Watch Rick Wakeman's piano performance of The Beatles' Help

A picture of Rick Wakeman
Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman is premiering the video for his piano cover of The BeatlesHelp exclusively with TeamRock.

The track is taken from Wakeman’s upcoming album Piano Portraits, due for release on January 13, 2017.

The album was prompted by the reaction to his performance of David Bowie’s Life on Mars on BBC Radio 2 earlier this year. He has since recorded a full solo piano album featuring a varied selection of music, including classic songs that he originally performed on.

Wakeman says: “I’ve been wanting to do a piano album for years and I spent quite a bit of time looking at everything from straight classical pieces to stuff that I’d played on in the past like Morning Has Broken and Life On Mars.

“Plus pieces of music that I thought would work really well like Stairway To Heaven and classics like Clair De Lune. Nearly all of the tracks have a memory for me somewhere down the line and it just seemed to work.”

Piano Portraits was recorded at The Old Granary in South Norfolk. The 15-track collection ranges from landmark Bowie hits Life On Mars, which Wakeman recorded the original piano parts for, and Space Oddity, to which he contributed mellotron, through The Beatles, Yes and Led Zeppelin. It also features to classical pieces composed by Debussy and Tchaikovsky.

Piano Portraits is available for pre-order on CD, 2LP and a bundle which includes a signed canvas now, with all pre-orders including an instant digital download of Help, the video for which can be viewed below.

Rick Wakeman Piano Portraits tracklist

  1. Help
  2. Stairway to Heaven
  3. Life on Mars
  4. I’m Not In Love
  5. Wondrous Stories
  6. Berceuse
  7. Amazing Grace
  8. Swan Lake
  9. Morning Has Broken
  10. Summertime
  11. Space Oddity
  12. Dance of the Damselflies
  13. Clair de Lune
  14. Vow To Thee My Country
  15. Eleanor Rigby

Rick Wakeman Quiz

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.