You know his name, you know his music, you know of his reputation. So when it was announced that Rick Wakeman, the legendary keyboard player for Yes, was reuniting with his former bandmates, singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Trevor Rabin, to form ARW and tour, it was like the mothership had breached the mountains in all its glory.
“Trevor and I have wanted to play Yes music together since the Union Tour,” Wakeman said upon the official announcement back in May. “And as for so many of us, there is no Yes music without Jon. The ‘Holy Trinity of Yes’ is, for me, very much a dream come true.” You can always count on Wakeman to turn an elaborate phrase but for the most part, this is very much true. Wakeman and Anderson especially were integral parts of the core of Yes for many years, as they toured and produced albums of high musical intelligence. In fact, so mindboggling were the arrangements, it was like the gentlemen were from another galaxy indeed.
Although all three musicians have kept making music following their departures from Yes, the band that formed in 1968 by Anderson and bass player Chris Squire, who passed away last summer from a form of leukemia, was always there, showing up in their concerts and interviews and fabrics of new music. “To be able to sing and perform with Rick and Trevor at this time in my life is a treasure beyond words,” said Anderson earlier this year.
A few weeks before the start of their tour on October 4th, Glide talked with Wakeman about getting back together with old friends and prepping a tour of this magnitude. Needless to say, Wakeman is not a virgin to doing things on a big scale. One look at his keyboard rig can attest to that. One listen to his operatic compositions, such as The Myths & Legends Of King Arthur & The Knights Of The Round Table, which he performed in an extended version over the summer in London for the first time since 1975, proves the man’s ability to delve far beyond simple notes. And a glance over long ago gossip columns shows that his personal life was, how should we say it, living life to it’s fullest. In fact, when he learned I lived near New Orleans, he told me, “I just used to walk up and down and go into bars and sit in with the Jazz bands that were playing. I don’t think I ever went to sleep when I first used to go there.”
For Wakeman, he doesn’t give life a chance to stagnate. He’s on TV and the radio, has appeared in movies and composed soundtracks, written books and sired sons that are now in the music business themselves (son Adam has been keyboardist with Ozzy Osbourne for over a decade). But for the moment, ARW will be his focus, as the tour rolls international next year and new music to hopefully follow.
What are your plans for this big tour?
Yeah, it is a big tour for us guys. This came about some years ago. Jon, Trevor and myself have always wanted to play together, to play Yes music, and just sort of finally got round to doing it. And I think that’s been helped in this very bizarre way by the sad tragic death of Chris Squire, because something that hit us all was our own mortality, I suppose, and if we don’t do this now, which is something we really want to do, there’s a chance it might never get done. So it just sort of kicked us into action and we’ve just had a wonderful time.
We’ve got a fantastic bass player in Lee Pomeroy, who is just going to amaze people, and a great drummer called Lou Molino. We wanted it to be a band very much, not just the three of us with some add-on musicians. We wanted it to be a band. We wanted to take the Yes music and do it our own way. We’ve been tweaking some of the music slightly differently and having some great fun with it and playing around and it’s just been a great atmosphere. I mean, it has been really amazing. And the energy that’s around when you consider that we are all, and how do I put this politely, senior citizens (laughs). In fact, it was suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t have road crew, we need carers (laughs). But the energy that is around is just absolutely quite amazing. It is going to be fun and we are having such a great time together as well. The atmosphere is just so nice.
That must have felt really great being a unit again so to speak.
It was lovely. Back in July we spent some time in Los Angeles playing and that was the first time that we’d all sort of played together, well certainly Jon, Trevor and I hadn’t been on a stage together since 1990, so that was fantastic to do. It was just huge smiles on everybody’s faces and you can’t beat that. It was just so good and Jon is singing so well. Trevor is one amazing player and it’s a joy to be on the stage with them.
I heard Jon singing a while back and he sounds just like he did in the seventies. It’s amazing.
He was very ill back in 2005/2006 but he’s been very sensible. He’s looked after himself well, got himself back to fitness and he looks after his voice tremendously well and quite right too because that to me, that’s the secret to Yes music is Jon’s voice. That puts the real smile on your face.
You mentioned you are tweaking some of the songs. How are you changing them up?
