THE MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

Once Rick Wakeman called it quits the first time and left Yes to concentrate on his solo career, he took his rather large ambitious ideas to the upper limits as he got inspired to tackle a work of music called "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table". If nothing else, you need to respect Rick's vision, and he did pretty much everything he could to give these stories as much as they deserved. But, this is probably where his biggest failure was with the entire work. Even though the world was ready for something this ambitious (this album quickly hit the charts in both the UK and the US, the public ate it up), I don't believe the recording industry was quite up to par to match his ambitions.

Rick's previous solo album was "The Six Wives of Henry VIII", and interestingly enough, it was much better sounding than this one, mostly because it wasn't as "over-the-top" with the choir, the orchestra, the narration and all of the planned productions that were made to support it after it's release. The focus is missing from this album, unlike the "Henry VIII" album. I'm not saying, however, that this is a bad album, because it is far from that. The compositional ideas are excellent. The problem is that there is so much going on here that I don't think a small recording studio was able to really put the final recording together very well.

The album is an excellent idea, and the wonderful booklet with it's colorful illustrations and lyrics are great supporting aids for the album and the idea. It is a bit difficult at times during the playback of the music to determine what Rick was seeing in his mind however, as it may not always coincide with the stories that some of us are familiar with. The reason for this is because Rick familiarized himself with different versions of the stories, and wanted to capture the best of all of the versions. For example, Arthur is depicted in the album to have pulled the sword from the stone (in the track "Arthur"), and then later there is a narrative presented by the choir that suggests he received it from the fabled lady of the lake (as in the short track of the same name). This also happens in the "Merlin" track. This one is divided up into 3 sections. One section depicts Merlin as an old man preparing his potions while another section depicts him as a mad scientist sort. The last section (the one that has the crazy banjo/honky tonk piano playing at a breakneck speed), represents a story of Merlin being locked up in a cave forever by a woman he had the hots for. This might account for some of the confusion about the tone of some of the songs.

Overall, however, it sounds as if Wakeman was able to stay consistent through the album, giving the music a real "classical" and "symphonic" feel throughout. This is quite well described not only by his keyboards and synths, but by the choir and orchestral sections. Where it all falls apart is in the recording of the album. When the album came out, it actually sounded like nothing else, quite impressive and technically flawless. To listen to it now, especially on the first side, from "Arthur" to "Sir Lancelot", there are many sections where all of the parts don't seem to come together very well, places where the parts are not even lined up rhythmically. There are also sections that sound a bit muddled and weighted down by all of the activity within the music. It almost sounds messy, if you will. However, the 2nd side (from "Merlin" to "The Last Battle", things seem to get much better, and this half of the album is much more enjoyable and fulfilling. So, there is a bit of inconsistency here.

It also doesn't help that the vocals are quite dramatic, almost rock-operatic, which give the album an over-the-top and bombastic feeling. Many people complain that Wakeman was a bit too bombastic and this is who they think of when they claimed that progressive rock was self-aggrandizing and pompous. I have to shake my head when I hear this because, in reality, all popular music artists are pompous. Wakeman was talented and it made a lot of artists upset that he was one of the most talented keyboardists in the industry. They say punk came about to retort the pomposity of prog rock, but before that movement ended, those artists were just as pompous as the people they were protesting, and the genres of music that replaced prog in the 80's (I'm talking pop, new wave and hair metal artists) were just as bad in that respect, if not worse. I just don't fall for that rubbish. But I'm not saying any of those styles are bad, I'm just saying that this just comes with any territory that puts certain people in the public eye, and if any of it is true or not, it all ends up coming across that way.

I completely respect Rick Wakeman and his talent and consider him a lifelong idol for myself since I also play keyboards. Yes, just like anyone else, he made mistakes, but he was far from perfect. But you can't deny that the man is talented. This is where it makes it hard for me to subjectively rate an album like this. I understand his ambition and his huge ideas would have been quite amazing if only the technology was there, at least, that is my take on it. Yes there were bands that were able to pull off some amazing works of art regardless of the limits of the recording techniques, but it was difficult. Being in a position of a solo artist only makes it harder, and your team had better be the best if you are going to pull of something like this album. It is unfortunate that, at least in my opinion, this original recording of "Round Table" just didn't have the people behind it that matched what Wakeman's vision needed. Some people may laugh at my assessment, but when I listen to this album, I can hear what Rick wanted to do here, and I can hear the flaws. When the album was made, it might have been a lot easier to forgive the artist for the flaws, but listening to it now proves that it just hasn't aged very well. As much as I hate to, I have to rate this as a 3-star album, but at the same time, I have to admit that it sounds quite messy at times, and inconsistent.