Without being morbid, I did one of the eulogies at Jon Lord’s funeral, standing very close to his coffin. It’s all there, and it means a lot to me. “You’ll have the original live version, plus a remastered version, plus the recent studio version, which for me is the definitive one, as it was meant to be. The renowned joker takes his day job seriously. With a Warners box set imminent, Rick’s belief in the va-va-voom of Verne is vindicated all over again. Of course in the end it was difficult, with A&M not wanting it, but I persevered by going to America… without Jerry Moss there would be no Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.” David said: ‘No, it’s not so difficult.’ And the moment I started pulling in a group of like-minded people, we were on a roll. I wouldn’t say it was that I’d lacked the courage to do it but I’d thought it looks very difficult. I liked being part of a team, but I’d always had clear ideas of other things I wanted to do. I was quite happy being a band member, both with Yes and Strawbs, and others. He said to me: ‘If you battle for what you believe in, and get people around you who believe in you, then you really can make things happen.’ That was key. He fought tooth and nail for that single to be stereo, which might not sound like much now, but there weren’t many stereo singles then. “One thing I’d learnt from David Bowie, while working on Space Oddity, was to fight for what you believe in. Long labelled the epitome of outlandish, pompous pretension, Journey… now sounds like someone’s thrown open the windows in the stuffy, cramped rooms of predictable, prescriptive, musical possibility. In 2012 the long-lost conductor’s score for the full story, with material pruned to make it fit a single album, mysteriously turned up, and Rick was able to put together a fully realised Abbey Road recording. The day after his lavish tour ended, with a show at Crystal Palace Bowl, he had a heart attack and went into hospital for nine weeks (where he wrote the King Arthur… album).īy May of ’74, Journey… was number one in the UK and number three in the US: nothing succeeds like excess. He defied common sense by getting his friends from the local pub band to play when names such as Clapton and Blackmore were being suggested. Famously, he remortgaged his house, flogged some cars, and received a writ for failing to pay the milk bill for two months. It cost a fortune, was unloved by the label in the UK until Rick took it to Jerry Moss (the M in A&M) in the US, and our caped crusader had to sell everything he had to make it happen. Wakeman recorded the original live at the Royal Festival Hall in January 1974, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the actor David Hemmings narrating. So probably I was the one that was wrong.’ I’ve seen him since and we laugh about it and he says, ‘I still don’t get it…’” Thankfully, there were millions of people who did. I used to sit in my office and think, but why should I fucking question it? He paid for most of this.’ He added that, ‘You don’t always have to like everything you release. ‘The interesting thing was,’ he said, ‘that I neither liked nor understood one single note of anything he ever recorded or played. The chap acknowledged that I had the label’s first UK Number One album and other massive sellers. “Many years later, with A&M long since sold off, this guy was asked about the history of the label – The Carpenters, The Police, The Tubes (who, by the way, I took to A&M co-founder Jerry Moss, Fee Waybill being a close friend) – and then they came to the ‘and Rick Wakeman?’ bit. So onstage, Rick, choosing the route of diplomacy, declared his gratitude to A&M and afterwards the pair shook hands. “But what was really brilliant, as I approached him, under the applause he leaned over into my ear and said, very clearly: ‘Don’t. Our man, waiting at the side of the stage, felt his jaw dropping with disbelief.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |