Best-known as the keyboardist in Yes' classic lineup, Rick Wakeman made his debut as a solo artist in 1973 with THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY THE VIII. Styled as a concept album (all but obligatory in progressive rock at that time), each of the album's six songs is a "musical portrait" of one of that English monarch's spouses. However, apart from the song-titles, the concept is tenuous at best, and each track on Wakeman's debut can be appreciated on its own terms as a slice of enjoyable, and often even engrossing, prog.Appropriately enough, the keyboard dominates the soundscape here as Wakeman struts his stuff. Less technically gifted than his main 70s rival Keith Emerson, Wakeman is also subtler than he (although "subtler" is of course a relative term), opting for a more composed, less brazen approach, allowing him to show off the full battery of early 1970s keyboards, from Moog to Mellotron to Hammond C-3, in layers of instrumental textures. His showboating reaches its crescendo on the Bach-inflected Jane Seymour, which also reveals the limits of his talents. In contrast to the dense fugues of yore, Wakeman's pastiche consists mostly of block chords and noodly organ runs, with little of the contrapuntal complexity that makes baroque music so... baroque.
However, Jane Seymour is the weakest moment only because it is here that Wakeman (over)reaches furthest. Throughout the rest of SIX WIVES his prowess is put to better use, especially on the opening Catherine of Aragon (familiar to Yes fans as Wakeman's solo spot during that band's concerts), a concentrated four-minute burst of tightly-composed, dazzlingly-performed progressive rock. But every track has something to recommend it: the gorgeous pastoral melodies of Catherine Howard (adapted from an English hymn), the jazzy intro of Anne Boleyn (The Day Thou Givest Lord Hath Ended) breaking into a keyboard ¬tour de force, the highly-charged bombast of Catherine Parr which finds Wakeman's penchant for grandiosity at its most obvious and most effective. Even the somewhat lackluster jam that comprises much of Anne of Cleves features a barn-burning performance from Wakeman's fellow "Yes-Man" Alan White on drums.
Indeed, in addition to Wakeman's excellent keyboard work, the musicianship here is top-notch, featuring the rest of Yes's classic lineup on Catherine of Aragon, half the Strawbs on Catherine Howard, and Alan White on everything else. Despite the presence of so many of his fellow Yes-Men, THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII bears little enough resemblance to Yes, other than that both fall broadly under the category of "symphonic prog." Actually, what Wakeman is doing here is more reminiscent of the contemporaneous Italian scene, with the focus less on complexity and more on mood, with lots of sweeping melodies and keyboard textures. Wakeman is fundamentally a conservative, foregoing jazzy dissonance and experimentalism in favor of grand symphonic gestures. For those who share his tastes, or really for any aficionado of early 70s progressive music, this is a standby well worth owning.
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