by Rick Wakeman
I have to be honest, I’m not convinced these places do as good a job as they claim. I’ll probably get shot for saying that, but I look upon these places in the same way as I look at a health farm. They both make you healthy in an environment that is utterly unrealistic, surroundings that have nothing to do with your real life. Then, when the people come out, those sterile surroundings are taken away and that’s why, in my opinion, so many of them fall off the wagon, because you cannot live that same lifestyle. I think the best rehab should happen out in the real world and not behind closed doors – but that would never work, because the temptation would still be there. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to health farms or, for that matter, rehab, but it’s a little like putting your car in for a service. The day it comes out, it runs a treat, but from the moment you pull out of the garage forecourt it’s starting to wear out again.
As far as people like Amy Winehouse and the like are concerned, I always think, Where are the people who are supposed to be looking after her? Why doesn’t somebody who actually cares for some of the young musicians, actors and entertainers coming up through the ranks collate a dossier of rock’s fatal casualties in their thirties and forties, and present it to these kids who are screwing themselves up? Hendrix did not have anyone preceding him to look at for perspective or a warning shot; these kids do, there are now several generations of rock stars who have fallen by the wayside. There is no mystery. We know what happens.
Unfortunately the one certain thing about the entertainment industry is that it’s always been governed by money. Nobody within the industry ever said to me, ‘If you keep doing this, you’re going to kill yourself.’ Why? Because they would probably have been replaced by someone who wouldn’t say that and wouldn’t stop the drinking and partying. At that stage, you have a certain income status and people, companies, livelihoods are dependent on you. That’s why Keith Moon was hauled out of so many scrapes, why Amy Winehouse can leave rehab early and why management mop up these messes and get their charges home in the small hours. You are their income.
It’s no good someone like me saying all this, though; when I was that age the last thing I would have wanted was some fifty-year-old lecturing me. But I have to say something, especially when with young ones like Amy Winehouse you see the abyss opening up in front of them and you just take a deep breath.
Ah, Keith Moon. That’s reminded me of a great night out I had with him one time. The Who was always my favourite band as a kid – I loved them and still do. One of the great things about my job and my life is that I can now count Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey as good friends, likewise the late, great John Entwistle.
Moony was a lovely man, he was one stop short of Upney (which, for those of you not familiar with London, is the station before Barking on the District Line), but he just had one of the biggest hearts and I thought the world of him. It is true that he was an incredible drummer, it’s not just sentiment. I once said to Roger Daltrey, ‘How do you arrange your individual parts when you’re putting new pieces together?’ Each band does this differently so I was curious. He said, ‘Well, Pete and John work out their parts, I come in and do the vocals and then Moony just does a drum solo from start to finish.’
Priceless.
Obviously Keith Moon was famed for driving cars into swimming pools, monstrous partying and suchlike, and we all have our story to tell about a night out with him. I was touring Tales from Topographic Oceans with Yes down in Australia at the same time as The Who were playing Tommy there, when I had this particularly memorable evening with the man. I hadn’t actually known him very long – we obviously knew of each other and had bumped into each other after a few shows, but we certainly weren’t close friends. So I was pleasantly surprised when my hotel phone rang one evening and it was Keith.
‘Rick, I’ve got a night off tonight. Do you fancy coming out for a meal?’
‘I’d love to, Keith . . .’ I said with not a little trepidation; my good friend Viv Stanshall had told me that if you went out with Keith Moon, you’d come back either in a police van or via an institution of some kind. This was back in the days when Moony would go out dressed in Nazi gear, goose-stepping into clubs, spraying people at random with a fire extinguisher. So I knew I was lining myself up for something unusual, to say the least.
We met up in the bar and, as we both were rather partial to a drink or seven, got on like a house on fire. Keith said there was a restaurant he wanted to try as he’d heard it was really good.
‘Have you booked, though, Keith?’
‘Er, probably best to book it in your name, Rick. I’m banned from most restaurants worldwide.’
