Grumpy Old Rock Star - Rick Wakeman

Keyboard player Rick Wakeman wrote and published a more conventional autobiography, Say Yes! in 1985. It has so far never been updated, and is long out of print. This volume, written with the aid of ghost-writer Martin Roach, takes a totally different approach. It is a selection of episodes from his sixty years in more or less random order. In theory it might seem rather disjointed, but in practice it works brilliantly.

As a trained ...
...2in) of British progressive rock, and who has toured most of the world, drinking it dry when given half a chance, he has some very funny tales to tell.

How did he get the sound of a waterfall for one of his albums, long before the days of electronic sampling made it all too easy? Who was that irritating man he once threw off stage for interrupting his keyboard solo, only to find he was not just a crazed fan but also one of the world's ... more

Keyboard player Rick Wakeman wrote and published a more conventional autobiography, Say Yes! in 1985. It has so far never been updated, and is long out of print. This volume, written with the aid of ghost-writer Martin Roach, takes a totally different approach. It is a selection of episodes from his sixty years in more or less random order. In theory it might seem rather disjointed, but in practice it works brilliantly.

How did he get the sound of a waterfall for one of his albums, long before the days of electronic sampling made it all too easy? Who was that irritating man he once threw off stage for interrupting his keyboard solo, only to find he was not just a crazed fan but also one of the world's most famous artists? How did he manage to smuggle a genuine KGB uniform out of Russia? What did his mischievous stage crew do with the inflatable dinosaurs which he took with him on an American tour as props for the show? What happened when he was wearing Rupert Bear trousers for the funeral of an aristocrat at which he was playing the organ, and was told rather too late that a morning suit was required wear? And as for that unfortunate episode involving his father's car and the headmaster's prized rose garden...well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

But it's not all laughs, and it does have its poignant moments. There is none more so than when he tells us that he was one of the last Europeans to play Argentina before the 1982 Falklands crisis, and how he met a fan from for whom he autographed a record after a concert on his last social outing before he was called up to fight in the war – and learned from the man's mother, some years later, that he had been called up and killed in action, fighting against the British. I was also struck by a thought-provoking chapter in which he writes about two working visits he made to Poland. The first was during the Iron Curtain days when everything appeared a different shade of grey, the second some time afterwards, and he was amazed to notice the changes for the better after the Berlin Wall came down.

I'm very glad he is still with us, not least as if he wasn't, we would never have had this uproarious volume. When it's serious, it is very serious. But as for the rest, it really is one of the funniest books I have read for a long time.

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