Rick Saddler

Longtime Wakeman associate Tony Fernandez, a drummer, gets co-billing on this album of material co-written by the two. Despite this, half of the tracks are slow and simple instrumentals with only light percussion…

Back in 1975, prog-rock virtuoso Rick Wakeman, at the time also an ‘on-off’ keyboardist with the group Yes, released the third of his solo albums. Like the previous two albums (The Six Wives of King Henry VIII (1973) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974)) it was not short of ambition, planning to tell, in musical form and mood, the story of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table…

This excellent solo piano album (also released, in fact, as The Piano Album) was recorded at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California in 1994. It's a wide-ranging survey of Wakeman's career, featuring new instrumental versions of songs Wakeman recorded with Yes, ABWH, and the Strawbs; songs he recorded as a sideman with David Bowie ("Space Oddity" and "Life On Mars") and Cat Stevens ("Morning Has Broken"); and solo material both classic and recent, including a definitive version of "Gone But Not Forgotten." Wakeman is in great form throughout, and this is one of his most enjoyable releases.

2001 Dutch release with live recordings from the King Biscuit Flower Hour vaults. This 1983 Palladium show is a great place to start for anyone not turned on to Derringer's brand of music, though its circumstances were very unfortunate at the time. The gig was put together to raise money when all of the instruments and equipment belonging to Derringer and his band had been stolen, along with the van they were stored in that night, from a Greenwich Village side street. The guest artists include Lorna Luft (who put the show together), Dr. John, Edgar Winter, and Ian Hunter.

The soundtrack to Ken Russell's movie provided Wakeman with a canvas upon which to work his magic (or do his damage - it depends upon one's attitude) upon the music of Franz Liszt and, to a lesser degree, Richard Wagner. Actually, much of what is here is more substantial than the material on Journey or Myths and Legends, which can be attributed largely to the composers' contributions.

Within the same year of re-joining Yes for 1977's Going for the One, Rick Wakeman released yet another solo instrumental concept album. Criminal Record, Wakeman's sixth album in five years, involves six tracks that instill Wakeman's keyboard wizardry to both fictional and historical accounts of punishment, villainy, and crime…