Keith’s reputation at this stage was such that he needed to be this secretive about his night-time forays. We took off in a limo and found ourselves at this really posh exclusive restaurant. It was beautifully furnished and there were about forty tables, all very proper, very formal. The maître d’ recognised me and was very welcoming. But when he looked behind me and saw Keith, his face dropped. I introduced Keith – not that I needed to – and Keith just cheekily looked up at this man with that gap-toothed grin of his.
The maître d’ paused momentarily: you could almost see him trying to think of a way of not letting Keith eat there, but he couldn’t so instead we were shown to a table in the most remote corner of the room. Then he scurried off and spoke with his staff who were obviously shitting themselves over who had just arrived.
However, we ate a delightful three-course meal and Keith was the picture of civility throughout. He thanked the staff constantly, ate his food with great poise, made fantastic conversation with myself, the staff and a few curious fellow diners and was generally the perfect guest. We talked about Yes, The Who, my life, his world – it was a brilliant meal with not a hint of trouble. Keith was the absolute perfect gentleman, stonkingly polite.
When the maître d’ came over with the bill, Keith even gently said, ‘Can I just say what a wonderful meal that was?’
‘Well, thank you, sir. I shall pass on your compliments to the chef. And can I just say what an absolute pleasure it’s been having you both dine with us this evening.’ The whole restaurant was watching as we stood up from the table to leave and you could slice the sense of communal relief with a blunt knife. I stood up first and started weaving my way through the other tables towards the exit . . .
. . . When I heard this almighty crash behind me.
I swung around to find Moony standing on our table with plates and glasses smashed everywhere. He then proceeded to jump across onto every single table in the room, smashing crockery, bottles, glasses, everything in sight. There was food, wine, stuff everywhere, carnage.
None of the staff ran to the table he was jumping to next, they just ran to the table he’d just demolished. Of course, that meant he was free to destroy every setting unhindered. When he finally landed next to me at the door, he looked up, smiled that toothy grin and simply said, ‘Run!’
He lost me within seconds and disappeared into the Melbourne night.
I ran and ran and ran and eventually hailed a cab to take me back to the hotel. Of course, when I arrived there were several police cars already waiting outside. They spoke with me and said that The Who’s management had been down to the restaurant and paid for everything and that Keith would receive a formal caution, as indeed did I.
When I saw one of his entourage the next day, I said, ‘I’d never been out with Keith before. Does he always do this sort of thing?’
He just smiled a knowing grin at me.
I went down to the pool and there was Keith, on a sunlounger.
The waitress came over to him with a beautiful full English breakfast on a tray. Keith thanked her kindly, took hold of the tray and jumped – fully clothed and with his egg, bacon, sausage and the plate – into the pool.
THE TIN-BATH TECHNIQUE AND THE SMALL-HOURS HOOKER
Prog rock has been much maligned over the years. You have to admit, though, like it or loa
the it, we certainly tried to push the boundaries of recording technology. Take the time I had my entire band standing over a tin bath in a cellar, pissing into it.
They don’t do that at Abbey Road.
We were at a studio in northern France made famous by Elton John’s classic LP Honky Château and I needed the sound of a waterfall for a track on the album we were making called No Earthly Connection. This was way before the days of samples, so although we had an LP with quite a few water sounds on there they were all pretty rubbish, to be honest – they didn’t even sound like waterfalls. We were using a cellar as an echo chamber and, by chance, there was a huge old tin bath in there. I had the brainwave that we should just fill lots of jugs with water and record ourselves pouring this back into the tin bath. We tried it but for some reason it sounded rubbish too – it just didn’t work. Plus it wasn’t making the sound for long enough. So, over lunch, I came out with the idea that if everybody drank copious amounts of wine until they were desperate for the toilet, but then hung on and on until the very last second, they could all piss into this bath at the same time, making a perfect long-lasting waterfall sound. I reckoned, by my own standards, that we’d have at least a minute’s worth of urinating waterfall on tape.
