Rick Wakeman, keyboardist from Yes, plays the piano on "Morning Has Broken". Rick had great solo albums too - The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
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2/2 In fact, I read that Bowie had actually asked Wakeman to join his new band-The Spiders From Mars-on the same day Chris Squire asked Rick if he’d be interested in joining his prog rock group, Yes…So, Rick played on Bowie’s album Life On Mars, but he joined Yes…& the rest-as they say-is history.🎶
sep 1, 2025, 3:25 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes, I learned of/was surprised by this when watching a doc w/Wakeman, who actually used to host an excellent radio program here🇬🇧-great anecdotes/🎶. He’d played on so many other artists’💿s as well as his solo💿s & Yes. So🍀I saw Yes w/Wakeman: Among Top 10 best concerts I ever saw-& I saw a LOT😊.
aug 31, 2025, 1:44 pm • 1 0 • view
I just remembered something else you may/may not know: Wakeman played piano on David Bowie’s Life On Mars. When Bowie died, as a tribute Wakeman made a simple, beautiful video of himself playing that song on his piano…such a poignant way to honour his friend…1/2…
sep 1, 2025, 3:18 pm • 1 0 • view
Thanks for this. I wasn't a huge Bowie fan, but now I've listened to the song, & found a youtube version of Rick's tribute. The song seems to be very much based on Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. This was also the basis of Eric Carmen's All by Myself. A classic stays a classic.
sep 2, 2025, 1:15 pm • 2 0 • view