Scoring a bullseye in 1972 with solo debut Six Wives Of Henry VIII “I’d get fed up of learning what I was supposed to be learning – ‘Forget Grade Four, why can’t I just jump to Grade Eight?’ I’ve been like that my whole life.” “Which was a fair assessment,” he agrees. It was uphill or downhill from there, depending whether you were Rick or his piano teacher, Mrs Symes, who described her precocious pupil as gifted but undisciplined. Later, aged 10, he went rogue at Wood End Junior School’s annual talent show by playing Russ Conway’s piano hit Side Saddle instead of his rehearsed piece, Clementi’s Sonatina. “Everybody clapped, and I thought, I’ll have some more of that, and refused to go back to bed.” Wakeman was already hooked on “the joy of applause”.

The five-year-old Rick would creep out of bed, and listen, mesmerised, as Uncle Stan did his George Formby routine and his mum and aunts sang the old music-hall number The Haddock, The Kipper And The Bloater.Įventually the infant Rick was allowed to join in and play the family’s upright piano. But on Sunday nights the extended clan joined him and Mildred in the front room of their terraced house in Northolt to relive the old days. But the war wrecked all that.”Ĭyril Wakeman gave it up and went to work for a building firm. “Dad played piano, Mum and Aunt Esther and Aunt Olive sang, Uncle Stan played the banjo and Uncle Laurie was a comedian. “Mum and Dad had been in a concert party before the war,” he says, settling into a comfy chair. He was born in May 1949 in Perivale, West London, to musical parents Cyril and Mildred. 'Two sleeves, please, one on each side…' (Image credit: Kevin Nixon)

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