Grumpy Old Rock Star by Rick Wakeman

Author:Rick Wakeman
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Group Limited
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘PROBABLY BEST TO BOOK IT IN YOUR NAME, RICK’

Celebrity is a funny old game, isn’t it? I’ve been around a lot of so-called ‘celebrities’ over the years and it always fascinates me how it affects different people differently. Sometimes, particularly within the music industry, it is not so much your celebrity as your reputation that goes before you.

Take Alan Yentob, then a producer and director, later to be Controller of BBC2.

Before Alan worked with me, he drank very little, didn’t smoke and spoke most eloquently. After two months of filming a documentary with me during my drinking days, he stuttered, smoked forty a day and drank like a fish.

I have apologised to Alan many times for this.

The programme was a series of documentaries called Success Story, one of which was about David Bowie and another of which was about me. Alan wanted to feature musical snippets of King Arthur and face-to-face interviews with me about my inspirations and ideas and so on. They were really excellent documentaries.

We travelled down to Tintagel, a picturesque village in Cornwall, to do some of the filming as this was supposedly home of King Arthur’s castle (as indeed are at least five other sites). I told Alan that one of my band, namely the singer Ashley, would love to be filmed on a piece of rock jutting out of one of the cliff faces but Alan pointed out that this would require a crane and would create all sorts of logistical problems.

‘But Alan, his heart is set on it – is there any way we can do this for him?’

Ashley’s heart wasn’t set on it at all, as it happens, and I had actually told Ashley that this was something that Alan really wanted to film. Alan duly obliged, and a hoist with Ashley strapped to it was therefore flung out over the cliff face.

Which wasn’t ideal, as Ashley suffered from severe vertigo.

Which I knew, of course.

It took Alan four hours to get him back onto flat ground from the cliff face.

They had to call a helicopter and the coastguard.

These documentaries can take months to complete so one of the tricky parts of any production is continuity. For the first phase of filming I’d had long hair, crooked teeth and a beard. So you can imagine which way Alan’s blood pressure went when he knocked on my door ready to start the second phase of filming after a two-week break to find that I’d drastically cut my hair, had my teeth capped and shaved my beard off.

Another week of filming was planned for a pub called the Saracen’s Head in High Wycombe, where I used to drink regularly. Alan wanted to investigate if the drinking helped my art and performance or hindered it. He’d spoken to the landlord and the people around me and heard all sorts of figures about the volumes I was drinking. Naughtily, I had a word with the barman in advance so, with the cameras rolling, they brought my drink over.

A pint of milk.

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