Electric Pianos, Tommy & Guy Protheroe

0:00Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to handle bill pay processes. Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money. We're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a $250 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Hey, this is Paige DeSorbo from Giggly Squad and today I want to talk to you about boost mobile. Quick question, why are we letting our phone bills bully us? Here's a money tip. Stop paying a carrier tax. When you bring your own phone and switch to boost mobile's $25 unlimited forever plan, you can unlock up to $600 in savings. That's real life money, not money trapped in a pricey phone bill. $600 is a trip, a shopping spree, or paying something off. Your money belongs in your life. You get unlimited data, talk, and tax for $25 a month with no contracts and no minimum line requirement. Your phone,

1:01your rules. Head to boostmobile.com to switch today and unlock the savings you actually deserve. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience lower speed. Customers pay $25 per month while active on boost mobile unlimited plan. Savings claim based on a January 2026 boost mobile survey comparing average annual payments of major carrier customers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan. Visit boostmobile.com for details. That's globalgamingleague.com. Everybody games. Welcome to the myths and legends of Rick Wakeman. And I thank you because I'm finding out

2:07about myself thanks to your wonderful questions that you send in. My god, you're an intelligent lot. Thank you so much. And if you've got an intelligent question or an unintelligent question or just a question that you want to write in, please do to rickertrickspodcast.co.uk. And we'll do our very best. That's me and GZ to answer you and make your day or not make your day as the case may be. And I'm rambling. So let's move on over to you GZ. If you'd like to get in touch with Rick on the podcast, it's rickertrickspodcast.co.uk. It's a very easy to remember email address even for us. Sorry, I've forgotten it. Could you tell me what I've written? rickspodcast.co.uk. No apostrophe on the S. Oh, no. No, no. Just straight letters. Rick at rickspodcast. That's it. And Jerry Moran didn't put into apostrophe on, which is why we've got it. Oh, great. He says, love and peace from Ireland. Oh, great. Well, we're about to say

3:09unfortunately. Oh, Ireland generally. Hello, Rick. So happy to hear on the road to rick over. He says, Jerry. Thank you very much, Jerry. We've had many, many, many of those. So thank you, Jerry. So the couple of questions. I recently saw a 70s photo of you. There are lots of 70s photos of you standing beside your keyboard rig. I noticed offender roads electric piano, although I don't think it's ever featured prominently in your work. And maybe you made a conscious decision to give it something of a wide birth. Do you remember using much or did you use much? The fender road's electric piano. I used the fender roads a lot in the 70s. I suppose I used it on some yes stuff. But mainly it came to the forefront. It was used on six wives, but very much used on journeys to the center of the earth. Yeah. It was the main electric piano keyboard that I used on that particular album. And the same it was used again on

4:10King Arthur. Yeah. It was a good piano. I mean, it had balanced problems because of the way that that it worked. It wasn't electronic. It was, you know, it was actually mechanical as well as electronic. Oh, okay. So it wasn't synthesizer sort of electronical. No. And it was not. And there were various versions. There was what they call the suitcase version, which it folded up into a suitcase and you carried. Could you amplify it? Could you plug into an amplifier? Oh, yeah, you plugged into an amplifier. I think I sold mine just a few years ago because I'm not going to use it again. No. I mean, I've done all the vintage stuff and played it. And so it's, you know, it was it was sold for somebody who would enjoy it and play it for young musicians. They get they like a lot of the vintage gear because they get to experience it and play it for the first time. It's got a particularly nice tone to it, a sound to it as well. Oh, it's lovely. It's a pleasant enough. It's a great sound. It was a, I suppose, that there

5:13were a big makers of electric pianos back then, like Fender. Fender made the roads. There was the Whirlitzer. Yes. Which was, I suppose, was more favored by bands like Super Trump. Yeah. They used the Whirlitzer a lot. They did use Whirlitzer was was a main feature of Super Trump 1970s, early 70s music. A lot of Italian electric piano makers like Kumar were one. I really. But what happened with the Italian electric piano makers? They would tend to bring out an electric piano. Then it wouldn't do particularly great. Right. So then the company would go bankrupt. Yeah. And then they'd restart with another name, but the same company, Tennis would brilliant at that. I mean, you could go to them to the sort of the instrument festivals like Alien Frankfurt. And they'd be there. It'd be the same people with a new company name

