Wakeman's secret

[Steven Sullivan]

[ This is a repost of the following article: ]
[ From: ***@aol.compass (Senor Velasco) ]
[ Subject: Wakeman's secret ]
[ Newsgroups: alt.music.yes ]
[ Message-ID: <***@mb-m18.aol.com> ]

Sorry if this has already been talked about. I stumbled across this article
when I was surfing Nexis during some downtime at work... Take it for what it's
worth, considering that it suggests Rick was on tour with Yes in 1985.
--------

Copyright 2004 EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS
The Express

May 1, 2004

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 27

LENGTH: 1807 words

HEADLINE: THE LOVE CHILD RICK WAKEMAN HAS KEPT SECRET FOR 18 YEARS

BODY:

EXCLUSIVE: One of Britain's top musicians speaks for the first time about the
daughter he s cared about and provided for since her birth but who the rest of
his family knew nothing about. Here, he tells Rachel Kaufman why he has chosen
this moment to come clean

THIS week Rick Wakeman carried out one of the most difficult and traumatic
tasks that he has ever faced in his life - telling his family for the first
time that he has a secret daughter whom he has kept hidden from them for nearly
18 years.

The rock legend yesterday contacted his estranged wife, former model Nina
Carter, and their children, Jemma, 21, and Oscar, 17, to admit to having an
American love child whom he has supported since birth without their knowledge -
although he only met her for the first time after his marriage broke up.

Amanda, now 17, was the result of a fling with his former love and one-time
costume designer Denise Girard. With her blonde hair, the teenager bears a
striking resemblance to her father. And - just like him - she loves playing the
piano.

Rick, 54, admits he is terrified at the impact that the revelation might have
on his children (he also has three adult sons from previous relationships).

"I'm gutted as to what I'm putting my family through, " he told the Daily
Express this week. "I love my children so much. I have no excuses and no
answers. I can only hope and pray they can somehow understand that I made the
decisions I did because I thought they were for the best for all concerned.

"This has been the most horrendous time of my life. I've been feeling sick and
numb for the past few months. It's something that has been eating away at me
throughout my life.

"I've wanted the truth to come out for so long, but I wanted to wait until my
children had all reached a certain age. My youngest is now almost 18. I don't
care what happens to me, I just worry about how this will affect everyone
else."

He adds: "At the time, I never told anyone about my daughter in America because
I was married to Nina and desperate to keep my family together. I'm aware
people will judge me, but I found myself in a no-win situation. I never wanted
to hurt anyone."

RICK is reluctant to say too much about Amanda - not just to protect her but
also to avoid causing his other children even more upset.

While he has travelled to America to meet her on a number of occasions since
their first face-to-face meeting two years ago (and is currently over there on
the 35th anniversary world tour of his band Yes for the next two months), he
admits that they are not in regular contact and that Amanda - who is about to
begin university - has her own life to live.

"Amanda's fine. She is my daughter and as such I love her, " he says. "But
she's anxious about my other children's reaction to the news about her.

"I hope one day maybe they can meet, if only to talk about what a complete
waste of space I am."

The story that Rick feels able to reveal only now goes back to a Yes tour of
the US in 1985. It was there that he had a one-night stand with long-time
friend and ex-lover Denise, now 50.

She was the woman credited with designing Rick's flamboyant stage costumes in
the Seventies - the wizard-like capes that became as synonymous with the
keyboard player as his long blond tresses.

After his second marriage ended at the end of 1980, Rick and Americanborn
Denise became romantically involved for the first time. He invited her to
England to live with him in his rented London flat. The couple even talked
about marriage. Rick says:

"But my life was problematic. We split up in 1981 and Denise flew back to the
States." He then met Nina and married her three years later.

But a year after that Denise, who still cared for him deeply, turned up at one
of Rick's American shows. "We ended up together that evening, " he admits.
"We'd been friends for many years. Neither of us meant it to happen but
sometimes, these things do."

Rick insists: "It was the first and last time I was unfaithful to Nina
throughout the entire marriage. It has never stopped eating away at me.

But you have to live with it because you can't turn the clock back."

Rick found out that Denise was pregnant in a phone call from her in August 1985
while he was on tour in Australia. "I was shellshocked when Denise told me, "
he says quietly.

Two weeks later, Nina broke the news she was pregnant with their second child.
Rick recalls: "I walked around in a daze. I found myself in a completely no-win
situation."

Desperate to hold his marriage together, and with his daughter Jemma then only
three, Rick agonised about what to do. "If I'd told Nina what happened, the
marriage would almost certainly have been over. That would have left Jemma and
the unborn Oscar without a dad."

EVENTUALLY, with Denise's agreement, he chose to financially support his
daughter but keep her a secret from his world back home.

Amanda grew up across the Atlantic unaware of her famous roots.

As she reached adolescence, she became deeply confused about her identity. The
animal-loving teenager wondered where her blonde hair came from, so she asked
her mother:

"Who is my father?" Denise finally told her the truth.

