Gonzo 2025
The Official Broadcast Collection
Spectacles of fingers that dance across the boards: the Caped Crusader’s earnest quests – as familiar and obscure as myths and legends – get packaged into a neat, if imperfect, box set.
Despite the fact that there’s no deficit of Rick Wakeman multi-volume anthologies, the arrival of another is always exciting, because, notwithstanding his allegiance to a single type of instruments, the British maestro used to remodel his craft, stylistically and presentation-wise, for decades, particularly in a live environment. This collection expands the veteran’s legacy by bundling, in a tentative context but not chronologically, a bunch of Wakeman’s recordings, half of which have already seen the light of day and half make their official debut here. There’s no booklet to add historical perspective to these six concerts spread over ten CDs and five DVDs, yet it’s a treat to be watching Rick’s constantly fluctuating, if not uniformly riveting, performances.
Two of the concerts unfolding on both types of discs – concerts hosted, respectively, in a small theater and TV studio, in 1989 and 1990 – come from Swansea and Nottingham and feature the same line-up. Filmed with a focus on Wakeman’s hands and his overall setup, often shot from above, these find the ivories virtuoso in a plastic era he had to navigate trying not to lose neither creative spirit nor sonic scope of it all. The former sees the befrocked Rick and his friends, with the equally mullet-ridden Ashley Holt shouldering a lot of emotional weight, in a confined space, so David Paton’s dry bass and Tony Fernandez’s toms feel very dramatic on “King Arthur” and “The Last Battle” that open the show. The latter, full of irritating appearances of cameramen on screen, seems a little too sterile and a little too serious, as Wakeman – garbed in a garish shirt and ruling the game from his center-stage crow’s nest – is transporting his perennials to a contemporary sort of synthesizers sound, bolstered by Holt’s electronic percussion, which complement, and challenge to a duel, Fernandez’s kit. Still, the strength and fine detail of the invigorating “Catherine Parr” – rejigged to suit the period demands – win the day and shine through, assuming fresh colors when played next to numbers from Rick’s then-latest album “Time Machine” and, in return, giving them the gravitas of timelessness. While on “Make Me A Woman” Ashley’s vocals tend to be hoarsely sentimental, in a rhythm-and-blues manner, they will grow monumental, albeit not overtly operatic, on “Journey To The Centre Of The Earth”: the only piece preserved on all the audiovisual documents on offer.
Done in various configurations, either almost entirely or partially, this epic best demonstrates its ever-changing arrangements and frequently shifting structural elements, up to excising the Grieg quote, as the clearest sign of “Journey” being a quintessentially progressive opus. Coming across as the least dynamic in Nottingham, even paler and poorer in terms of improvs than in Swansea, it rocks hard in 2001 report from Porto Alegre, as Ant Glynne’s guitar riffs and slider rolls propel the caped Wakeman’s underground adventure to delirious delights. It becomes genuinely majestic, if not as interesting to watch, in 2014’s concert from Buenos Aires, supported by, like back in the '70s, symphonic orchestra, who take ample melodic load off Rick, a choir and a narrator to recite the text in Spanish. Florencia Benitez sharing singing duties with the faithful Ashley and engaging in a top-notch call-and-response with him on “Ride Of Your Life” for an encore, on which Dave Colquhoun’s guitar does a bit of jive-talking, may fetch passionate angle to the Argentinian run, but Portuguese-speaking punters would witness “Journey” upgraded in some aspects.
On Brazilian discs, it’s sculpted by vintage and modern keyboards, with Rick’s son Adam’s organ vignettes and vocal harmonies and Lee Pomeroy’s bass rumble providing a deeper scope to the proceedings that Damian Wilson’s mightily supple pipes supply, in turn in a relaxed and intense manner, a story for. Wide shots of this gig render the show more panoramic yet less intimate, as stressed by the comparison with a Sweden one from 1980, where a similar ensemble look much closer-knit, with a fusion edge to the performance, sharpened by axeman Tim Stone’s fluid passages and Steve Barnacle’s slapped bass. Holt’s singing the choral lines of two of the retrofuturistic “Six Wives” portraits before retreating to congas and letting Wakeman, resplendent in an electric-blue jumpsuit but located further from the front, lead the way, with Mini-Moogs reigning supreme, into the brilliantly histrionic, deliberately rough-hewn assemblage of “No Earthly Connection” highlights and beyond.
Gracing five of these outings with and without lyrics, which weren’t part of the original recording anyway, “Merlin The Magician” reflects the temporal flow of aural fashions as well. Brisk and merrily robust, especially when a pair of keytars are brandished for a pater-scion head-butting duel, it’s mysteriously missing from the Nottingham DVD – although previous editions of the same contained it. However, it’s there on the CDs that include the rare delivery of the cheesy, yet arrestingly bombastic, jazz-tinged romp through the rather polished “No Earthly Connection” medley alongside “Sea Horses” – delicately painted and nigh new-age-intangible. It’s there to serve as the finale of the magnificent, if differently shaped for each tour, “King Arthur” whose alternative readings appear on three other mementos here.
This suite is frivolously funky in Karlskrona, with “Galahad” augmenting the customary sections and Wakeman prowling the planks while his group go for a wigout, and loose, with Glynne’s impressive flights of fantasy, in Porto Alegre, where shorter pieces follow the two album-long evergreens. There are the wondrously extended “Catherine Howard” and selections from “1984” plus the muscular, despite Ant breaking a string, “Starship Trooper” – the sole YES track in the whole collection, one as far removed from the familiar template as possible and enhanced with the “Heart Of The Sunrise” intro – and the unexpected full-band handling of “Eleanor Rigby” which Rick usually did on his own.
Most of what’s on both CDs and DVDs in this box set, no matter how diverse it is, is in stage formats Wakeman’s fans know well, and that’s why the only show which doesn’t have videos attached, a London concert from 1987, might possess the strongest allure of all. Ramon Remedios cut several albums with Rick, yet seldom joined him in public, so hearing the Liverpudlian’s classical tenor live on “Welcome The Star” and “The Hour” from the then-recent “The Gospels” should send chills down the listener’s spine. Soaring high over the backdrop of BBC Radio Orchestra and choir who elevate “King Arthur” and “Journey” and transform “Sea Horses” and “Gone But Not Forgotten” into atmospheric experiences, the instrumentalists and Ashley bring forth the very gist of Wakeman’s art. Rick’s also spinning his humorous yarns to tether music to the ground, but “Robot Man” – where both warblers are featured – and a couple of “Wives” allow Wakeman to marry solemnity to levity, abetted by Paton and the solidly omnipresent Fernandez, whose grooves, woven tightly around the keyboards, push “White Rock” and “Summertime” to the brink of bliss.
With “Overture From 1984” and “After The Ball” to move it all towards utter rapture, this recording has been sourced from FM, so it has great sound, which can’t be said of the rest of the “Broadcast” material. There was no effort made to restore picture quality on DVD, and assorted CDs incorporate redundant intros and credit-accompanying speeches that got transferred directly from video. The value of “The Official Broadcast Collection” lies in the performances, nevertheless, and again, Rick Wakeman’s concerts are always exciting, so drilling into the six shows will captivate many an aficionado.
****
