Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories

Tables of Contents

RICK WAKEMAN
is the most gifted keyboard player of his generation, as at home on stage at a rock concert as in the organ loft of a great cathedral. As keyboard player for the 70s supergroup Yes, his extraordinary live tours and multimillion-selling albums are legendary. He has also appeared on
Top Gear
achieving a lamentable lap time of 1.55.26.

MARTIN ROACH
, who collaborated with Rick Wakeman on this book, is a five-time
Sunday Times
bestselling author who has written more than a hundred books on music, entertainment and youth culture.

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This paperback edition published by Preface 2009

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Copyright © Rick Wakeman and Martin Roach 2008

Rick Wakeman and Martin Roach have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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I actually consider myself extremely fortunate to still be alive after all I’ve been through (well at the time of writing this dedication in June 2008 I was still alive anyway), and therefore be able to share some of my tales of the ‘unexpected’, ‘inexplicable’ and ‘unbelievable’ adventures as both a musician and a grumpy old man.

So many of my musician friends that I grew up with and worked alongside are sadly no longer with us, and so it is to all of them that I dedicate this book, as in their own way, they have all contributed greatly to my becoming a Grumpy Old Rock Star, of which I am immensely proud!

GRUMPY OLD ROCK STAR

AND OTHER WONDROUS STORIES

Rick Wakeman

with Martin Roach

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Simple maths . . .

On the day this book is published I will have been a professional musician for forty years.

People who know me well, know that nothing ‘ordinary’ ever happens to me and a ‘Spinal Tap’ tale of one sort or another will always seem to come about whether I am on the road touring, in the studio recording or just simply walking down the road!

So where does the maths come into it?

Well working on the very conservative estimate that at least three ludicrous things happen to me every year, then a simple calculation will tell you that at least 120 completely farcical events have happened in my life since 1968.

Work backwards through my semi-pro years, college and my schooldays and you’ve just added at least another hundred such stories.

Therefore, the final maths sum will tell you that potentially, this book is the first of a possible twenty volume set.

I never did like maths much.

MY LIFE AS A RUSSIAN DOLL

You know those Russian dolls, the ones that are made to fit inside each other? Well, I was one of those once.

Funnily enough, it was in Russia.

Music has gifted me the opportunity to travel all over the world – touring with Yes, taking my own solo shows around the globe, promotional trips abroad, it’s a lot of air miles. And I’ve come back with as many bizarre experiences as I have souvenirs. On one occasion it was the souvenir itself that put me in a very peculiar situation indeed.

I was booked to do a TV show in Moscow, deep behind the Iron Curtain. The trip was right in the middle of the Cold War, and East/West relations were not good. I’d travelled there before and loved the country – I used to come home with my suitcase crammed full of souvenirs. With $20 in cash, you could buy the world. The kids and family all loved the red T-shirts with the hammer and sickle on them, the woolly fur hats . . . standard tourist fayre.

Luckily, the customs officers at the airport tended to turn a blind eye to all this black-market stuff.

Apart from the KGB uniform I bought from a total stranger in a dark alleyway.

What’s all this got to do with a Russian doll, you say? Bear with me . . .

My hotel was typical of the type used by Westerners. Police guards on the main doors and barricades outside. You were told there were places you could go, places you couldn’t, things you could do, things you couldn’t. Admittedly, it could be quite difficult because the British and American politicians didn’t trust the Russians and the Russian politicians didn’t trust the British or Americans.

I loved the Russians and got on with them great. The TV show went very well and myself and the band had a lovely time. It was only after the filming that things started to get complicated.

It was no secret that the Russian black market couldn’t get enough dollars. The buck could buy you anything, and I mean
anything
! Funnily enough, the dollar bills themselves had to be crease-free, in absolute mint condition. They also needed to be low denominations, one or two dollars ideally.

This one particular day I slipped a dollar into the hand of the policeman on guard at the door of my hotel and went off wandering. It was
freezing
, properly cold. I was wearing this absolutely huge coat I’d bought in America which was like a rancher’s coat – it was massive. As I trotted off down the street, I looked like Mr Blobby crossed with J. R. Ewing. Any Westerners wandering around certain dingy backstreet lanes were so easy to spot and with my hair, height and rancher’s coat I was like a beacon of the West crunching loudly through the snow. It wasn’t long before I was approached by a very suspicious-looking character who’d clearly bought his battered old brown suitcase from Arthur Daley or Del Boy Trotter. Most of these characters actually knew me because, as I’ve said, I’d been over a few times and was always a willing customer. You’d walk along a main street
and from the shadows of a dark alley you’d hear, ‘Mr Wakeman, over here, you buy T-shirt?’ These ‘entrepreneurs’ would then open some dusty old suitcase and offer you perhaps five T-shirts for a dollar. They weren’t exactly the finest quality but I always bought quite a few and enjoyed our little chats.

However, on this occasion, it wasn’t a paper-thin T-shirt that I was offered.

It was a genuine KGB uniform.

Out of a suitcase.

From a complete stranger down a back alley, off the beaten track in the middle of Cold War-entrenched Moscow.

Don’t ask me why, but when this man whispered for me to go down this shadowy dead end to look at what would obviously be illegal merchandise, for some reason unknown to my right-thinking mind I did. He huddled behind a wall and opened up his case, saying, ‘Here, KGB uniform. Is good.’

I knew this was playing with fire. Being in possession of a KGB artefact or uniform was considered a very serious crime.