Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories

by Rick Wakeman

  You will recall how worried I was when I realised there was still a KGB uniform in my suitcase as I sat in Igor’s security office in Russia. Looking at the colossal loss I stood to make on King Arthur on Ice was the exact opposite feeling. I was reading about

  9.8 on the ‘Don’t-Give-a-Toss-o-Meter’ by this point. ‘If it’s going to be done, it should be done properly. Decision made, chaps. King Arthur on Ice it is!’

  Building the set was like being involved in one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. We started to get the castle built first and I spent hours and hours in meetings with carpenters and builders, explaining about ramparts and how they would need to accommodate the orchestra and the choirs. At the same time, we’d shipped in the skaters and were rehearsing them like crazy. I was loving every minute.

  Meanwhile, the media were all over the idea. They were particularly interested in my having said there’d be horses involved.

  On ice.

  ‘Are you definitely saying you are going to have horses on ice, Rick?’

  ‘Absolutely, it’s going to be fantastic. There will be a lot of horses.’

  By the time we got to three days before the three performances, all the tickets had sold out but the RSPCA, an organisation for the prevention of cruelty to animals and even Brent Council were mercilessly interrogating me about the possible dangers to these horses.

  I calmly explained that we’d created these special stables outside Wembley, down by the artists’ parking area, and that everything was in order. I then invited about fifty of the world’s biggest newspapers and magazines down to show them these horses. The RSPCA and Brent Council representatives were there too, plus protesters ready to spit feathers when we unveiled the animals.

  Except they weren’t actual horses, were they?

  I’d never said that.

  I’d just said there’d be ‘horses’. In this particular case, they were men on hobby horses. Skating round through dry ice so you could only see their top halves. To be fair, there wasn’t one journalist who didn’t laugh when these dozen or so blokes on pantomime steeds trotted out. Even the RSPCA people laughed, because they saw the funny side and were just glad it wasn’t an issue. The only people who didn’t laugh were the ones from Brent Council, who were just slightly left of Stalin. They didn’t like it one bit.

  Come the actual performances, I absolutely loved every second.

  There are two defining moments from the King Arthur on Ice shows that stick in my mind. Firstly, the nuns. The opening night had gone brilliantly. At the end of the first half, we had about a dozen female skaters dancing around in a Charleston style: it was really very striking, a great little taster for the second half. When they’d finished, I used to say to the band, ‘Hey, guys, what do you think of that?’ and they’d hold up score cards with 9s and 8s on them. Then I’d say, ‘And what do you say to working for me for nothing?’ At which point they’d flip the cards over to spell out the word ‘Bollocks’. The audience loved it and it was all good fun.

  On the second night, however, I hadn’t really looked around the audience before I got to this section. I was just introducing the ‘score cards sketch’ when my eyes fell upon the seating block nearest to where the cards would be held aloft . . . it was full of nuns. There must have been 200 nuns sitting there, all pristine and proper.

  Right on time, but with a sinking feeling in my stomach, I asked for the scores and the band duly held up some 9s and some 8s. The nuns all chuckled and a few polite handclaps rippled across the ice from their seats. I had no intention of making the joke about working for nothing but, unfortunately, the band didn’t know that and just wanted to hit their cue.

  Which they did, beautifully.

  Bollocks.

  The nuns howled with laughter!

  The second defining moment of King Arthur on Ice was on the last night. Before the show, Tony Burdfield came to me and said, ‘Rick, do you know you’re one skater short? One of them is off sick.’

  I wasn’t too bothered. ‘That’s all right, Tony, there’s that many of them . . .’

  ‘Yes, but Rick . . .’

  ‘Tony, no one will notice, don’t worry.’

  ‘OK, Rick, I’m just letting you know . . .’

