THE BEST

     Six Wives and Journey, Rick's first two solo albums, are generally acclaimed as among his best, and Voyage and Recollections are good samplers of Rick's A&M years, which were the most commercially successful of his solo career.  Six Wives, an instrumental suite, features several of Wakeman's Yes-mates.  Journey is my favorite Wakeman solo album; the opening fanfare is Rick at his most majestic, and "The Battle" contains my favorite bit of solo Wakeman music.

    But maybe I'd better mention something now: Journey features vocals, and Wakeman's choice of vocalists (here, Ashley Holt and Gary Pickford-Hopkins) is not to the taste of even some of his biggest fans.  I wouldn't advise giving up altogether on Wakeman's albums with vocals if those on Journey turn you off -- Journey is a live recording, with all of the rough spots in the singing left intact (and there are a couple of howlers).  Several of Wakeman's albums feature better vocal performances than this one.  But some listeners may want to stick with the primarily instrumental albums, such as Six Wives, White Rock, and Wakeman's several fine solo piano albums.  If you want to hear some of Wakeman's very best piano playing, get Heritage Suite, his tribute to the Isle of Man, his home.  It's wonderful.

    For excellent instrumental work, you may also want to consider Rhapsodies (though I can tell you that this recommendation will not meet with universal acceptance among Wakeman fans -- in fact, I can see the raised eyebrows now: "Rhapsodies?  What is this guy talking about?")  I enjoy Rhapsodies a lot.  I think it's gotten a bad rap in the past and I wanted to draw attention to it -- that's why I put it here.  Rhapsodies doesn't contain any long prog-rock suites (which are something I think Wakeman always did better with Yes than on his own), and it's not a concept album, so maybe it won't appeal to some hardcore prog-rock followers.  What it does contain is appealing music, concise tracks, and lots of good keyboard playing.  Some people have called it "cheesy" -- what I think it is is FUN.  The Japanese CD edition is long out of print -- hopefully someone will put it out on CD again.
 

THE NEXT BEST

     For the most part, these are almost as good as the ones above.  Myths and Legends (an album with vocals) features the great "Merlin the Magician" -- and to portray the powerful wizard with a playful honky-tonk piece strikes me as, just maybe, a stroke of genius.  Criminal Record has a lot going for it, including guest appearances by Chris Squire and Alan White.  Classic Tracks is Wakeman's best latter-day revisit to earlier material; it features an American neo-prog-sounding band that really adds something to the music, rather than just acting as sidemen.

    Simply Acoustic, another solo piano album, is a very enjoyable in-concert career retrospective. The Private Collection includes some good piano pieces and other vintage '70s recordings, all otherwise unavailable.  Country Airs, Rick's first solo piano album, is possibly the least of the albums in this section, but I enjoy it and find it quite pleasant -- in the original Coda Records version, that is.  I have some problems with the remake on President Records (see below).
 

GOOD

    The albums listed here are all likely to please Wakeman fans -- they all feature fine keyboard playing and enjoyable music. White Rock and G'ole are soundtracks. Live at Hammersmith and the King Biscuit disc are live recordings of material from Six Wives, Journey, and Myths and Legends. Night Airs and Sea Airs are two more good solo piano albums. The Family Album and Visions are "New Age"-type albums, superior to some of Wakeman's other efforts in that vein (see below).  Wakeman went through something of a slump from about 1982-1992, if you ask me (note how many albums from that time I place below), but on the Wakeman With Wakeman discs, it sounds like working with his son Adam has re-invigorated him.  Those two albums are given over to rock keyboards; Romance of the Victorian Age and Tapestries are much more subdued affairs.

    The New Gospels is Rick's definitive version of his oratorio about the life of Jesus (the original version, The Gospels, is listed in the next section).  As Rick is a devout Christian, this is a work close to his heart (he has also done other religious albums, several of which I have not heard).  Cirque Surreal is a strong album done with a full rock band (and with some vocals by Chrissie Hammond, another Wakeman singer who does not meet with universal acceptance among fans). Return to the Center of the Earth, Wakeman's much-publicized sequel to the original Journey, features narration by the great Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard himself) and vocals by several guests, including Rick's friends Trevor Rabin and Ozzy Osbourne.  The album is worthwhile, and its sound is gorgeous, but the story and the songs, perhaps inevitably, don't match the original.
 

OK

    The albums in this group all feature some work that may well be of interest to Wakeman's more avid fans, but they also all include music that I find less appealing.  Piano Vibrations, the earliest release listed here, is not really a Wakeman album -- it's an "easy listening" collection put together by producer John Schroeder, which features session-man Wakeman on piano.  Through being listed in the discography in Dan Wooding's Wakeman biography The Caped Crusader, it's achieved a legendary status that it of course can't live up to. The Burning is a soundtrack, with some quite un-Wakeman-like music. A Suite of Gods is an experiment in using operatic vocals, which doesn't always come off -- though I might like it better if I were a fan of operatic vocals, which I'm not.  In the Beginning is a selection of Bible readings by Rick's wife Nina, backed with music by Rick.

    The two Classical Connection releases look promising, but the performances, if you ask me, could be better, and many of the pieces on them are in fact available in better performances on other Wakeman albums.  (Fans of early Wakeman may want to pick up the second one because it includes and outtake from the Six Wives sessions, featuring Chris Squire, Steve Howe, and Bill Bruford).  The Aspirant trilogy of New Age albums is just fine for what it is, but Wakeman has done better work under the "New Age" rubric (see above).  Rock'n'Roll Prophet Plus is a reissue of a 1982 Wakeman album (listed below), with four new recordings added.  The new pieces are much stronger than the original album, which features an "electro-pop" sound and some odd songs sung by Wakeman himself.

    The rest of these I just find somewhat lackluster, with a few high spots here and there (such as "Gone But Not Forgotten" on Cost of Living), but not enough for me to recommend them to new Wakeman listeners.
 

MY LEAST FAVORITES

    These are, in my opinion, Wakeman's least successful works.  Most of them promise more than they deliver.  Some fans rate No Earthly Connection highly, but I think it's a muddle.  A quote from my All-Music Guide review of it: "It's notable that Wakeman, having broken with Yes over the obscurely metaphysical album Tales from Topographic Oceans, proceeded to make his own obscurely metaphysical album here." -- and, not surprisingly, it turns out Jon Anderson does it better.  1984 and Softsword are also disappointing concept albums.  The re-recording of Country Airs, done on an electronic piano (I think), loses the pastoral feel of the original in mile-a-minute playing.  Live on the Test is a vintage concert recording, but the repertoire, the band's performance, and the sound quality are all below par.

    The 2CD Rick Wakeman's Greatest Hits is not what the title says it is -- instead of collecting Wakeman's best work, it features new remakes of some of it.  Wakeman records a whole CD of instrumental versions of Yes classics, and a disc of his own solo work, with little variety in keyboard sounds.  The playing is fine, and the songs are of course very good, but the overall result is somewhat tiresome.

    The others listed here I just find mostly dull and uninteresting.  The exception is Phantom Power, which gets my vote as Wakeman's worst-ever album.  A wildly over-the-top soundtrack to a 1925 black-and-white film version of Phantom of the Opera, this one (which, by the way, features virtually no interesting keyboard playing) strikes me as totally ridiculous.  (Sorry, Rick.)
 

And, for reference,

ALBUMS NOT REVIEWED