The bloody marital history of Henry VIII was long ago captured by the popular riff “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”, but in 1972 the rock star Rick Wakeman offered a more complex musical interpretation.

He composed The Six Wives of Henry VIII, a solo album full of ambition and synthesised swooshing sounds. He felt that Hampton Court, the Tudor monarch's most famous residence, was the only suitable venue in which to perform his opus, and duly applied for permission to stage a rock concert somewhere on the premises. “I got the impression that what I had asked was tantamount to treason,” he told The Times this week.

Now, after 37 years, officials at Hampton Court have finally recognised Wakeman's contribution to the popular understanding of Henry VIII and invited him to stage his seminal album with the palace as a backdrop. Wakeman, 59, said: “That is the longest wait I have ever had for a venue.”

The first live performance of The Six Wives of Henry VIII before an audience of 5,000 people on May 1 will begin a series of events marking the quincentenary of the accession of the King in 1509.

Times Archive, 1976: Rick Wakeman live at Hammersmith Odeon

At last Wakeman has abandoned his grandiose requirements

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Preparations for what will be a “mock-rock Tudor experience” continue apace. As well as Wakeman, clad in a cape and surrounded by his customary rack of 20 keyboards, there will be a choir, a full orchestra, a company of ballet dancers and several other “surprises”.

“The only person who looked worried was my accountant,” he said. His accountant was perhaps remembering the time that Wakeman staged his musical interpretation of the legend of King Arthur, on ice, skaters in mythical costumes swirling around a giant castle in Wembley Arena, an endeavour that lost a great deal of money, although it boosted sales of his Arthurian concept album.

The idea for the Henry VIII album came to Wakeman midway through a tour of America with the rock band Yes. In an airport shop he had bought The Private Life of Henry VIII, by N. Bryson Morrison. “A particular theme came into my head as I was reading about Anne Boleyn,” he said. “I flicked back to Catherine of Aragon and a chromatic line started running through my head.”

On his return he immersed himself in the period. The album was conceived “as if I was an abstract artist”, he said. Anne Boleyn begins with a playful melody. “The opening is very genteel, but with allusions of unrest,” he said. It ends with a hymn that came to Wakeman in a dream.

Anne of Cleves “was rather free-form, almost having no form at all, there was a contradiction in what everyone was playing. The guys in the band thought I was completely barking, but it had to be like that”. It represented the frantic thoughts of a woman brought to marry a murderous foreign king, who deemed her ugly.

The album was scorned by critics, who came to regard it as a symbol of the worst excesses of the progressive rock era.

It was also ignored by leading historians. David Starkey told The Times that he had never heard of Wakeman and doubted “that he tells us anything about Henry VIII”. He added: “Henry VIII and pop culture do have affinities, however: the quest for fame, the pursuit of happiness at all costs and the belief that love and marriage are the same thing.”

If it did not fundamentally alter the historical consensus, it did provide a thesis one could sway to, and sold 15 million copies. “If this is as successful as I hope, then next year we will do Arthur on ice,” said Wakeman. “We'll be back.”

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