Rick Wakeman – 'Return To The Red Planet' review: a second voyage to Mars
Six years after 'The Red Planet', the Yes keyboard player heads back to Mars – with the English Rock Ensemble and a tribute to David Bowie.
Photo: Stéphane Gallay from Laconnex, Switzerland / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
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Single: Bowie's Vision
With 'Return To The Red Planet', Rick Wakeman follows up his 2020 album 'The Red Planet'. Most of the nine pieces are named after places on Mars, such as 'The Jezero Crater' or 'Noctis Labyrinthus'. He is backed by his English Rock Ensemble with Lee Pomeroy (bass), Dave Colquhoun (guitar) and Adam Falkner (drums), with Mollie Marriott on vocals. The album came out on 16 October via Madfish, including a CD/Blu-ray edition with a Dolby Atmos mix.
Wakeman says new data and photographs from the Mars missions inspired him: 'There was simply too much more to say about Mars.' Classic Rock's Philip Wilding hears 'more a love letter to Mars, and less things with teeth', a more genteel journey than its predecessor – 'positively deft by his standards'.
He singles out 'Bowie's Vision', on which singer Mollie Marriott, backed by church organ and choir, imagines the Spiders from Mars descending towards Earth. Wilding's closing line: 'What a trip.'