The Hit Parader Interview
By Lisa Robinson
December 1974RICK WAKEMAN
[Part Three]
HP: What about your future? Do you have a band together?
Rick: Yes. I was very lucky really, in that we recorded the Festival Hall concert - and we were all able to listen back to it and really hear what it sounded like. Everyone really could analyze it, and I decided that I'm going to keep the same band that I used on it. I'll add another guitar player, but other than that they'll be those people. The good thing was that nobody really knew any of them. When I decided to do the concert everyone said you're off your head - with an orchestra and a choir and all. But I really believed that instead of writing a piece of music and then having it orchestrated, you could write a piece of music for the whole orchestra. I mean Mozart didn't sit down and write something for the piano, and then say, 'well, that's good. Now I think I'll orchestrate it.'
So I started off like that, and then I tried to look at things other people had done with orchestras - and to try and learn from their mistakes. There's no right or wrong really, but it never sounded live to me. David Mesham - who did the engineering told me that an orchestra has its own internal mix. That's why they're set up the way they are onstage - and you never see a symphony orchestra with thousands of mikes onstage. You hear the acoustic sounds because they set up accordingly. So we only used three mikes - one on the left one on the right, and one in the middle - so that we only heard the natural acoustic sound or the orchestra.
Next - I had to get the people. I went to see "Tommy" and ended up playing some of the piano stuff at the end. And I really felt that the music suffered because everyone who was involved was a face, and people weren't going to listen to the music - they were going to see ... you know, Rod Stewart's coming on next, and Maggie Bell's coming on next - and like that. And there certainly were lots of top class musicians about who people never heard of.
So I went hunting around in the bloody local pubs ... I went everywhere, and I came up with a bunch of musicians who people never heard of but who were willing to give their all and are just as good as any of the well known faces who are about nowadays. We went up onstage - with people who weren't known, and the whole thing had to stand up on the music. I went into a pub not fifteen miles from my house and there was a bass player in there named Roger Newell who was amazing. I sat in with him - I played a bit of piano and you can really pick them out if they're good musicians.
He wasn't doing anything particularly clever - but you knew he could if he wanted to. And we talked a bit about Yes and he said he liked "Heart of the Sunrise" - and played a bass line for me that was fairly difficult and then he said, 'I would have liked it if after that you had done something like this' - and he played this thing that was really hairy. So I said, 'Oh yeah? What are you doing on January 18th?' - so that's how he came along. And then I met the drummer and the singer... and Mike Egan who's the guitar player, he did all the stuff for me on "Henry".
He's a rare breed in that most guitar players want to be incredible superstars and stand up and leap about, etc. - but Mike is really tacit and he just wants to play, and has no illusions about being the greatest in the world. But if you stood him next to the greatest in the world - he probably would be.
HP: Will you be bringing "Journey" here?
Rick: Right, the orchestra and the choir and the whole thing. Really good players we can pick up along the way if we need them - and we'll bring the English Chamber Choir with us and David Hemmings and David Measham and - there are negotiations going on now, if David Hemmings can't do the narration I'd like to get Orson Welles. You know, it's funny. When we started, David was the only one interested in doing it - now the list is over 80 pages long ... The arrangements are all done, and if we have David Measham to conduct - which is very important because you have to have co-ordination between the narrator, the choir and the band - then the first concert would be at the Crystal Palace in England, and an English tour that would go through October 10th, then hopefully we'd come straight here.
HP: How did you manage to do something on such a grand scale and yet avoid sounding pretentious, or the music being excessive?
Rick: Well - there were so many people involved, and when you have people like David Hemmings and David Measham and the London Symphony Orchestra involved with you - if any of it didn't sound quite right, they'd be the first to tell me. If you do take what people have to say into account - like people would often make a suggestion with an arrangement or a certain part - then you avoid that sort of thing.
HP: Did it turn out differently than you originally intended?
Rick: Well - it took me about a year and a half - but it didn't really change. I mean if I went back and listened to the original demos of it and the actual recording now, it would sound worlds apart. But things changed in tiny degrees - week by week, so that you wouldn't really notice if you'd been following the thing all along.
HP: Do you feel that your music is in part educating young people to the classics ... you know, like sneaking Grieg in there and all?
Rick: No - that wasn't deliberate. There's a part in the book where the volcano stops and it's pushing up all the water and in one of the transitions it says 'I appeared to be in the hall of a mountain - as if a king were looking down.' So I said,'yeah, got to do that'. I mean music shouldn't educate, anyway, it's there to enjoy. If people want to be educated then they should be able to educate themselves. If they want to learn something that's up to them - if they want to sit back and listen to a piece of music and enjoy then they should be able to do that from the same piece of music.
