Robert Wyatt talks to the Grauniad about the Soundtrack of his Life:
When I’m not watching Russia Today, obviously, I’m watching pop TV. Even my son’s embarrassed by the infantilism of my tastes, but there’s some good stuff out there now. Pharrell Williams’s Happy– that’s absolutely fucking knockout. Williams is as good as any 60s soul singer and the song is brilliantly put together. It’s a great drum track, and there are only four chords or so, but they’re just enough. It’s really subtly done, absolutely spot-on. My granddaughter tells me I should totally disapprove of that other song he did, though. With someone else… something lines? Blurred Lines! That’s the one. Take it from me that I don’t like that one at all.
Cult prog rock hero, Robert Wyatt was of course one of the founders of Soft Machine as well as part of ur-Canterbury group the Wylde Flowers before that. He has the sort of sense of humour that left him to call his own group after leaving the Softs Matching Moles, as a pun or play of words by way of the French Machine Molle. Not to mention calling his first solo album after having become paralysed from the waist down after a nasty fal out of a window dead drunk, “Rock Bottom”. That sort of humour explains why his one and only brush with hitdom was with a Monkees’ cover:
There was a bit of mischief there, too. I didn’t like the fact that hierarchies had developed between what people thought was “serious” rock music and pop music– that was all rubbish. I was very uncomfortable with that. That was exactly the kind of situation I thought our generation had got rid of. I’ve always admired pop music, because I think it’s the modern post-industrial folk music. Everybody can join in, you don’t have to be a specialist. You can sing along with it. But there’s not much room in pop music for all the things I want to do. It’s a bit like food: I like all kinds of interesting food, but in the end, I can just sit down with an egg sandwich and really feel great.
Wyatt actually reminds me a lot of Alan Moore, carving out a similar uncompromising career in writing and with some of the same concerns and interests in magic and parascience, as well as magnificent bushy beards. In Wyatt’s case, there’s pataphysics:
Wyatt was introduced to ‘pataphysics in 1967, when Soft Machine—already established, alongside Pink Floyd, as darlings of the London underground scene, and about to tour the States with the Jimi Hendrix Experience—performed a live soundtrack to Ubu Enchaîné at the Edinburgh Festival. By the time of their second album, Wyatt was introducing the band as “the official orchestra of the College of ‘Pataphysics,” going on to prove these credentials by singing the letters of the alphabet in reverse.
Though sometimes the idea of Wyatt’s music appeals more to me that actually listening to it, at his best he’s brilliant, both solo and with groups like Matching Mole: