{"id":1330,"date":"2021-11-07T15:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.nysmusic.com\/2021\/2021\/11\/07\/rick-wakeman-brings-gifts-of-keyboard-wizardry-and-gab-to-bearsville-theater\/"},"modified":"2021-11-07T15:40:00","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T15:40:00","slug":"rick-wakeman-brings-gifts-of-keyboard-wizardry-and-gab-to-bearsville-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.nysmusic.com\/2021\/2021\/11\/07\/rick-wakeman-brings-gifts-of-keyboard-wizardry-and-gab-to-bearsville-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Wakeman Brings Gifts of Keyboard Wizardry and Gab to Bearsville Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Prog rockers are not a group known for their sense of humor. But there is one towering prog godhead who is top of the heap as an instrumental virtuoso and teller of ridiculously entertaining tales, ones featured in his surprisingly stupendous memoir, Grumpy Old Rock Star<\/a><\/em>.  It\u2019s Rick Wakeman<\/a>, the keyboard wizard whose riffs can be heard on some of the most memorable works of Yes, The Strawbs, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, T. Rex, Al Stewart and a boatload of his symphonic solo albums.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wakeman brought his massive chops and incredibly funny tales to Woodstock\u2019s beautifully outfitted Bearsville Theater <\/a>on November 1.  It was the last stop on the first swing of his \u201cEven Grumpier Old Rock Star Tour.\u201d  The evening was equal parts baroque instrumental brilliance and Borsch Belt humor.  And it was all the more enjoyable for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dressed in a knee-length black morning jacket, Wakeman manned a duo of Korg Nautilus synths and a Yamaha grand piano to take the audience on a 14-song retrospective of his career as session man, bandmate and solo artist.  There was a similar cache of stories, as well as a Q&A session, where the keyboardist reeled off hilarious anecdotes with punchlines as well-oiled as his arpeggios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the gorgeous symphonic double synth-driven opener \u201cSeahorses,\u201d Wakeman moved over to the piano. Here he told the story of one of his most memorable dates as a session man on Cat Stevens\u2019 classic \u201cMorning Has Broken.\u201d According to the piano man, it wasn\u2019t really all that much of a song, just 40 seconds or so, when they first ran through it. Stevens\u2019 producer Paul Samuel-Smith asked his to lengthen it with a piano intro, a gorgeous one that is as memorable as Matthew Fisher\u2019s Bachesque organ on \u201cWhiter Shade of Pale.\u201d  The producer and Cat liked it so much that they asked him to return to it several times, in the middle of the tune and for a coda, to bring the tune to single length.  Wakeman also recalls Stevens sitting in a corner chain smoking, all to muster the proper grit to commit his vocal to tape. He also remembers not getting paid, until 37 years later, the 12 British Pound session fee (about $120 is today\u2019s dollars)!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wakeman then set up a medley of two tunes from his classic\u00a0The Six Wives of Henry the VIII<\/em>\u00a0album by observing that \u201cthe King\u2019s life was prophetic of my own.\u201d\u00a0 Like Henry, Rick had multiple marriages, one reason being \u201cthat I really liked cake.\u201d But where Henry \u201cchopped off his wives\u2019 heads,\u201d Wakeman observes he \u201cgave my wives houses.\u201d\u00a0 After the laughs died down, Wakeman gave sharp, articulated performances of \u201cCatherine of Aragon\u201d and \u201cCatherine Howard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rick Wakeman – photo by Neil Segal<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Before heading into a medley of Yes, a mashup of \u201cThe Meeting,\u201d \u201cAnd You and I\u201d and \u201cWonderous Stories,\u201d Rick told an anecdote about a clever putdown he launched at a know-nothing TV interviewer in Los Angeles. When asked where his bandmate Trevor Rabin was when he wrote Yes\u2019 biggest hit \u201cOwner of A Lonely Heart,\u201d Wakeman said he was \u201cdid it on the toilet.\u201d\u00a0 And that it \u201cwas the first time someone wrote a #1 while doing a #2!\u201d\u00a0 Naturally, the interview ended right there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Q&A that followed, Rick answered 25 fan queries. He shared a host of trivia about his career, his love for his fellow prog keyboard titan, the late Keith Emerson, and that, yes, his long blonde hair was all his.  He then returned to the synths for \u201cThe Dance of a Thousand Lights\u201d from his 1999 disc, Return to the Centre of the Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creative and emotional high point of the evening came with Wakeman\u2019s memories and medley of David Bowie, a giant whose last residence was a stone\u2019s throw from Bearsville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rick Wakeman – photo by Neil Segal<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick was the pianist featured on two of Bowie\u2019s greatest works, his career-making \u201cSpace Oddity\u201d and \u201cLife on Mars.\u201d Before launching into the tunes, Rick recalled their days of neighbors in the U.K and various chance meetings while on tour. He also credited Bowie and his producer Tony Visconti as sources of knowledge in the area of record production that proved so vital in his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick Wakeman then told another humorous tale about Emerson and Deep Purple\u2019s Jon Lord, before dedicating the next medley to them, wildly original covers of The Beatles \u201cHelp!\u201d and \u201cEleanor Rigby.\u201d Repeating an exercise he learned during his days at the Royal College of Music, he covered these in the styles of classical composers. The standout was his reinvention of \u201cEleanor Rigby\u201d in the hyper style of Sergei Prokofiev.  It was blur of rapid arpeggios and pianistic filagree which could\u2019ve been complemented by a horde of dancing Cossacks\u2026 if Rick could still afford the overkill of his infamous stage productions of the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a standing ovation and thunderous applause from the near sell-out crowd, Wakeman returned for a crowd-pleasing encore of story and sound.  First came another scatological tale about a \u201cdodgy vindaloo\u201d and being asked to autograph an album while on the toilet!   This was followed by yet another instrumental dazzler, the super syncopated \u201cMerlin the Magician\u201d from 1975 album, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wakeman\u2019s concert is a model for what classic-era artists can bring to their audiences. It had musicianship that showed he hadn\u2019t lost a step to time and his formerly wild rocker lifestyle. It also had all the tall tales and trivia that die-hard fans have an inexhaustible hunger for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos by Neil Segal<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n