  The show was going along swimmingly until we came to a piece called ‘The Last Battle’. It was a fantastic sight, I have to say, all these magnificent skaters dressed as knights with their wooden swords, an incredible light show, dry ice everywhere, it was remarkable. Out of the dry ice these horses’ heads were visible, twenty-five on each side of the rink facing off for the final climactic battle. They would then skate around and face each other in pairs, where they would have a choreographed sword fight before simultaneously ‘killing’ each other and disappearing beneath the dry ice.

  Just as ‘The Last Battle’ commenced, the penny dropped as to why Tony was worried about having a skater off sick. He was one of the knights which meant we had an odd number, twenty-four on one side and twenty-five on the other. The consequences were dawning on me too late, however; the knights were swirling around the rink majestically and then, bang on schedule, paired up to commence their sword fights and finish each other off.

  Except of course for the one odd skater who was floating around aimlessly, looking for someone to kill and be killed himself. He was out of luck. His intended target – the missing knight – was at home in bed with gastroenteritis.

  By now, the orchestra, the band, the choirs, the lighting crew, everyone had twigged. I remember David Measham, the conductor, looking at me and I just mouthed, ‘Keep going, keep going!’

  By now, the audience were starting to do the maths too so, as the numbers of knights dwindled, all eyes were on this lone warrior. The poor sod was skating around on his own, trying desperately to look like it was all planned. Eventually, of course, there was no one left but him and so for about a minute he skated around the rink, the whole of Wembley Empire Pool looking at him in anticipation. It felt like an eternity.

  How he thought to do what he did next I will never know. But it was pure genius.

  He simply stopped, plunged his sword into himself and committed suicide.

  Genius.

  It was a work of art.

  King Arthur on Ice was one of the best times of my life. I loved every single minute: the preparation, the rehearsals, the music, the performances, everything. I would give my right arm to do it all again. It has gone down in rock ’n’ roll folklore as one of the most extravagant shows of all time. In the countless polls that magazines like Q run every year, it nearly always comes out in the top three in both the ‘Best Live Show’ and the ‘Biggest Folly’ sections. I don’t care about the latter, it was amazing. We were pioneering. This wasn’t a 3-D hologram castle, we built the bloody thing out of wood. It wasn’t special effects, it was all human-led, real life in front of your eyes. As far as I know, it was the first time a hung PA had been used in the UK. In many ways, those three nights on ice were very innovative. There is nothing to beat what I call a ‘human spectacular’ where everything that is going on is created by people – musicians, singers, actors, dancers and so on.

  Everyone who took part in King Arthur on Ice has a story to tell.

  A few years back, I spoke to the skating superstar Robin Cousins about the show and he was telling me that the technology has advanced so much that we could now do so much more: the ice doesn’t need to be flat, they can freeze a rink much, much faster and you can even tour these shows. America would have been perfect because they have ice hockey stadiums absolutely everywhere; Eastern Europe likewise, albeit only once the Wall had come down. But back when I did it, the logistics meant it simply wasn’t a show that could stand on its own two feet (or skates), even selling 15,000 tickets every night. So, sadly, we only ever did those three nights; I’ve performed King Arthur all over the world but only ever three times on ice.

  Of course, as the money men had predicted, I lost a fortune across those three nights.
But within eighteen months the King Arthur album had sold an extra 10 million copies.

  Absolutely priceless.

  When a musician tours, he or she needs insurance. It’s not just for their own health cover, it also deals with what might happen if 10,000 people get to a show having paid for tickets and the show is cancelled for one reason or another. Insurers know the rock world isn’t the safest of places to issue premiums, but there are several risk-takers who deal with this kind of business.

  When it came to taking King Arthur to America (without the ice extravaganza), I could understand why insurers weren’t beating a path to my door to cover me. I was only in my mid-twenties and had already had two heart attacks. I was under strict medical advice to stop smoking and drinking, both of which I patently wasn’t doing. I was on tablets that were like little capsules of TNT and were designed to pretty much blow up your veins if you felt chest pains to allow any clot to pass through. And, finally, I was about to fly out to perform several highly demanding and lengthy shows across numerous American states, all the time inhabiting the far-from-healthy world of rock ’n’ roll.

