Tales From Topographic Oceans

Cafe Society
1

I happened to be browsing in a bookshop today and I was leafing through Rick Wakeman’s autobiography. Some good stories in there - most amusing, some hilarious.

Anyway, when I got home I was youtubing Tales From Topographic Oceans to remind myself how it goes and I read this in Wikipedia:

Now, by coincidence, I actually read the relevant curry story in RWs book today and it’s not quite how wiki have it. I’ll have to paraphrase but basically it goes like this:

Rick used to have a roadie/tech guy who actually lay under his keyboard banks for the entire set during gigs. This was for two reasons. The first reason was so that, if something were to go wrong (which often did back then), he would be in position straight away to try and fix it. It was very rare that he was actually able to fix anything and most of the time would just look up at Rick, shrug and say “it’s fucked”.

The other, main, reason why he was under there was so that he could hand alcoholic drinks to Rick during the set, Rick having something of a drink problem through the 70s. Now, anyone familiar with Yes will know that some of their songs can go on for quite a long time and Rick would often find himself with nothing much to do for long periods so him and the tech guy would have long conversations about this, that and everything.

One time, during a gig at Manchester Free Trade Hall, the tech guy asked Rick a question that sounded like “What are you doing later?”. So Rick said “I’m going to have a curry”. Then the guy said something that sounded like “What are you going to have?” Rick thought this was an odd question but said “Chicken Tikka Vindaloo, Pilau Rice, Brinjal Bhaji, Tarka Dall and some poppadoms”

Cut to a little while later and Rick is sitting at his keyboards when he notices a strong smell of curry emanating from underneath. He looks down and the guy is down there with a load of foil containers. Rick says “What’s that?” The guy says “It’s your curry”. Rick says “I meant I was going to have a curry after the gig”

By this point, the curry was there, Rick was still having long periods when he didn’t have much to do plus he had quite a lot of room on his keyboard banks so he spread out the different containers around and began digging in. At the time the band were playing Tales from Topographic Oceans - this album divides Yes fans. Some love it and some hate it so half the audience were zonked out on drugs listening and the other half were falling asleep “bored shitless” as Rick puts it.

But slowly the pungent scent of the curry began to waft out over the audience who began to stir as they smelt it. Pretty soon, Jon Anderson began to notice it from where he was and came over. He said to Rick “What’s that?” Rick said “Chicken Tikka Vindaloo, Pilau Rice, Brinjal Bhaji, Tarka Dall and Poppadoms. Dig in, help yourself”. Jon shrugged, took a Poppadom, and wandered off.

So Rick didn’t “down tools” to eat the curry - he still played his bits in between eating. And he didn’t order the curry as a protest against the album, it just arrived mid-set and now that it’s here, might as well eat it.

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It sounds like that techie was just trying to curry favor.

I love that album very much. I think Wakeman was brilliant but does he explain in the book why he left then?

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He no doubt will shed some light on why he left but I was just quickly skimming it in the shop. The book is still in hardback form and was quite expensive. When it goes paperback I reckon it could be worth buying - I only skimmed it but every story I read had me snorting out loud in the shop.

There was another one about before he joined Yes when he was in The Strawbs. They were playing a gig in France but it wasn’t a traditional gig, it was some kind of open air circus that only had three acts - a lion tamer, a tightrope walker and a guy who fell off tables. They played at this place every night for three weeks - their job being to provide musical accompaniment for the acts.

The lion didn’t require much taming as it was so drugged it just lay there listlessly. The guy would put a lump of meat in it’s mouth to show how fierce it was but the meat would just slide out of the other side of it’s mouth. The rope that the tightrope walker was using was really elastic and tied really loosely so that for most of the middle section the guy was just walking on the ground. And the guy who fell off tables broke his leg one night falling off a table and so was unable to continue for the last couple of weeks.

Anyway Rick only had one bit where he had to do a solo so he used to look forward to that bit all night. One night the time was approaching for Ricks solo when suddenly this man with a droopy moustache came on stage and raised his cane and all the audience cheered. Then he raised his cane again and the audience cheered again. Then he raised his cane again and the audience cheered again. Rick was getting worried that this guy was going to overshadow his solo so he went up to the guy and said “Get off”. The guy looked at him puzzled and then raised his cane again and the audience cheered. Rick was getting pissed off by this point so he gave the guy a shove and pushed him off the stage.

By this point he’d missed his solo anyway but one of the other members of the band came running up to him and said “Do you know who that was?” Rick said “No. Who?”. The other guy said “Salvador Dali”

There seem to be stories like this on every page from what I gathered.

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From what I’ve seen and read (various documentaries and a Yes biography), it was pretty much the same story, though described in less detail. Some people wanted to tie this amusing incident to the fact that most of the other members of Yes were vegetarians, and made it out to be a protest.

The real reason he left Yes was that he just wasn’t being inspired by the musical direction the band was taking. In one interview he said that when he heard Relayer, he knew he had made the right decision - great music, he said, but just not the kind of thing he would want to do.