RICK WAKEMAN
INSTANT KARMA
RICK WAKEMAN
AN AUDIENCE WITH...
The high wizard of prog talks Bowie, bhunas and golf with Norman Wisdom
Interview by SAM RICHARDS
Rick Wakeman: “The day it becomes a job is the day I’ll knock it on the head”
“We tried all sorts of weird things because the technology hadn’t caught up with us”
NORMAL pressure hydrocephalus may sound the title of a Rick Wakeman album from the 1970s, but it’s actually the neurological condition for which the keyboard maestro had to undergo corrective brain surgery at the end of the last year. Thankfully it all went well, and Wakeman is already back to his usual jocular, enthusiastic self. “I mean, I’m not going to make the Olympics,” he laughs, “but I’m walking again. Luckily, it didn’t affect the piano-playing. That gets affected by the arthritis, which is a pain, but I’m 77 this year – what do I expect?”
Although he’s been unable to reschedule his planned tour dates with singer Hayley Sanderson, he’s about to go on the road with his son Oliver instead. A sequel to his 2020 album The Red Planet is also due in May. “I decided, when I was ill last year, that I would make a wishlist of stuff I wanted to do before I departed this mortal coil. It’s so long that I will be about 107 when it’s finished, so obviously one or two bits probably won’t get done. But I love writing and recording. I’ve always said: the day it becomes a job is the day I’ll knock it on the head.”
Evidently that hasn’t happened yet. From soloing in the dark to devising ice-dance spectaculars, Wakeman’s whole career has been an attempt to sidestep the everyday, as we’ll soon discover…