Legendary keyboardist Rick Wakeman will get intimate with Aucklanders this weekend. The British composer and songwriter will play to some of his more ludicrous life experiences, including a number of ''pretty normal for me'' arrests. Wakeman, who formerly played for rock band YES, is in New Zealand for a three concert solo tour which has already sold out in Wellington.
The visit will be his first since performing with the Auckland Symphonia 37 years ago at Western Springs. ''I've never turned down anything for New Zealand, up until I was invited nobody had asked me,'' he said. ''It's one of those things you go where you're invited - like a dinner party, you can't turn up if there's a place for you.''
Wakeman says waiting another 37 years to return to ''my wife's favourite country'' simply wouldn't work out for his figure. ''I'd be 104 and odds aren't good are they really,'' he said. ''Even if I am here it would be knowing where my fingers are. 'I don't know if I could play, it would be likely be a bit slower, but I might need some help getting up.''
Wakeman said he hadn't finished choosing his stories for the Kiwi audience, nor had ne narrowed down his list of songs. ''Most of the stories are really very silly, they are fun, I try to think of it as everyone in my front room,'' he said. ''And there are no shortage of stories because nothing normal has ever happened to me.''
Wakeman began his intimate solo concerts ''donkeys years ago'' when his head was over the slaughter block over lost equipment. ''It started many years ago in Costa Rica and I arrived with my band but the equipment didn't,'' he said. ''The promoter said 'you will play, you play or they kill you and they kill me too - no show, you dead'.
''I said okay, what have you got, a piano. So the band just stood at the side because they couldn't do anything, and there were about five or 6000 people,'' he said. ''I said through a translator 'I've got no equipment but I've got a piano and through the translator I'll tell you a few things and I'll play, if anyone is not happy they can have their money back'.''
Wakeman said just four people left that concert and upon taking the solo idea back home it ''just took off''. So if you didn't know Wakeman was arrested for stealing a KGB Soviet intelligence uniform during the cold war, that he's had four wives, or invented the stacking of keyboards, the intimate opportunity awaits.
Tickets are still available to An Intimate Evening with Rick Wakeman in Auckland and Christchurch.
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