For Those Of You about to Wear Rock Capes, I Salute You

Stephen Malkmus and Ozzy Osbourne's cape designer reflect on why rock stars stopped dressing like superheroes.

Photo by Lee Wilkinson

There’s no way to mentally prepare yourself for watching a 74-year-old man in a gold cape performing an unnecessarily long keytar solo. 

Your brain, being a reasonable organ, will likely suspect that your eyes are messing with it. What other explanation could there be? Or maybe it’s footage from a state fair in some middle-of-nowhere Midwestern town, where old men with capes playing keytars are a more common occurrence (I’m guessing). 

But then you realize, as I did, that the video in question was recorded in a real city (London), at a real venue (the Hampton Court Palace), and the caped keytarist is not someone accustomed to being paid in concession stand coupons. He’s Rick Wakeman, former keyboardist for Yes and a prog-rock legend.

If I close my eyes, the music sounds like any Yes album from the ‘70s. It’s standard synth-rock jamming. But the moment I open my eyes and see the music’s source—did I mention that Rick is also wearing a red jumpsuit? Because duh, what else accessorizes with a gold cape?—I feel like I’m witnessing something that’s simultaneously majestic and very, very stupid.

What brought me back to Rick Wakeman, in 2023 of all years? I likely never would have stumbled upon this weird and wonderful footage if it wasn’t for Gary Wright.

Not too long ago, I was talking with my wife about all the musical icons we’ve lost this year—Jeff Beck, Shane MacGowan, Harry Belafonte, David Crosby, Tony Bennett, Sinéad O'Connor, Robbie Robertson, the list goes on and on—and I mentioned that Gary Wright, the guy who wrote and recorded “Dream Weaver,” had also recently died. I remarked that it was especially tragic because it meant there was one less artist in the world willing to perform with a keytar while wearing a cape.

My wife remembered it differently. “Gary Wright never played a keytar,” she said. “And he certainly didn’t wear a cape.”

I don’t win most of our marital disputes, but I was pretty sure I had this one in the bag. YouTube proved me very wrong. I searched video after video, scouring for any evidence that my memory wasn’t failing me. I found one with Wright rocking out with a keytar…

…but nothing in a cape. This was confounding because, in my head, the two things were inextricably intertwined, like a double helix of awesomeness. Gary Wright without a cape and keytar was like finding out Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, had all the bionics but never wore a red tracksuit. Apparently, I remembered Gary Wright’s stage costume with the same clarity that some people believe they saw Sinbad in a nonexistent genie movie.

Long after my wife lost interest and wandered to bed, I was still at my laptop, looking for anything that would prove me right. I found nothing… but I did find a lot of keytar videos. From Justin Timberlake to Prince, Lady Gaga to Boston street musicians dressed as bears, you can easily lose an evening in a maelstrom of keytar jam sessions.

But the moment I stumbled upon that video of Rick Wakeman, carrying himself with the cool casualness of somebody who thinks he looks pretty amazing in a cape, I immediately lost all interest in keytars.

A guy with a keyboard strapped around his chest is equal parts ridiculous and enthralling. But put a rock musician in a cape, and there’s nothing else your eyes can focus on. Wakeman could’ve been strangling a baby to achieve the perfect audio squeal, and my first thought still would’ve been Why the fuck is he wearing a cape?

It’s one of those weird staples of rock music that you probably weren’t consciously aware was a thing until I mentioned it right now. When you first look at Rick Wakeman in a cape, it seems conspicuous and cringe-worthy, like a troubling symptom of advanced-stage dementia. But when capes become normalized, you find yourself having what psychotherapists call a breakthrough moment. You remember just how staggeringly many people in the history of recorded music thought it was a good idea to put on a cape.

There’s the lovable buffoonery of prog-rock, where even the roadies at a Yes or Edgar Winter concert were probably wearing capes. But there’s also Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who couldn’t have pulled off “I Put a Spell on You” with any credibility if it wasn’t for the cape.

There’s James Brown, whose cape was like a member of the band.

And don’t forget Jimi Hendrix. And Janis Joplin. And Gene Simmons. And Solomon Burke. And Elvis Presley, David Bowie, and Sly Stone. You don’t even have to think that hard to come up with dozens of music legends who proudly wore capes during their careers.

But what about recently? Or even the last ten years?

It’s surprisingly undifficult to get people to reminisce about capes. I tried contacting Glenn Gass, the author of A History of Rock Music and a rock historian at Indiana University, and even though he was on vacation with his family and unable to comment, he couldn’t resist sending several emails with more rock cape suggestions.

“David Crosby’s cape in The Byrds was definitely the coolest,” he told me. And then, a few days later: “Thanks for your understanding. Wish I had more time. Oh, and the Beatles (Ringo especially) on the cover of Help. And OF COURSE James’ Brown entire cape routine.”

