Even the most dedicated of music fans can sometimes have blind spots in their knowledge. So here's a question for you all: which of Henry VIII's six wives do you imagine might be prog legend Rick Wakeman's favourite?
We're fully aware that this is unlikely to have been a question that's ever kept you awake at night, but now that we've raised the matter, you want to know, right? Of course you do.
Respect and big thanks here are due to Vulture writer Jordan Hoffman who broached the subject with the 75-year-old English musician during a recent interview, published on the website yesterday. The relevance, obviously, being that Wakeman's second album, released in January 1973, was a concept album based around - you've guessed it - The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
And the answer?
“Catherine Howard,” Wakeman declares, selecting the fifth of the monarch's six spouses, married to Henry VIII from July 28 1540 to 13 February 13, 1542. “In Tudor times, they didn’t keep good records. Certainly the death records of Henry’s wives are known — he did chop three of their heads off — but births are muddled.
“It’s suggested that Catherine may have only been 18 when he killed her. And she was a fun time. I tried to make the piece I wrote about her fun when I recorded it. She must have known what was going to happen, because if you play around while you are Henry’s wife, you know that you’re going to be separated from your body, head-wise.”
Warming to the theme, Wakeman continues, “I also admire Anne Boleyn, because when Henry put her in the tower, she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. She had tried everything she could to be a good wife to Henry, and it was just the fact that he’d found somebody else. It was a great shame, really, because she was the one wife that really had a lot of dignity.”
We hope that this has resolved the matter to everyone's satisfaction. Thank you for reading.
