Creativity Quote by Rick Wakeman

Wakeman’s brag is disarmingly casual: not “I was versatile,” but “they called, I showed up.” The sentence moves like a session player’s calendar, hopping genres the way a working musician hops cabs. Pop, glam, rock, classical - the list isn’t a manifesto so much as a resume, and that’s the point. He’s signaling an older ecosystem where taste was less siloed and the job was to deliver, not to curate an identity. Before “branding” became an artistic requirement, competence could be a persona.

The subtext is also a quiet rebuttal to the prog-rock caricature of Wakeman as the caped keyboard wizard locked in a single, baroque lane. By framing his range as something other people demanded of him (“I used to get called”), he smuggles in a claim about legitimacy: gatekeepers with budgets trusted him. That matters because session work is an unromantic credential - it implies speed, literacy, and ego management. You don’t get hired for myth; you get hired for results.

“It was great” lands like relief. There’s joy in being useful, in moving between supposedly opposing worlds: the disposable sheen of pop, the theatrical sparkle of glam, the blunt force of rock, the discipline of classical. Wakeman’s intent feels less like genre tourism and more like a defense of musicianship itself: technique as a passport, curiosity as a career. In an era when playlists flatten everything into “vibes,” he’s reminding you that crossing borders used to require chops, not just taste.