Today (January 28, 2015), social media reliably informs me that Robert Wyatt is 70, which seems a reasonable justification for reposting this long and, I hope, interesting transcript of an interview I did with him at home in Louth back in 2007, a little before the marvellous “Comicopera” was released. It begins with Wyatt discussing, of all things, Big Brother...
Robert Wyatt, speaking in the new issue of Uncut, reveals that he could never have been a pop star, despite scoring a 1974 hit with a cover of The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer”.
I was reading over this interview with Robert Wyatt today, thinking about “The Ghosts Within”, and about how he flourishes as a collaborator with friends, but not as a bandmember. “The trouble with a band is I can’t take orders and I can’t give orders,” he said around the time of “Comicopera”. “So there’s no comfortable role for me in a band, whereas on a project I think, well, if they’ve asked me I shall try and do whatever it is they’ve imagined me doing. As close as possible. There’s no pressure on me. I try and do what they want.”
