罗伯特·瓦耶特

Robert Wyatt (born 28 January 1945) is an English retired musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming paraplegic following an accidental fall from a window in 1973, which led him to abandon band work, explore other instruments, and begin a 40-year solo career.

Wyatt was a key player during the formative years of British jazz fusion, psychedelia and progressive rock, but his own work became increasingly interpretative, collaborative and politicised from the mid-1970s onwards. His solo music has covered a particularly individual musical terrain ranging from covers of pop singles to shifting, amorphous song collections drawing on elements of jazz, folk and nursery rhyme.

Wyatt retired from his music career in 2014, stating "there is a pride in [stopping], I don't want [the music] to go off." He is married to English painter and songwriter Alfreda Benge.

Early life

Wyatt was born in Bristol on 28 January 1945. His mother, Honor Wyatt, was a journalist with the BBC, and his father, George Ellidge, was an industrial psychologist. Honor Wyatt was a cousin of Woodrow Wyatt, whose political stance influenced Robert in joining the Communist Party of Great Britain. Wyatt had two half-brothers from his parents' previous marriages, Honor Wyatt's son, actor Julian Glover, and George Ellidge's son, press photographer Mark Ellidge. His parents' friends were "quite bohemian", and his upbringing was "unconventional". Wyatt said "It seemed perfectly normal to me. My father didn't join us until I was six, and he died ten years later, having retired early with multiple sclerosis, so I was brought up a lot by women." Wyatt attended the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, Canterbury, and as a teenager lived with his parents in Lydden near Dover, where he was taught drums by visiting American jazz drummer George Neidorf. It was during this period that Wyatt met and became friends with expatriate Australian musician Daevid Allen, who rented a room in Wyatt's family home.

In 1962, Wyatt and Neidorf moved to Mallorca, living near the poet Robert Graves. The following year, Wyatt returned to England and joined the Daevid Allen Trio with Allen and Hugh Hopper. Allen subsequently left for France, and Wyatt and Hopper formed the Wilde Flowers, with Kevin Ayers, Richard Sinclair and Brian Hopper. Wyatt was initially the drummer in the Wilde Flowers, but following the departure of Ayers, he also became lead singer.

Soft Machine and Matching Mole

In 1966, the Wilde Flowers split into two bands—Caravan and the Soft Machine—and Wyatt, along with Mike Ratledge, was invited to join Soft Machine by Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen. Wyatt both drummed and shared vocals with Ayers, an unusual combination for a stage rock band. In 1970, after chaotic touring, three albums and increasing internal conflicts in Soft Machine, Wyatt released his first solo album, The End of an Ear, which combined his vocal and multi-instrumental talents with tape effects. A year later, after becoming increasingly unhappy about his musical ideas being rejected by the others, Wyatt left Soft Machine. He participated in the fusion bigband Centipede, performed at the JazzFest Berlin's New Violin Summit, a live concert with violinists Jean-Luc Ponty, Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Michał Urbaniak and Nipso Brantner, guitarist Terje Rypdal, keyboardist Wolfgang Dauner and bassist Neville Whitehead, and formed his own band Matching Mole (a pun, "machine molle" being French for 'Soft Machine'), a largely instrumental outfit that recorded two albums.

Accident

Matching Mole gradually disbanded, and Wyatt began writing material that would eventually appear on his second 'solo' album in Venice. He began to assemble a new band to record these numbers, but on 1 June 1973, during a birthday party for Gong's Gilli Smyth and June Campbell Cramer (also known as Lady June) at the latter's Maida Vale home, an inebriated Wyatt fell from a fourth-floor window and broke his spine. He was paralysed from the waist down and has used a wheelchair for mobility ever since. On 4 November, Pink Floyd performed two benefit concerts, in one day, at London's Rainbow Theatre, supported by Soft Machine, and compered by John Peel. The concerts raised a reported £10,000 for Wyatt.