Rick Wakeman Quotes

Liszt was a bit of a rock and roller at heart, but he was a bit of a puritan on his sounds.

I had just left Yes and had done a concert at Crystal Palace, South London, with a choir and orchestra playing my solo album 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' when I had my heart attack. That day, I hadn't been to bed for four days. I don't remember much. I felt very numb during the day and airy, which is the best way to describe it.

I was in and out of Yes six times. Someone once likened it to Liz Taylor and Richard Burton's marriage where we couldn't live with or without each other. There's an element of truth, and I last left in 2005.

I avoid preset sounds wherever possible, and all the sounds I use I have edited.

I learned an invaluable lesson from a kid in Argentina when we were playing Buenos Aires in 2002. I came out of the hotel and this 16-year-old-boy asked me to sign his copy of my Six Wives of Henry VIII album. As I was signing it I asked him 'what does a 16 year-old like about this old music?' and he looked at me, quite hurt, and said, 'it might be old to you, Mr Wakeman, but I only heard it for the first time last week. When you hear something for the first time, it's new.' I've never forgotten that.

My faith is very private to me. It plays an important part in my life, but I do not try and throw my beliefs at others. I have tremendous respect for all faiths and beliefs, but have a deep concern that religion and faith are currently a long way apart from each other.

I cut out bread, I don't eat after 6 P.M., and I go on walks, and it's had a great effect.

Success is buried in the garden of failure.

Touring with Yes was generally great fun, and I got on well with the rest of the guys, but we were like chalk and cheese in many respects. I was unique in the band as a card-carrying Conservative.

People always said that I hated punk, and that really wasn't true. It was glossed over for many years that I was the guy who found the Tubes and signed them to A&M. English punk was a revolution.

I am a very extreme sort of character, as I don't do things by halves.

I've got an overactive brain. I enjoy work, I enjoy life, and I'm not good at relaxing. I've also never slept very much due to this overactive imagination and my brain constantly thinking.

I like Toronto a lot, it's a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you're turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting.

I had joined Yes in 1971. I was a classically trained musician who had worked with numerous artists as a session musician. I played on David Bowie's 'Life On Mars,' Cat Stevens's 'Morning Has Broken' and even on some Des O'Connor records, though I kept that quiet.

There are people who think the film 'This Is Spinal Tap' is simply a very funny 'mockumentary.' Well, with Yes, we lived it. Take the hilarious scene in the film in which the bass player is trapped in a giant pod - that actually happened to Alan one night.

I am a Yes fan, ultimately. I've been a member of the band, but I was always a fan of the band first.

Since the 1980s, I've been known more for my TV work, I used to host 'Live at Jongleurs' and of course 'Grumpy Old Men,' and so it's really all come from there. It's been a funny career really, there are people that know me now as a TV person, a comedian, an interviewer - I've had people genuinely gobsmacked to find out I am a musician.

When I die, I'll probably climb out of the coffin and play the organ at my own funeral!

My dad died in 1980, and I found out afterwards from mum that my piano lessons, which cost £2 a week, took up nearly a third of his income.

'Tales From Topographic Oceans' is like a woman's padded bra. The cover looks good, but when you peel off the padding, there's not a lot there.

My mother had never had a day's illness in her life and never thought to have checks. Then, at 78, she discovered she had breast cancer and passed away the next year. But if she'd had a check two years before, they could have done something about it, they could have saved her.

I read numerous books - loads in fact - and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henry's old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period.

I was born in 1949 - which seems like a long time ago ... Actually, it is a long time ago, when I think about it.

I joined Yes in July 1971. I had heard Yes live, as Strawbs had supported them at a gig in Hull. I thought they were amazing - incredibly different.

I'm a Freemason, and we love to celebrate Burns' night: piping in the haggis, the whole lot.

I've been married three times and divorced three times.

When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd.

But I listen to live recordings of things that I did back in the '70s and then how I've done things since. And there's no doubt about it: if I compare the two, it's like chalk and cheese.

I'm hugely fond of Scotland. My daughter, Jemma, was born in the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh, and it always tickled me that she was so vexed she didn't have a Scottish accent even though she was brought up down south.

But I'd play on everything from pop records to a lot of the glam stuff to rock stuff to classical stuff. I used to get called to do all those things, it was great.