Creativity Quote by Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman’s deadpan “Actually” does a lot of work: it corrects the myth before it even fully forms. Yes, the keyboard wizard with the capes is famous for coming and going from Yes like a prog-rock comet, but he’s insisting on a smaller, cleaner story. “I only left twice” is a factual claim dressed as a gentle jab at the fan narrative that treats his career as perpetual drama. It’s the tone of a musician who’s been turned into a legend against his will and is now tidying up the record with a shrug.

The line’s real bite is in the timing. “I left then, and then rejoined literally two years later” deflates the supposed permanence of “leaving.” In rock mythology, departures are supposed to be ruptures: ego, betrayal, creative death spirals. Wakeman frames it like commuting. That “literally” is almost comedic - a stopwatch held up to an epic saga - and it telegraphs how quickly these “breakups” can become contractual footnotes when the music (and the business) pulls you back.

Name-dropping Going for the One anchors the correction in a cultural moment: the late-70s pivot when prog had to reassert itself amid punk’s anti-bloat backlash. By pointing to that album, Wakeman signals that rejoining wasn’t nostalgia; it was productive, even strategic. Subtext: bands aren’t soap operas, they’re working entities, and the public’s appetite for melodrama often has more endurance than the actual conflict.