  I was expecting a pretty horrid premium.

  In fact, not one single insurer would touch me with a bargepole.

  Not one.

  The shows were already booked.

  So I decided to go without insurance.

  We made an agreement with the promoters that before each show I would have an ECG and if that said my ticker wasn’t about to implode, then we’d do the gig. It was a long tour and it was quite some logistical achievement to get an ECG before every show but somehow we did it. I learned not to have one too soon after landing in a plane, as that can affect your heart rate hugely. Tricks of the trade, eh?!

  I also learned that my heart rate and ECG reading seemed to improve vastly depending on how many free tickets to the show I handed the hospital staff. I was doing really good business at the time with two Top 5 albums, so tickets were pretty scarce. I’d go in for an ECG and they’d come in, start wiring me up and – you could almost time them – they’d say, ‘Rick, you don’t, by any chance, sorry to ask, have any tickets for tonight?’

  ‘Yes, of course . . .’ and then they’d do the ECG.

  Which, if I failed, would mean the cancellation of the show that they’d just been given free backstage passes for.

  Not the most objective of medical advice.

  Night after night, according to the paperwork, I was one of the fittest, healthiest men on earth.

  HERR SCHMIDT’S FISHING TRIP

  I tell you one thing that’s a pain in the backside when you are a touring musician. Bloody visas. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had visas go adrift or arrive late. The problem nearly sent me to a Siberian labour camp once, as you know, but that wasn’t the last time I had troubles.

  Take Paraguay in 1980. I was living in the south of France at the time – I didn’t really want to live there but my missus did, so that was where I lived. I was booked on a tour of Brazil but there was a problem with my visa.

  Oddly, there was a rule about the ‘featured artist’ which stated that only the main performer needed a visa, while his supporting band didn’t. So my band could travel there without a hitch, but I was stranded. At the time I had a tour manager called Barry the Perv. Most of the band used to buy Autotrader to read on the various bus and plane journeys but Barry would always turn up with a copy of Underwear Unlimited or some other seedy little top-shelf mag. And he used to sweat quite profusely.

  I tell you what, though: apart from being a sweaty perv, he was a great tour manager and a very funny guy.

  So I get this phone call from Barry the Perv. He explained that Joan Baez had recently been in Brazil and at her opening press conference had laid on some fairly heavy political criticism of the government. The authorities did not take to this lightly and had subsequently stopped her from playing the shows.

  ‘So why is this a problem for me, Barry?’

  ‘Because they’ve stopped issuing visas to visiting featured artists until further notice, Rick.’

  Great.

  ‘But it’s all right, Rick,’ continued Barry the Perv, ‘I’ve spoken to the promoter and the right backhanders are being dropped in all the right places. I can’t get a visa before you go, but you can get to Rio posing as a tourist, and then we can go from there.’

  Sounded like a plan.

  I arrived in Rio and waltzed through passport control and customs. I was very well known in Brazil at the time and probably the only ones unaware that I was there for a tour were those in cemeteries.

  ‘Are you just holidaying, sir?’ etc., etc. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ and I was through. Barry had already arrived so we scooted off to the hotel to meet the promoter. When we got there, the promoter walked into the room and said, ‘Right, welcome to Brazil, Mr Wakeman. Now you’ve got to go to Paraguay.’

  ‘What? Right now? Why?’

  ‘No, relax . . . in the morning. To get your work visa. They are not issuing them here, as you know, but we have arranged a backdated one to be issued in Paraguay. You will be met at Asunción airport – here are your tickets, here is an envelope,’ he explained. ‘Hand this envelope to the man at the visa office in Asunción.’

  ‘I’m not handing over any envelope,’ I interjected, ‘to anyone in Paraguay without knowing what’s in it.’

  ‘There’s five $20 bills, Rick. Barry will go with you, he must travel too.’

