Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1848090056
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Around about August 1948, Mr and Mrs Cyril Wakeman had an early night and some time later, at Perivale in Middlesex, Mrs Wakeman produced a bonny baby son. They named him Richard, but he quickly became known as Rick. Rick was a likeable little fellow who had a talent for the piano and for making trouble. Music became Rick's life - he joined a popular music group called Yes and became a legend. Much later he became a Grumpy Old Man who appears on Countdown, hosts a hugely popular radio show on Planet Rock and performs a one-man show telling stories about his rather extraordinary life.Which is where this book you are holding comes in. Mr Wakeman is simply one of the great storytellers of our age - let's face it, he has some fabulous material. It seemed a shame that some of the funniest yarns should not be more widely known. So he accepted some cash and here we are. Curl up by the fire with a Grumpy Old Rock Star and your nearest and dearest. We defy you not to want to read it aloud and laugh.
cue. Which they did, beautifully. Bollocks. The nuns howled with laughter! The second defining moment of King Arthur on Ice was on the last night. Before the show, Tony Burdfield came to me and said, ‘Rick, do you know you’re one skater short? One of them is off sick.’ I wasn’t too bothered. ‘That’s all right, Tony, there’s that many of them . . .’ ‘Yes, but Rick . . .’ ‘Tony, no one will notice, don’t worry.’ ‘OK, Rick, I’m just letting you know . . .’ The show was going along
FORGOTTEN Sometimes with my job I have laughed until my sides would split; occasionally the opposite is true. I was one of the last Europeans to play in Argentina before the Falklands crisis in 1982. I was down there just before the war started and I had no idea what was going on. The people there had always made me very welcome and I made a lot of friends over the years; there was rampant unemployment in Argentina at the time and a lot of unrest among the younger generation; yet on my return to
I heard sniggering from the clouds and I turned around, looked up and there were the band and crew pissing themselves laughing from one of the windows. They weren’t laughing, mind you, when we were all standing on the street outside the hotel with our bags at 5 a.m. The final insult was when the manager came out with an estimate for how much the damage would cost – we had a golden rule that if anyone ever did any damage they paid for it personally, it did not come out of the band fund. When the
just to my right. ‘Hello, Mr Wakeman.’ It was strange, because as a musician in various well-known bands I’m used to strangers saying, ‘Hey! Rick!’ and all that; yet, here in Poland, there was no reason to expect this, not least because my own mother wouldn’t have recognised me in the secretive scarf and hat. They spoke perfect English. But they weren’t from England. ‘Hello,’ I said, almost by reflex. ‘My name is Boris and this is Ivan,’ the tallest one said. You’re having a laugh, I
expensive pair of cymbals belonging to the headlining rock band, ‘We appear to have three cymbals now!’ After a rather strange residency at a social club for people with mental disorders – don’t ask – I joined a local dance-band quartet which did a lot of work for weddings and other family events. It was proper money, £3 a night – bear in mind that when you are at school and the average pocket money is half a crown, £3 is serious dosh. And this outfit worked three nights a week, mainly over the