Robert Wyatt - Ptolemaic Terrascope Vol. 3 - N°1 - January 1992

PT : How did it all begin?

RW : It's a long story. When the Romans left Britain... oh, then a few other things happened, I was born in 1945, went to school in the Fifties and left at the end of them. I think the Fifties were a very good time to be at school. It was in Canterbury - people say 'Oh, Canterbury', but I went to school there and that's all there is to it.

PT : You didn't live there then?

RW : No I didn't, I lived near Dover actually, although I did have a spell there in late 1960 or early '61. I couldn't make head nor tail of school, I had a coupIe of friends there - one of whom from the age of about 10 was Hugh Hopper. His older brother played clarinet and had some nice records. My big brother had some nice records as well. But because our records were our big brothers' jazz record collections, people think we had older tastes than others our age.


PT : You obviously heard the radio as well, though?

RW : Not obviously at all. I never heard the thing much, quite frankly. We preferred records: jazz, some R&B - we were fans, as teenagers are. Then Hugh got a bass guitar and started playing some Ray Charles type stuff, so there was this twin-tracked thing going on, some dance or song-based music like R&B and some harmonic and melodic deviations of the modern jazz of the time. What we played was neither one or the other in the end, we sort of fell between two stools and stayed there, on the floor.

PT : Great play has been made down the years of the fact that you had various musical contemporaries at school, but in fact they weren't exactly contemporaries at all - there was a year or so between you all?

RW : That's right. I vaguely remember Dave Sinclair playing piano for the school hymns, but I knew his older brother better because we studied violin together for a couple of years. I think the myth really is more glowing than the reality. School life for me consisted mostly of trying to catch the same bus as the girls in the other schools. And I'm very glad I did, because my first wife, Pam, was a girl who lived on the same bus route. She kept me for years afterwards, working as a secretary for some fairly unpleasant cleric when I didn't have two pennies to rub together. I did a few jobs after leaving school, worked in a forest near Folkestone for instance, but that was it. We had a son - he's in his twenties now and a nurse - but that's really the most positive thing I can remember coming out of school. There was some music though, of course. Daevid Allen, who's a nomadic Australian, had come to Europe and floated about London and had some contacts which later became invaluable - people like Hoppy, who set up various gigs. I've come to the conclusion that the whole world is gradually becoming Australian... anyway, there was this bunch of people who were fairly radical in their own fields. And Daevid was older than us, so he showed us around. He used to get stoned, so he was my introduction to all that. He also had a dog which he used to take for walks with him - it was actually a tin can on the end of a bit of string which he would trail some yards behind him. To an impressionable lad of my age, that was pretty far out!

PT : And your first group, The Wilde Flowers, came together then?

RW : Hugh was the one in Canterbury who wanted to get a group together. We (the Wilde Flowers) did basicalIy R&B covers rather than hits, although we did occasionally do Beatles songs and stuff. The point is though, Hugh started writing his own material at this time and I would do odd bits as well - I started singing for instance, because he wouldn't sing himself. It was all a learning process, realIy. [Referring to Richard Sinclair's comments in issue 8 of the Terrascope:] Mine and Richard's memories of Wildflowers material seem slightly out of synch - the soul material I remember doing was like James Brown, Nina Simone, and simple jazz pieces like Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock). But of course other stuff like by rock & rollers such as Chuck Berry was often thought of as Brit-beat music at the time...

RW : Yeah, we got a deal with Anim-management, the Animals people, and because they'd also signed up Jimi Hendrix, we all went on the road to the States. What was useful about that was, a tour like that soon knocks the whimsy out of you. Playing in front of a few thousand beer-soaked Texan teenagers waiting impatiently for Jimi Hendrix does something for your nervous system. It makes you get on with things and state your case. It could have been awful, it could have been very frightening for us - we were going around there with very little money with bands who were using a lot of money (although it turns out they weren't getting to see a lot of it) - but luckily, the Jimi Hendrix Experience were very protective towards us. Like, Hendrix would sometimes get some flak for having this weird-sounding band at the beginning of his show, and he always said look, they're trying to do something, they're not trying to copy anybody else, and I want them on the show, OK? He personally stood up for us, even though we were making a lot of musical mistakes and hadn't got it fully together. The others in the Experience were simply terrific as well, and they were always doing things for us without seeming to use their privilege. Like, Noel would say look, we're all going down to this club and we want to go in mob-handed, so you'll have to come too. What he meant was, we know you couldn't afford to go in, we know you couldn't afford to buy any drinks once you're in there, so we're taking you. But they'd never put it like that. Mitch helped us a lot as well- such a brilliant drummer, he'd been with Georgie Fame before, and you have to be good to work with somebody like that. A very proud bloke, quick to take offence but he's actually all heart. Sitting there watching them play every night and seeing how they'd work was great for us. Mitch had had this maplewood drum kit made to his own specifications, and at the end of the tour he gave it to me. Everything I've played since as a drummer has been on that kit which Mitch gave to me.

