The Gonzo Daily: REVIEW: Rick Wakeman live at Plymouth Pavilions

Sunday 27 April 2014

REVIEW: Rick Wakeman live at Plymouth Pavilions

I LOVE Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens so much that we had it at our wedding.

What makes that version of the hymn so lush and fabulous is the flowery piano playing but I hadn’t realised until recently, that it was Rick Wakeman who was tinkling the ivories on that recording.

So it was a real trill to hear him play the track and a handful of other unexpected gems in his prelim to performing Journey to the Centre of the Earth on Saturday night.

Each of the tracks played represented someone from whom he had learnt a lesson that stuck with him for life. With Cat, whose record company were refusing to release the single or even include it on an album, it was to ‘stick to your guns’.

The next track he performed was, Life On Mars, on which he provided keys for David Bowie, and proceeded to tell us how David trusted him enough to lay down all the keyboard parts for his ensuing Hunky Dory album, telling him to surround himself with competent enough musicians to allow them to ‘do their thing’.

Rick also told us that his father had taken him to see Peter and the Wolf at a young age, which was when he first cottoned on to the idea of telling a story through music. He informed us that a few years later, aged just 14, he had read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and decided that was the story he wanted to tell through music.

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