6:18with electric pianos. The same piano. Wow. I collected loads of them. Some of them were great. Then there was RMI. The RMI company who produced electric pianos that were really, really good and different. Yeah. They were expensive. They were made by the Alan Orgen company who made church organs. Yeah, it was a huge, it was a massive period. You could actually have a museum of electric pianos that were made in the early 70s. Yeah. Yeah. Early to mid 70s. I mean, there really were a lot of them. And then you have to go back further. You've got the Hona Peernet and the Travinette. Yeah. Yeah. And then digital pianos first started. They first started appearing really in the in the 80s, the mid 80s. Yeah. And the very first digital sample piano that was made was made by techniques. Was it really? The very first one at quite a lot of background noise, but was at light years. I mean, people couldn't believe it.

7:23They sound familiar. It was not successful for the simple reason that techniques were not known for making pianos. No, they were high five. High five and also home organs. Of course. They did a lot of home organs. I was invited to Bracknell where they were to see this so-called people that sounded like a piano, which nobody had ever managed to do before. And I got invited by a great friend of mine. I used to play golf with directors of Panasonic and techniques every Saturday morning when I was on tour at a wonderful golf club in sorry called Fox Hills. Okay. And we used to meet there. And it was there one day while we were playing that they said, we've got this keyboard that's arrived in from Japan. It sounds like a piano. And I said, nobody's been able to get one that sounded like a piano, yeah. And they said, well, we're told this one does. Would you come and have a look?

8:28So where I had a look stunned. It was absolutely amazing. Wait a ton. Yeah. It did sound probably like a piano. If it wasn't for the little bit of surface noise behind. Right. Yeah. You would say, this is outrageous. And they said, what do you think we should do with it? I said, you're sitting on a gold mine. Yeah. In a digital piano. Yeah. That sounds like a piano. I said, I would go around the studios. And I said, how I would market it. I would offer them one free. Of course. Yeah. And then you take the sales from all the people are going to go, well, I cannot believe this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing happened. And they come and they said, look, we don't know what to do with this. This isn't our department. We were home organs and high fire. I love techniques high fire to this day. Me too. I've got a wonderful techniques. High fire. I need to get restored or repaired and serviced. So they left it. And I then I was hearing rumors already that Yamaha were. Yeah. Well, but techniques were about six months

9:34to a year ahead. And Yamaha did the climate. Was it clapping over? That was their big successful one. Clavin Ola came in for that. And they knew how to market it. They knew what how to deal with their department on that and became a huge success. And that original piano techniques, digital piano, of which they didn't make very many. I have the first one. Wow. It's in, I have it in storage. Wow. I don't know what to do with it. I think what I should do is maybe talk to techniques and say, do you have a museum? Would you like it? Yeah. That would be the thing to do. I don't have any contacts at techniques anymore. Well, maybe somebody's listening. Maybe somebody does. It's Panasonic techniques. Huge Panasonic techniques fan. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven

10:37for a special offer. A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities, and even another passenger, who are three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together at Rajon's Pember S.I.P.C. Jerry Moran's second question is about Guy Pradharo. Oh yeah, yeah. I discovered him through your work and through Van Gellis. I'd love to know how you met him and formed the English chamber choir. I wish I had to form the English chamber choir, not guilty. You're misappropriating, I think, Jerry, but very kind of you. I mean, I do have a long association with the Brother Rose. It started in 1973. There was a man called Lou Reisner. Oh yes.

11:40Lou Reisner, who did a lot of work for I&M Records and other people. And he had this brilliant idea of doing an orchestration of Tommy with the London Symphony Orchestra, which he did. The live performance is very few at that time. Initially, we're at the Finnsbury Park Empire, which became the Rainbow. Ah, the famous Rainbow. And I was basically in the band on stage. Okay. Playing mainly Clavinette. I think there are recordings of this, aren't there? We've talked about this before. There are recordings of it. I think there are. I don't actually have one, but I believe there are, yeah. And there was, Mooney was, Keith Boehm was involved. And, oh, there by Hamster. Terrifying. There by Hanks Tails. But there was the London Symphony Orchestra. And also at that time, the conductor, the main conductor was Andre Previn. But he was never there.

