit, recording a lot and picking out the pieces I thought were truly worthwhile, that suited the record. That's how it worked for the initial inspiration: I can't just write something and say "I'll call it this", I really can't do that, there has to be a concept behind it, shaped by everything I'm thinking about, everything I'm reading at the time.

You've also put out some beautiful pop-up records and CDs. How important do you think the physical format is in this strange digital age we live in?

For me it's really important. I'm 71, and naturally I grew up with LPs: the joy of LPs, for me, was buying them, opening them up, reading the liner notes and taking in the brilliant artwork and all the interesting things you could find inside. Bands would sit down and spend ages discussing the album cover, which was essential for groups like Yes. Then, when CDs came along, they sort of killed off the LP: the cover wasn't as important anymore, and the information printed in the booklet — unless you were a fly with a magnifying glass — was impossible to read! People stopped paying attention to it, and it was really sad, it became just a piece of hardware you played music on. So when vinyl was rediscovered, it was fantastic — not only for the joy it gave younger listeners — to rediscover the beauty of album covers. When we put together "The Red Planet" a year and a half ago, Martin Cook's team of artists started working on it, throwing out ideas, accepting some and rejecting others, and there were even small changes right before it went to print. For example, the David Bowie references on the sides of the spacesuit, and the addition of the MiniMoog. We spent a lot of time on it, with a lot of care, because I believe the cover should be a signpost to what's inside: if people put real work into the cover, there's a good chance the music received the same amount of attention too. It really is a return to all of that.

It's a pleasure to hold something like this in your hands and not just listen to the music…

Yes, one of the things I've always argued is that the music and record industry, for many, many years, made huge mistakes because they kept telling us they had replacements: they thought they could substitute vinyl with cassettes, then with CDs, and then with downloading and streaming they started claiming we'd no longer need a physical format, hardware, etc. All wrong! What they should have done over time is say: "Hey, look: here's another way to enjoy music! You can have music on CD, on cassette – and they've started making cassettes again just now – so many ways to have music, not just one." I think the fantastic thing today is that people, even young people, have understood this, and they can download music for their iPod so they can listen on the train, going to work or in the car; then there's the CD, which is very convenient, and the LP, which is ideal for reading and enjoying the artwork, on top of the fact that it's wonderful to play with the physical gesture of putting the needle on the record. The funny thing is that people would write to us at first listening to the records at 33 rpm before discovering they were meant to be played at 45… Someone would tell us: "Some songs are a bit slow!" And we'd say: "Exactly! Try listening to them at 45." The reason for 45 rpm is better sound quality.

Of course… going back to the past, I know this must be a very hard question to answer: what are your best and worst memories of being Rick Wakeman in the Seventies?

(Laughs) Oh, wow! I have wonderful memories, certainly performing "Journey To The Center Of The Earth" with the orchestra, and "King Arthur", playing with Yes and making albums like "Close To The Edge", and even recording tracks like "Awaken" with Yes in 1977. And then working with people like David Bowie and Marc Bolan… A fantastic era: the best thing about the Seventies was that you'd wake up thinking about music, spend your day thinking about music and go to bed thinking about music… everything was music! The worst was – I think – the end of the Seventies, when the record companies, which had been used to letting bands and musicians write music in peace, suddenly thought they understood our music, when they didn't. Just as we didn't understand anything about business, they didn't understand anything about music. They started saying: "We need more bass on this track, more drums…", just to say something, and they were wrong! It's interesting to note that for the first half of the Seventies, up to around 1976-'77, I'd say up to and including "Going For The One", they left us alone. Then, nothing more. By the end of the Seventies I suddenly wasn't allowed to make the music I wanted, I was being told what to do. Unfortunately I'm one of those people who said: "No, I won't do it!", which always caused problems. I lived through the best and the worst of the Seventies.

I read a very interesting interview you gave together with my friend JJ Burnel of the Stranglers. Personally I love progressive rock as much as punk rock, and I sometimes mix them in my band, the Mugshots. Do you see any contradiction there?

