The beginning of the year has very much been a time of preparation and organising for the future and considerable changes have been put into place.
We'll do our best to categorise these changes throughout this newsletter, but as there is a certain amount of cross collateral between the areas you may have to do some cross referencing yourselves!
Recording
All the ambient product is now being re-released on President Records and this includes Rock "n" Roll Prophet Plus which comes out at the end of March. It was especially digitally mastered from the original at Abbey Road Studios and sounds as if it were recorded yesterday. As most of you will be aware it also contains four new tracks. (Hence the plus)!
Crimes of Passion is now at long last available on CD, with an additional track from Maggie Bell thrown in for good measure.
African Bach is being prepared for pressing, and so hopefully before too long, everything will be available!
For the really insane amongst you who like to collect everything, Rick's track Thoughts of Love is now part of a K-TEL CD entitled Highlights of Silent Dreams. It is available only in Germany, but if you want one then please contact K-TEL direct at K-TEL international (Switzerland).
Rick is completing recording of what he describes as his first serious classically orientated piano work.
It is entitled The Heritage Suite and is being recorded at the finest known classical recording studio at Guildford University with the highly acclaimed engineer, Ken Blair.
Ken is the same engineer that Rick used to record the Marina Milic classical albums, which incidentally are due for release in early April.
The Heritage Suite is written in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century European style of composition and is in fact so difficult to play Rick has had to do some serious practise. One piece in particular took over three hours to record!
There are twelve pieces in all, with the total running time extending to around the fifty minute mark.
The recording has been done on a sixth month old Steinway concert grand, which should certainly please all the purists out there.
The release date is initially planned to coincide with a concert performance at the Museum Theatre on the island at the end of April - the Heritage Trust are also producing a full colour, A4 style glossy booklet that can be bought as a limited edition to accompany the CD. We will certainly have some here exclusively for RWCC members.
Adam Wakeman
Adam has signed an exclusive two album recording deal with President Records. The first album Soliloquy is scheduled for release on april 19th.
During the last week of February, Adam flew to London for a photo session for the front cover. Whilst in London he also discovered much of the night life of the area and at the end of the week was, to use a well worn musical expression "completely shagged out".
Adam now wants to live in London.
Soliloquy was also mastered and cut at Abbey Road. The album consists of fifty minutes worth of Adam's compositions with him singing and performing on every track. He used top session players on backing vocals, guitars, bass and percussion which included the now infamous Greasy Wop (Tony Fernandez).
Following the European tour, Adam will be touring the radio stations of the UK for a couple of weeks doing promotion, so keep an ear out in your area and try and catch him on the air.
Adam has also signed an exclusive publishing deal for two years with Edward Kassner music. Publicity photos have all been taken at President's offices. Would you believe by Tony Fernandez's nephew, Jimmy (lovingly known as mini Wop).
Adam will be forming a band in May and hopes to do some club dates in order to prepare for the Wakeman with Wakeman tour at the end of the year in which he will open the show with his band, Rick will do the second half and then the pair of them will combine for a "third" half to finish proceedings off.
Rick's Publishing
Rick has also signed an exclusive publishing deal with Edward Kassner music for three years and at last we can give you the good news that they are very happy to start producing sheet music, although sadly not from recordings prior to this agreement. To this end we are still talking to Rondor Music who have all the other rights.
The European Tour
In essence Rick has not toured Europe as a whole for fourteen years and so most of his old supporters are now either very old, very dead or very deaf.
Rick is under no illusions that it is going to be a very difficult tour with small audiences, many of whom will not have seen him play before. It undoubtedly will make a loss but this is tempered with the hope that it is preparing a touring market for the future.
The tour is being done very much on a shoestring budget with everyone doubling up on jobs.
- Rick's other job is as chauffeur.
- Adam's other job is trying to stay awake.
- Wop's other job is navigator and drinking.
- Alan's other job is not navigating.
- Ian's other job is sampling local food.
- Doom's other job being happy. (we are looking for an alternative job for doom)
Whilst this list is not complete, it does contain the majority of the shows already booked.
