Rick Wakeman – The Return of the Caped Crusader

Rick Wakeman – at The Egg 3/29/2024 – The Return of the Caped Crusader

A Review by Dick Beach

Known by many monikers these days, Grumpy Old Rock Star and The Caped Crusader amongst others, Rick Wakeman is a legend.  Not simply a legend, but one whose work is precise, flourished, unique and very well known.  As our fearless leader Art pointed out in a recent conversation – because ‘effing Rick Wakeman.  A member of the seminal prog band Yes on and off for 30 some years, as the writer and performer of albums such as The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, the soundtrack from the film Listomania and The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (as he tells it, the long title was to get 2 boxes when the album hit Billboard to be more noticed – they only used King Arthur as the title).

The Albany show at The Egg is the last on this leg of his short, final US solo tour – he is heading to Mexico tomorrow – and what an exit.

The seriously packed Egg was a mix, surprisingly, of both older (such and myself) and much younger fans.

At just short of 75 (Happy Birthday May 18!) Wakeman come on stage wearing white sneakers and a trench coat.  Get your minds out of the gutter you people you – this was a family show.  He also brought his A game.

Leading off with material from The Six Wives – there was no doubt that the years have been mostly good to Rick as his talents are not simply apparent, but also mesmerizing.  Alternating between a small dual keyboard electronic rig and a grand piano, his stories were fun and is play deadly serious.

In addition to his own works, he also played homage to David Bowie (with a medley of Space Oddity and Life on Mars and a story about his great respect for the man) and two Beatles songs – John Lennon’s HELP! and Sir Paul’s Elenor Rigby.  As Wakeman tells it, John wrote HELP as a ballad and was less than happy with the Beatles more upbeat version.  Each of which was recognizable as the theme, but with that only as Rick Wakeman could do it.  As he explained, HELP was done in the style of classical composer Saint-Saëns and Elenor Rigby in the style of Russian composer Prokofiev.  Now that takes some brass……ummmm……castings.

One of the features of a Rick Wakeman solo show is that he plays Yes material from his years with the band.  While looking for a new way to perform these, he (with an unlikely assist from his friend Dave Cousins of The Strawbs – hope I got that right) has been performing them as YesSonata – a loose medley of Yes pieces whose transitions change each time played.  The bridge between songs changes depending on his mood that evening.  How much fun is that?

For and hour and a half, we were provided excellent story telling and brilliant play.  Art was completely correct. Why?  Because ‘effing Rick Wakeman.

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