  So we were all set – all we had to do was travel under the false pretence of being tourists to a country with a collapsing economy and a legacy of SS- and Nazi-sympathising, where we would hand over an envelope to a complete stranger in exchange for what I was now beginning to realise was probably not the most ‘legitimate’ work visa.

  Barry had started sweating (without the use of one of his many magazines).

  When we landed at the airport in Paraguay I was surprised to be met by quite an entourage, including a television crew. I was not surprised to find that the man in charge was German. He was old and appeared to have a leg missing. Much later, I found out he was a former Second World War pilot. So off to a flying start, then – if you’ll excuse the pun.

  No ‘Welcome to Paraguay’ this time. The boss man just briskly shook our hands and said, ‘Please come viz me.’ The entourage – all with strong German accents – led us to a large blacked-out Mercedes, opened the doors and we climbed in. The car then glided out of the airport – no customs this time – and into the streets.

  I was sitting there with Barry the Perv, taking this all in while looking out of the window at the passing scenery. There were hundreds of normal houses but then every few miles you’d see a huge mansion with a big driveway and the occasional swastika on the gate.

  ‘I don’t like this, Rick, I don’t like this at all,’ said Barry, sweating.

  ‘Look, just keep calm, we’re here now. If you want to get paid for the show, the show has to happen and for the show to happen we have to do this. It’ll be all right.’

  We arrived at a hotel and were given separate rooms. Another man with a German accent came into my room and said, ‘You may phone for ze room service. There is not ze room service at zis hotel, but for you two, zey will bring ze food. You can go to ze bar but do not leave ze hotel.’

  At that exact moment, Barry the Perv bounced into the room and shouted, ‘Rick, I’m trying to phone England and I can’t get a sodding outside telephone line . . .’

  Ze German looked at Barry and then at me, one single precise eyebrow raised.

  ‘You’re not helping matters here, Barry,’ I pointed out.

  We were politely informed that we were not allowed to make any phone calls either.

  ‘Ve vill pick you up in ze morning. I repeat, do not leave ze hotel.’

  Once again I was waiting for Harry Palmer to walk into the room.

  He didn’t, nor did Michael Caine.

  I had Barry the Perv.

  We went to the
bar and sank more than a few drinks. The Germans were actually very nice folk, likewise the people of Paraguay. (I have a theory that if you are in a band and a drinker, people are more accommodating; if you are known as a druggie band, people can be a lot less tolerant, as many of my peers found out.)

  The next morning, the Germans arrived as agreed. We got back in the Merc and drove off to a town just outside Asunción. It seemed quite a small place, so I was sure that we’d soon see an embassy or official-looking building looming large around a corner.

  Then the car started to slow down.

  And stopped outside a newsagent.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ I asked, thinking that someone needed a paper.

  ‘Up zeez stairs, zis is ze Brazilian embassy.’

  Above a bloody sweet shop.

  ‘You vill meet zis man, he is a Brazilian, he vill sort out ze visa.’

  I dutifully climbed these rickety stairs to this tiny room above the sweet shop, a million miles from Mervyn Conn’s solid oak staircase in the West End. At the end of the landing was a small room, just big enough for about four people to fit in, with a glass partition in the facing wall much like the ones you get at a doctor’s reception. A woman opened the glass sliding panel, said, ‘Yes, take a seat,’ then went out of view and appeared from behind a door, beckoning me through. Inside this room there were six wooden chairs and little else.

  We sat down and waited.

  Barry was sweating. A lot. He was getting very paranoid.

  ‘We are going to get killed, Rick,’ he was saying. I noticed he wasn’t browsing through a mag from his extensive porn collection now. ‘We’re never going to be seen again, Rick,’ he continued.

  ‘Barry, if you don’t bloody well shut up, I’ll make sure you’re never going to be seen again.’

  We were told to go back through the door where we would be dealt with by – and I am not making this up – a Herr Schmidt. The glass sliding panel opened again and the lady asked us exactly what we were there for.