PT : So you have some good memories of that tour?

RW : Absolutely, yes. I mean, I know 1968 wasn't an easy time to be in America, I saw a lot of horrible things which make you think a bit. You read articles here sometimes about racism and of course we have a right to talk about it, but unless you've spent some time in the States where the streets smell of racism, you really have no idea. I saw the kinds of things that a sheltered English lad had never seen, the hostility between the police and any kids with hair... the police would ride through crowds on motorcycles without even waiting for them to clear. I saw them pick up one kid, hold him horizontally and run him into a wall like a battering ram. We were pretty much sheltered as a group going from hotel to hotel, but you could see that life on the streets was sticky.

PT : Did Hendrix himself suffer from the racism at all?

RW : Well, Hendrix was a rich entertainer, therefore he couldn't really be black. It was a class thing. You'd get cops standing at the side of the shows saying 'hey! That nigger picks good!'. But there's always been a place in America for the black entertainer. Mind you, they've a reason to be grateful. I mean, where would American music be today without the black American's contribution? About as famous as New Zealand's I should think.

PT : The Eire Apparent album (on Buddah) came out of that tour - are you on it?

"Hendrix was trying to turn it from pop into something more dangerous..."

RW : Yeah, that was nice. Me and Noel did girly choruses basically, and Hendrix was trying to turn it from being pop into something more dangerous, as he saw it. Eire Apparent were a very nice bunch of Irish lads. They joined us for the second half of the tour, in a way it was to get something more poppy in on the act - but they'd been signed up and we reorganised the concerts accordingly. It was a good, contrasting sort of thing. I have to say though that even on our best nights, Hendrix would simply erase the memory of everything that had gone before. He was just so fucking good. And consistently good, too. Better than on the records, actually - that's one thing we had in common, I think we played better than we ever recorded and I think he did as well. That's the jazz element for you.

PT : The first Soft Machine album was actually recorded in New York?

RW : That's right. Now, what was the name of the guy that produced that?

PT : Tom Wilson?

RW : That's him. He'd worked with Frank Zappa so they figured he'd be able to deal with us. He was very nonchalent, not kind of fretting - just play, we'll tape it and it'll come out alright. It's easy. He was living his life, and we were welcome to join in if we wanted to. But he made sure all the nuts and bolts were all tight - he did his job. I have to say though that because we in the group never got on very well personally, in a studio situation you'd be dealing with each other much more whereas on stage, you're all facing the same way which is outwards - so somehow we could work together much better live than in the studio.

PT : When was the last time you listened to that album?

"I'd no more listen to that [first Sort Machine album] again than I would put my school trousers back on"

RW : About twenty years ago. I'd no more listen to that again than I would get out my school trousers and put them back on. I accept it completely, but the only way I can concentrate on doing my best is by clearing whatever's gone before ruthlessly away. I couldn't function by sitting in my own bath water!

PT : The Sort Machine disintegrated at that point - you stayed in New York and then later moved to Los Angeles?

RW : Yeah, I liked New York. Mitch took us around and introduced us to some other musicians that I might not have otherwise met - people like Larry Coryell. Then Hendrix booked a house in Los Angeles at the end of the tour, a big L-shaped place it was - basically they're only stage sets for Perry Mason films, but when there's no Perry Mason going on, people live in them. So there we were in this L-shaped stage set with people shouting 'hi!' across the swimming pool...

PT : You recorded some demos while you were in New York and LA?

RW : I did, yeah. Jeff Dexter's just found one of them, I must have left it at his house by accident - but it's only an acetate so it gets really grunged up whenever you try to play it. It costs a lot of money to re-record them and clean them up, but he's trying to organise that at the moment. I also started writing bits and pieces which turned up in later reincarnations of the group.

PT : At that time, did you consider yourself to be a part of Soft Machine?

RW : I don't know what I felt, really. I remember thinking that I wasn't being a very good father. Anyway, we came back to England and found people were wanting us to do some gigs, so we 'phoned each other up to see if we were all into it. Kevin Ayers wanted to do his own thing, so Hugh, who had already been roadying for us and had actually written some of the best tunes in our repertoire, was the natural choice for a replacement. We reformed really as a response to being offered jobs. I thought God, this noise we're making is boring. I went down to the Marquee and saw Keith Tippett's band and thought they were really good, so we asked if we could borrow their brass section for a while, which made it a bit richer. We went on the road like that for a bit.

PT : You'd already recorded the second Soft Machine album by this time?

RW : I think so - I can't really remember. I haven't got a copy of that one, either.

PT : And by the 3rd album, by which time sax player Elton Dean had joined, the band seemed to have fractured - it's like a side each, really?

RW : I suppose so, although I must say I enjoy Hugh's side, the live side. There was this British jazz-rock thing developing though and I found it a rather tight-arsed thing really, a fairly weak version of what was a pretty dodgy idiom in the first place. I thought, I'm literally not going to get a word in edgeways here. I got all my fun from doing gigs outside of it, playing with Keith Tippett's friends or with the South African exiles that were around. It might not leave any great records, but it was nice to be working with people you enjoy being with. The adventure of trying things out seemed to be more important than getting polished results and showing off tricky time signatures. The corsets seemed to be tightening by the month.

PT : The Soft Machine's appearance at the Proms happened about this time, didn't it? (13/8/70)

RW : Yeah, we were invited there by a very nice English composer named Tim Souster who, being an English composer, had a night to himself at the Proms. He'd written a piece for it which didn't last the whole night, so he thought 'I'll get that band in, that'll stir it up...'. I didn't really like playing there (the Royal Albert Hall) because I couldn't hear what we were doing - it's an appalling place to play. My microphone wasn't on when I was singing and the organ kept breaking down. We did get to be interviewed by Richard Baker though!

PT : Next we had your first solo album, 'End Of An Ear'?

RW : Yeah, that was me throwing off the corsets basically. All hell was let loose. I just screamed me head off and had a lovely time, I even played the piano. I can't actually play the piano, but I thought right - l'm going to play the fucking piano. Turned out I could play what I wanted to hear after all. Just goes to show, you never know until you try!

PT : And you recorded 'Bananamoon' with Daevid Allen....

RW : Did I? You're right, I think I did.

PT : .... and went on the road with Kevin Ayers and The Whole World.

RW : That's true. I remember, he'd take two rooms at the hotel - one for him and one for the rest of the band. I mean, I know it was Ayers' band, but I'd never heard of that before! I come from this sort of lefty, co-operative background so I wasn't used to this sort of colonial treatment. Me and Mike Oldfield, Dave Bedford, LoI Coxhill alI scrunged up in this little rat-infested room - well, I suppose we were the rats really. Anyway, I thought that was a bit off so I jumped out of the frying pan and went back into the fire for a bit.

PT : To do the 4th Soft Machine album.

RW : That's it. Back into the fire, as I say.

PT : And then onto Matching Mole with David Sinclair, who was later replaced by Dave MacRae, Phil Miller and Bill MacCormick?

PT : 'Animals'?

RW : 'That was Victor Schonfield, an American film director who was making this 'Animals' film. He had a friend of ours doing the narrative and he asked her if she could find somebody who could do the film music. They got permission to use a track of Talking Heads music for the opening of the film, but they asked five hundred pounds for something like three minutes. He paid it, but he still had an hour and a half to fill. So I did the rest for a hundred pounds!

PT : Then it's 'Old Rottenhat' after that?

RW : Yes it is. I'd put ideas out without having a coherent reason for an LP. I was originally a drummer and not a composer, it's only occasionally it comes together enough. Thanks to the feedback from the singles though I'd become active again and had generated enough of my own material for an album, so I went and did it. I think the title, 'Old Rottenhat', was influenced by Ian Dury - he's one of the great lyricists in the English language, a very underestimated writer. He's also very funny, and I appreciate that. It was he who inspired me to use that obscure old London expression that I'd heard Alfie use.