In 1975, fresh out of Yes and having established himself as the keyboard wizard of progressive rock, Rick Wakeman undertook the ultimate challenge: staging his concept album The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, live at Wembley — on ice.
It was a disaster. There was so much dry ice that Guinevere got lost, Wakeman’s cape got caught on a suspended keyboard and he was left floating in mid-air; after one knight failed to show up, this opponent had no choice but to commit stage suicide. Such are the hardships of the prog visionary. Wakeman has scaled things down since then, and as this concert proved, he didn’t survive five decades of rock fantasia without having a sense of humour.
“We have an interval because I have a bladder,” said Wakeman, still donning a glittering cape at 74. “If I come back next year, the first half will be eight minutes long.” Backed by a band he described as his “carers”, Wakeman let rip on a handful of early 1970s Yes classics including And You and I and Roundabout.
It allowed plenty of opportunities for the guitarist Dave Calhoun to jump from 12-string acoustic guitar prettiness to searing electric solos, the singer Mollie Marriott (daughter of the Small Faces’ Steve Marriott) to give it her all, and Wakeman to take off on all kinds of cosmic synthesiser odysseys. It also displayed how Yes, despite their image as the ultimate impenetrable rock titans, were above all musical. This was complex material, but accessible.
Wakeman’s 1974 album Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which made up the second half, hadn’t dated so well. The mix of musical theatre vocals and progressive grandiosity was hard to take seriously, not least when Wakeman took off on a jaunty keyboard solo to soundtrack a pitched battle between an ichthyosaurus and a plesiosaurus.
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Still, ludicrous youthful ambition and the mellowness of age made for a nice combination, and the standing ovation at the end was surely not just for Wakeman’s grand folly, but for the much loved, self-deprecating man himself.
★★★✩✩
At Bristol Beacon on February 28
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