Rick Wakeman's 10 Favorite 70s Rock Songs (and Roc

“I never left the seventies,” the keyboard legend admits, “It was such an explosive era for music.”

Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall
When I was living in Switzerland there was a wonderful pub in Montreux called The White Horse and every musician that worked at Queen's Mountain Studios spent their lives there.

It was a phenomenal place. Absolutely buzzing in every respect. It had a jukebox and that was where I first heard Another Brick In The Wall. I went straight over, put it on multiplay and waited for people to complain. Nobody did. Everybody loved it... It's very unFloyd.



The Faces - Stay With Me
Another Swiss memory. Where I lived was halfway up a mountain in a place called Les Monts-de-Corsier and my car journey down the winding road to the studio took exactly the same length it took to play Stay With Me.

I absolutely love the Wurlitzer electric piano on it. Ian McLagan was a great player and a very under-rated player. One of the hardest things for keyboard players is playing the right thing, and he had the knack of playing the right thing.

Argent - Hold Your Head Up
Rod (Argent) is a good friend, and I'm not just picking people because they're my mates, I'm picking this because it's brilliant. The organ solo in Hold Your Head Up is, for me, one of the finest organ solos on a record.

It's brilliantly put together, and from an era where you couldn't go back and correct notes and redo things. It's a true solo. A little work of art, so it has to go in. It's just brilliant, so good.

Free - All Right Now
Another track that has to go in because of a solo. Paul Kossoff's guitar solo's really good, but what I really love is, as the solo finishes and you come back into the chorus again, there's probably the simplest drum break you ever heard.

Most drummers would do something absolutely ridiculous at the end of a solo like that, but not Simon Kirke. He just did a really simple da-dum da-dum da-dum-dum-dum. Simple, but brilliant.

Stealer's Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You
They were on the same label as me. A&M Records; the last of the truly great independent labels, because (label co-founder) Jerry Moss encouraged a real diversity of music. A&M was the equivalent of jazz label Blue Note or classical label Deutsche Grammophon.

If you bought something on A&M you were pretty sure it was going to be good. The production levels had to be very, very high and Stuck In The Middle With You, a simple song, is totally unique.

The Moody Blues - Question
The Moody Blues were such a great band both live and as songwriters. They were also one of the first real users of the Mellotron, the famous I-can't-keep-it-in-tune instrument that all keyboard players have, but they used it really well, and although they employed it most famously on Nights In White Satin, they used it here in a way that nobody had ever used it before. A good melody, a great song and a unique use of the dreaded Mellotron.

Deep Purple - Black Night
A phenomenal solo from Jon Lord. Not a synth lover, but he loved his organ and electric piano. He got a load of different guitar effects and built this long string that went from his amp to both the Leslies and his cabinets so he could create a really unique organ sound that would cut through while doing a solo.

Being great friends we discussed it at length and Jon said “I just wanted to see what I could do with the instrument rather than just do what it did”. He did that right up to his dying day. An absolute genius.

Status Quo - Rocking All Over The World
Rick Parfitt and I used to get into serious trouble together, I was living in Surrey at the time and we'd go out to a very dodgy snooker hall in Putney, then on to very dodgy clubs until the early hours of the morning, then come back and tell everyone we'd been working hard on music.

He was a good lad, I loved Rick to bits. Quo produced fantastic stuff with the limited chord progressions they used, some amazing things that nobody else did, and there's a real art-form in that.

Alice Cooper - School's Out
Alice has always managed to come up with songs with a broad appeal. School's Out was a classic example; a song that mums and dads liked and were quite happy for their kids to listen to despite the fact he went on stage with snakes up his rectum and God knows what else.

I mean, even though he'd be a good person to have around at Halloween, he speaks well and writes good tunes that are very relatable. I've got a lot of time for him, he's great.

The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar
The one thing every kid playing music in their room wants to hear is their parent shouting “Turn that bloody racket off!” up the stairs. It's the seal of approval. Music is the first thing any kid owns: parents choose their clothes, school, what they do, eat, where they go, but their music? That's theirs.

There must have been millions of parents who shouted “Turn that bloody thing off” as the Stones played on Dansette Majors and kids fist-pumped the air in their bedrooms thinking 'Yes! Thank you!'. Brown Sugar encapsulates that feeling.

