Hello! In this post, as you can see from the title, I will talk about an appearance of Trevor Rabin that may be surprising to some of you.
As most of you probably know that during The Union Tour, Trevor Rabin (The guitarist that was one of the key parts of YesWest. Mostly hated by prog purists but loved by the more hook liking nature of the band.) and Rick Wakeman (Possibly the most celebrated keyboardist in all of Yes' history) became really good friends. They were really good friends that during the solos that Rick would perform, Rabin would jump in to play guitar, which if I'm not mistaken he's probably the only one who did that with Rick Wakeman. And on some shows Rick tried to go faster and faster just to toy with Rabin. So yeah, they're pretty good friends.
Now, where does that bring me? Onto the 1994 album, Talk. Some of you might know this but still gonna say it for people that don't know. For the album Talk, Phil Carson suggested that they bring in Rick Wakeman to the album but because of classic Rick Wakeman Management Issues, he wasn't brought in and Trevor Rabin did most of the keyboard work on the album. Though it would've been really interesting to see Rick's '90s sound coming to a Yes album since we didn't really get that. Keys to Ascension albums are probably the ones that are the closest to that but the combination of the his keyboard sounds and Talk's a more "poppy" approach (Compared to Keys to Ascension studio tracks) would've been really interesting, especially "Endless Dream".
I actually imagine that we might've gotten a Rick Wakeman "Endless Dream" if say ARW continue but oh well. But as I finished the story I imagine how this is all gonna relate to the title. I was gonna start it now actually. If you say scoured through Trevor Rabin's Wikipedia page, you might have seen that he apparently appeared on a Rick Wakeman album. And when I first saw that, I was really interested on the album. The album I'm talking about is Rick Wakeman's Return to the Centre of the Earth, a 1999 sequel to his classic concept album based on Jules Verde's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". The original was ambitious to say the least. A completely live record full of new material with heavy orchestral stuff, narration and weird choice for synths.
It also was separated into just 2 medley type tracks. It might be pompous as the critics said back then but it definitely became a classic over the years. And because Rick loved it a lot, he wanted to make a sequel to it after a couple decades with orchestral stuff and pushing the limits of a CD. The album had 22 tracks, all odd numbered tracks narrated by the one and only Patrick Stewart and all the even numbered tracks being the music stuff. Though for Return to the Centre of the Earth, Rick had the idea that he should've brought in some special features on the music stuff. These features range from Ozzy Osbourne (Who brings a killer performance) and Bonnie Tyler.
But the feature that interested me the most has always been Trevor Rabin's feature on the track "Never Is a Long, Long Time". The title might kinda sound cheesy but holy fuck, it's such a good track. I've listened to the album a bunch of times and while it doesn't stand at the level of say the studio recording of Journey to the Centre of the Earth but this track definitely stands alongside. I'd honestly say that this is one of the best songs of his career and that's saying much considering the gigantic discography he has.
The song features Trevor Rabin as the vocalist and the guitarist and he brings a killer performance on this song. He has a little solo after that weird arse synth tone of Rick but that's such a nice foreshadowing of the climax solo he does towards the end. And the guitar is recognisably him. Like you would know that it's him if you only heard the guitar parts. His lead vocals are a weird beast though. If you don't like his voice, I imagine that you won't like it but I think his voice fits really well with this orchestral and really active instrumental. The lyrics are fine but they aren't really what I come to the song for. I came for the banger instrumentation and Rabin and I got that.
I'd recommend hearing this song on Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to your music since it's kinda a gem in Rick's catalogue and people that like Rick and Rabin eras of the band really needs to check this out. And that was the post, I guess. So see y'all next time I do a post or whatever. Maybe I won't though, we may never know.
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