by Rick Wakeman
The next morning, they called me out at assembly and ordered me to go to the headmaster’s study.
Now I was really shitting myself.
The headmaster, a Dr Evans, was sitting behind his desk looking less than happy.
‘Wakeman,’ he started, ‘I was very fond of my rose garden.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir, I lost control, it was my dad’s Ensign, you see, and my Anglia wouldn’t start and the brakes are terrible but not on the Ensign and I came in and hit them too hard and—’
‘Wakeman, you’re rambling. Stop. You are fully insured, I hope, Wakeman?’
‘Well, it depends what you mean by “insured” . . .’ I was still with Cloverleaf.
‘Oh, for God’s sake. And how many times did you lose control? There seem to be three or four different skid marks.’
‘Well, what happened was . . .’ I started to feebly explain.
‘Never mind, never mind, I don’t have the energy to listen. Look, you will have to pay for the damage to the rose garden and the lawn. I have spoken to the gardener already and he has given me an estimate as to what he feels it will cost. Further, you will be banned from bringing your car to the school.’
‘It wasn’t my car, sir.’
‘Wakeman, don’t push your luck. Now, the cost of repairs to my rose garden will be £35 which, I believe, is the same amount you were due to be paid for the dance band.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ I said, mortified.
‘Well, let’s leave it at that, then.’
Except it wasn’t so easy for me, was it? I’d promised the band £12 in total and they had played all night, as agreed. So for the privilege of playing a crap gig and destroying a rose garden, I was down by £12. I was gutted. It reduced my post office savings account by half.
They don’t make car names like they used to. After the cherished but catastrophic Ford Anglia was sold, I bought a Vauxhall Victor Super Estate, on a 1958 plate. What a name! I bought it out of the Evening Standard for £78. It was pure rust. The doors were actually attached at various points with string. There were some parts of the bodywork and interior that had been patched up with paper. It was beautiful.
Then it struck me – the headmaster and the school didn’t know this new car was mine. They were still on the lookout for either a blue Ford Anglia or my dad’s Ensign. There were quite a few of the teachers’ cars in the school car park so I figured that no one would notice me. The first day after I picked up the Vauxhall Victor Super Estate, I drove to school in it. I veered off into the car-park entrance and spotted an empty space. As I drove towards it, I noticed it was next to the headmaster’s own car, his pride and joy, a mid-1960s Ford Consul Classic Capri. This, I later learned, was the only thing in the entire world that he loved more than his rose garden.
I lined up the Vauxhall and took my time, determined to park this beauty perfectly.
I was – with the benefit of hindsight – going a tiny bit too fast, but nothing ridiculous and besides, the Vauxhall had proper brakes, not like the Anglia. You could stop it on a sixpence. I came in at quite a pace beside the headmaster’s car . . .
. . . It would have been absolutely fine if he had not still been in the car and just happened to open the driver’s door just as my Vauxhall arrived in the space next to him.
I did, indeed, park my car beautifully.
The only snag was that I took the headmaster’s Capri door off with me in the process and pinned it against a wall. I can still see him sitting there, shocked, with the door handle in his palm, looking first at me, then at the ripped-off car door now pinned on this wall.
He got out, brushed himself down and walked off.
Assembly comes and it’s, ‘Wakeman to see Dr Evans immediately, please.’
‘You are fully insured, I hope, Wakeman?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Fortunately, I had moved on from Cloverleaf. But the problem was that this accident had happened on private land, not on a public highway, so my insurance was invalid. Within twenty-four hours my post office savings account had been closed with a zero balance.
‘Any car you are driving is not allowed to come within a three-mile radius of this school, do you understand, Wakeman!’
This time I did as he ordered.
Although I did drive into his school car park one final time.
Six years later, to give a talk to the sixth-formers on a career in the music industry.
When Yes were Number 1 all around the world.
And I was driving a pure white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.
Fully insured, of course. And the headmaster had left his space free for me to park in too!
A BLOODY NICE CURRY
Life on the road.
Good times.
Once you are onstage, anything can happen.
Believe me.
I’m perhaps best known for my work with Yes, but before that band I was in a fantastic outfit called The Strawbs. I joined in 1970 and my year-and-a-bit with them proved very enjoyable and certainly very productive. The media picked up on my performances and magazines like Melody Maker even hailed me as ‘Tomorrow’s Superstar’, which was nice. It really propelled me to another level.
In the early days of The Strawbs, however, we played some bizarre venues. In May 1970 we’d been booked to play a circus in France. A promoter had had this brainwave to put on a circus but instead of having the usual big-top band, he’d use various rock and folk bands to accompany the different acts. It was a bit of a cock-up from the start, to be honest, because they got all the names on the poster wrong: Arthur Brown was ‘Alan Brown’, Heavy Jelly was ‘Really Jolly’ and The Strawbs were billed as ‘Les Strobes’.
The idea was that each band would play for a certain act, depending on the style of music. For example, Arthur Brown played for the lion tamer. I say ‘tamer’, but to be honest the lion was so drugged up that they had to drag the thing into the ring. When it got there, this lion just wanted to play and he’d roll around a little bit before the climax of the show when the lion tamer forced open the lion’s mouth and tried to shove a huge lump of meat down its throat. The very sparse crowd would applaud indifferently at the danger of it all while this lion lay disinterested, meat sliding out of the other side of its mouth onto the sawdust.