70s Rock Down: The Ultimate Rock Anthems is out this week.

70s Rock Down: The Ultimate Rock Anthems tracklist
CD1
Queen Killer - Queen
Kiss - I Was Made For Lovin’ You
Elton John - Pinball Wizard
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Old Time Rock And Roll
Paul McCartney & Wings - Live and Let Die
Free - All Right Now
Argent - God Gave Rock & Roll To You
Blue Oyster Cult - (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son
Golden Earring - Radar Love
Tom Robinson Band - 2-4-6-8 Motorway
City Boy - 5.7.0.5
Yes - Wonderous Stories
Emerson Lake & Palmer - Fanfare For The Common Man
Bachman Turner Overdrive - You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Ram Jam - Black Betty
Jo Jo Gunne - Run Run Run
Gary Moore & Phil Lynott - Parisienne Walkways
Jethro Tull - Life Is A Long Song
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird (full version)

CD2
Status Quo - Down Down
The Who - Who Are You
Focus - Hocus Pocus
Deep Purple - Black Night
Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back in Town
Rainbow - Since You Been Gone
Hawkwind - Silver Machine
Bad Company - Can’t Get Enough
ZZ - Top La Grange
Taste - What’s Going On
Heart - Barracuda
Rory Gallagher - Bad Penny
Slade - Cum On Feel The Noize
The Knack - My Sharona
McGuiness Flint - When I’m Dead and Gone
Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle
America - Ventura Highway
Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the Middle With You
Climax Blues Band - Couldn’t Get It Right
Canned Heat - Let’s Work Together

CD3
Fleetwood Mac - Don’t Stop
Alice Cooper - Schools Out
Eric Clapton - Lay Down Sally
Mott the Hoople - All The Young Dudes
The Faces - Stay With Me
Joe Walsh - Life’s Been Good
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band - Blinded By The Light
Foreigner - Cold As Ice
Santana - Black Magic Woman
Python Lee Jackson - In A Broken Dream
Uriah Heap - Easy Livin’
Dr Feelgood - Roxette
The Allman Brothers Band - Jessica
The Moody Blues - Question
Mink DeVille - Spanish Stroll
Roger Daltrey - Giving It All Away
Nazareth - Love Hurt
10cc - Rubber Bullets
Rick Wakeman - Catherine of Aragon

I suppose he could have picked "morning has broken", "space oddity" "roundabout" and "life on Mars." Glad to see he didn't take the easy way out. ;)

cstack3 wrote: AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I suppose he could have picked "morning has broken", "space oddity" "roundabout" and "life on Mars." Glad to see he didn't take the easy way out. ;) Funny, I had the exact same thought!  Interesting that his selections didn't necessarily hew to the "keyboard hero" model, although the Argent tune does - a fine selection.

verslibre wrote: AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I suppose he could have picked "morning has broken", "space oddity" "roundabout" and "life on Mars." Glad to see he didn't take the easy way out. ;) Why would he pick something he played on?

MortSahlFan wrote: "Pinball Wizard" isn't even by Elton, and his re-make isn't as good as The Who. But Elton had a TON of fine songs. I hope he looked at the discography before choosing and not on some park bench

I like a lot of songs of his list, but as expected, I wold make a lot of changes to it. As the saying goes, "To each his own."

MortSahlFan wrote: "Pinball Wizard" isn't even by Elton, and his re-make isn't as good as The Who. But Elton had a TON of fine songs. I hope he looked at the discography before choosing and not on some park bench

I'm surprised that Rick didn't pick a Sabbath song, having guested on one song once on record.

chopper wrote: verslibre wrote: AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I suppose he could have picked "morning has broken", "space oddity" "roundabout" and "life on Mars." Glad to see he didn't take the easy way out. ;) Why would he pick something he played on? You do know he played on all those songs?

I appreciate the earthiness of these selections - no snobbery, no self-aggrandizement, just a list of rock-solid rockers. He knows a good song when he hears one. I would be interested to see his favorite Prog songs that he has not performed on. Rod Argent is clearly one of his favorite keyboardists. I wonder who else he likes.