Ask Rick Wakeman if there’s some underlying psychological reason for the opulence, the grandeur, the sheer spectacle of his infamous live shows, and he’ll offer up a blokey shrug. “Not really, I just like grandiose. I’ve loved the idea of telling stories with music since I was about eight, when my father introduced me to Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf, but over the years, I got bored going to concerts. The music was great, but I came to the conclusion that a concert should be a multi-purpose entertainment.”
There have been plenty of other artists who went the extra mile: Pink Floyd and the Wall; David Bowie and the Glass Spider; AC/DC and Rosie. Still, when it comes to the multi-sensory assault-and-battery of eyes, ears and brains – not to mention a flag planted deep in your memory banks, for good or bad – nothing has comes close to Wakeman’s epics. “Dad doesn’t do things by halves,” agrees Rick’s son Adam Wakeman, himself a musician who has played with Wakeman Sr multiple times.
