“Drinkers and hell-raisers”: Rick Wakeman would rather have been in Black Sabbath than Yes
When you’ve got the sort of natural ability for an instrument like keyboardist extraordinaire Rick Wakeman, you can almost walk your way into any band, in virtually any genre.
Perhaps best known as a member of Yes and The Strawbs, and also as a frequent contributor to David Bowie’s early 1970s output, Wakeman is one of the most celebrated synth, keys and piano players of his generation, and a remarkably good composer in his own right to boot.
However, that doesn’t mean that he was always satisfied with the music he was making, and while he would have achieved success with some of the projects he was involved in, there was always a burning desire to be associated with something more fulfilling.
As a self-confessed heavy metal fan predominantly earning his stripes in the progressive rock world, Wakeman’s desire was to work alongside some of his favourite artists from within this adjacent sphere, and when he was asked to work alongside pioneering group Black Sabbath in the early ‘70s, he jumped at the chance.
While they were recording their 1973 album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, his services were called upon by the band while Yes happened to be recording in the studio next door, working on Tales from Topographic Oceans. Speaking about how they managed to drag him into the studio, he recalled the experience in a 2010 interview with Classic Rock Magazine.
“I told them I’d pop in after we’d finished,” Wakeman remembered of the situation. “When I got there, they were all… ‘asleep’ is the politest way of describing it. Except for one frightened young tape op, who put the track in question on. I tried a few things out, and after the third thing I played, Ozzy lifted his head up, said, ‘Fucking great’, and passed out again.”
The two bands had toured together in the past over in the States, and Wakeman also revealed that he immediately hit it off with them, more so than the band he has endured five separate tenures in. “Socially Sabbath were much more my cup of tea than Yes were,” he claimed, calling the Birmingham band “drinkers and hell-raisers who really loved their rock’n’roll.”
He also revealed that he and Tony Iommi had remained friends since this period, and it was only down to Ozzy Osbourne’s concern about how their audience might react that he didn’t join the band as a permanent fixture.
It would have been something of an unusual combination to see the cape-wearing, classically-trained pianist Wakeman parading around behind his stacks of keyboards while the rest of the band were busy raising hell, but hearing his contributions to ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ does highlight the level of versatility that Wakeman had, not to mention just how easily his style slotted into a heavier setting. Wakeman may still kick himself for not taking Iommi up on his semi-serious offer of joining the group, but his career with Yes was still nothing to be sniffed at, and his legacy as one of prog’s finest keyboard players is one that has remained intact with the decisions he made.