Until two years ago, Rick had no contact with either Amanda or her mother. But
following his separation from former Page Three girl Nina, 52, four years ago
and Denise's own divorce, he began to take the first difficult steps to making
contact.

Rick's personal life has always been chequered. His first marriage to Ros
Grover in 1970 produced two sons, Oliver, 32, and Adam, 30. They divorced in
1977 and Rick then fell for Swiss-born Danielle Corminboeuf, with whom he lived
in Montreux, Switzerland. He had another son with Danielle - Benjamin, 26 - and
they married in 1980, but parted shortly afterwards and he returned to the UK.

That was when Denise moved to England from America, but their relationship
didn't last. Denise flew off to work as a designer in South America and China
and in 1981, Rick met Nina Carter.

He was on a solo tour at the time, and Nina was brought along by one of the
star's friends to watch his show at the Oxford Apollo. "Nina sang a song on my
record label, " Rick recalls. "She sang it well but it was a terrible song. I
should know, because I wrote it, " he says with a smile.

A week after their first meeting, they went on a date to see Michael Crawford
in Barnum at the London Palladium. Within a couple of months, he moved into
Nina's house in Godalming. They married in November 1984 in Camberley, Surrey.
"It was a fabulous day, " says Rick. "It was one of those rare occasions when
Nina returned to her natural dark hair, so it was a unique day in many ways."

Initially, Nina proved a calming influence on Rick, an alcoholic whose
extraordinary lifestyle had cause him to suffer three heart attacks before the
age of 30.

Born in London in 1949, he learned to play the piano at the age of four,
trained at the Royal College of Music and left early to join the rock scene.

He was a member of The Strawbs and did session work with David Bowie and Cat
Stevens before linking up with progressive rock band Yes in 1971.

Over the next two decades, he broke away from Yes on several occasions to forge
a successful career in his own name. In 1974, he recorded his monumental album
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth with the London Symphony Orchestra. But as
his musical achievements scaled giddying heights, so did his drinking habits.
He drank port and brandy in pint glasses and chain-smoked.

Four years after meeting Nina, Rick finally gave up drinking after he suffered
alcoholic hepatitis. In 1988, he moved with Nina to the Isle of Man where they
involved themselves with community life and bringing up Jemma and Oscar. Rick
played golf on his rare days off and found comfort from Christianity. An active
campaigner for charities, he built a studio in his house and his work became
more introspective. He played gigs in churches and small clubs.

Despite earning fortunes from his career, Rick has frequently experienced
financial problems - which he blames mainly on his divorces.

"My relationship with Nina was fantastic in every way for many years. The major
problems were usually financial. When I was with Nina, I was still recovering
from two divorces and some losses from a few failed ventures. But we always
seemed to come through in the end."

AFTER 16 years, the couple split up in 2000.

Rick packed two suitcases and left. Nina stayed in the marital home on the Isle
of Man, where she now lives with local builder John Martin, 31.

Today, Rick moves between hotels and rented accommodation. He credits his gypsy
ancestry with his willingness to roam. "I don't know where I'm going now or
what I'm going to do, " he says wistfully.

His relationship with Nina remains a subject he is reluctant to discuss in any
detail. "I don't like to look back on the last year or so of our marriage when
the problems started. I have too many wonderful memories, " he says. "Besides,
what's the point? I like to look at the good things in life."

Even so, Rick reluctantly admits that the stress of his divorce over the past
four years has affected his health, causing him to suffer blackouts, depression
and a clinical breakdown. Once, he found himself sitting in the middle of
Trafalgar Square but couldn't remember how he got there.

He later realised that he had been there for four hours.

On another occasion, he felt he was about to have a breakdown while recounting
a joke in a TV interview.

"I just went on to autopilot, " he says now. "When I came off set and was back
in the safety of the dressing room, I cried."

In company, he covers these problems with a dry sense of humour that in recent
years has won him regular appearances on television shows such as Countdown,
Have I Got News For You, Grumpy Old Men and Through The Keyhole.

This week, he is back doing what he does best: performing live and sitting
behind the astonishing collection of 18 keyboards which he plays each night on
Yes's world tour. Such is the scale of the Seventies supergroup's act that in
the run-up to the tour, he spent 15-hour days programming the sounds into all
the keyboards and running through a legion of technicalities with the band.
They finally began in Seattle two weeks ago, and are due in Las Vegas and New
York before moving on to Europe.

But, for all the hard work, he is at least on familiar territory. It is a fear
of the unknown - of how his other children will react to the revelation with
which they were confronted yesterday that worries Rick Wakeman more than
anything else now.

"I haven't slept at all recently, " he admits. "But I've always known the truth
has to come out."

LOAD-DATE: May 3, 2004

[Steven Sullivan]

whoops, sorry about that redundant cross-post. Meant it to go
to r.m.p.