Of course, by the time we’d all drunk copious amounts we were far from sober – a slight flaw in my cunning plan. The resulting tape was nothing short of hilarious. Everyone is sniggering, going, ‘Ssshhhh!’ and saying, ‘Hurry up! Hurry up! I’m bursting!’ I was up in the control room, having relieved myself in the normal way in a toilet, in charge of this hi-tech studio wizardry.
‘OK, guys, now you’ve all got to start pissing at the same time, right, it’s very important, what we are trying to create here is—’
‘Bloody hell, Rick, press the sodding button before I piss myself . . .’
So I pressed ‘record’ and there was a communal but silent sigh of relief, with an absolute torrent of water gushing into this tin bath. And do you know what? It sounded exactly like a waterfall. As time went on, people started to run out of pee and the sound got gradually quieter.
Until there was only one person still urinating.
Martin Shields, my trumpet player.
A further minute and a half went by and he was still going.
The rest of the guys were still all standing around him, flies undone, watching . . .
Two minutes.
Then he stopped . . .
. . . And then started again for about another half a minute . . .
Then he finally stopped.
. . . Only to start again for another twenty seconds or so.
By now, of course, although their bladders were entirely empty, they were all most definitely pissing themselves.
To this day, I still get letters from techies and musos asking me where on earth I got the amazing waterfall sound from on No Earthly Connection. I simply say, ‘All you do is get your band to piss in a tin bath in an echoey cellar in northern France.’
My expertise in studios didn’t just extend to sound effects. In 1980, I started work on a new record – to be called 1984 – at Morgan Studios in Willesden. I’d worked there before on various projects, including King Arthur, and the studio owner was a lovely fellow by the name of Monty Babson. On this particular occasion we were assigned a really softly spoken engineer who we nicknamed Albert. Now, Albert was about thirty-odd years of age, drove an old Rover and was very much of the old school. A really lovely guy.
A brilliant engineer but not very rock ’n’ roll, to say the least.
By way of neat contrast, as a group of individuals we were putting huge amounts of drink down our necks.
Huge.
Each day, Albert would quietly get on with his work and he seemed immune to distraction by our inanities and lifestyle. We couldn’t help noticing his reserved manner and he quickly became the topic of conversation. We surmised, through entirely speculative conjecture, that he was almost certainly a virgin and was, in fact, clearly married to his work.
You’d have thought we had better things to talk about. Chaka Khan and Steve Harley were both regulars in the studio, adding their vocals, along with Tim Rice who wrote all the lyrics. It was a real melting pot of global talent.
But the burning question was, Had Albert ever been given a right good seeing to?
We thought not and determined to do something about it. Most days started around midday and went on well into the early hours of the next morning as we preferred to work long after midnight – we just seemed more creative and productive that way. On this particular occasion it was getting well into the small hours and there were only three of us left standing: myself, my drummer, Tony ‘The Greasy Wop’ Fernandez, and good old Albert. Everyone else had gone home, in fact the rest of the studio had been locked up. Albert was still working industriously on some mixes when myself and Tony headed down to the bar to get a refresher. It was left open for us and we just made a note of what drinks we’d taken for the people who ran it to add to my ever-rising bar bill for the duration of the recording.
‘So, Tony, do you think Albert’s ever been set upon by a woman?’ I asked.
‘Nope, can’t see it meself,’ came the reply.
‘Well, listen, as a gesture of goodwill and thanks for all the wonderful work Albert has done on this album, I think he deserves a present. Where do we find a woman who can do the honours at this time of night? . . . Hey, I know who will know . . .’
I called my mate Kenny Lynch who I knew would still be up at this unearthly hour.
‘Hey, Kenny, Rick here, I need a woman.’
I kid you not, he said, ‘What for?’
‘Look, it’s not for me, it’s this friend who hasn’t been sorted and we want to give him a present . . .’
