ADAM WAKEMAN

He's played live with everyone from Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne to Tony Hadley this year, and before some rare shows by his band Headspace, the keyboardist reflects on a very busy 2025.

- Nick Shilton

Steven Wilson is customarily described as “the busiest man in prog”. However, given his dizzying array of live activities, that epithet might arguably be attributed to keyboardist Adam Wakeman. When Prog speaks with Wakeman in early September, he’s in Italy with Tony Hadley but is about to decamp from the former Spandau Ballet lead vocalist’s tour to make a flying visit to New York to perform alongside Steven Tyler, Joe Perry and Nuno Bettencourt at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards honouring Wakeman’s longtime employer Ozzy Osbourne.

By the end of 2025 Wakeman will have performed around 120 live shows to add to the almost 130 that he played in 2024. Aside from the VMAs, this year Wakeman will have undertaken Wilson & Wakeman duo shows alongside his longtime compadre Damian Wilson, joined his father for a Rick Wakeman & the English Rock Ensemble tour, played a string of Jazz Sabbath concerts and been part of the epic Back To The Beginning last hurrah for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath in Birmingham in July.

However, top of the agenda today are the three Headspace shows that Wakeman — alongside lead vocalist Wilson, bassist Lee Pomeroy (ELO, Anderson Rabin & Wakeman, English Rock Ensemble), guitarist Pete Rinaldi (Anastacia, ABC) and drummer Joe Lazarus (Mike Vennart) — will play in the UK in November and which represent the band’s first live outings since 2016.

How did these shows come about?