216. Rick Wakeman
Theatre Royal Drury Lane
27 February 2024
There are very few evenings in life when you find yourself sitting in a gilded West End theatre, surrounded by polite applause and the faint smell of Werther’s Originals, waiting for a man in a sequinned cape to lead you on a Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But this was one of them.
Rick Wakeman, the high priest of prog excess, had returned to Drury Lane, the very stage where, fifty years ago, he first performed his lava-lamp symphony to baffled critics and blissed-out fans. This was the “Return of the Caped Crusader” tour: part rock concert, part historical re-enactment, part pension top-up.
I was joined by a fellow prog aficionado, the only man I know who can discuss Tales from Topographic Oceans sensibly, and who had organised the tickets. Together, we took our seats amongst a crowd that looked like they’d all once owned a cape themselves and probably still had one hanging in the wardrobe “just in case.”
Wakeman took the stage to rapturous applause, his thinned silver hair gleaming like moonlight on a Moog. The cape was there, of course, blue and gold, shimmering under the theatre lights like the world’s most fabulous wizard. But the man beneath it? Sharp, funny, and delightfully self-aware. “You know,” he said, grinning, “I used to wear these capes because they made me look thinner. Now I wear them because they hide it all.”
He opened with a selection of Yes classics: “And You and I”, “Roundabout”, “Wondrous Stories”, each rendered with such warmth and virtuosity that even the most cynical souls couldn’t help but be impressed. His fingers danced across the keys with the same flamboyant precision that made him both a hero and a punchline in equal measure during prog’s glittering, chaotic heyday.
But then came the main event: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, performed in full; the album that once bankrupted a record label and cemented Wakeman’s legend as prog’s most gloriously excessive storyteller. The orchestra swelled, the choir shimmered, and Wakeman, surrounded by enough keyboards to qualify as his own postcode, guided us through molten rock, subterranean oceans, and the very limits of reason itself. It was magnificent. Ridiculous. Overblown. Oddly sublime.
Between songs, he proved once again that he might just be the funniest man in rock. He told stories about Yes rehearsals (“we never agreed on anything except lunch”), about the perils of touring with capes (“great for entrances, terrible near open flames”), and about the original Journey recording (“half the orchestra had no idea what they were playing, but they did it beautifully”). His humour was dry and unguarded; the godfather of prog admitting, yes, it was all a bit mad, but wasn’t it wonderful?
We sat there in reverent amusement, caught between awe and laughter. Here was a man who had played on some of the most intricate music ever composed by human hands and yet was perfectly content to mock his own mythology.
By the time the final crescendo hit, a tidal wave of organ, timpani, and choir that could have summoned Atlantis from the deep, the crowd were on their feet, cheering not just for the music, but for the man himself. Rick Wakeman, the caped wizard of prog, had returned: older, wiser, still hilarious, and utterly unrepentant.