------------------------------------------------------- FEBRUARY 5, 2003 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Mixdown Monthly -- Issue #106 http://www.users.bigpond.com/apertout/Wakeman.htm Return to the Centre of the Earth – Part 2 By Adrian Pertout With the upcoming Australian ‘Yes’ tour, Adrian Pertout speaks with legendary keyboardist Rick Wakeman from the UK about his bygone collection of classic synthesizers, his film music career, as well as his ‘Return to the Centre of the Earth’ and ‘Yes’. Projects such as ‘The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table’, and Ken Russell's ‘Lisztomania’ were to follow Wakeman’s highly acclaimed ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ of 1974, as well as personal tours breaking every indoor attendance record. In 1976, he then rejoins Yes, recording ‘Going for the One’ and the top ten single ‘Wondrous Stories’, but leaving once again in 1979 together with Jon Anderson. In the eighties, highlights include the music for the horror film ‘The Burning’ in New York and ‘1984’, featuring Iyrics by Tim Rice and vocals by Chaka Khan, Steve Harley and Jon Anderson, not to mention a string of solo albums. A million selling CD worldwide in 1989 then revitalizes the Yes partnership yet again, with tours throughout America and Europe undertaken, while in 1995, after the completion of soundtracks for two Michael Caine films, ‘Bullet to Beijing’ and ‘Midnight in St Petersburg’, Rick is back for another Yes episode. In 1998, EMI then signs Wakeman to compose and record ‘Return to Centre of the Earth’, the sequel to his spectacular musical portrayal of Jules Vernes’ ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and a narration by actor David Hemmings. Now in 2002, he is back with the Yes team, Jon Anderson (vocals), Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass), and Alan White (drums), scheduled for world wide tour that will take them through to September of 2003. Q: How highly do you regard the old classic synthesizers today? What have you kept and what new technologies have you adopted since? RW: “I’ve still got a minimoog up there that is thirty years old, which is priceless and irreplaceable. But I haven’t got anything that was produced earlier than the eighties. I’ve got a Korg 01W ProX, which is a wonderful machine. That was made in the late eighties, about ’88, ‘89. That’s a great machine. Then I’ve got a few keyboards up there that were from the early nineties, and I’ve got a other few bits and pieces up there, including some prototype of stuff. I’ve got a wonderful Italian keyboard called the Pro Mega, it’s made by a company called General Music. It is astonishing! It’s just ‘the’ best piano sounds ever. The best cathedral-type organ sounds. The best Wurlitzer piano sound. It’s just an amazing machine. There’re some people making some great stuff out there now. So most of rig is made up of Korg, General Music and Roland basically.” Q: What about at home? Have you kept all your pre-eighties stuff? RW: “No, a lot of my stuff got nicked…” Q: Really? RW: “Yeah, it got nicked out of a warehouse a few years back, which I suppose was a pre-emptive, because I got divorced again – for the third time, a couple of years ago – so I don’t have a house anymore (laughs). ‘Cause it’s one of those things that seems to happen in divorces. You sort of donate your house and worldly goods, which is just as well because I’m on the road all the time. So I’m living in hotels. But it’s a good thing that I haven’t got it all because I haven’t got a house to put it in at the moment.” Q: So what sort of stuff did you lose? RW: “I lost about six minimoogs, a couple of Mellotrons, a Fender Rhodes, a huge long list of stuff. And some of it’s resurfaced. One of the Mellotrons, the famous double Mellotron resurfaced. And a guy got hold of it and rebuilt it, and that’s in a museum somewhere in America. And he contacted me to verify that it used to be mine, and I wrote back to him and said, ‘Yeah, it was stolen in nineteen whatever it was.’ And it completely freaked him out. He called up and said, ‘I didn’t steal it.’ And I said, ‘I know you didn’t, ‘because you’re hardly likely to have stolen it and then ring me up.’ And he said, ‘Do you want it back?’ And I said, ‘No, if you’ve rebuilt it, good for you. I’m glad that it’s got a good home, and I’m glad that it’s in a museum.’ So there you go.” Q: You also began a notable film music career that following year with Ken Russel’s ‘Lisztomania’. How did this aspect of your musical career evolve over the years? RW: “One of the great things – and again, I go right back to how we started, when I mentioned my dad – is that because he gave me an incredible music education, with everything from piano lessons, church organ lessons, clarinet lessons, and orchestration lessons with one of the greatest orchestrators. All those great things meant that in any genre of music that I got asked to do something, I felt I could do it, which was great. And I think that it’s one of the things that’s made my life so entertaining in many ways, because really no two days are the same – a slight exaggeration – but certainly no two months are the same. And I could be doing a film one month, out on tour with Yes on the other, doing a thing with a choir on the next one, or doing some jingles. That’s what makes it so great. I suppose the best way I can put it is that regardless of whatever my marital status is, or wherever I am, I love waking up in the morning.” Q: What led to the revisiting of ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ with the sequel launched in 1999? In what way would you say that this episode differed to the opening one? RW: “I’d been asked to do it for ages and ages. And it’s completely different. It’s a completely different piece of music, it’s a sequel. It’ basically a whole set of explorers who decide to follow the same footsteps as the original people did. So they set off, and in the original book when they get down into the base of the caverns, they’ve got a choice of two ways to go. In my version they come down, and even though originally planned to take exactly the same route, then decide to take the other one. So they have a whole new set of adventures, and come back out again. And I always knew how I wanted to do it, but knew that it would be phenomenally expensive. Unbelievably expensive. And then out of the blue, one day Sir Richard Littleton, the head of EMI Classics, came to me and said, ‘I’ve seen your synopsis for this Return to the Centre of the Earth. Have you got a budget?’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah. You won’t like it (chuckles). That’s why it has not been done.’ And he said, ‘Show me the budget.’ So I showed him the budget and he called me for dinner, and said, ‘I really want to do this Return to the Centre of the Earth, but…’ And I said, ‘God, you’re going to hit me with the budget.’ He said, ‘Yeah. I’ve looked at it, and I’ve been through it time and time again, and it doesn’t add up.’ And I said, ‘I knew you were going to say this, and it can’t be done any cheaper.’ He said, ‘No, no, no, I wasn’t going to say that. I’ve done the budget and I think that you’re a hundred grand short. I’ve worked it out and you’re going to need this extra time with the London Symphony Orchestra, and I don’t know where you got your budget for Patrick Stewart, but you can triple that figure for a start. I want to do it, so we’ll put another hundred in the budget.’ And I walked out stunned, absolutely stunned. And it took me nine solid months to produce that, and I’m really pleased with it. We did one live performance in Canada, which was a huge success, and I’d love to do it again. What I’d really want to do is to insert the first half, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and then do a second half, which is Return to the Centre of the Earth.” Q: There have also been several returns to the Yes project over the years with this particular one marking the 30th anniversary. What do you consider has been the effect of the past thirty years on the way that you do the music today? RW: “Technologically, we can do certain things with the music that we couldn’t do before. I mean, certain sounds that we had to almost bluff our way round, or get close to, we can now reproduce pretty well. Certainly, the technology makes life less fraught on stage, as I said earlier on; trying to keep things in tune, trying to keep things going was half the battle in the early days. Now I walk on stage with a very high tech rig knowing that everything’s going to work, and that all I’ve got to worry about is playing. So I think that there’s been a lot of pressure taken off when we’re on stage. The band certainly has matured, it’s playing better. There’s no doubt about it. The band’s playing technically better and musically better than it’s ever done. And the thing that’s really nice is that this band loves to play, and that’s a great bonus. The first question we ask when we arrive somewhere is, ‘What’s the earliest time we can start?’ They say, ‘Eight o’clock.’ ‘Is there a curfew?’ Yeah, eleven o’clock.’ So we time the set to finish literally, I mean seconds up to eleven o’clock. So we just like to play. And we’re doing some pieces we’ve never done before, like ‘South Side of the Sky’ from the ‘Fragile’ album. And that never had an ending, so it was great fun writing an ending for it. There are quite a few things that have actually changed, but I think that the most important thing is that you must never lose the character of what the piece originally was. If you can retain the character, then you can do anything you like with it.” Q: What do you intend doing after this world tour is over? RW: “The actual tour finishes around about the end of September next year (chuckles), so there’s a long way to go there. So I’ve really got no idea. At the end of the tour I’ll probably look for somewhere to live (laughs).” Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com