Happy birthday to Robert Wyatt. a founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine. Born on the 28th of January 1945 in Bristol, Wyatt was brought up first in London and later in Kent. Wyatt’s love of jazz, wordplay and surreal humour stemmed from his father, George Ellidge and Wyatt grew up as part of a “Bohemian” household that loved music, literature and travel. Wyatt’s parents were part of the literary circle of the poet Robert Graves and the young Wyatt spent several summers at Graves’ home in Majorca.
It was at grammar school in Canterbury that Wyatt first encountered bassist Hugh Hopper and Mike Ratledge who would eventually become his bandmates in Soft Machine. Another influential figure was the legendary Australian beatnik Daevid Allen (of Planet Gong fame) who lodged with Wyatt’s family and nurtured the young Robert’s interest in modern and avant garde jazz Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk were all early Wyatt heroes.
Soft Machine grew out of the Wilde Flowers, the now almost legendary spawning ground for both Caravan and Soft Machine. At various times Wilde Flowers involved Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Brian Hopper, Kevin Ayers, Richard Sinclair, Dave Sinclair and Richard Coughlan, the last three ending up in Caravan.
Wyatt moved to London, living in a communal house and forming a group with Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge. Originally named Mister Head they adopted the name Soft Machine from the title of the novel by Beat Generation author William Burroughs who famously gave the young Brits his blessing to use the name by drawling “can’t see why not”.
Allen had left before the recording of the first album which was released in 1968 by which time the Softs were the darlings of the London underground music scene playing all nighters at the UFO club alongside Pink Floyd, their performances enhanced by the visuals of the Sensual Laboratory lightshow.
The band also toured America supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Wyatt was much influenced by Mitch Mitchell’s drumming style. The intense touring schedule proved a bit much for Ayers and Ratledge who returned to England as soon as they could but Wyatt stayed on in the states until his visa ran out, recording with Hendrix on bass, the sessions being released by Cuneiform Records as “Robert Wyatt ‘68” some thirty five years later. They still sound terrific.
A second Soft Machine album was recorded with Hugh Hopper replacing Ayers on bass. With Wyatt now handling all the vocals “Volume 2” is widely regarded as being among the band’s best. Originally recorded to fulfil a contract its success saw Soft Machine continuing as a working band but the tensions between Wyatt on one hand and Hopper and Ratledge on the other began to grow. Famously ascetic and intellectual Hopper and Ratledge favoured increasingly obtuse, complicated pieces, the hedonistic and more spontaneous Wyatt still favoured song based works. “Third”, a double set which added saxophonist Elton Dean to the line up managed a successful compromise between the two approaches with Wyatt’s side long “Moon In June” widely considered as a masterpiece. Nonetheless the rift began to widen leaving Wyatt increasingly frustrated, with Dean now on board he was effectively outnumbered three to one and felt himself as being frozen out of his own group. “Fourth” included no vocals whatsoever and for the first time Wyatt was uninvolved in the writing process. It was all too much for him and he quit, the resulting bitterness lasting for many years.
After leaving Soft Machine in these acrimonious circumstances he recorded two albums with his own group Matching Mole, but Post-Soft Machine, two events changed him forever. In early 1972 he met artist Alfreda Benge, who was to become his wife, muse and lyricist. It also coincided with the beginning of Wyatt’s devotion to Communism, with politics serving as “the missing protein” in his music. Then, in 1973, came the drunken fall from a fourth- floor window at an alcohol fuelled party that left Wyatt paralysed from the waist down. The effect, he says, was truly liberating, in that it narrowed his career choices and made him concentrate on being a singer. He calls the accident a neat dividing line between adolescence and the rest of his life: “Your youth is a period of maximum physical potential. Suddenly being anchored to a wheelchair forces you to experience life in a more abstract way. You become more reflective.”
For over forty years he has continued to make music from a wheelchair, recording a series of acclaimed albums that have featured his talents as a vocalist and songwriter as well as a player of keyboards, trumpet, cornet and hand played percussion. Perhaps his most widely known performance is his vocal on the song “Shipbuilding”, Wyatt’s singing adding an almost unbearable poignancy to this commentary on the Falklands War written by Clive Langer and with lyrics by Elvis Costello
Aside from his expressionistic blend of free jazz, folk, classical and world music, what truly sets Wyatt apart is his exquisite voice. Reedy and tremulous, there’s a haunted vulnerability and disarming candour to his singing, which his friend Brian Eno compares to “a poor innocent cast into a complicated world”.
His instantly recognisable voice is likely to set off a string of emotions and associations in the listener. Its unique beauty has come to symbolise an empathy for anyone suffering a crisis, whether personal, political, or both. Second, it is an instrument that conveys a deep understanding of the folly and recklessness of our collective behaviour. Third, it is one of the most soothing and restorative sounds to be issued from the human soul. Somewhere along the line Wyatt has, unknowingly made the transition from wilful outsider to national treasure.
The sheer breadth of Wyatt’s solo work is dizzying. As an extension of his modus operandi, he has reworked pieces by such disparate artists as John Cage and The Monkees, and recorded with Henry Cow, Eno, Phil Manzanera, Syd Barrett, Björk and Ryuichi Sakamoto, to name but a few.
Stick a pin anywhere you like,from 1974’s Rock Bottom to 2007’s Comicopera, from Soft Machine’s 1968 debut to 2010’s three-way alliance with Gilad Atzmon and Ros Stephen, For The Ghosts Within, and all of these albums are freighted with Wyatt’s rare brilliance. For all the genre-hopping, Wyatt’s work occupies a distinct corner entirely of its own.
In the course of making his solo albums, he suffered from depression and became increasingly alcoholic, even suicidal but then in 2007 he realised that liqour had truly become to much of a burden, so he enrolled at Alcoholics Anonymous and is now (in AA terms) a ''dry drunk". Drunk or sober, he has redefined the sound and scope of popular music and we are lucky to have him.
Unexpectedly in 2014 he announced that he was retiring from music, which was sad news for his many admirers because Wyatt has produced some of the most strikingly original work of the past half century. His, he says, is “an improvised life”. One fuelled by jazz, socialism and an absurdist slant on the world around him.
Happy birthday to one of the most unusual and characterful musical adventurers of the last half century. Thank you, Robert Wyatt for being such an uncompromising, unique talent in this insular, commodified world of ours and for creating such engaging, solidly original music. a truly inspiring individual. If you do not know his work, please give these songs a listen.
Robert Wyatt - I'm a Believer
Robert Wyatt - Sea Song
Robert Wyatt -The Age of Self
Robert Wyatt - At Last I am Free
Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding featuring Elvis Costello
Robert Wyatt - Free Will and Testament
