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Home
Authors
Robert Wyatt
English
Musician
About the author
I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Play
#Being
#Sense
#Act
#Music
#Musicians
Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Music
Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Being
#Freedom
#Famous
Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Character
#Songs
#Song
#Adventure
I don't do live things.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
I don't find the business easy. The moment you start talking about the business, you start sounding like someone in Spinal Tap.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Talking
#Business
I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Thoughts
I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Respect
#Men
I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Songs
#Writing
I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
I'm not full of malice, but I do dislike Neil Diamond a lot, and I'm sorry that I've done a Neil Diamond song.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Song
#Malice
I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Character
#Will
#Question
#Musicians
It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Life
#Work
#Musicians
#Happiness
I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Nature
#Poets
#Workers
It just doesn't mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Want
#Friends
#Money
In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Work
#Musicians
#Theory
In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Past
I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don't want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Want
#People
#Old
#Defeat
I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Wrong
#Music
I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Clouds
#Nostalgia
I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Folk
I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Youth
#Business
I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Youth
#Ideology
#Fashion
I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Thought
If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Right
#Hope
#Experience
#Energy
When there is a voice in a piece of music, we tend to focus on the voice. That is probably something from when we were babies and we depended on hearing our mother's voice.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Mother
#Music
#Focus
#Hearing
#Voice
#Babies
On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
My heroes are people like Picasso and Miro and people who at last really reach something in their old age, which they absolutely couldn't ever have done in their youth.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Youth
#Old
#Age
#Heroes
People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Song
People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Shame
#Wishing
The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Quality
The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren't particularly youth culture.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#World
#Youth
#Culture
There are people I would like to work with. It's a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I can't really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#People
#Work
#Being
There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Youth
#Jazz
#Music
There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Ideas
#Music
This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Pressure
Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Want
#World
#Nations
#Artists
#Individualism
We did not get any money from the early records. It was all taken by crooked managers. It is just a gangster's paradise.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Money
#Paradise
#Managers
What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Sense
#Disappointment
When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Singing
Love is blind. My politics has been, too. I think you can fall in love with ideas, and you can fall in love with people. It's a very subjective experience. And I'm loyal to that experience.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Love
#People
#Experience
#Ideas
#Politics
#Blind
I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.
Robert Wyatt,
English
Musician
#Singing