The Hit Parader Interview
By Lisa Robinson
December 1974RICK WAKEMAN
[Part Four]
HP: You mentioned in our last Hit Parader Interview with you that you had a son, and you wanted him to learn the piano and the Moog?
Rick: Right, I've got two little horrors - one is two and a half and the other is three months. Now what happens with the Moog - when you take into account that it's really become the rich keyboard player's toy ... you can technically learn to play it without learning too much about knobs and dials if you just want to make noises. But that defeats the whole idea of the instrument. If you have to learn it from nothing - the way you do with the organ ... all the pedals and stuff, then you could really have some exciting keyboard players. What happens all too often though is that people get their keyboards together and then play the Moog afterwards.
I thought that if my little boy is musical - what would be interesting would be for him to start out on the piano and learn the Moog at the same time. There really are only a few people who use it right ... Walter Carlos ... Nobody really understands it fully. I've been at if for five years and I don't get it all. Keith must have been at it for 6 or 7 years and he doesn't understand if fully. Only Walter Carlos comes close ... it's just one of those instruments that you can go on learning about forever ...
HP: What about your next album?
Rick: I'm not doing any more albums. (Laughter)
HP: Ever?
Rick: After the American tour - which should end about the end of November - we will start - maybe not finish, but get something down that we can start thinking about. Then we'll go off to Japan and Australia and do another tour, and then come back - analyze what we've done, and do more from there.
HP: Do you have a concept?
Rick: Well, I often change my mind but I'm thinking of doing something totally musically removed from what I'm doing now. See the country around Devon - where my house is, is near the last county you come to which is Cornwall. King Arthur came from there - called Tintagil and I'm thinking of basing the whole thing around the myth of King Arthur. So many things - the round table ... Merlin the magician, the various knights. I stayed on a farm near Tintagil for many years, I was very young, but I've never forgotten it. It's really an amazing place.
The place we've got in Devon is only about 50 or 60 miles from there so I'm going to have a look again and then delve into the history before I actually start writing.
HP: "Journey" actually was Number One in England wasn't it? And it went right on the charts here ...
Rick: Went right in at 78 on the Billboard charts. It's always a good move to buy shares in Billboard. (Laughter.)
Photos by Lee Black Childers