‘Oh, yeah, sure . . .’
‘No, look, listen . . .’ And so I explained my idea.
I was then given a number which I duly called and explained to a very pleasant-sounding lady about my friend Albert.
‘Look, it’s not for me, it’s this friend who hasn’t been seen to . . .’
‘Oh, yeah, sure . . .’
‘No, look, seriously . . . my friend and engineer Albert is, how shall we say, a little shy in the female department and he’s worked really hard for us recently so as a present . . . you know. Can you help?’
‘I will bring someone with me as you’re a new customer,’ she said, ‘and payment is by American Express.’ (When it showed up on my credit-card statement, her ‘personal services’ showed up as a jewellery company in Mayfair, but I certainly didn’t buy Albert a bloody necklace.)
In no time at all, a beautiful Rolls-Royce glided up to the front of the studio and a young lady in a fur coat was helped out of the car by this enormous black guy. We went inside and sat down, where I explained that I’d like her to be introduced just as a friend who’d come to listen to the mixes and for her to strike up a little chat with Albert. Then me and Tony could leave and she could, you know, sort him out.
So off we went into the studio and I duly introduced Albert to this woman in a fur coat. He hardly batted an eyelid and politely said, ‘Hello.’
After a couple of minutes, I said, ‘Er, Albert, me and Tony are just popping down to the bar for a drink. We’ll be back up soon.’ Turning to the young lady, I said, ‘Why don’t you sit next to Albert and he will show you what he’s doing? That all right, Albert?’
‘OK, Rick,’ said Albert, completely unaware.
Twenty minutes later, this lady came back down the stairs, by which time we were desperate to find out what had gone on.
I couldn’t contain myself. ‘What happened? What happened?’
‘Bizarre, absolutely bizarre,’ she replied. She sat down and proceeded to recount the details of her liaison with Albert.
‘I sat down next to Albert and, yes, he is rather shy, isn’t he? I gave him a few minutes and then let my coat fall open so that my tits were fully exposed – I have nothing on underneath yo
u see.’
I could imagine. In fact, I already had.
‘Go on. What did he do?’
‘Well, we carried on going through pleasantries so after a while I just grabbed his balls.’
Tony and me were howling with laughter by this point.
‘Then I said to him, “What a very nice pair of balls you have, Albert.”’
I was gasping for breath from laughing. ‘What did he say?’
‘In the politest voice possible, he gently said, “Thank you very much, and you have a very fine pair of breasts yourself.”’
By this point, the tears were streaming down my cheeks.
‘He still made no move,’ she continued, ‘and I thought we might be there all night, so I pounced on him and had him over the mixing desk.’
Albert duly seen to, the young lady excused herself and left the premises. Tony and myself went back upstairs and walked into the studio where Albert was seated at the desk, working on the mixes exactly as we’d left him.
‘Hello, Albert, you OK?’
‘Hello, Rick, yes, I’m fine, thanks. Have you known that lady very long, Rick? She’s quite forward, isn’t she?’
‘Er, yes, I guess.’ I was barely able to contain my sniggers. ‘Anyway, Albert, how are the mixes coming along?’
Without a hint of irony or sarcasm, he said in that quiet voice of his, ‘Well, to be honest, Rick, they are a bit jerky.’
My ‘relations’ with Morgan Studios didn’t end that night. The day after the young lady in the fur coat took Albert’s virginity, we turned up at the studio but he wasn’t there. Most unusual. I walked into reception and the studio secretary – a very nice lady called Pat who ran the place with a rod of iron – fixed me with a grim stare and said, ‘Rick, did you have a prostitute in here last night?’
‘I did not personally have a prostitute in here last night, no. Why?’
‘Monty wants to see you upstairs immediately.’
I went into his office, followed by Pat who said, ‘Monty, do something. I know he had a hooker in here last night. Think of the reputation of the studio, Monty. Do something.’
