…and his musical treatments of Journey To The Center of The Earth, King Arthur, The 6 Wives of Henry the Eighth, etc. What’s he done lately?
Thanks
Quasi
Don’t quote me, but I seem to remember an advertisement showing him on a current tour with the once-again reconstructed but now painfully elderly Yes.
He’s pretty much into cricket and having a quiet pint down his local pub. Still making music but it’s not quite the preoccupation of old. Don’t know if he’s back touring - seems unlikely (to me) given the all-important Ashes cricket series against Australia is about to start in England.
From the impressions I’ve got (on teevee), he seems to be a very nice bloke.
Yes may be a bunch of old lads by now, but their latest album “The Ladder” kicks absolute ASS. Highly recommended, even fro the “old time” fans. Trust me, give it a try.
Glad to see there are other RW fans out there. Look him up on Amazon.com to see what’s available – I hardly see anything onm the shelves at the local record stores. There’s a LOT of stuff I don’t have, but I really liked Return to the Center of the Earth, a 25-year-later revisit to Journey to the Center of the Earth, this time with narration by Patrick Stewart!
He did get together with his old Yes pals and put out an album as Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe, which had several quite decent songs reminiscent of the Fragile era. They also released a live double album from the tour to promote it (called An Evening of Yes Music Plus), featuring Yes music, music from the ABWH album, and even some of Wakeman’s solo work (Merlin the Magician and Catherine Parr). Then they got together with the new, Trevor Rabin version of Yes (that did 90125) and put out an album called Union, but then parted ways, and the same lineup from 90125 put out Talk, which I quite like. This was all a while ago though.
Personally, Steve Howe has always been the one I’ve missed the most, especially since it seems Roger Dean does the cover art for albums he’s on (Union, various Asia albums, and the ABWH albums all feature his artwork, but 90125 and Talk don’t). That and the end of Starship Trooper.
Rick Wakeman is alive and well in the evangelical Christian music circuit in the UK. He’s released approximately a googleplex’s worth of solo albums (I know, I was in a binge to get them all a few years ago, I gave up at 35) and all but two or three are crap.
Yes presently is without a keyboard player. They will be doing a “symphonic” tour this summer with local orchestras filling in for keyboards. Wakeman last performed with Yes in the mid-1990s, check out the Keys to Ascension live albums for classic Yes tracks, as well as some fair-to-middlin’ new songs. As my esteemed friend in prog, Coldfire, stated, The Ladder is pretty good. It’s miles better than ANYTHING released under the “Yes” name since 1977 or so.
Steve Howe is still in Yes, and just released a new solo album this week, I believe.
Check out The Official Yes Site as well as a better fan-run site for all the information you ever wanted to know about Yes, but were afraid to ask.
We Have Heaven, indeed.
Yeah, I was looking a bit into the history of Yes, and noticed that Steve Howe is back, Rick Wakeman returned and left for a fourth time, and Tony Kaye and Trevor Rabin are gone. Apparently, after Talk I never noticed anything they did. Well, with Steve Howe back, I figure I might have to check out the new stuff.
Do not get Open Your Eyes. Steve Howe was only nominally a member of Yes then (1997, I believe), and Billy “I am the Second Coming of Trevor Rabin” Sherwood did most of the guitars on that album, which was originally meant to be the second Chris Squire solo album (check out the first, Fish Out of Water, it’s probably the best of the Yes-related solo albums, and that says a lot).
The Ladder is worth getting, as are the Keys to Ascension discs. I think last year’s House of Blues live album is better than Keys, but that’s just because I don’t particularly like the new stuff on Keys all that much.
But, do not buy Open Your Eyes. It’s the Big Generator and Tormato of the 1990s.