MY PROG HERO
RICK ASTLEY
Inspiring the wider music world…
Best known for the chart-topper, Never Gonna Give You Up, the celebrated pop singer popped his prog cherry with Rick Wakeman and Camel.
His wife, less so!
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGE
No Rickrolling here: Rick Astley is a big Rick Wakeman fan.
JEFF SPICER/GETTY IMAGES
► “I listened a lot of prog when I was growing up in the early 70s because my older sister was into it. She took me to see Camel play at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester when I was about 10 and it was pretty life changing. They played some of Mirage and some of The Snow Goose, and they had this huge screen behind them with the camel and the pyramid projected on it, and then The Snow Goose cover as well. I don’t even think I’d been to a gig before that, apart from maybe Supertramp a little while before, and I’d never even seen a screen that big. I remember something in me changing when the lights went down [and thinking] ‘I don’t know what this is – I want to be part of this world, because it’s absolutely amazing.’