One afternoon [Wakeman] dropped by a local recording studio, where he spotted an odd little keyboard in the corner. The manager of the studio, Tony Visconti, told him it was a Mellotron, the spooky-sounding, electro-mechanical instrument made famous by the Beatles on “Strawberry Fields”. But it was so difficult to play that nobody in the studio could figure out how to use it. “Mind if I have a go?” asked Wakeman. Visconti and his recording crew watched in awe as the gawky kid made the mellotron sing.
“How’d you do that?” an engineer asked.
“Don’t tell him,” Visconti told Wakeman. “It’ll make you a fortune!”
Visconti asked Wakeman if he could come back to play mellotron for one of his artist’s recording sessions. After getting dropped off at the studio by his mother, Wakeman was greeted at the studio by a precocious young rocker whose eyes appeared to be two different colors. His name was David Bowie, and he wanted Wakeman to play mellotron on “Space Oddity”, the title track of his second album. “This will be a piece of cake for you,” he reassured Wakeman.
“Oh, okay,” Wakeman stammered.
“I take it you have played a piece of cake before?” Bowie replied. Wakeman, confused and nervous, offered no reply.
“Well,” Bowie went on, “maybe not then.”
The song launched a lifelong friendship with Bowie, and Wakeman’s career. He became rock’s go-to keyboardist, playing in countless sessions. In 1970, Melody Maker, at the time England’s most influential music publication, featured Wakeman on a cover story that anointed him “Tomorrow’s Superstar”. Bowie offered him a few key pieces of advice: get your own band, play with musicians who understand you, and, when it comes time to perform, “do what you want onstage, especially if you’re using your own money. Don’t let a promoter, agent, or manager tell you otherwise — they don’t have the imagination.”
Wakeman put the advice to use in the brashest of ways: He turned down Bowie’s offer to play in his sideband, the Spiders From Mars, and instead became the keyboardist for Yes. With its mystical lyrics, orchestral productions, Tolkienseque album art, and long, multipart songs, Yes exemplified progressive rock in all its technical breadth and portentous glory. Wakeman, who surrounded himself with keyboards and wore a cape to hide his arms after a critic said he moved like “a demented spider”, became prog rock’s most iconic star. “Here comes Rick, the caped crusader!” the band’s lead singer, Jon Anderson, recalls with a laugh. “He had a great sort of stance onstage, and very powerful energy. It really put him apart from any other keyboard player.” Or, as Wakeman deadpans, “I was Spinal Tap for real”.
David Kushner, “The Stranger-Than-Fiction Secret History of Prog-Rock Icon Rick Wakeman”, Vanity Fair, 2020-06-25.
August 12, 2025
QotD: Rick Wakeman – “I was Spinal Tap for real”
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