While Rick Wakeman was in the process of putting his latest solo album Melancholia together, he was asked by Snapper Music to make a follow-up to The Red Planet, his 2020 Mars-themed concept album with The English Rock Ensemble.
Although he hesitated over the prospect of a sequel, he soon found there was a lot of source material to draw on for the tentatively-titled Return To The Red Planet, the release date of which is yet to be confirmed.
“It’s in total contrast to Melancholia,” Wakeman tells Prog cheerfully, describing the work as “a full-on, over-the-top prog album.” He adds: “There’s been a lot happening on Mars since I last visited it. So there’s more than enough inspiration for me.”
He reveals that he drew on his experience playing with David Bowie back in his pre-Yes days. “When we did Life On Mars? we talked a lot about it; he was fascinated with Mars – not to the depth that I am, but it intrigued him. So I wrote a track, almost like a tribute to David, called Bowie’s Vision. I’m very pleased with it.
“Then there’s one I’ve done on the three epochs of Mars – very proggy, based around the fact that Mars was essentially created in three periods of time over billions of years. So I’ve separated those and made a suite of that.
“There’s also a track called Martian Dust Devils, which is a term astrophysicists use for massive swirling storms. We get them on Earth, in deserts, and they’re pretty wild. But imagine something 1,000 times more powerful! That was a great idea to write, too. It was great fun.”
Once the initial writing was done, though, a highlight for the recording process for Wakeman was getting into the studio with the English Rock Ensemble after they’d been working remotely on their contributions.
“They work together so well,” Wakeman says. “They bounce off each other. Conkers [Adam Falkner, drums] would say to Lee [Pomeroy, bass] – who’s known as The Oracle – ‘If I do this here, why don’t you do something like that there?’ And they’d go, ‘That’s a good idea.’ Then Dave [Colquhoun, guitar] would go, ‘Well, if you’re going to do that, I’ll do this.’
“It was just like the old days – it’s the closest I can remember coming to how it was in the early 70s, the very early days of Yes, preparing for a new album.”
Reviewing The Red Planet on its release, Prog said: “This is very much a Wakeman album, not a Yes one, but those little flourishes and clever thematic connections he once brought to that party can be heard in close-to-delirium abundance… It’s a joy to hear Wakeman going large, doing what most of us consider to be what he does best: taking risks and landing it.”
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