Rick Wakeman

“I'm always writing or playing because that is my life.”

“Country and western is the music of the devil. That's the real truth of the matter. My late Mother, bless her, loved country and western. God, I couldn't handle it.”

“Liszt was a bit of a rock and roller at heart, but he was a bit of a puritan on his sounds.”

“I've been married three times and divorced three times.”

“I had just left Yes and had done a concert at Crystal Palace, South London, with a choir and orchestra playing my solo album 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' when I had my heart attack. That day, I hadn't been to bed for four days. I don't remember much. I felt very numb during the day and airy, which is the best way to describe it.”

“I bought a racehorse, Tropical Saint, that belonged to the Queen Mother. I used to go down to Banbury and watch him train, but during a televised race, his jockey pulled up and said there was something wrong. They put him in the grass to try and settle him but found him dead in the field.”

“But I'd play on everything from pop records to a lot of the glam stuff to rock stuff to classical stuff. I used to get called to do all those things, it was great.”

“I'm hugely fond of Scotland. My daughter, Jemma, was born in the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh, and it always tickled me that she was so vexed she didn't have a Scottish accent even though she was brought up down south.”

“I am a very extreme sort of character, as I don't do things by halves.”

“I've got an overactive brain. I enjoy work, I enjoy life, and I'm not good at relaxing. I've also never slept very much due to this overactive imagination and my brain constantly thinking.”

“Apparently I'm well-known for my stories, my raconteur tales, that sort of thing.”

“My life revolves around music and always will. I need to be a part of music and not an observer.”

“As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie - a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.”

“I joined Yes in July 1971. I had heard Yes live, as Strawbs had supported them at a gig in Hull. I thought they were amazing - incredibly different.”

“Since the 1980s, I've been known more for my TV work, I used to host 'Live at Jongleurs' and of course 'Grumpy Old Men,' and so it's really all come from there. It's been a funny career really, there are people that know me now as a TV person, a comedian, an interviewer - I've had people genuinely gobsmacked to find out I am a musician.”

“People always said that I hated punk, and that really wasn't true. It was glossed over for many years that I was the guy who found the Tubes and signed them to A&M. English punk was a revolution.”

“I'm a Freemason, and we love to celebrate Burns' night: piping in the haggis, the whole lot.”

“'Tales From Topographic Oceans' is like a woman's padded bra. The cover looks good, but when you peel off the padding, there's not a lot there.”

“I didn't enjoy 'Topographic Oceans' at all. It was a double album, and the truth is it was padded out, and I didn't like that. But I was a fan of Yes - still am - and as such, I'm entitled to say what I think.”

“When I die, I'll probably climb out of the coffin and play the organ at my own funeral!”