Wide Awake Man

Rolling out of bed at nine in the morning (it’s a tough life, kids), your Hot Press correspondent finds himself desperately shaking off the cobwebs in a bid to sound chirpy for Yes legend Rick Wakeman. You see, the 63-year-old keyboardist appears to have a better appreciation for sleep than I, rising each day at precisely 5:45am. And yet, as repeated encounters with his voicemail unfold, it would appear that he’s off in the land of nod. Or, as it transpires, running slightly late due to car trouble. Rumours of his early morning regime haven’t been greatly exaggerated after all.

“I don’t know what it is, but I seem to have a built-in alarm clock,” he says breezily. “Wherever I am in the world, doesn’t matter about the time change – a quarter to six – my eyes open and I get up. I think it stems back to the early days when I would do a lot of sessions for other musicians and I had to rise early to make sure I’d beat the rush hour and be in London for 7am. I just got used to it.”
There are probably not enough words in this entire issue to cover the sheer length and breadth of Wakeman’s career, so let’s look at one of his most recent endeavours, a regular Saturday evening slot (The Rick Wakeman Revolution) on the increasingly popular Radio Nova. Originally set for a six-month stint, Rick, having finished up a five-year run on Planet Rock, found he and his new Dublin-based station to be a perfect match. As Nova turns two years old, he’s still very much on board for the ride.
“It’s amazing, really,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like two years since I came over for the launch day, which was tremendous. People lined up down the river bank, it was astonishing. The great thing about Nova is, there have been a lot of radio stations that have sprung up all over Europe in the last few years, but it’s really interesting how many of them didn’t actually look and go, ‘Well, hold on a minute. Whether we’re broadcasting to ten people or ten million, the quality of what we put out is the most crucial element’. Nova really thought about that. The studios they built, the equipment and people they brought in, it’s all top-notch, the approach you would take with a national station. I think that’s the secret of their success, because they don’t treat it like a small local station, they treat it as a national one. Also, they’re aware that an awful lot of people listen online.”
As someone who helped pave the way for today’s electronic acts, Rick believes the current synth craze is anything but a fad. He sees it as an exciting time for the scene, noting that many musicians are capitalising by mixing great songwriting skills with increasingly sharp technology. Still, the old classics will never go out of style.
“I use the Minimoog constantly. I’ve got about eight of them. They’re all about 40+ years old but they’re an instrument that I will never go onstage or record without. There are a couple of others that are somewhat priceless to me. There’s a Korg 01/WproX which is a wonderful machine. Roland make an instrument called the JD-800, which is about 25 years old and goes everywhere with me. I have tons of new stuff too, but nobody has made anything since that can make the sounds that these make. It’s as simple as that.
“Modern musicians are going back and discovering these instruments, which is great. You’ve got to remember that when I first got involved with them, there were no instruction manuals. We didn’t even have proper stands. I had to buy a chest of drawers, cut the drawers out and slot the keyboards in! Nobody made anything to support them. It was a real pioneering time of hassling the companies and yelling at them to make what you wanted. They were great. They really did listen back then. It was a fantastic time. None of us really knew what we were doing. We were just having fun doing it.”
A further example of Wakeman’s ‘learn by doing’ mantra is his session work. He describes playing alongside David Bowie (on Hunky Dory) and Ozzy Osborne (on 1995’s prog-influenced Ozzmosis) as “the most wonderful apprenticeship course”. One fellow in particular also gave him a certain appreciation for eccentricity.
“Lou Reed was quite strange,” admits Rick. “On the particular sessions we worked on, he insisted that the entire studio was blacked out. Completely blacked out. That’s what he wanted. It worked, and the thing that’s interesting – whoever you are working with, it’s very important to tune into them in the same way that you hope that people who are working with you on projects tune in with you, because if you’re on the same wavelength you’ll get the right results. Lou stood there, in the pitch darkness, and said, ‘Thanks very much!’.
“I went downstairs afterwards, there was a bar there and it was very bizarre because sitting there in the bar were Viv Stanshall from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Rolf Harris and Ronnie Barker. If I remember rightly, I got plastered with Viv and somebody took me home.”
Presumably not Mr. Reed, though stranger things have happened. Speaking of which, what’s Rick’s take on the divisive five-headed monster that is last year’s Reed/Metallica hybrid, Lulu?
“I love people who go a bit out of the ordinary and break a few rules,” he says. “I love things when you’re not expecting them. I’m not saying everything should be like that but I love strange combinations of people. I mean, why not? That’s how things progress, by trying things that are new. You’re always going to get mixed reactions, which that album did, but the proof of the pudding will be in 20 years’ time.”

Radio Nova celebrates its second birthday this month. Rick's show airs Saturdays from 6-8pm.