Well, the best way to describe it is, obviously there is a lot of music that Trev played on with Jon that I didn’t and a lot of music that I’ve played with Jon that Trev didn’t and we thought, okay, what can we do here? So the best way I can describe it is we’ve tried to imagine on the pieces, for example, where I didn’t play keyboards, what would I have done if I’d been in the band at that time. Obviously you play the main themes and the main riffs that were always meant to be there. But on the other things, you go, okay, if I’d been there I’d have done this, I’d have added that. And those are the kind of things that are really just gently changed. And it’s the same with Trev with the pieces he wasn’t on and going, okay, would I have had a different sound, would I have played that there, what would I have done. And what that has done has given it a real identity. It’s still very much Yes music and it’s still got all the ingredients but there’s these little additives that just put smiles on your face.
How did the three of you go about picking the songs that are going to be in the setlist?
(laughs) Well, we still haven’t decided yet. But we started by emailing each other with ideas of the list. And amazingly, there was a lot that was the same, probably about 60% we all agreed on right from word go. Then it was just a matter of, we said, well okay, let’s just practice and try bits and pieces out with all the other pieces that we put together and let’s see what works. And it’s going to be the next couple of weeks really that will really define exactly what it really is we are going to do.
Do you see yourselves leaning towards one album in particular pulling songs off of?
No, to be honest, that’s not actually happened. It’s been a real sort of mixture. Obviously there’s been stuff from Fragile and Close To The Edge, stuff from The Ladder and from 90125. It’s a real mixture.
Is it going to be difficult bringing it into a time frame?
No, well, hopefully not. I think the great thing about Yes music is that it’s very adaptable so I think we should be alright.
What about your rig? Are you going big or are you downsizing a little bit?
I don’t downsize, that’s unheard of (laughs). I do everything to excess. My life has been totally to excess. I mean, I’ve been tee-total since 1985 but when I drank, I drank for the world. I stopped smoking in 1979 but I used to smoke thirty a day when I did smoke. I’ve been married four times. Everything I do I do to excess so I would not go out there with a watered down rig (laughs). And it’s a good rig. We put it together especially for this tour and there is a mixture of some very new instruments and some very, very old ones. The instruments that I’m using date back, some of them as far back as 1971, right up to stuff that isn’t even on the market yet.
For you, what song has always been the most complicated to transfer to the live stage?
Probably the most difficult has always been “Awaken.” In fact, when we first went out on tour with it in the late seventies, certainly from my point of view, it was incredibly difficult because the keyboards at that time certainly couldn’t emulate the church organ sounds I needed or some of the other sounds that we’d actually recorded in the studio. But as time has gone by and keyboard instrumentation has improved drastically, that’s become more and more and more and more doable and in fact, it’s now very doable. I look back and I wonder how on earth we used to get through it without some of the stuff I’ve got these days.
When you’re composing, do the gears change much depending on the nature of the project, the way you write?
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m quite good at putting myself in the zone that I need to be in. If I’m doing orchestral stuff and writing for orchestra then somehow my brain, which is not great anyway but it does seem to be able to behave itself quite well and go, okay, well, just open the filing cabinets that you need for this so I don’t get confused. So I’m quite good actually at sort of concentrating and putting the blinkers on to just what I’m doing at the time.
Anything coming up with your son Adam?
Oh Adam is so busy. He’s out with Ozzy at the moment plus some of his own stuff that he’s doing. I’m going to see him at Christmas, which will be nice when I go back, and I will see him and the family. In fact, I try to see all the kids if I can. But I think he’s in America as well at the moment but nowhere near where I am. I’ll have to Google Ozzy to see where he is (laughs).
I met him once after an Ozzy show and he was very nice
He’s a lovely lad and he’s been with Ozzy about fourteen years now. Loves Ozzy to bits and I think they are very fond of Adam as well.
You dabble in so many different things yourself, any chance you’re going to have to put some of that on hold?
There’s lots of things that I’ve put on hold. There’s a couple of TV series, cause I do a lot of TV in the UK, they’ve all been put on hold. I have a radio show for BBC which I do and they very kindly allowed me to pre-record so I can pre-record loads to put out and that’s normally a live show. Things like that I’ve been able to do. But yeah, pretty much everything has been put on ice. There’s a few bits and pieces that we’ll all carry on doing but in general let’s just say we’re 95% ARW for the foreseeable future.
So what can conceivably happen with ARW after this tour?
Well, we’ve got Europe to come next year and Japan and South America and a few other places. We’re obviously going to start recording. We will start putting some stuff together next year. And the truth of the matter is, if people want us to continue we will. If people enjoy the tour and see where we’re trying to head and what we’re trying to do then there is no doubt that it will continue. But very much we’ve always listened to what fans and people around us say and I think that’s very, very important that you do that and if we can deliver what we enjoy and what other people enjoy then I think there’s no reason why there isn’t quite a few years of life left in the old dog yet.
Portrait by Lee Wilkinson