- March 5th Helsinki
- March 6th Gdansk - (Rick only)
- March 7th Oslo - (with Fish)
- March 8th Stockholm - (with Fish)
- March 10th Hamburg
- March 13th Tilburg
- March 14th Nuremburg
- March 15th Munich
- March 16th Vienna
- March 17th Zurich
- March 18th Rome
- March 19th Reggio Emilia
- March 22nd Madrid
- March 23rd Barcelona
- March 24th Montpelier
- March 25th Grenoble
- March 26th Paris
- March 28th Osnabruek
- March 29th Frankfurt
- March 30th Cologne
- April 1st Stuttgart
- April 2nd Halle
- April 4th Bremen
- April 5th Hanover
- April 6th Berlin
Big Bear Management
This is the name of Brian Lane's management company which supersedes Sunarts Ltd. The address remains the same (Hillgate Street, Notting Hill Gate, London W9).
Brian now acts exclusively for Rick and is currently renegotiating Rick's entire musical situation.
YES
Due to unfortunate contractual and legal difficulties we are not able to bring you any update on the YES situation as regards Rick's original participation agreement. A full report will appear in the next newsletter.
Fish
Fish, (not the YES one), and Rick met in London during Fish's UK tour, (Davy Paton says "hi" to everybody, he's Fish's bass player), with a view to working together later in the year.
The two have been friends for quite some time and belong to the same mutual admiration society and so agreement was reached with no difficulty at all as regarding musical content and other possible musician involvement.
Rick is looking forward to this recording and touring project immensely which should see the light of day early 1994 which is not that far away.
Radio
Some of you may have caught Rick's hour long interview with Bob Harris during the early hours a couple of weeks ago.
Rick and Bob have been good friends for many years now and Rick thoroughly enjoyed chatting away in a nice informal manner.
The same day, Rick pre-recorded an interview for 1FM about the life of David Bowie. Rick rambled away for hours, but you can rest assured that will be whittled down to minutes by the time the programme goes out!
Prayers
Word Records have just informed us that they have set a release date during May for Prayers, in the UK.
Apparently no decision has been made as yet as to release in other countries but it is hoped that it will not be too long after the UK release.
Most of you are probably aware that all the royalties from sales go to the Christian charity "ASSIST" of which Rick is a strong supporter.
Bits and pieces
Oliver, Rick's eldest attained the age of 21 on February 26th and found himself in the midst of a surprise party at Nina's brother's pub in Milford, surrey. Guests included the Greasy Wop, Rick, Nina and Adam and a strippergram!
Jemma takes her grade one piano exam the second week of March.
Rick's first golf tournament of the year is at Chester in the British Airways Open on March 4th. Adam is also playing in the same tournament.
The Rosser and Davies album will be completed during April and released in early summer - they have just signed up for a six week pantomime this Christmas.
Rick has resigned as chairman of the Isle of Man branch of the Lord's Taverners due to pressure of work, but remains a member.
Some of you may have spotted the television cameras picking up Rick in three recent football matches. Millwall against Brentford, Queens Park Rangers against Manchester United and England against San Marino.
Plans for the rest of the year
At the end of the tour, after a short break, Rick will be back in the studio recording.
Projects to do include completing the Rosser and Davies album and the Wakeman plays YES for Tring international.
The next few months will be made up of recording and hopefully touring. The countries on offer at the moment are South Africa and South America with Japan also in there as a strong possibility.
The other recording projects that Rick wants to do this year include a re-recording of The Gospels, another "classical" piano suite as well as a synthesiser/classical choir recording.
If all things went well as regards The Heritage Suite, then Rick would love to tour the very small one hundred seater classical type theatres and perform the work just on a grand piano.
Plans are still going ahead for a sequel of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, both for recording and performing and once the initial funding arrives, (from where, we know not yet) everything will be geared towards this project.
finally we must thank all of you who wrote such lovely letters to us about the Wakeman with Wakeman tour. Adam especially is still ploughing through his ever increasing mail, (mostly from the opposite sex)!
If any of you happen to be holidaying during the European epic tour and are able to catch a show, please say hello to the lads as they do get very homesick and none of them are particularly fluent in English let alone a foreign language!