Rick Wakeman: His best solo album.

[llanwydd]

In descending order:

1. Six Wives
2. Criminal Record
3. Phantom Power
4. Journey
5. White Rock

[Man In The Mountain]

That is great! Rick's big tube stick.

[yamishogun]

Jon Anderson played all the keyboard parts; Rick played only the Greek bouzouki.

I hope to see ARW this fall. I'll be suspicious if for a song or two Anderson isn't on stage during an instrumental. Maybe he'll be taking a vocal break while under the stage helping Wakeman out...

[Yodelgoat]

Oh Wow...

I have been a huge fan of Earthly, Journey, six, and Aurthur. I have never given any of the others a chance. Looks like I'll have to at least try Criminal Record and... Well what else? I am NOT opposed to Wakemans Cheese, as is it better than most artists serious beef.

[nycsteve]

White Rock

[grego]

On Criminal Record, I like only the first track, which reminds me of Genesis in a way.

[dropforge]

I love Criminal Record, Six Wives, White Rock and 1984, and I also dig The Burning, Night Airs, The Piano Album, Retro, Retro 2 (wish he'd done a third), G'ole!, Themes and quite a few others.

I must be one of those dumb guys who doesn't understand that Six Wives is the only album of Rick's worth writing home about.

[arturs]

I am NOT opposed to Wakemans Cheese, as is it better than most artists serious beef.

I agree. I think that with Wakeman, the cheese is half the fun. I would like him far less without the pompous bombast.

[Man In The Mountain]

I love Criminal Record, Six Wives, White Rock and 1984, and I also dig The Burning, Night Airs, The Piano Album, Retro, Retro 2 (wish he'd done a third), G'ole!, Themes and quite a few others.

I must be one of those dumb guys who doesn't understand that Six Wives is the only album of Rick's worth writing home about.

Oh come on, I was being tongue in cheek. And it's not what I meant that no others are worth owning... in fact, all those you just listed also make the top of my list. I have more Rick Wakeman albums in my collection than I care to admit. But on a serious note, Six Wives - has he ever made another quite like it? White Rock & The Burning are similar, but not as good. King Arthur is Rick's most epic for sure, his Brain Salad Surgey one could say... I place it second only because Six Wives is such raw analog wizardry it just rises above the pack.

Retro & Retro II are later day gems. In fact, they came out after I had given up on Rick, then there he goes again putting out wonderful analog cheese outings.

[JJ88]

^Criminal Record is the closest I've found to Six Wives, it has a similar formula of six 'themed' tracks. It's the only other one with Chris Squire and Alan White, for one thing. Apart from the cheesy ending of 'Chamber Of Horrors' and the very silly 'The Breathalyzer', it holds up fairly well.

I like some of the music on both Journey and King Arthur. The vocals, the lyrics, narration and general bombast are something I have to be in the mood for, though.

[dropforge]

Oh come on, I was being tongue in cheek. And it's not what I meant that no others are worth owning... in fact, all those you just listed also make the top of my list. I have more Rick Wakeman albums in my collection than I care to admit. But on a serious note, Six Wives - has he ever made another quite like it? White Rock & The Burning are similar, but not as good. King Arthur is Rick's most epic for sure, his Brain Salad Surgey one could say... I place it second only because Six Wives is such raw analog wizardry it just rises above the pack.

Retro & Retro II are later day gems. In fact, they came out after I had given up on Rick, then there he goes again putting out wonderful analog cheese outings.

I wasn't singling you out, bro. Just a generalization. And ditto!

[gilawi]

This is what Wakeman's Favorite Albums Poll reveals (first six)

1 - Myth and Legends
2- Six Wives
3- Journey
4- Criminal Record
5- No Earthly Connection
6- Return to the Center of the Earth

[Luckie]

Another vote for Six Wives here. Myths & Legends second. Plenty of great stuff elsewhere but I have to cherry-pick.

Journey seems totally overrated to me (though I can see why it was the bee's knees at the time) - boring narration, pedestrian band, silly lyrics, choir messes up a verse...

EDIT: Grieg's Hall Of The Bleedin' Mountain King...

[grego]

Journey is puffed up, and was never percieved as something equal to Wives and Arthur, both his best of the 70s era. After Rhapsodies I lost interest. Heard Out There though. Nice, but NEC is much better.

[Progbear]

I will have to check out White Rock. Sounds like I may like that one.