We – The Strawbs – played for the child jugglers, the tightrope walker and the man who fell off tables. The child jugglers only lasted five days before they ran out of plates; the tightrope was old, bendy and only about eight feet off the ground anyway so by the time this guy got to the middle he was just walking along the floor; and the man who fell off tables only lasted two nights because during the second performance he fell off a second-tier table and broke his leg.
Now, as I said, this was early days for The Strawbs so money was very tight. We used to earn about eighteen quid a week each from various shows. The circus was having all sorts of financial problems so no one really expected to get paid. I was new to the band, so I was only playing a little electric piano that was supplied for me at the gig.
I had one solo, one tiny little solo in the entire set, which I used to really look forward to. At the end of the first week of shows, we were playing for the tightrope walker and it was coming up to my twelve bars of solo. I was sitting there behind this little electric piano, gearing myself up in anticipation for my lone moment of glory. Suddenly there was a big cheer from the audience and I looked up to find an old man reminiscent of a Roald Dahl character standing onstage waving a stick in the air. Every time he waved the stick, the couple of hundred people watching would roar applause back at him.
Who the hell is that? I thought to myself.
Great.
I had one solo and some weirdly dressed stick insect with a ludicrous moustache from out of the audience had come onstage, started waving a stick and was about to ruin my big moment.
My solo was fast approaching and I was really pissed off, so I stopped playing, walked over and poked this old man on the shoulder. He turned around to f
ace me, complete with curly moustache.
‘Get off,’ I said.
He looked at the crowd and waved his stick again.
They roared their approval.
I poked him again. ‘I said, get off!’
He looked at the crowd again and waved his stick once more.
They roared again.
So I pushed him off the stage.
I went back to my little rented electric piano but by that time my solo had long since passed by and the guys were playing the next piece.
We finished our mini-set and afterwards Dave came up to me looking rather shell-shocked.
‘Do you know who that was, Rick?’
‘I don’t give a toss – he ruined my solo.’
‘It was Salvador Dalí.’
‘Was it? Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Oh, well, that’ll teach him to bugger up my solo in future.’
Sometimes it’s not who comes on the stage that is rather unexpected, but what. On my travels over the years, quite a few of these road stories have evolved and mutated to the point where the truth is long since lost. They’ve become rock ’n’ roll folklore. Like the time I ate a curry onstage.
I once heard the tale told on the radio that I had a waiter come out onstage with a silver tray and white napkin, serve the curry at a table decorated with a flower and a candle, and then I sat there and ate this meal while the band played on. Bloody hell, talk about Chinese whispers. Or, in this case, Indian.
What actually happened was this. It was the Tales from Topographic Oceans period in the UK with Yes; as I’ve mentioned, I was really struggling with the album and tour – there were a couple of pieces where I hadn’t got much to do and it was all a bit dull. In those days, I had this great big analogue keyboard set-up and, believe it or not, I used to have my roadie – my ‘keyboard tech’ – actually lying underneath the Hammond organ throughout the entire set.
There were two very important reasons for this. One, if anything went wrong – which it did on a regular basis back then – he could try and put it right . . . (although he rarely managed to do this. Mostly when something failed he would simply give it a ten-second once-over and announce, ‘It’s shagged.’)
. . . And, two, he could continually hand me my alcoholic beverages.
As I didn’t have that much to do we’d often have a little chat along the way; he’d be lying there and we’d talk about all sorts. This one particular night I thought he said, ‘What are you doing after the show?’
‘I’m going to have a curry.’
‘Right, what would you order?’
It seemed a strangely specific question, but I didn’t have much else to do so I told him.
‘Chicken vindaloo, pilau rice, half a dozen poppadums, bhindi bhaji, Bombay aloo and a stuffed paratha . . .’
‘Right.’
About half an hour later, in the middle of the next piece, I was playing along when I started to get this distinct waft of curry. Within a couple of minutes, the smell was overpowering and I noticed it was coming from by my feet. So I looked down and my roadie’s lying there holding up an Indian takeaway.
‘What’s that?’
‘Chicken vindaloo, pilau rice, half a dozen poppadums, bhindi bhaji, Bombay aloo and a stuffed paratha . . .’
‘What?’
‘You said you wanted a curry.’
‘No. I said I wanted a curry after the show . . .’
‘Oh.’
It smelled really good.
I still didn’t have a lot to do so I thought I might as well tuck in.
My keyboard tech passed up the little foil trays and I laid this lovely spread out on the Hammond and other keyboard tops. Chicken vindaloo over here, pilau rice next to it, some poppadums over there, a stuffed paratha and Bombay aloo on the Mellotron next to the bhindi bhaji: splendid.
The gig was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The Yes faithful had mixed opinions about Tales from Topographic Oceans – they either loved it or hated it and that particular night half the audience were in narcotic rapture on some far-off planet and the other half were asleep, bored shitless. But after about five minutes of opening this takeaway the smell of curry started to wake them up.
