Published on Jun 7, 1999
In 1973, Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman recorded his first solo
album,
The Six Wives of Henry VIII, a dazzling 35-minute
demonstration of Wakeman’s virtuostic flourish on the huge variety
of electronic and acoustic keyboards at his disposal, as well as
the Royal Academy of Music grad’s substantial compositional skill.
It was, along with Yes’ contemporaneous release
Close To The Edge, the high-water mark of Wakeman’s
career.
Wakeman and Yes stood at the head of the burgeoning art-rock
movement, and, in typical form, set about shooting themselves in
the foot the second the summit was reached – Yes with their
overblown (but to Your Humble Narrator very underrated)
Tales From Topographic Oceans, Wakeman with a series of
records so odious in their pomposity that the very talented
keyboardist’s fantastic work was obscured by narration, ice-skating
Arthurian knights (no lie!), and other drek that speeded the
decline of progressive rock as a viable genre.
For the last five years, Wakeman (who in the interim found
religion, gave up booze, and made about fifty solo albums) has
promised one more colossal progressive rock masterpiece.
Unfortunately, this album –
Return To The Centre Of The Earth – follows more in the
footsteps of his mid-70’s kitsch-fests
The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur and
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (indeed
Return is a sequel to this 1974 record) than some of his
more impressive instrumental output –
Six Wives and 1977’s
Criminal Record LP.
Return To The Centre Of The Earth is a lengthy (nearly 77
minutes) concept album in the strictest sense of the world, telling
the story of modern explorers retracing the footsteps of Arne
Saknussen and the heroes of Jules Verne’s classic novel. Featuring
Patrick Stewart on narration and guest vocalists as diverse as Ozzy
Osbourne, Justin Hayward (Moody Blues), Trevor Rabin (ex-Yes), and
Bonnie Tyler,
Return is an expansive album dealing in a variety of musical
styles, with varying degrees of success.
The good points: Wakeman is still an incredible performer, and
frankly I cannot fault a single thing about his performance on this
album. The orchestrations behind Stewart’s narration are
particularly good (an album full of instrumental composition in
this vein by Wakeman would be very interesting indeed). “The Dance
of a Thousand Lights” is a fantastic piano/orchestra piece, very
restrained, dignified, and virtuostic.
The problem is that there’s just not enough Wakeman on the album
– too much of the very cluttered sonic landscape is taken up by
screeching choirs, angular swoops of strings, and other
less-than-satisfying noise that obscures Wakeman’s performance.
“Still Waters Run Deep” features a beautiful synthesizer lead
underneath Hayward’s vocal that is one of the easy highlights of
the album.
Surprisingly, Wakeman’s keyboard timbres are also very
well-chosen on the album (his recent work with Yes on the Keys to
Ascension project featured some really awful sounds) – his Moog
solo on “Buried Alive” is quite good, and the lightning fast solos
on “The Kill” and “Floodflames” are very effective.
The narration, while perhaps a little overdone in terms of how
much text is read (approx. 23 minutes of the album is narration) is
delivered well by Stewart, and the music behind it is gentle and
soothing.
Nearly all the guest vocalists do a good job with their tunes –
“Buried Alive” is a very neat track (with one major flaw–below)
with Osbourne in fine voice (if undermixed). Tony Mitchell’s “Mr.
Slow” is the first really outstanding vocal song on the album –
Mitchell’s low lamenting voice is perfect for the wistful tune.
“Still Waters Run Deep” is another really good song, with a good
peformance by Hayward that is (perhaps predictably) reminscent of a
Moody Blues ballad.
And now, for the negatives: If you strip the choir completely
off this album, I think it gets a lot better. The choral delivery
of some of Wakeman’s lyrics renders them completely undecipherable
and in some cases actually ruins the song – “Never Is A Long, Long
Time” in particular.
“Buried Alive” also suffers tremendously from the screeching
choir trying to race through complicated rock-oriented lyrics. More
conventional “rock” backing vocalists – perhaps a trio of female
singers similar to those used for the wordless vocals on
Six Wives – would have provided for more distinct vocal
delivery and taken some of the clutter out of the sonic landscape
(to use a cliche) of
Return To The Centre Of The Earth.
Which is my second complaint. With four-piece rock band plus
choir plus full orchestra plus guest vocalists there just isn’t
enough noise to go around it seems. The orchestra seems overmixed
at times, the choir is simply extraneous, and all this seems to be
at the expense of the soloists – Wakeman is inaudible for much of
the album (a pity) and even Fraser Thorneycroft-Smith’s couple
guitar solos are indistinct in the wall of sound.
The album just starts out so slow – not until “Buried Alive” is
a catchy musical theme introduced, and “Dance Of A Thousand Lights”
(some 24 minutes into the album) is the first standout track. The
rest though (from “Mr Slow” on) is on the whole pretty good.
Bonnie Tyler and Katrina Leskanich sound quite out of place –
“The Ride of Your Life” seems ridiculous in context – an upbeat
song while our heroes are about to be shot through a volcanic chasm
back to the surface of the Earth.
This is just indicative of the whole record, though – while
ostensibly a concept album half the vocal songs have no obvious
connection to the story at hand – particularly “Never,” “Is Anybody
There?,” “Ride,” etc.
In all fairness to Wakeman, the original plan for this album had
included guest appearances by Robert Plant and David Bowie, among
others, and a blockbuster live performance for TV to be staged on
the 25th Anniversary of the release of the original
Journey. Sadly, a life-threatening case of pleurisy put
Wakeman in the hospital during key stages of the project, and an
almost complete lack of promotion in the States from label EMI
Classics has doomed any chances of commercial success
Return could have enjoyed.
In summary,
Return To The Centre Of The Earth is an album that shows so
much promise – Wakeman’s talent for melding the orchestra and band
shines through on tracks like “Dance”, “The Kill”, and
“Floodflames”, as well as the narration cuts – but is ultimately
disappointing due to the overuse of the choir and the undermixing
of Wakeman’s parts.