Rick Wakeman, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are some things that are well worth the wait, even if you didn’t realise just why you had waited for them until the first note came crashing down around your senses and you were transported through time and the love of literature to a point of sheer bliss.

Rick Wakeman is a showman, a person who can make you feel at ease so quickly that you have barely had the chance to warm the seat, take off your coat and nestled back to enjoy a seminal great being performed. This though was different, not in the manner of the man for which he has few equals but in the way that what was to played was an album that only been heard live three times on these shores before this tour in the space of 40 years. This was not an excuse to be self-indulgent, for which Mr. Wakeman is very possibly the only man in Prog for who an audience would allow the luxury, this was a chance to make history and with Journey To The Centre of the Earth being played in its entirety at The Philharmonic Hall, history was made.

Before the audience inside the Philharmonic Hall were given that special honour, Rick Wakeman showed exactly how important the album was, the pressure he was under from the record company and the sincere backing he had by some very important names by playing several songs from their catalogue as a thank you to them. With upmost sincerity flowing from his keyboard, Mr Wakeman performed, with help from Hayley Sanderson and Ashely Holt, the Cat Steven’s classic Morning Has Broken, Summertime and David Bowie’s Life on Mars before doing an outstanding version of Eleanor Rigby as if it had been performed by Sergei Prokofiev. Each song was greeted with respectful applause except for the final track which had the awesome effect of leaving the crowd stunned by the brilliance of it and then cheering as wildly and with much admiration as if they had just witnessed the Moon landings for the first time.

The second half of the show belonged entirely to Journey To The Centre of the Earth, the Jules Verne classic novel turned 40 years ago into a best-selling piece of music sensuality. This was music that hadn’t been heard live in Liverpool before and the audience inside the Philharmonic Hall lapped up every note of desire, every tantalising morsel of music gratification and at the end, after the actor Philips Franks had finished narrating, after Matt Pegg, Dave Colquohoun, Tony Fernandez, Guy Protheroe, the Orion Symphony Orchestra and of course the amiable genius like quality of Rick Wakeman had let the final image filter from stage to audience , the explosion of applause was enough to have the people who run John Lennon airport check the internet to make sure Liverpool hadn’t opened a rival airport in town.

It may have taken many fans 40 years to finally hear this album performed live but like all good things it was worth the wait.

Ian D. Hall