Jon came over to the keyboards. ‘I can smell curry.’
‘Yes, I’ve got chicken vindaloo over here, pilau rice, some poppadums over there, a stuffed paratha in the middle, Bombay aloo, bhindi bhaji: splendid. Tuck in, help yourself.’ He took a poppadum and went about his business.
The rest of the band weren’t too impressed at the time, although in later years they did laugh about it. And I tell you what . . .
. . . It was a bloody nice curry.
I very much enjoy playing gigs all around the world. One of the many reasons for this is that many countries have a different attitude towards music – money is not the key motivation like it is in the UK nowadays. Certain countries hark back to a previous time when it was all about the music and it was much more pure in that sense.
Of course, the focus on money has been happening in the UK and America for many years. I’ll give you an example. During the early 1980s, I played the Hammersmith Odeon, as it was called back then. We had three electrical systems: one that ran the gear onstage, one that ran the lights and one that ran the PA. This particular night, the one that worked the gear onstage was damaged and we lost all power. For once, this was not my fault – it was the fault of the Hammersmith Odeon. We’d still got a PA and some lights working, but nothing else.
Very quickly, it seemed apparent that there was a major problem which might go on for a while so, keen not to see the audience restless, I wandered up to the microphone and started to tell a joke while we waited for the power to come back on. I remember the joke very well. It was all about a woman stuffing food up her arse and the audience seemed to like it very much.
It went down so well, in fact, that I looked around at the anxious roadies and thought, Well, I’d better carry on. I stood there in front of the entire Odeon crowd and continued telling jokes.
Eventually, after forty-five minutes, I heard the sound of a guitar being tuned so I thought, Great, we’re back on.
We played the show and it went down a treat. Afterwards though, Deal-a-Day Lane came up to me and said, ‘That’s the most expensive joke-telling session you will ever have, Rick.’
‘Why? What are you talking about?’
‘Well, we’ve just been fined £2,000 for going past the venue’s curfew by forty-five minutes.’
‘That’s ridiculous, I was just trying to fill the gap and keep the audience entertained. I bloody well held the fort single-handedly in front of 4,000 people for the best part of an hour. That’s not my fault.’
‘But Rick, they had the power back on after thirty seconds.’
‘PROBABLY BEST TO BOOK IT IN YOUR NAME, RICK’
Celebrity is a funny old game, isn’t it? I’ve been around a lot of so-called ‘celebrities’ over the years and it always fascinates me how it affects different people differently. Sometimes, particularly within the music industry, it is not so much your celebrity as your reputation that goes before you.
Take Alan Yentob, then a producer and director, later to be Controller of BBC2.
Before Alan worked with me, he drank very little, didn’t smoke and spoke most eloquently. After two months of filming a documentary with me during my drinking days, he stuttered, smoked forty a day and drank like a fish.
I have apologised to Alan many times for this.
The programme was a series of documentaries called Success Story, one of which was about David Bowie and another of which was about me. Alan wanted to feature musical snippets of King Arthur and face-to-face interviews with me about my inspirations and ideas and so on. They were really excellent documentaries.
We travelled down to Tintagel, a picturesque village in Cornwall, to do some of the filming as this was supposedly home of King Arthur’s castle (as indeed are at least five othe
r sites). I told Alan that one of my band, namely the singer Ashley, would love to be filmed on a piece of rock jutting out of one of the cliff faces but Alan pointed out that this would require a crane and would create all sorts of logistical problems.
‘But Alan, his heart is set on it – is there any way we can do this for him?’
Ashley’s heart wasn’t set on it at all, as it happens, and I had actually told Ashley that this was something that Alan really wanted to film. Alan duly obliged, and a hoist with Ashley strapped to it was therefore flung out over the cliff face.
Which wasn’t ideal, as Ashley suffered from severe vertigo.
Which I knew, of course.
It took Alan four hours to get him back onto flat ground from the cliff face.
They had to call a helicopter and the coastguard.
These documentaries can take months to complete so one of the tricky parts of any production is continuity. For the first phase of filming I’d had long hair, crooked teeth and a beard. So you can imagine which way Alan’s blood pressure went when he knocked on my door ready to start the second phase of filming after a two-week break to find that I’d drastically cut my hair, had my teeth capped and shaved my beard off.
Another week of filming was planned for a pub called the Saracen’s Head in High Wycombe, where I used to drink regularly. Alan wanted to investigate if the drinking helped my art and performance or hindered it. He’d spoken to the landlord and the people around me and heard all sorts of figures about the volumes I was drinking. Naughtily, I had a word with the barman in advance so, with the cameras rolling, they brought my drink over.
A pint of milk.
‘What’s that?’ Alan asked.
‘Er, it’s Rick’s usual, Alan.’
‘Milk? Are you having a laugh? What about all these stories about boozing?’
‘Alcohol? Nah, never seen him touch a drop of the stuff.’
Celebrity has changed over the years. When I was sinking gallons of booze daily, there weren’t rehab clinics on every street corner. The rehab clinics that were known were mostly in America – even back then, you weren’t really, truly hip unless you went to one.