While there’s no escaping the fact that he’s the eldest child of Yes keyboard legend Rick Wakeman, Oliver Wakeman has carved out his own significant career. He played a diverse range of music with a broad array of bands before touring with Yes from 2008 to 2011, being dismissed when the band changed line-up during the making of Fly From Here.
In 2019 the band released the mini-album From A Page, featuring previously unreleased tracks laid down by Wakeman, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White and Benoît David before the change. Wakeman took the opportunity to tell Prog about his arrival and departure from the band.
As a child in the 70s, how aware were you of your dad’s work?
I was born in 1972 and my mum and dad split up in 1978. By the time I was 6, Dad had moved out. He was away throughout the late 70s and the early 80s, living in Switzerland, and I didn’t see him much. When he married his third wife, Nina, he had my brother and I over for weekends.
My mum got some records out of the loft which Dad had left. The first ones she gave me were Tales From Topographic Oceans, Styx’s The Grand Illusion and No Earthly Connection – which is still my favourite record of Dad’s.
When Nina told me Dad was going to do a show and play Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, I asked: “What’s that?!” It was only in my early teens that I really got to know what dad did. Also, in 1984-85, prog rock really wasn’t what teenagers talked about!
People think because Dad was in Yes, all of Yes would come round – but Dad had left Yes by ’74; and though he rejoined in ’77 he’d gone again by ’78. So I don’t have a lot of memories from that period about Yes. But I do remember we had part of the Tales From Topographic Oceans stage set in our garden!
How did The 3 Ages Of Magick album with Steve Howe come about in 2001?
When I was 16 I’d gone on the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe tour with Dad. I chatted to Steve a lot and we got on well. Years later, my mum lived in north Devon and I got off the train at Tiverton. Steve was there, waiting for his son to arrive. I reintroduced myself, and later sent him a copy of my debut solo album Heaven’s Isle. We would meet up whenever he was back from tour.
I started playing him bits of music and he talked about whether we should do something together. He realised he didn’t have time to do a joint album but said he would like to play guitar on some tracks. Then he suggested executive-producing it.
The album was recorded in a huge barn on a farm in Cornwall. I had an old Yamaha keyboard, and when I was trying to do a solo, a clicking sound kept coming through. It was the voltage pulsing from the electric fence keeping the cattle in! They had to turn off all the fences and get my solo done quickly so the cattle didn’t get out!
What were your feelings about joining Yes?
In my time in Yes there was a lot of interplay socially – and that came across musically. The magic happens when people enjoy working with each other
The first call came from Steve in late 2007, when Jon Anderson was still in the band. My first few months were mainly emails between Jon and myself where he talked about what he wanted to play on tour. Then he got ill and things ground to a halt. A month or so later, Steve said they had a new singer they wanted to tour with, and asked if I would still like to be involved.
I didn’t have much time to learn everything. When I asked Steve to send me what they thought of doing for the setlist, it was about three-and-a-half hours long. I’d never heard some of it before, contrary to what people might think.
We only had a couple of weeks together before we walked on stage. Steve, Chris and Alan had been playing these pieces for years. Benoît David had come from a Yes tribute band and been singing 70 per cent of the set regularly. Benoît always used to say he thought I had the hardest job. I just knuckled down; I was in the rehearsal room before anybody else and stayed there after everyone had gone.
Did you receive any advice from your dad, unsolicited or otherwise?
Nothing at all. He just said, “Have fun!” Dad knew I was capable of doing it and Steve had worked with me enough to know I had the ability. It wouldn’t
have felt right phoning dad and asking how he played certain bits. I thought I just had to approach it like any other musician lucky enough to get this gig.
You and Benoît David were the new boys in Yes. What was the dynamic within the band during that three-year period of touring?
It was a very happy time. It’s not a huge spoiler to anybody that Yes had arguments in the past. With Jon not with the band, there was a lot more responsibility on Chris, Steve and Alan to make this new version of Yes successful. They had to act as a unit to make it work. It was nice to watch them interact properly.
I’d seen the band play when dad and Jon were there and they’d be off in separate dressing rooms when the show finished, go separately to the restaurant and sit at different tables. But in my time in Yes there was a lot of interplay socially – and that came across musically. The magic happens when people enjoy working with each other.
I always try to be professional and respectful about people’s decisions. It was their band, so I had to go along with it
Were you surprised to learn that Geoff Downes was replacing you for Fly From Here?
