Recollections - The Very Best of Rick Wakeman (1973-1979)

Album Review

With all of his lengthy suites and unified concept albums, Rick Wakeman's solo work would appear to be very difficult to anthologize. As the first Wakeman compilation available domestically in the U.S., that's what Recollections: The Very Best of Rick Wakeman (1973-1979) sets out to do. The two tracks from Journey to the Centre of the Earth are edited excerpts, but otherwise all the material is present in its original, full-length form. Most of the other pieces (14 in all) are from The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Myths & Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, White Rock, and Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record — most of them cohesive concept works that devoted fans will already have. By its very nature, Recollections can't be anything other than a sampler for casual fans, but in that respect it functions very well.