12:47Oh, okay. And everything was done by a wonderful guy called David Measham. It was a conductor. And he could see that blending mon instruments and rockets and orchestra could work. He really believed in it. I have to say the orchestra and the major, they weren't sure until they got the royalty checks. And they were very sure. But David Measham decided that the orchestra should have its own choir. And so was formed the English Chamber choir. I think. Of which two of the main members, two very young people at the time, my, I suppose, were Guy and Anne Prothero. Right. It was a very young choir. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And I got talking to David Measham

13:48because I'd had this idea for Jodie to the centre of the earth. And he said, I'll get it through. I can get it approved. He said, by the orchestra, hierarchy. He said, I'm sure I can. He said, and I know I'll get approval from Andre, from Andre Previn. Because he, you know, he's had a very wide knowledge of feeling for all kinds of music. Well, I'm Jesus Christ Superstar earlier. I think he had done that. Yeah. For movie stuff forward. So he said, and you're using the choir. I said, yeah, he said, well, you should meet the choir. So I met Guy Prothero, the choir. And we're all about the same age. We're all, I mean, I was, I was 20 early, early mid 20s. They were all early mid 20s. And, and I think David Measham was a little bit older. But we all got on great.

14:50So that really was very, very important to me because I knew then that if I got it done, it had an outlet. Yeah. And I also used the two arrangers who'd done Tommy. Yeah. And other stuff, which was Wilmalone and Danny Beckhamam. So there was a whole team there already that understood what you were trying to do. Right. So I made the demos of, of journey on a Reevox in my house in Jarrah's Cross, where I lived at the time. And was really, really pleased with it somewhere, the original culture, each tape of all of that still probably exists. But it's probably rotted away by now. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify Bill

15:56Pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer. In 2024, a truck crashed into Canaw in Morescu, where I work. 146 of our dogs needed homes fast. We asked for help on Facebook. Our stories spread through WhatsApp messages and Instagram reposts. Immediately people stepped up. And just six hours later, every dog was fostered. I'll never forget how our community showed up for us. Learn how over 3.5 billion people connect to what matters with meta at meta.com slash community. But then what I did was I went down to, I had a little farmhouse in Devon called Trevann in the farm in Woodbury, Saltedton. And that's where I would go to finish it off and tidy it up without being interrupted. And so I went down there, basically in an nutshell, people came to me.

17:05Danny and Will came down to me and we went through the demo, which they loved. And they said, right, we'll go ahead and get working on that, which is exactly what they did. And I wasn't worried at all about how they would do it because I knew that they were on the same wavelength. Moving ahead a bit, it was interesting that when I did return to the centre of the earth, again with the London Symphony Orchestra, it was completely different because everybody in that orchestra understood rock music, they understood different kinds of music, they understood the feel. And that's the main difference. There is a feel in music, which you can't write in notation. I was going to say, you love tempo and you love the time signature, but you can't write feel. You can't write a feel. That's something you can't do. However you try to write, you can't do it.

18:09So unless the musicians understand what you're trying to do, and of course it was difficult then because rock musicians didn't really understand how classical players worked. Classical players didn't understand how rock musicians worked. So it was tricky, but Will and Danny and I have to say David Measham, they knew what was trying to achieve and they were absolutely sensational. And then it was recorded live, but the rehearsals when the choir came along, that's where I sort of became friends with Guy and Anne, who were sort of looking after the choir, even though David Measham conducted them all. Guy and Anne held the choir together. And in fact in later years, when I believe for initially for financial reasons, orchestra stopped having their own in-house choir, because of course there was a limited use for an in-house choir. Guy and Anne took it over and

