Rick Wakeman: Saturday 15th November 1997, Mansfield Leisure Centre

The ‘It’s Nearly Christmas’ tour

Rick Wakeman certainly knows how to entertain an audience. You might not like his music – and you’re mad if you don’t but that’s another matter – but he can always be guaranteed to make people laugh with his outrageous anecdotes from his many years in the music business. Whether it’s stories of his time spent working with Strawbs,  David Bowie (‘Life on Mars‘), and Cat Stevens (‘Morning Has Broken‘) or just his apocryphal tales of working with erstwhile Yes colleagues Messrs Anderson, Howe, Squire and Bruford, White, Kaye or whomever he was involved with at any one time, he’s always going to keep you sniggering and often guffawing. I remember him being accompanied by son Adam on this gig, as well as Fraser Thorneycroft Smith on various guitars. It was a great night right on my doorstep and one that I was glad that I didn’t pass up. A few years later I went out and bought the DVD below which I can certainly recommend as it gives the general gist of one of his tours from around this time.

Setlist: unknown

Here’s a tour programme (which I don’t possess) Click it to see inside!

You can visit Rick’s website HERE.

Rick Wakeman: Thursday 15th May 2008, Palace Theatre, Mansfield

The ‘Grumpy Old Picture Show’ tour

Rick Wakeman (keyboards, conversation!)

Rick was very much a TV star at this point, having been a key protagonist in the BBC series ‘Grumpy Old Men‘ (hence the name of this tour).

The evening was a great little session of him playing pieces solo and interspersing them with lots of chat and anecdotes, something that he is really good at (this was the second such evening that I had spent with him). I remember being thrilled that he played ‘The Dance of a Thousand Lights‘ from the recent ‘Return to the Centre of the Earth‘ album, the best track on there.

He certainly had quite a back-catalogue to have a go at by this stage too. Three of the tracks from his epic ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’ made it into the set along with ‘Merlin’ from the brilliant ‘King Arthur & The Knights of the Round Table’, together with a couple of Yes tunes and some more eclectic material featuring The Beatles and Pachelbel.

Interestingly we were also treated to Cat Stevens’ ‘Morning Has Broken’ together with the story behind it. That story is now reported by Wikipedia thus: Cat Stevens’ recording, with piano arranged and performed by Rick Wakeman, led to international recognition of the song. When shaping ‘Morning Has Broken’ for recording, Stevens started with the hymn, which took around 45 seconds to sing in its basic form. Producer Paul Samwell-Smith told him he could never put something like that on an album, and that it had to be at least three minutes, though an acoustic demo of an early Stevens version lasts almost three minutes. Prior to the actual recording Stevens heard Wakeman play something in the recording booth. It was a rough sketch of what would later become ‘Catherine Howard’. Stevens told Wakeman that he liked it and wanted something similar as the opening section, the closing section and, if possible, a middle section as well. Wakeman told Stevens he could not as it was his piece destined for a solo album, but Stevens persuaded him to adapt his composition. The single reached #9 on the UK Singles Chart and #6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, becoming Stevens’s most successful single on the latter chart (later tied by his rendition of ‘Another Saturday Night’).

In 2000, Wakeman released an instrumental version of ‘Morning Has Broken’ on an album of the same title. That same year he gave an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live in which he said he had agreed to perform on the Cat Stevens track for £10 and was “shattered” that he was omitted from the credits, adding that he never received the money either.

On his return to performance as Yusuf Islam, Stevens paid Wakeman and apologized for the original non-payment, which he said arose from confusion and misunderstanding by the record label. On a documentary aired on British television, Wakeman stated that he felt Stevens’s version of ‘Morning Has Broken’ was a very beautiful piece of music that had brought people closer to religious truth, for which he expressed satisfaction in having contributed. Wakeman included a 3:42 version on his 2017 album of piano arrangements, ‘Piano Portraits’.

So there you have it!

Rick is certainly a bon viveur and great raconteur as he has proved many a time on the telly these days and I recall having lots of laughs as he regaled us with tales of touring with Yes, Jon Anderson’s ‘idiosyncrasies’, dry ice on stage, trapdoors and take-away curries being delivered – and consumed!! – mid-gig.

Great night!

Setlist: Pachelbel’s Canon; Catherine Howard; Morning Has Broken; And You and I / Wonderous Stories; The Dance of a Thousand Lights; Jane Seymour; The Meeting; Merlin the Magician; Catherine of Aragon; Help! / Eleanor Rigby; The Jig (from the following night’s performance at Southend Palace Theatre, so ours would have almost certainly been identical)

You can visit Rick’s website HERE.

