Top 25 Rick Wakeman Quotes

My life revolves around music and always will. I need to be a part of music and not an observer.

Sparks is a sporting charity that puts on golf tournaments for sick children, and my animal charities include Oldham Cats and Feline Care, a big cat charity close to me in Norfolk. I’m also a Freemason and the money they raise for charity is phenomenal.

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

As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie – a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.

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.

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

The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.

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.

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

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 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’m always writing or playing because that is my life.

I was 65 in May, and when I have just shaved, I see my father. I realise that I now have the same facial idiosyncrasies he had: little twitches here and there, mouth and nose movements, even the way he would tilt his head.

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.

My eyes are green, and in one of them there is a splash of brown – apparently it is not a colour, but a freckle! Sometimes I notice that one eyelid droops more than the other.

I bought a racehorse, Tropical Saint, that belonged to the Queen Mother. I used to go down to Banbury and watch him train, but during a televised race, his jockey pulled up and said there was something wrong. They put him in the grass to try and settle him but found him dead in the field.

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.

My earliest professional musical experiences were really as a session player, and every day was an adventure. Three sessions a day, every day, and you never knew who you would be working with until you arrived at the studio.

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.

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

There’s a fine line between angry and grumpy. Angry isn’t nice, but grumpy is funny.

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