Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

like the *decay* behind wine is what I meant to write!!

Not to derail the thread too much from Bob Wyatt, but to answer next time you see him can you play "The Call" by Backstreet Boys and ask if there's a mellotron on that track? I always suspected there was. - apparently it's a generic string sample. Amusing that we made him play it though, that's even funnier than when I insist on inflicting Perfume on the poor guy.

In all honesty the only records Wyatt plays on that I like are the first 3 Soft Machine LPs. I do feel hugely guilty about my indifference towards his solo career though if that makes up for it.

i wish i remembered more abt wyatt's discussion of desafinado! who did the interview and when, for example (80s from memory but that might be wrong) -- at the time none of the wider context stuck with me, just only that word -- bcz it seemed useful (he's always been good on the politics of the clash between official music stylings, and unofficial, so i can see why this appleaed to him as a move. in the 80s i knew nothing at all about bossa nova, so if he mentioned it it didn't register.

obviously there's a nice cover of insensatez on cucklooland, and you can easily hear how his own vocal style gels with jobim's (more than gilberto's: gilberto is a pretty exact note-placer, jobim is a lot more, well, let's say conversational haha) ... not sure if it "influenced" him even w/o getting into my usual rage against that word, just as likely he sang like this anyway in the come-as-you-are style of 60s pop-making and afterwards discovered there was brazilzian sanction for it with good politics attached

(on the other hand it was around and he was a jazz head -- stan getz etc -- so maybe he was always deeply versed and used it as permission from the outset) (he must have talked abt all this somewhere but i'm evidently googling the wrong words)

Yeah, there was a conversational/direct address realness to his singing, even when getting louder and more quavery, on the earliest Wildeflowers tapes I've heard, and he could have already heard bossa nova then, of course,whether or not any difference (otm re Jobim's vocalizing seeming even more relevant than Gilberto's). Obv. he's gotten into that kind of instrumental groove from time to time, like with the Enotron and Ladytron, also somewhat Miles-Gil-type versions of "My Funny Valentine" etc.

He sang in Spanish on Soft Machine Vol 2!

that's bcz of this tho (brazilians sing in portuguese):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswhUGb1k6c

He sang in Spanish on Phil Manzanera's first solo LP too (a bit later, to be sure).

he lived in majorca for a while in the early 60s

I think it was me who first posted that clip itt! Anwyay I think the Soft Machine track shows influences from outside US/UK early in his career.

they were always skipping back and forth to paris iirc

however i continue to maintain none of this constitutes proof that he heard joão gilberto pre-wilde flowers and thought "i'm also going to sing like that"

tho he might have done

That's how Daevid Allen ended up getting stuck in Paris and forming Gong. There's an interview with Wyatt in French on Youtube where he speaks French with a distinct Robert Wyatt accent but seems pretty fluent.

(xp)

Kevin Ayers of course moved to Spain in 1970, as described by Robert on As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still

Well Ibiza anyway

& of course there are a fair few Spanish language tracks on Nothing Can Stop Us / EPs box

A friend used to have that EPs box and I remember the booklet (written by RW) - he described the synthesiser used on The Animals Film, he said it sounded like a wasp, nothing like a mellotron of course.

mark I'm not thinking of him as nec. being i-word etc. but just, like all yall are saying, the Iberian/Med and maybe Brazilian sounds of that era were in the air around musichead R and fellow travelers.

encouraging some of their mellow-meldier inclinations

I feel like the album itself is supposed to exist half in this world and half in the spiritual realm

OTM

i mean, he sings that way too

he is the best singer in the world.

My comment was praise, just to be clear

I know, good comment.

i do love his voice, the chat about desafinado gives it some interesting context

this is my favourite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huwy0Vq5-Ak

Oh jeez NV you got me weeping at 3am here. Yeah his voice on that kills me.

There was some thread several months ago where a few ppl said Robert Wyatt's voice was a deal breaker, that it's too goofy, or too twee or something. Yeah, the desafinado thing, or dissonance, or whatever it is that he does, the emotional impact of it can be devastating. I can't think of any other singer who achieves that kind of vulnerability off the top of my head, nothing goofy about it.

Was kinda imagining this with wyatt's regional accent\inflection.
dora

There was some thread several months ago where a few ppl said Robert Wyatt's voice was a deal breaker, that it's too goofy, or too twee or something.

It put me off for years, ngl. When I was about 15 and had just discovered John Peel he was playing "Pigs" a lot; me and my friend Ian used to find it funny/annoying, it became our in-joke. We'd walk round the village pointing at sheds, vans, pillar-boxes etc, saying: In there? What? Pigs? On a day like this? Huddled up in there? and so on. As hilarious as you can imagine, but I think RW would have quite appreciated this reaction.

It was Shleep that got me really into him, but even them I was still getting cross about trackes such as Duchess, which I thought was whimsical waste of time. I love it now.

Re. the Mellotron, this would appear to be a photo from the Rock Bottom sessions, as it is Robert sitting in front of a Mellotron M400 with Nick Mason, who produced the record: https://www.facebook.com/mellotronfactory/photos/a.975313009206468/3614788971925512/?type=3

It’s not 100% clear to me which choir sound he’s playing on Sea Song as it’s overdubbed in both channels and maybe pitched up, but it sounds like he may be playing the 8 voice choir sound there.