ARW (Anderson Rabin Wakeman): Tuesday 21st March 2017, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

Back in the days of good old real, hard copy tickets!

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Publicity photograph.

The ‘An Evening of YES Music’ tour

Jon Anderson (guitar, vocals) / Trevor Rabin (guitars, vocals) / Rick Wakeman (keyboards) / Lee Pomeroy (bass) / Lou Mollino III (drums)

I dropped lucky here as I copped for a half-price ticket because my mate Rob was let down by a pal who couldn’t go; there was no way that I was going to pay £60 to see a slimmed-down version of Yes. Did I say “slimmed-down”? Well, Jon was elfin, bordering on a little podgy; Trevor looked as though his face was going to melt under the arc lights; Rick looked like he had eaten an elephant. In an interview with – I think – Radio Trent he confessed that he was contractually obliged to wear a cape, so there he was, resplendent in a red cape.

Photo from the Glasgow gig.

The gig itself went well and I really quite enjoyed it. The music was fine, and there is a strong argument to suggest that this is the best chance that you will get of seeing Yes, these days; at least there are two of the original members in there. But can Rabin play the ‘Yes guitar’ parts as well as Steve Howe? Hmmm…

Trevor Rabin squeezes out a lick.

Well, the conundrum over Rabin was solved by the fact that although he did play several ‘old Yes’ songs quite impeccably, a true comparison was difficult because the band played rather more of the later material from the Rabin-era Yes anyway. And of course, on those tracks he was unquestionably on his game. That said, I was a little disappointed that we got not one song from the 1994 ‘Talk’ album. I love ‘Endless Dream’, ‘The Calling’ and ‘Walls’, but none of them was forthcoming. Pity.

Jon Anderson hits the right note.

Whilst I was not in the least surprised to hear the classics like ‘I’ve Seen All Good People’, ‘Roundabout’,  ‘Perpetual Change’,  ‘Long Distance Runaround’,  ‘Heart of the Sunrise’ and ‘Awaken’, it came as quite a surprise to be offered ‘The Fish (Schindleria Primaturus)‘ when there was no Chris Squire on stage. Nevertheless, Lee Pomeroy on bass performed a very accurate rendition of Squire’s signature piece.

Wakeman was all arpeggios and cape!

In truth, the overall performance was very good indeed and all five members of the band put in a sterling shift. Whether it was old or new Yes material that they sang/played it was superbly executed. For the most part I was carried along by the general euphoria of the night, but there were a couple of stand-out moments. The first was that the intro to ‘Awaken‘ was very different to that of the album version; this one employed a very eastern/oriental feel, and it was excellent. You can hear that version on their live double album which can be heard on YouTube.

Wakeman on keytar.

Then towards the end of the gig, during ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart ‘ (or ‘Owner of a Horse and Cart’ as Rick calls it) Rabin took off into the audience with his guitar, followed by Wakeman, lumbering out from behind his banks of keyboards, playing a keytar.

It was a good night which I really enjoyed. Was it Yes? No, not really, but there were two founding members there, and a third from a different era. They performed well and the rapturous applause at the end showed that the audience was very pleased with what they saw and heard. I am certainly glad that I went because the band hasn’t toured again and after just one live album they split. Chance of a lifetime then! 😉

I have just one further memory from this performance. As we were sitting up in the front row of the circle, Rob took the opportunity to set up his phone/camera on the balcony to record the gig, but an usher came and made him remove it. If you check this YouTube link, you can see what few snatches of material he managed.

There’s a very short review of this same gig on The Afterword website; a slightly longer – and more positive – one of the Glasgow gig a few days later; and a third from the Progressive Aspect website for the gig at the Cardiff Motorpoint Arena.

Setlist: Cinema; Perpetual Change; Hold On; I’ve Seen All Good People; Drum Solo; Lift Me Up; And You And I; Rhythm of Love; Heart of the Sunrise; Changes; Long Distance Runaround; The Fish (Schindleria Primaturus); Awaken; Make It Easy (intro) / Owner of a Lonely Heart; Encore: Roundabout

I managed to bag an A3 poster from off the wall; quite rare, I believe. Note the setlist around the border – neat!

And here’s an A5 flyer, which I don’t possess.