Robert Wyatt
Different Every Time

There is this Great Old Man.

His figure is imposing, solemn, his face framed by a large white beard. And his voice is the voice of a child.

The voice of a child who has been playing in Hell.

And then there is a chair.

And that chair is the problem.

Because that chair becomes an easy (too easy!) explanation. That chair – and the pain it refers to – evokes superficial empathy, barroom psychology, interpretative hallucinations, critical voyeurism. And, what's worse, banal and trivializing chatter: like Van Gogh's madness, Leopardi's hump, or Billie Holiday's skin color.

As if Beauty were the favored daughter of Suffering.

And yet Robert Wyatt's Genius had already fully unfolded before that chair.

It had sprouted in the fields of Lydden, a suburb of Canterbury, in a large aristocratic house - Wellington House – where the Ellidges had moved when George, the head of the family, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In the rooms of that great house, Robert's friends gathered to listen to lots of jazz and talk about women, books, sports, dreams... And those friends, that handful of pimply teenagers, had names like Brian and Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge, Dave Sinclair, Kevin Ayers; making you wonder why sweet Euterpe had gotten so eager to bear children with such vigor in the pleasant countryside of Kent!

Then one day, at the door of Wellington House – which was so large that some rooms were rented out – a traveling sprite knocked, an eccentric Australian just over twenty, poet, musician, world citizen, and visionary named Daevid Allen.

Daevid brought to that house his jazz records and strange music, a piece of the world, various types of drugs, a nice dose of madness, and the desire to escape. And also his drummer friend, George Niedorf, who – to pay for his room – taught Robert how to play drums (his father had already taught him to play the piano).

And there it is! These are things that happen very rarely, as if by magic: in those long, motionless afternoons, that group of overly hairy boys, spaced-out youths, and Art students invented a new, unheard music, suspended between jazz, psychedelia, and the bucolic atmospheres of the English countryside.

Something we shall call the “Canterbury school” for convenience.

I'll try to put it well: Jazz, as you know, is an American affair (like blues, rock’n roll, or R&B). But that didn't stop excellent jazz from being made in Europe: Paris was almost a second Harlem, Berlin rivaled it greatly, and even Moscow was not far behind (though few know this).

But not London.

For some strange reason, before the '60s, not much jazz was made in England! Not that it wasn't played – certainly! – but the best things were elsewhere.

Then, suddenly, in the autumn of the sixties – boom! – there was English jazz! And what music: Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Fred Frith, Keith Tippett, Derek Bailey, John Surman, Lindsay Cooper, and a lot of others.

And it was also new music, which had the syntax and formal construction of jazz, but spoke another language.

And the spark that kindled that fire was ignited in that great house in Lydden, a suburb of Canterbury, in the fields of Kent.

And, basically, this would already be enough to give our Robert a front-row seat in every respectable History of Pop Music. Only, for Robert, the role of the head of the “Canterbury school” doesn't fit; among Caravan, National Health, Camel, Hatfield and the North, etcetera, he's confined, as he was in the Soft Machine.

In fact, Robert leaves even before everything begins. He says goodbye to Lydden and Wellington House (and all it means), which will soon be sold, after the death of Robert's father. First to Mallorca with Niedorf (the most beautiful period of his life: among eccentrics and artists, anarchy and wild nature) and then to London with Kevin and David – the David Allen Trio – sharing the stage with people like Pink Floyd (and, later in America with the Soft Machine, also with Jimi Hendrix), now a citizen of the World.

Basically, in Robert's head now swirls a mix made of jazz, acid jams and lysergic psychedelia, English countryside atmospheres, adolescent melancholy, an anarchic approach, and quite a bit of typical British humor.

And then there is Alfred Jarry. And Jarry, for me, is a thread stretched between Cleveland and Canterbury. Because if I wanted to talk about the genius who in just 34 years gave us Ubu father and king, Dr. Faustroll, and “merdre,” I would have to keep you here for I don't know how many more pages…

And I'm told I tend to get long-winded.

So I'll just recommend reading "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician" and to add a new, fundamental ingredient to Robert's recipe: pataphysics.

And so we have the early cries of the Wilde Flowers, the unstable balance of the first Soft Machine, and then “Third” and within “Third” that shiny and precious thing which is “Moon In June” and, practically simultaneously, an alien gem like “The End Of An Ear.”

