Rick was about to generate a seismic shift in the music world, and more especially that of Strawbs.
Dave Cousins, from his autobiographyExorcising Ghosts, published in 2014.
As the 1970s dawned, Rick Wakeman, aged just 20, already had hundreds of recordings as a session musician under his belt. ‘Fixer’ David Katz, who sourced musicians for record producers, was instrumental in ensuring Rick received regular work, which included performing on TV themes for popular series likeThe Avengers andJason King. Some of the pop and novelty acts he recorded for including White Plains, Edison Lighthouse, Brotherhood of Man, The Fortunes, Cilla Black and Mary Hopkin enjoyed hit singles, but his contributions went uncredited. Although he was usually hired for his playing and arranging skills, he wrote and performed the jaunty theme tune for the BBC TV seriesAsk Aspel, a popular family entertainment programme during the 1970s.
Despite his unorthodox appearance and casual demeanour, Rick earned the respect and admiration of the producers and musicians he worked with. He was nicknamed ‘One-take Wakeman’ because of his uncanny ability to nail his parts first time and he could often be found in the pub across the road while the others were still in the studio working on theirs. In between sessions, he was still appearing nightly on stage, but as the groups he’d performed with thus far never ventured beyond the club circuit, his public profile as a musician – let alone a rock star – was minimal. This was about to change, however.
Although he was earning good money with Spinning Wheel, Rick was getting tired of playing every night to the same pub audiences and yearned to be part of a proper touring band. He was briefly a member of Warhorse, fronted by Ashley Holt, who he had befriended back in the days of the Ronnie Smith band, but this came to nought. Given that the following year, Rick revealed toMelody Maker journalist Mark Plumber ‘I hate folk music’, his next move, in hindsight, seems like an unusual one.
Strawbs, unlike many of their folk-rock contemporaries, performed original songs, many penned by band leader and frontman Dave Cousins. They had evolved from the Strawberry Hill Boys, a bluegrass combo who were part of the London folk scene in the 1960s. Strawbs were handled by E.G. management and had the distinction of being the first UK act signed by American label A&M Records. Like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Cousins has a very distinctive voice that one immediately associates with British folk and like Rick, he was a session musician in the late 1960s working through David Katz. When interviewed byMelody Maker in 1970, Cousins acknowledged:
I suppose my songs are old-fashioned, out of date, but then again, they aren’t. I don’t deliberately set out to write a song to sound as though it were from some different age, it just comes out that way. … We’ll play ev
