Rick’s announcement about the tour...

"I truly think that as regards my music, I must have some of the most loyal supporters that there can possibly be anywhere in the world. Over the last year in particular I have been inundated with e-mails, letters and personal messages from people, saying, that whilst they fully understood my reasons for not being able to do long tours anymore, they really felt it was a shame, that, (with my limiting performances to ‘one-offs’), it could very much mean that, the ‘one man shows’ in particular, would be very much of the old genre, with the exception of the Xmas Shows of course, which always had something of a twist in the tail!

I really do take notice of what people say, (with a few notable exceptions of course), and my initial thoughts were that I’d probably taken the ‘One Man Show’ element as far as I possibly could, but then came a germ of an idea that, although I initially thought would be far too expensive to stage, somehow, has amazingly developed over the last few months, (with tremendous help from Robert Garofalo of Classic Media and the promoter John Hessenthaler), to now becoming a reality.

On stage for ‘Rick Wakeman’s Grumpy Old Picture Show’ will be an acoustic piano, a keyboard rig and a lectern, from where a rather “unbelievably silly”, “tongue in cheek” and at times, what may only prove to be adequately described as “hysterical”, version of much of my life will be related.

Accompanying all this will be specially prepared, and in many cases previously unseen, film footage illustrating both the stories and much of the music that I will be playing and finishing off with a specially prepared ‘film finale’ that could well prove to something of a show-stopper if all goes according to plan!”