Rick Wakeman

16th October 2025

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

 

The Caped Crusader

Well then, good ol' Rick Wakeman (the nation's favourite Caped Crusader) is still out and about performing; on this jaunt, his 1973 and 1975 albums The Six Wives of Henry VIII and The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  Along for the ride are a fine four piece band (which includes his son Adam), augmented by a trio of girl singers: The Progettes, he introduced them as.

Now 76 years young, Rick shuffles rather than bounds across the stage these days, wears fingerless gloves when playing due to arthritis and has to sometimes pop on glasses to read (something) during some songs.  For all that (assuming what we were hearing this evening was ALL RICK LIVE, his fingers centainly appear to have lost none of their trademark nimble dancing touch.

I have to admit I did keep casting an eye towards his son Adam (who was also playing keyboards) during some of the more challengingly fiddly passages to confirm this.  And yes, Rick was doing the playing.

The first half of the show was taken up with the Six Wives album, with the running order re-jigged from the LP release to reflect the wives' chronological order.  Generally the performances were fairly faithful renditions of the original recordings, but a couple of tracks, most notably Anne Boleyn, were embellished to give the various band members a wee blow out.

Dave Colquhoun, RW and Lee Pomeroy.

The Bespectacled Crusader

For the Arthur half of the set, we were joined by vocalist Jesse Smith, whose work on Guinevere was quite sublime.  I had never really taken to Ashley Holt's gruff vocal on the 1975 recording, and Smith brought a subtlety and vulnerability to his performance which really made this song the highlight of the evening.  

Merlin the Magician was omitted from the main set, and retained as the encore to allow, in Rick's words, "everybody to have a bit of fun".  Which of course they all did.  Jesse Smith was even given some new lyrics to sing over that bass guitar/keyboard melody which runs through the song.

Towards the end Wakemans Senior and Junior each picked up one of those funny keyboard/guitar hybrid thingies for more jolly japes.  

All good clean fun although, for reasons I cannot quite pin down, I did find the sight of the Three Progettes forming a human keyboard stand just a touch uncomfortable.  The ladies had been given precious little to do throughout the evening beyond Ooohs and Aaaahs, and this visual gag felt just a wee bit disrespectful.

Anyway, this was but a minor jarring note in what had been a hugely entertaining evening.

    

RW and Jesse Smith who, we learned, replaced Mollie Marriot at 2 weeks notice.

Adam Wakeman

    

Rick gets some support from The Progettes.

I noted Rick has a new album out just now - a set of piano instrumentals called Melancholia.  I have been listening to it a bit, and it really is rather enjoyable.  I was a touch disappointed he hadn't maybe opened the show with a couple of tracks from it: Sitting at the Window or Hidden Tranquility would have done just fine.

Perhaps next time.

Set list

Catherine of Aragon

Anne Boleyn

Jane Seymour

Anne of Cleves

Catherine Howard

Catherine Parr

                                         Interval

Arthur

Lady of The Lake

Guinevere

Sir Lancelot and The Black Knight

Sir Galahad

The Last Battle

Encore

Merlin the Magician