Everything needed is already there. Also that childish voice, tender and unsettling (and not so carefree if we think our man has already behind him a suicide attempt). And it's already so much, so much. Even too much. Robert's personality is already defined and overflowing and everything that will come has already been laid out before our eyes and ears.

Indeed – as said – in the Soft Machine (and in the so-called “Canterbury school”) our man starts to feel constrained. Too constrained. So there will be a fourth album in forced cohabitation with the Softs and two with his new group: the Matching Mole. And with the Matching also comes politics. And a hint of stagnation.

And then there’s Venice.

In Venice, Robert arrives, in '72, with his “Alfie.” She has to work for a film (“Don’t Look Now”) with her friend Julie Christie. Robert hopes to compose something which he doesn't know if he will use for a new group he has in mind, for the reformed Matching Mole, or for himself. And he also hopes to enjoy a nice vacation with his woman.

Instead, Alfreda spends all her time with her friend Julie and, to please her man, one day she gifts him a “Riviera” brand organ she finds at a local market.

And, in short, when Robert returns from Venice most of “Rock Bottom's” material has already been composed. And Robert returns from Venice on his own feet.

And, damn, we could end everything here and it would be beautiful. And Robert and his Music would be something else, but still something great.

Instead, fate waits on the threshold: June 1st, 1973. A party, a stupid prank, too much alcohol, a fall, a broken back, a life to rebuild.

The rest is known to everyone (at least everyone reading these lines): a piano in the hospital, a slow rehabilitation, Delfina’s house in Wiltshire, lots of friends playing for him and with him, the marriage with Alfie. And “Rock Bottom” which is an album and also a rebirth.

With that organ sound…

Even if I, in “Sea Song” insist on hearing only the woes of a guy annoyed because he wants to be with his woman with, around him, the misty atmosphere of Venice.

Then more albums will come. Another eight in the studio under his name, and collaborations, and live albums, and compilations and EPs. A “mature” singer-songwriter, pearls of exquisite craftsmanship. All beautiful.

The ingredients are always the same: a part of jazz, a part of psychedelia, the Kent countryside, crooked pop, a sprinkle of pataphysics and – despite everything – an all-English humor, that British way of looking at things with detachment. Then, from time to time, you can add a dash of Third-Worldism, a touch of political commitment, a hint of new sounds and more to taste.

Then, in 2015, the great old man decides it’s time to call it quits. Robert is tired. He announces his retirement and, in my opinion, a man like him, if he says something, he does it.

The record companies, then, got a bit worried, did some calculations: after all, how much longer can a great old man with a broken back go on? It’s a matter of waiting. Keeping interest alive with some celebratory product and waiting.

This “Different Every Time” might seem like the first fruit of this mercantile strategy: a book and a double anthology just to start.

Now an anthology is an anthology and – always – in an anthology what is missing weighs more than what is there. And, then, for someone like Wyatt, owning the entire discography should be mandatory. However, while the book doesn’t seem to say anything new, the album, in my opinion, has some points of interest.

Firstly, because those pieces were chosen by him, Robert. And, so, this “Different Every Time” could end up being a sort of artistic testament. Thus, in the first disc “Ex Machina,” the absence of “Rock Bottom” (there is a “Last Straw” live in a different version from the album) and that (for me very painful) of “The End Of An Ear” make a certain noise. But equally significant is what is there: the twenty minutes of “Moon In June” placed at the beginning as if to say: “here everything necessary is here” (which is the same thesis I presented at the beginning of this writing). And then some of his most brightly pop songs (“Free Will and Testament”, “Just As You Are”) as if the great old man wanted to emphasize that that is what he has been, in the end: nothing other than a pop star.

But, above all, it’s worth lingering on the second disc – “Benign Dictatorships” – which collects some of the collaborations Wyatt has sprinkled in dozens of albums (illuminating them, always, with his presence). This is the disc that justifies the ticket price: either because it unveils the greatness of the great old man’s genius in a new way or because even the most attentive completist might have missed some of those gems.

Well, if you decide to visit the fields of Kent, know that at night they are inhabited by ghostly voices and that in Canterbury they also prepare excellent goose pie. If anyone is interested.