Rick Wakeman recalls an altercation with a particularly famous fan in his new autobiography The Wizard Of Prog, which comes out Thursday.
Wakeman’s new book covers his time accompanying some of the biggest stars of the 1970s, and his beginnings in Strawbs, which saw him kick celebrated artist Salvador Dalí off the stage without realising who he was during a 1970 gig in Paris.
“It was a bizarre situation,” Wakeman told the Press Association in a new interview.
“And I had one little solo to do on my little electric piano back then in 1970, and this chap sort of wandered on and started waving his stick around, and I thought somebody will throw him off whoever it is.
“They didn’t so I just went up and I thought I’ll assist him on his way, a gentle nudge shall we say, and off the stage he went.
“It was afterwards that the late Dave Cousins, who was the leader of Strawbs, said to me, ‘do you know who that was?’, I went, ‘no, some old sod, he sounded like he was spouting away in Spanish, I don’t know’.
“He said, ‘Salvador Dali’, I said, ‘oh, I like his work, but I don’t like him wandering on stage and ruining my solo’.
“But I never got to meet him, and he probably, after I’d given him a shove shall we say, he probably wouldn’t have liked to have met me either. I’d like one of his paintings on my wall, that’s for sure.”
The 77-year-old keyboardist, who has released classic prog records such as The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (1973) and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1974), recently performed to 150 rescued bears in Vietnam and is also performing concerts based on the lectures of late cosmologist Stephen Hawking in the Canary Islands.
Wakeman’s Free The Final Bears concert in September saw him support Animals Asia in raising awareness of a further 125 bears who remain trapped in bile farms in Vietnam, despite the government banning bear bile farming in 2005, with one bear even standing up to get a better view during the gig.
The unusual show should come as no surprise from the man who masterminded the King Arthur On Ice show at Wembley Empire Pool in 1975 in support of his record The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table, released in the same year.
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