Yeah… that was awkward. In 2009 we toured Europe on a bus. I’m a bit of an insomniac and Chris always stayed up late so we’d be chatting late at night. Chris said, “I really enjoy this band. I want us to go into the studio and record a new album.” Chris said, “Who would we get to produce it?” I suggested Trevor Horn.
Fast-forward four or five months and we started to get together for writing sessions in a house in Phoenix, which was very enjoyable. We all brought the songs that we had. Steve and I had got together in the UK beforehand to work on songs. We worked on these pieces on and off over a six-month period. Then we turned up in Beverly Hills to record with Trevor.
We went to his house and played all the songs. He said he really wanted to do We Can Fly From Here, which had been a Buggles song. I asked Steve and Chris a few times, “Why are we doing a Buggles song?” It didn’t seem to fit with the thoughts that – maybe naïvely – I had about the Yes record, that the touring band would go into the studio.
In gaps when Trevor would head back to London, we’d work on some of the pieces that later ended up on From A Page. Then we toured South America with the intention of getting back together in January. And I sort of got told never to come back. It wasn’t quite those words; but it ended up with someone finally saying, “I’m afraid it’s all changed. Geoff is coming in and you’re not in the band any more.”
How did you feel about your departure from Yes?
It wasn’t easy. But they’d made a business decision about working with Trevor. Obviously Trevor wanted to bring in more pieces he’d written with Geoff. They felt that was the right direction for the band.
I always try to be professional and respectful about people’s decisions. It was their band, so I had to go along with it. Contractually I had to finish one tour around America and then a second set of shows in Mexico – knowing that I was out of the band. But I genuinely really enjoyed that last tour.
I thought, ‘This is quite fun – I’ve got a piece of Yes music that no one knows about!’
How did the exhumation of the four tracks on From A Page come about?
After the last shows in Mexico, I had no involvement with the Fly From Here record. Steve said my songs were mine to do what I wanted with. They sent me the studio sessions on a couple of discs, which sat on my shelf for several years.
Then I got an email from Chris saying how sorry he was about the way things turned out, and that we should stay in touch. When I heard that he’d got sick, I dropped him a line and we exchanged emails. When I was about to move house, I was listening to Live In Lyon as I was packing and received an email from their tour manager: “Chris passed away this morning.” It floored me – I could hear Chris playing upstairs.
Once I moved into the new house, I wondered what state those old sessions were in. There were loads of takes and parts of a song: it was a jumbled mess. I slowly pulled all the bits and pieces together, almost as a personal memory of my time with the band, to give me some validation of what I had done, and also to remember Chris. I thought, “This is quite fun – I’ve got a piece of Yes music that no one knows about!”
After another year, I found Words On A Page and To The Moment. I posted a tweet about it and it all snowballed. I met Steve and the Yes management; Steve sat with a pen and paper as we put To The Moment on. Within the first few notes, he put the pen down and said, “These aren’t just demos. We’ve got to make something more of these.”
Is more material from those sessions sitting in the vaults awaiting release?
Steve and I agreed to make From A Page the best it could be, rather than make it too long and pad it out with demos and other stuff. I wanted it to be something to sit alongside the Yes catalogue, rather than a compilation outtakes record.
It was lovely when Roger Dean got involved and provided the wonderful cover, because Yes album artwork is so important. I wanted to make sure that every element of this project had care lavished on it. Which was why I searched through my archives to find new photos of the band for the booklet.
The Wakeman name might open the door; but in a band like Yes, unless you can do the job, the door is going to be swiftly closed in your face
Is From A Page a bittersweet release for you?
I’m very happy with it and that people get to hear it. Obviously, there’s a tinge of regret that I’m not out there playing it with the band, because that would have been lovely – particularly with Chris when he was around. But you can’t ever really plan life and it adds validation to the period that Benoît and I had in the band. We came in and helped make Yes a happy touring entity again. It’s nice to prove that we were in the studio coming up with good music.
Is the Wakeman surname a blessing, a curse or both?
When I started with Yes, people thought I got the job because of the name. It might open the door; but in a band like Yes, unless you can do the job, the door is going to be swiftly closed in your face.
My brother Adam and I try to uphold the quality of what we think the Wakeman name stands for. We’ve learned from Dad about quality and working with audiences. I have to uphold what people would expect from seeing something with the name Wakeman on it.
