Feakes Rick Wakeman

In the 1970s
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-78952-620-2
Verlag: Sonicbond Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Reihe: Decades

Keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman is one of the most talented and influential musicians and composers to have graced the world of popular music. He is also one of the most prolific, with more than 100 albums to his credit. The 1970s, however, was Rick's most significant decade; one in which he regularly topped magazine polls, staged extravagant concerts and released several highly successful albums, including a UK number one in Journey To The Centre of The Earth.
Rick's professional career began as a highly respected session musician where he played on hundreds of recordings, including many hit singles and songs by David Bowie, Elton John, Cat Stevens and Lou Reed, amongst many others. He was also a member of the folk rock band Strawbs and played a key role in the International success of progressive rock pioneers Yes.
In addition to tracing Rick's career trajectory throughout the 1970s, this book examines in detail his recorded output during the period, including nine solo albums, six albums with Yes and two with Strawbs. As such, this is the most comprehensive guide yet to the music of this extraordinary musician during this most pivotal decade in rock history.

Geoffrey Feakes is an author and music journalist. He has published four previous books, The Moody Blues On Track, The Who On Track, Steve Hackett On Track and 1973: The Golden Age of Progressive Rock. He has been a writer for the Dutch Progressive Rock Page since 2005, with hundreds of reviews and interviews to his credit. He lives in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK and when he's not writing, he spends a good deal of time listening to music, including contemporary progressive rock.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Feakes, Geoffrey

Leseproben

Chapter 1

1970 – A Man for All Seasons

Rick was about to generate a seismic shift in the music world, and more especially that of Strawbs.

Dave Cousins, from his autobiography Exorcising Ghosts, published in 2014.

As the 1970s dawned, Rick Wakeman, aged just 20, already had hundreds of recordings as a session musician under his belt. ‘Fixer’ David Katz, who sourced musicians for record producers, was instrumental in ensuring Rick received regular work, which included performing on TV themes for popular series like The Avengers and Jason King. Some of the pop and novelty acts he recorded for including White Plains, Edison Lighthouse, Brotherhood of Man, The Fortunes, Cilla Black and Mary Hopkin enjoyed hit singles, but his contributions went uncredited. Although he was usually hired for his playing and arranging skills, he wrote and performed the jaunty theme tune for the BBC TV series Ask Aspel, a popular family entertainment programme during the 1970s.

Despite his unorthodox appearance and casual demeanour, Rick earned the respect and admiration of the producers and musicians he worked with. He was nicknamed ‘One-take Wakeman’ because of his uncanny ability to nail his parts first time and he could often be found in the pub across the road while the others were still in the studio working on theirs. In between sessions, he was still appearing nightly on stage, but as the groups he’d performed with thus far never ventured beyond the club circuit, his public profile as a musician – let alone a rock star – was minimal. This was about to change, however.

Although he was earning good money with Spinning Wheel, Rick was getting tired of playing every night to the same pub audiences and yearned to be part of a proper touring band. He was briefly a member of Warhorse, fronted by Ashley Holt, who he had befriended back in the days of the Ronnie Smith band, but this came to nought. Given that the following year, Rick revealed to Melody Maker journalist Mark Plumber ‘I hate folk music’, his next move, in hindsight, seems like an unusual one.

Strawbs, unlike many of their folk-rock contemporaries, performed original songs, many penned by band leader and frontman Dave Cousins. They had evolved from the Strawberry Hill Boys, a bluegrass combo who were part of the London folk scene in the 1960s. Strawbs were handled by E.G. management and had the distinction of being the first UK act signed by American label A&M Records. Like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Cousins has a very distinctive voice that one immediately associates with British folk and like Rick, he was a session musician in the late 1960s working through David Katz. When interviewed by Melody Maker in 1970, Cousins acknowledged:

I suppose my songs are old-fashioned, out of date, but then again, they aren’t. I don’t deliberately set out to write a song to sound as though it were from some different age, it just comes out that way. … We’ll play every instrument we can. One minute we’ve got dulcimer and piano and tablas, and the next something completely different.

In his biography The Caped Crusader, published in 1978, Rick told author Dan Wooding: ‘…Dave Cousins is probably the best lyricist this century musically. I thought he wrote incredibly nice melodies – but I don’t think the way they were treated was very good’.

Rick’s gradual induction into the ranks of Strawbs included a guest appearance on their second album Dragonfly. He plays piano on the ten-minute-plus ‘The Vision of The Lady of the Lake’ that dominates side two of the original vinyl LP. Strawbs utilised an unusual combination of instruments to ensure a unique sound that set them apart from the folk mainstream. The line-up for Dragonfly is Dave Cousins on vocals, acoustic guitar, dulcimer, percussion, Tony Hooper on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, percussion, Claire Deniz on cello and Ron Chesterman on double bass. In addition to Rick, guests Paul Brett from Velvet Opera and Danish jazz man Bjarne Rostvold play lead guitar and drums respectively on ‘The Vision of The Lady of the Lake’.