19:12kept the English Chamber choir going. And that's how I became very close to the family, still am. And I've used them on lots and lots of different projects, including I was commissioned to do some stuff for them. And I did a piece called Noah, which I've really enjoyed, never been recorded. Really? I think there's a bootleg on one of their live performances, never been, which was just a great fun to do. And I would love to recall that at some juncture, because I had the choir split into sometimes into seven, eight parts, very much a choral piece. I've also, I wrote the Wizard and the Forest of All Dreams, which was piano and choir, which they've always wanted to sing live. But the piano parts have gone missing. Oh no. They weren't missing when I came back

20:18from the Isle of Man to hear during a divorce period. And a lot of stuff never made it. One of those times. Yeah. And the music, it could be transcribed again, but would take weeks and weeks and weeks. But it was great fun to do. And I loved the Wizard and Forest of All Dreams. That was a real lovely, lovely album. And I love choirs. And I love writing for choirs. And they've sang with me on piano odyssey, which was wonderful fun to do, which is a piano, a small string section and choir. I've used them on so many different projects. They were on, obviously, on return to the centre of the earth. Yeah. It's just tons and tons of stuff. And they've become great friends. And the other wonderful thing about a guy in a hand, the wonderful brotheros, is that they're

21:25they're on that same wavelength that, going back to something that I think we've talked about before, David Bowie said to me, always work with people who understand what you're trying to achieve, because they can be the most clever people in the world. But if they don't get what you're trying to do, you'll never, you'll never achieve anything. And the great thing about the brotheros is that they, they get it. They get where my head's at. And I don't understand it somehow. I mean, some people like Eric Jordan helps produce everything I do. I don't know how he does. He seems to understand stuff before I even try to explain what it is I'm doing. I mean, he is, as if you remember, the series, MASH, with radar. I mean, he's my radar. You know, he, you know, so I say, well, when I'm trying to achieve it, you know, go, I think this is what you're up. Oh, yeah, great. And that's what you need. And it was the same with the brotheros when we sat down and and we orchestrated, for example, the six wives music for the orchestra and quiet at Hampton Court.

22:32Yeah. God, it's spot on. Absolutely spot on. And that's what you need. You need a team that understand you because I'm very impatient. Yeah. When I'm in the studio, I just want to get on. Yeah. I want to get on and get things done. Sometimes you need people around you to say, oh, just hold on. Yeah. If you want to get this done properly, it's going to take time. And I've got that with the musicians around me, people like Dave Cahoon, guitar, people like Lee Pomeroy, people like Adam Faulkner on drums, singers like Hayley Salison, Molly Marriott, and Jesse Smith. Yeah. They all get. Yeah. And that makes my life so much easier. But it also has taught me to lay back a bit. Yeah. When we were in the studio doing red, the return to the red planet, whereas I would maybe in the past few years ago, it's like, come on, let's get that down now because we're going to move on to this. I now can sit back, learn and get on with it,

23:37move away, make the odd comment, and know that if they say it's going to take us all afternoon to get right, fine. Well, it's an excellent insight and into certainly the relationship with the Proderos and something I should say actually is the thank you for the answer to that question. But also, we talked a little bit about Journey there. And one of the things that we're going to do on the podcast plus, this is where if you subscribe to Rick's podcast, then you get extra groovy stuff. One of the things we're going to do is a deep dive special into Journey because there's quite a few questions that have come up about it. So if you want to get that episode, it'll be with you very soon. Make sure you do subscribe to Rick Wakeman's podcast plus, which will be available. Just have a look at your app that you're listening to your podcast on. They're not being in front of you there. As always, get in touch with Rick if you have questions to ask Rick at rickspodcast.co.uk. And yes, we shall be back for another edition of the podcast. We'll see.

24:46Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to handle bill pay processes. Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money. We're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a $250 gift card as a thank you terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Recently, our company softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything. Dale's a loser. I played a win like early payout from bet three six five. If my team goes up big, I could pay it out instantly even if they blow the lead later. Sound familiar, Dale? Bet three six five. Winning is everything. Gamely problem call 1800 gambler 21 plus only must be physically located in Virginia. TNC's apply in app only.