Quite a few BYG albums now reissued and streaming on Bandcamp---I started with Banana Moon, because RW is in the core band with Daevid Allen and Archie Legget, ready for excellent guests. "Stoned Innocent Frankenstein" could be the title track, considering whole set's seemingly off-handed pop-rock flair through the crusty bits*, with attentive dynamics def. incl. Wyatt's drumming and harmonies.
He sings lead on "Memories," which could be a ringer, but fits with other songs' sincerity ("Get Me Outta Here," o yes), and the voice is distant, but persistent, also unmistakable, while the playing is bluesier than his otm "Rock Bottom" B-side arrangement, but sympathetically so. Here's the best audio of the B that I've heard, on Richard Sinclair's Bandcamp:
https://richardsinclairsongs.bandcamp.com/track/memories

And before I forget, here's the 2023 Banana Moon:
https://bygrecords.bandcamp.com/album/banana-moon (Gong's reissued Magick Brother is sounding pretty good on BYG BC too)

*wiki:

In 2003, David Bowie included it in a list of 25 of his favourite albums, "Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie", saying that "it's possible, just possibly maybe, that strands of the embryonic glam style started here."[7]

From Robert Wyatt's son, on FB... 😢♥️ pic.twitter.com/ZQRk4JEF8M

— David Johnston-Smith (@djsarchivist) February 7, 2024

Awful news

:(

:(

that's really too bad. was just listening to his latest one (Comicopera) the other day and just marveling at the guy's career, the way he just popped in and out at will and delivered music that sounded completely out of time and place but were all very much Robert Wyatt. he seems like such a sweet guy. I hope he's not suffering.

for the overwhelming majority of his life, he has sustained an unquestionably heroic existence, in terms of what he has advocated and in how he has persisted in his daily life and his creative output. When he does go, hopefully there will be some glimmer in his consciousness beforehand that his life had been well lived.

A friend of mine booked a summer outdoor music series in NYC in the 2000s: one time he told me that he had talked to robert and had nearly convinced him to travel to NYC and DO A FUCKING SHOW. He claimed that Robert was set to do it but that Alfie's mom was herself near death and he didn't want to commit to something like that in Alfie's time of need. I found this very hard to fathom, as I don't believe, other than ToTP in 1975 (which is mimed, right?) that he ever played live after the accident; or did he appear at one of the meltdown festivals? And I don't think he ever traveled outside of Western Europe; I think he and Alfie lived in Spain in the late 80/90s. It was really really hard for me to believe that he would agree to come to america and play live for some fairly low profile, but also not at all DIY, not at all left wing politics affiliated summer music series. I would have been a pig in shit if he did. tho.

robert played a few concerts in the early days after the accident... only one under his own name, at drury lane in 1974, but a couple as a major performer - hatfield and the north at the roundhouse in 1974 and a couple of shows with henry cow in 1975. he's also done a few in-studio performances for television broadcast under his own name. other than that mostly just guest performances - with david gilmour at "meltdown", with paul weller a couple years back. sad to hear of robert's progressive memory loss, glad that he's being cared for. i didn't know him at all, but what i know of him, of... not just his music, but his _personality_, the stories other people have told of him, they've been really influential on me. he seems like an admirable person. as much as admiring someone i don't know can... lead to disappointment, i do think it's fair to say that i admire him.

He also came on for a couple of numbers, singing and playing pocket trumpet, with Charlie Haden, Carla Bley and a version of the Liberation Music Orchestra at Ornette Coleman's Meltdown Festival in London, in 2011. Even then his voice was audibly diminished, but still poignant and distinctive. Might have been his last live appearance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5OJN5bwLRM

Thanks, not seen that clip before

i get a little emotional thinking about him, he really touches me a in a way few musicians do.

but there was something so special and inspiring about how he went from being just this MONSTER drummer, a real physical force on that instrument and then have all that taken away from him, and then transformed himself as an artist to make music that made that sense of physical frailty such a core and touching part of what it was

i don't know if i said that very well but i hope you know what i mean

totally, thank you

Friend of mine managed to end up backstage at a Patti Smith concert (in the Southbank probably?) Verlaine might have been there and Gillespie almost certainly was and various other luminaries. He said everyone there were complete arseholes and then he noticed a guy sitting (he thought) in a corner, pint of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, covered in ash. He went over to talk to him and it was Robert Wyatt and he was like, "What do you make of all this?" and he was basically the only genuine person in the room.

amazing posts, ums and veronica moser

oh! I also interviewed him! having talked with him and Scott Walker, that shit was major for me.

and then transformed himself as an artist to make music that made that sense of physical frailty such a core and touching part of what it was

I've always thought of Rock Bottom as one of the very few albums that sounds exactly the way the artist imagined it in their head, idk how to describe this exactly but it's not something I get from a whole lot of albums

very sad news. It's a horrible way to go - it takes everything away from a person.

He did a gig in Brighton in support of Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, w/Weller and Danny Thompson. It was widely reported in advance, but I've never read a review. There are bits on Youtube.

Ugh!

His son's post puts the best light on it, reassuring himself and others w/o overselling---I know from experience w relatives that progressive memory loss does have its stages, and hopefully he can still listen to his own music, or from his collection (response to music can often be among the last things to go, if it goes at all). Good that he still recognizes friends and family, although as long as he enjoys them, doesn't matter if he's got their names etc. Good son, good that he's got one, didn't know that. Does he have other kids?