I wasn’t interested in just waxing nostalgic about rock capes’ greatest hits. I wanted to know if capes were a relic of a bygone era or if they’d ever have cultural relevance again.

In my search for answers, it sometimes felt like a wild goose chase, if the goose was well-versed in arcane rock trivia and never answered any of my questions. A music writer friend recommended that I track down an English band called Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly! — which I suppose, given the band’s cape-centric name, he thought qualified as a “hot tip.”

Their publicist informed me that the band’s name was not meant to be taken literally, and suggested that I talk to somebody called “Har Mar Superstar,” the R&B alter ego of Sean Tillmann (who wears “all sorts of capes,” the non-cape-wearing-band-with-the-cape-wearing-name’s publicist told me. “Tiger print, pink and fluffy, you name it!”) 

I reached out to the publicist for Har Mar Superstar, who wasn’t aware of Tillmann’s cape obsession but did suggest that I talk to Jim James of My Morning Jacket, who (I’m just learning now) has worn a cape in public on more than one occasion. As of this writing, my request to speak with Mr. James about capes has borne no fruit.

I thought I might get some insights on 21st-century rock capes from Ray Brown, the legendary rock fashion designer who’s created whacked-out wardrobes for bands like Styx, Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, and Mötley Crüe. But like almost everybody else I talked to, he’d completely forgotten rock capes existed until I brought it up. 

“I did make a couple of capes for Ozzy Osbourne, which he wore as part of his tour in the mid-80s,” he told me. But he couldn’t think of an artist in recent years who’d asked him to design a cape—except for David Arquette, and let’s be honest, that doesn’t count.

I managed to finagle a phone interview with Jeff Nolan, Hard Rock's music and memorabilia historian. Nolan told me about some remarkable capes he’s curated for exhibits over the years, like a James Brown cape with “Soul Brother Number One” embroidered on the back, and Janis Joplin’s cape from the Pearl album cover. But when it came to modern cape wearers, he drew a blank.

As somebody who spends all day traveling the country with rock clothing—and, for the record, has never tried any of it on when nobody was paying attention (or so he says)—Nolan considers it a sad reflection on modern music that rock capes have gone the way of dinosaurs.

“Some of the cats we’re talking about,” he said, referring to cape enthusiasts like Hendrix and Presley, “it wasn’t like they were wearing a costume. They just wore a goddamn cape. And it was fucking cool. Maybe modern acts just feel like there’s too much affectation attached to it. But capes used to be like a barometer. If you put on a cape and you weren’t self-conscious, then you were well on your way to being a rock star.”

Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus seems just unselfconscious enough to pull off a cape. But when I brought it up during an interview, he wasn’t interested. “When I think of capes, I think of magicians and superheroes, not rock n’ roll for some reason,” Malkmus told me.

He also has a practical reason for not wanting to don a cape during Pavement’s live shows. “It would get in the way of my windmill kicks,” he says. “I can throw the guitar around in a 360 and play behind my head and stuff like Hendrix. A cape might interfere with some of those moves.”

His tongue-in-cheek answer, whether he realized it or not, perfectly demonstrated the pointlessness in bemoaning the death of rock capes.

A grown adult in a rock cape who isn’t doing it as a joke has no chance in the cynical 2020s, when there’s always someone waiting in the comments to point out that you look like an asshole. And if they are doing it as a joke, that’s somehow even worse. Do you want to live in a world where boygenius accents their stage tuxedos with matching capes, or Dave Grohl starts wearing a cape the size of a canopy, and all the groovy kids go blue in the face laughing at how deliciously ironic it is? Rock capes, like keytars, stop being funny when everybody acknowledges they’re funny.

Capes should be left to the Rick Wakemans of the world—who, I’m almost positive, has never done an ironic thing in his life.

2023 was another bad year for rock star mortality. But it didn’t take Rick Wakeman and his glorious capes from us. I guarantee you, wherever Wakeman is right now—whether he’s watching the news in his living room, or making mac-and-cheese for one—he’s wearing a rock cape. He might be in sweatpants and a wife-beater, but the rock cape never leaves his neck, goddammit.

Am I deluding myself? Probably. But I refuse to believe otherwise. Telling me I’m wrong about Wakerman’s rock capes is like telling a kid Santa is just his dad’s fat friend in a red suit and cotton-ball beard. What’s the point of being such a callous asshole? Life is an endless hellscape of dashed dreams and a carousel of “told ya so” disappointments. Maybe don’t be the dick who takes away all joy? Let us have our myths.

Rock might be dead, but while Rick Wakeman still has lungs to breathe and a rock cape to wear, it’s not gone just yet.