Inside the mind of a Machine - Melody Maker - January 2, 1971

And then, as the year has drawn to an end, he has further established his own identity by becoming a prime mover in Symbiosis, that excitingly impromptu, free-blowing band, and finally topping off the proceedings by producing his own album — you believe he produced it, too?

He has called it "The End Of An Ear," which is quite a funny pun, I suppose. But then, Robert it quite a funny person with his huge fur French hat crammed down over his untidy lank hair.


Whenever I think of Robert I think of that hat, and there are other mental images, too. Of Robert slouching around in that curious way of his, with his creased trousers that are always too short flapping around his ankles, dressed in the maroon coat that always look a size too big; of Robert lathered with sweat as he sits stripped to the waist, flailing away like a man possessed under the hot lights of the Albert Hall during The Softs' televised concert; and then there is Robert sitting with bitter tears in his eyes in a dressing room in Rotterdam because he hates the performance he has just given.

Because, you see, he's nothing if not an emotional person. He is also nothing if not a nice person, and niceness is not an excessively common quality among musicians and entertainers. Much of the secret of his success is that people respond so readily to his spontaneity and generosity of spirit. Everybody wants to work with him, and when they have made the gig they come back for more. There was nobody happier and more elated amongst those 50 people in Centipede than Wyatt, and no one more brought down when they band received reviews that were generally cautious and, in one instance, bitterly hostile.

" I'm upset, not for my own sake," he explained later, " but for Keith and Julie."
" And he meant it.
Anyway, like I say, he has reason to feel disappointed about his own career at this point. The past 12 months have proved very fruitful for him. Come to think of it, he could have called that album "The End Of A Year," couldn't he?

HOW do you feel about interviews, Robert?
I regret most I've done when I see what's happened, but then I regret most performances on records, too. I think one of the big difficulties is that written words and spoken words aren't the same thing. You actually think different things in print — I do. Things I say, words I use in speech, if I was writing down the same thought, I actually wouldn't use the same word. There's nothing anybody can do about that, really. It's misleading. I find I say things just to pad some things out, or to be clever for a minute while I'm trying to think what I really think. I can see the value of them, but I still find it makes demands... it upsets me sometimes, put it like that. But that's true of anything.

> Zoom

BUT Hugh (Hopper and Mike (Ratledge) don't like interviews, do they?
Well, Hugh is pathologically shy. Very. The fact that he goes on stage is part of it. You don't get up on your own, you get up with equipment and amplifiers and volume. It's very private on stage; it's not an exhibisionistic thing to do at all.

People are often surprised at musicians and performers being introverts but it doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is that people who are extroverts are musicians. What amazes me is when a brilliant musician is an extrovert, because if they’re extrovert it probably means that they spent their time in their teens rushing round coffee bars meeting people, and I'm surprised that they had the time to learn to playt anything at the same time.

Whereas I find that introverts are less social people are very often the ones who learn to play instruments properly. The one way you can hide is to be a performer, because it's really a false identity to be on stage. You can really feel untouchable and private.

The group has become primarily instrumental, for instance, because of our characters, in a way. We're a very unplanned group in our direction. We just sort of drift from whatever area seems to excite us at the moment to whatever other area seems to excite us. Even the simple things, like the gaps, the lack of gaps, is because we are embarrassed, I think, to have a silence on stage where the audience is expected to react back to us. I just find that totally embarrassing — ending a number, bang, then straight into the next one, all that business. I can't bear it.

YOU don't always appear happy with the group… What do you think it's doing wrong for you personally?
(Long pause). All the things you can talk about in music we agree on. We all share similar ideas on the possibilities of freedom and the different types of freedom, and structure, and discipline, and what use they are, and when they're useful and when they are not, and how to operate, and still express yourself. But music isn't, like, conscious ideas, concepts if you had them; the real music is the way you play, the actual note that you put after the note before.

And quite simply, sometimes we aren't playing the same piece of music — the drumming isn't the drumming for the bass line that Hugh’s using, or there's another bass line that isn’t being played, or the rhythm section thing that should be with Mike’s organ solo isn't because Hugh and I are somewhere else. The idea, after all, is not to create four pieces of music but one piece of music, and I'm upset on nights when we create four pieces of music.

SO what have you gained musically from the Symbiosis?
Since the summer, since I've started playing with Kevin, I've realised that in other contexts there are things in me which come out and never seem to come out, when I play with Soft Machine. It's not a question of quality at all, it's just a question of different situations demand different skills, and I hadn't realised just how much you do adapt and just play what seems necessary. I would be very loath to put a word to it and think of a concept which fits what I mean.

All I know is that when I get on a kit, and there's Roy Babbington on me left and, whoever it might be, Neville Whitehead or someone, and Gary (Windo) and Nick (Evans), that a whole different thing happens. I just lift up me sticks and immediately something else happens and different situations arise that would never arise with Soft Machine. I just play completely different things.

Symbiosis is different people. All music is a cooperative thing, you see. Beyond all people's individual talent, which the music has. How to pin down the best relationship…

European music sort of solidified in a way into an almost military hierarchy of composer, conductor and orchestra.

What happens is, there's a kind of assumption that the type of person who conceives the music is a different kind of person from a performer — that's what European music assumes, although many great European composers have been virtuoso performers of their own work, and many great composers are great conductors. But generally speaking, this is a hieracy that's accepted, and the fact is that in my opinion the most vital influence on music has been the black music of the past 50 years.

The most interesting thing it seems to me, that has been suggested by black music, is that, as in, say, painting, the person who conceives of it and the person who plays it can be one and the same — combine both skills in one person. And this seems to me the most interesting, challenging thing that jazz music has come up with that European music doesn't really like to get to grips with. And what Symbiosis is, is a complete imbalance; in other words, we're all blowers without any of the composers, or when we do have composers — like Keith was with us the other night — he's not in a composing or controlling role at all.

And so it's an incredible risk, Symbiosis every night, because we just turn up and play. The responsibility is enormous; you've got to be on form then and there because you're going to be doing all the composing and all the performing at the same time, and so is everybody else.

WOULD you agree that this seems to be a very interesting period for young jazz musicians and the thinking rock musicians?
They really seem to be coming together. Well, Centipede is directly responsible for Symbiosis and so on. Yeah, I think so. For me, I find it staggering, and a hit scary, because it seems to me there's so much to do and so little to hide behind.

There's a lot of knowledge and wisdom that's been spread around in the last four or five years. There's no excuse for certain types of musicians not knowing about other types. The standards are so high now! And the aera of information you are expected to cope with! I think there's bound to be a lot of messy stuff of journalistic interest — interesting but disposable — but I think it's incredibly exciting. Short answer to your question — yes.