It’s probably the most stripped-down of his 70s output, since it was recorded as a duo (Rick plus drummer Tony Hernandez). The title track is pretty amazing since the whole thing is just Hernandez on drums plus overdubs of Rick’s Minimoog. You’ll want to skip over “Montezuma’s Revenge,” though, as if the title weren’t enough of a clue.

G’olé sounds like a similar idea, but is way less well-regarded. It’s from 1983, so I’ve never been moved to check it out.

I actually do have a bit of a soft spot for Journey and Arthur, at least parts of them. A little goes a long way, though. They’d probably be better regarded than they are if Rick just let Gary Pickford-Hopkins do all the singing (though even then, we’d be left with embarrassments like Terence Stamp’s narration and “Gone are the days of the KNIGHTS!”).

I fail to see why people are so jazzed by NEC. For me, it’s all of Rick’s most cheesy/embarrassing/cringeworthy tendencies slammed together on one disc. It literally sounds like the result had Liberace attempted a prog album.

That said, I kind of have a soft spot for the Lisztomania soundtrack, at least the Real Lisztomania version. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but it’s where the cheesiness crosses over into being entertaining. Probably because I saw the movie first, and thus associate it with that. Incidentally, the movie is completely insane! Then again, how many Ken Russell films weren’t?

Speaking of Russell, I’ve also seen Crimes of Passion, but was not moved to seek out the soundtrack. It just sounded like so much sax-heavy porn-movie music to me (actually, appropriate, given the film’s subject matter). The exception was the “It’s a Lonely Life” song featuring vocals by Maggie Whatsherface from Stone the Crows (at least I think that’s who sang on that!).

^Criminal Record has 'The Breathalyzer'. Six Wives doesn't.

I also find the ending of 'Chamber Of Horrors' to be deeply, deeply corny.

Couple that with way less inspired/memorable compositions than 6 Wives and more of those hideous Polymoog sounds from Tormato and you have the reasons why I don’t crow about this one the way other folks do.

[yesstiles]

For me, I enjoy Six Wives, Journey, Arthur, and Earthly all the same Criminal Record is close but not quite.

[Luckie]

Progbear, I'm today's designated pedant. It's Fernandez, not Hernandez, and the Myths & Legends narrator was Terry Taplin, not Terence Stamp. I think he also narrated Journey on tour, post-David Hemmings. Died 2 or 3 years ago.

[Yodelgoat]

Oh yeah, you have to be able to stand icky, icky vocalists with Wakeman. Whats his problem? cant he find any decent vocalists? Yuck.

[Rarebird]

I love Criminal record, especially the closing track.

[Beebfader]

It's the terrible vocalists that put me off all but his instrumental 70's work..

[Yeswave]

The problems is that he put out so much product to pay the bills that it's hard to keep up. There's only so many New Age/Piano albums that I can take before they all merge into one and there are many great albums that have gone largely unoticed having got lost in this sea of releases. My favourite of these lost releases are;

Zodiaque - billed as a New Age album but full of good melodies and tunes
Black Knights at the Court of Ferdinand IV & Stella Bianca - Ricks two albums with Mario Fasciano, I think these are great albums.
Themes - These are largley quite straight down the middle keyboard rock tunes al la Rick but I find it a very enjoyable CD. The piano/ambient tunes on the CD work well to break up the rockier tunes as oppossed to getting lost on 3 CDs worth of similar piano tunes.
Private Collection- This is similar to Themes with a few studio recording from the Journey period including a fab studio version of The Battle. Again there's a few piano tracks thrown in which I find work well against the rockier tunes.
Six Wives at Hampton Court - (not really a lost release I know) I have the CD I bought on the night of the concert. I don't listen to this as Brian Blessed's narration winds me up. The later release on vinyl sounds superb.

Of his "main sequence" releases I of course would go for Six Wives... as his best but would give special mention to 1984. This album strikes me as the last of his "main sequence" and the tour in support of the album was great, so perhaps this has lifted it in my mind.

[Progatron]

Zodiaque - billed as a New Age album but full of good melodies and tunes

That's a good one. I don't agree with it being labeled New Age, just like the "Airs" trilogy I mentioned earlier.

[Steve983]

Six Wives for me from his 'big successful' years, Softsword is my main fave but a bit obscure for most people. From his piano works I like the Classical Connection albums and the first album he did with Adam, 'Romance Of The Victorian Age' is excellent - although my faves are in fact Adam's compositions. Otherwise I'd say his career is mostly padding and filler!

[Trane]

Six Wives by a very long shot.

this!!

/end of discussion

[John Doe]

This "Dumb Dumb" goes for Criminal Record.

This one too