Rick Wakeman

At age 30, Rick Wakeman was already one of rock’s greatest superstars. A classically trained keyboardist, he reached international stardom in the early 1970s with Yes, the influential and enduring band that pioneered progressive rock, and would go on to sell more than 50 million records as a solo artist. As a session player, he performed on an astonishing string of classics, from Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken” to Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water.” At the height of his celebrity, Wakeman defined the age of rock excess: collecting a fleet of Rolls-Royces, building a pub in his country mansion, and, most infamously, performing in a long, flowing cape, encircled by electronic keyboards like a sorcerer of synths. “Rick’s mastery of electronic instruments,” Elton John once quipped, “was one of the reasons I stuck to the piano.”