No, you know… I've read quite a few articles claiming I hate punk rock, and that's absolutely not true. I like to point out to people that I'm the person who discovered the Tubes, bringing them to A&M, Fee Waybill is still a great friend of mine and I love the Tubes, I love the Stranglers, I love the Jam, there are so many great bands. As for the Stranglers, I once spoke with Hugh Cornwell, and he told me: "They always lumped us in with punk, but I never thought of us as playing punk rock!" But it doesn't matter where people place you, as long as they place you somewhere. I think there's a real connection, because it was a wonderful rebellion against what was happening, something that has always happened in music: there's always a new kind of music coming along — if you go back to the Fifties, it was about singers, we called them crooners; then beat bands, pop bands took over playing pop songs and killed off the world of solo singers. Then it happened that a lot of musicians wanted to do something more than pop music, because they were better musicians, with more ideas, and that's how progressive rock was born: musicians who wanted to play more than three chords and have a nice little tune. So, for a brief period of time, that killed off the pop bands. It has always happened that there's a generation of people saying: "No, no, no, wait a minute, I don't like this." And also a lot of musicians saying: "We want to play, but not this prog stuff, maybe because we're not able to do it, but maybe also because it's just not us." Because one of the most interesting things — and it's the same everywhere — is that when you're young, you listen to the music your parents choose, that's the music you grow up with; but when you're more or less a teenager, you don't want to listen to what your parents wanted, you want things that are your own. And that's exactly what happened over time: punk was a rebellion against what was happening in the world, against people, against fashion, against art, against music… That's why, when people told me it wouldn't last, I'd reply: "It will absolutely last, because it will have an important role to play in the years to come, and looking back we'll see just how much it will have changed art, music, acting and everything else." And that's exactly what happened. The best thing is that musically it survived and, rightly, it sells too. There was definitely an element in the Stranglers that was more or less progressive, which is great, because prog means breaking the rules, and the Stranglers broke the rules.

Yes, sadly we recently lost Dave Greenfield, the keyboardist, who brought in that influence…

I know, I met Dave, and I talked to Hugh about Dave, I also put together a couple of tributes. Speaking of "Golden Brown", there were a couple of failed attempts to record it, and Hugh told me it was only once Dave put it together that they managed to nail it. Of course, it's one of the greatest classics of all time.

I have a couple of questions from two well-known Italian musicians. Singer-songwriter Enrico Ruggeri would like to know what it was like working with David Bowie and what he was like as a person, beyond the music.

David… I can't say enough about David, he was a fantastic man, with great vision, and he gave me great advice over the years. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me was: "When you're working on your music, make sure you choose musicians who understand what you want, because otherwise you could have the best musicians in the world, but if they have no idea how you think musically, you won't get the results you want. Choose musicians who understand you." And that's what he did throughout his career: he changed his band a lot, depending on the music he was making. He'd choose the musicians he thought were best for the music he was making at that moment. He used to say you had to believe in yourself, he kept saying: "If you believe in something, don't listen to managers, record labels and producers! If you believe in it, do it: because if it works, the labels and managers will take all the credit; if it fails, they'll blame you. You can't win either way, so make sure you do what you believe in!" He was great, and as a man I truly loved him. We stayed close friends, I saw him a lot in the late Seventies — from 1976 onwards — because we both lived in Switzerland, we used to go to a small club called the Montreux Museum Club, which is still there. We'd meet up to put together some lyrics, some music and have a chat, I was never tired of meeting David and talking to him, I think his musical influence is the most important of the late 20th century. I think people will talk about his music and analyse what he did for the next hundred years.

Like a classical composer…

Absolutely! He was so intelligent, he always did unexpected things, that's why I loved working with him, he never did what you expected. He was a genius on stage, and he was even more brilliant at creating characters like Ziggy or Aladdin Sane, he knew how to be different people at the same time. And once he'd used up everything about that character, he'd get rid of it and another one would appear. Brilliant, and truly, truly intelligent.

Silvio Capeccia, keyboardist of Decibel, would instead like to know your opinion on the new "Moog One"…

Well (looking it up on the Internet, ed.), the truth is I didn't know it existed until you just asked me, so I'm really grateful to you for that, and I'd say it looks exactly like something I should own (laughs), that's all I can say.

Ok, perfect! What are your memories of Italy, and do you have a final message and greeting for your Italian fans?

I truly love Italy, I've loved it for years: I first came, I believe, in 1970 with Strawbs, I think that was the first time I ever came to Italy. It was wonderful, we played in small bars and folk clubs, wherever we could play, we'd go. I grew more and more passionate about Italy year after year, and certainly over the last twenty years – getting older, after turning fifty – I started seriously following architecture, and my favourite architect of all time is Palladio. He's fantastic, I've made so many trips here, to Venice and the surrounding area, to Vicenza, to see Palladian architecture. I've been very lucky to know people who took me into private villas to see his work and the incredible structures of the buildings, houses and villas he designed and built. For me it's a joy to come to Italy, I don't think there's been a single year in the last fifteen when I haven't come at least once, sometimes even more, whether for piano concerts or shows with the band or with an orchestra, and then to treat myself to a wonderful trip and enjoy the fantastic architecture, museums and art galleries. I love all of this, and I've semi-lived – going back and forth from the UK – in and around Milan, it was fantastic: I had friends in Lugano just across the border and I'd take the train to go to Como to see my friends, I'd drive around there and wherever I went I'd run into musicians and people from the music world. I'm also a huge fan of Opera and Ballet, which were everywhere. I never get tired of being in Italy, and I never will.

(06/09/2020)

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