The backing track was recorded in the latter part of 1969 at Ivar Rosenberg Lydteknik in Copenhagen, but they ran out of studio time, so it was completed at Morgan Studios in London. Producer Tony Visconti booked Rick to play piano, but they encountered a major problem. In his autobiography Exorcising Ghosts, Dave Cousins takes up the story:

The eight-track machine was running at a slightly different speed to the one in Denmark. There was no vari-speed facility to correct it, so Rick’s piano sounded completely out of tune. Tony Visconti came up with the ingenious solution of playing the piano back through a Leslie speaker so that no one noticed that it was out of tune. Instead, it had a strange ethereal, psychedelic sound that suited the track anyway.

‘The Vision of The Lady of the Lake’ begins as an acoustic ballad with bowed double bass, dual acoustic guitars, and mournful cello. Thanks to Visconti’s unusual treatment, Rick’s piano is virtually unrecognisable. Cousins’ poetic lyrics tell the tale of a boatman who encounters a mysterious maiden who rises from the lake. She gives him a sword and he fights a succession of creatures, including an eagle, a snake, and a wolf, before succumbing to a watery grave. As Cousins’ lead vocal becomes more impassioned, Rostvold’s busy drum pattern enters at the five-minute mark, joined by Brett’s distorted lead guitar.

Although it did not chart, when Dragonfly – which Cousins later described as ‘acid folk’ – was released in the UK on 16 February 1970, it did respectable business, shifting 19,000 units. Despite being an experienced session musician, it was the first time Rick’s name appeared on a record sleeve and he was so grateful he wrote to Cousins thanking him, although they had first met in January 1969 when Tony Visconti brought Rick along to a BBC Radio One session for John Peel’s Top Gear show to promote Strawbs’ forthcoming eponymous debut album. Visconti was enamoured by Rick’s talent and used him at every opportunity. He also admired Rick’s social skills, as he confirmed in his 2007 autobiography: ‘I always liked Rick; he had a refreshing ‘just-one-of-the-lads’ personality and could drink most of us under the table at the pub’. Rick plays organ on the three songs recorded for the Peel session, which feature as bonus tracks on the 2008 reissue of Strawbs. Cousins confirmed:

We played our epic, ‘The Battle’, the six-minute-long closing track on Strawbs, and I knew we had recorded something special. After the session, we adjourned to the nearest pub for a celebratory drink – Rick was wide-eyed, enthusiastic, enjoyed several pints and was one of the lads, as we say. I made a note to stay in touch with him.

In March 1970, shortly after the release of Dragonfly, Cousins contacted Rick and they arranged to meet in the Greenford Hotel pub – now a McDonalds – on the Uxbridge Road in Southall, West London. Cousins remembers the occasion well:

Rick turned up with Ros, who he introduced as his fiancée. We exchanged pleasantries over a couple of pints, and then I asked him if he fancied joining Strawbs. Rick’s hand, holding his pint, was shaking like a leaf as he accepted my generous offer of £12 ($20) a week. I told him that I wanted his first gigs with Strawbs to be something memorable.

In The Caped Crusader biography, Rick recalls that Cousins’ offer was £25 a week. Otherwise, the details of the meeting remain the same. When Cousins explained that the band were going to Paris the following month, Rick initially declined because he and Ros were getting married on 28 March. They couldn’t afford a honeymoon, however, so Cousins suggested a compromise whereby Ros accompanied Rick to Paris.

Rick’s debut gig on 5 April with Strawbs was billed as the ‘Open Circus’ and was held in a big top on the Champ du Mars by the Eiffel Tower. The other bands on the bill included East of Eden and Pete Brown’s Piblokto. They each had to accompany the circus acts and Strawbs were allocated the child jugglers, a lion wrestler, and a high-wire act. Without a drummer in the band, Rick had to time his solo during ‘Where Is This Dream of Your Youth’ – from the debut Strawbs album – to reach a crescendo when the wire walker did a forward roll. On the second day, during Rick’s solo, the audience began to cheer when none other than Salvador Dali walked onto the stage. Rick was less than impressed, however and not knowing who Dali was, and he suggested in colourful language that the famous painter be escorted from the stage.

Rick’s first UK gig with Strawbs was also his first television appearance for the show Songs from the Two Brewers. It was filmed in the upstairs room of a pub in Manchester, just around the corner from the Granada TV studio. Legendary folk singer Ralph McTell was present and was stunned by Rick’s playing when he launched into his solo on upright piano during the folky ‘Till the Sun Comes Shining Through’ from Dragonfly. Although Rick recalls audience figures being low on those early shows, a critic for Melody Maker praised his performance at...