4. Robert WyattRock Bottom
I came to this in the 1980s through a guy called Bill Allerton who ran this amazing 1960s record shop called Plastic Passion in Ladbroke Grove. This guy had incredible knowledge. You couldn’t just go into the shop for five minutes. At first he wouldn’t sell you the records, I remember trying to buy his copy of the soundtrack to The Trip and it was like he was selling me one of his children. It took about four hours until he went, ‘as long as it’s going to a good home.’ He was an amazing source of knowledge of psychedelic and German kosmische music. I picked this record up there.
It feels like a song cycle to me, there’s a sense of unity to the tracks in terms of the sound and the emotional content. It’s got this reflective, slightly happy-sad feel to it, but also this weird mythology. I like it when you get a bit of one track, or a feel of one, coming back into another. It’s not as pastoral as other records of the time, it’s got an otherworldliness. The opening track ‘Sea Song’ is my favourite. The lyrics sound like they could be about a mermaid, or they could be extremely domestic. The only problem is that I can’t get through it without crying. I don’t know why, but it just gets me. There’s something about Robert Wyatt’s voice and the vulnerable quality of the music. And I love the lyrics. “When you’re drunk, you’re terrific.” I think he’s incredible. He’s someone I would have loved to work with, but I don’t think it’s going to happen now. There should be proclamations of Robert Wyatt’s genius on a weekly basis.
