Robert Wyatt quotes

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)
I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.
Robert Wyatt
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
What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.
Robert Wyatt
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
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
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
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
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
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
I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers. (Robert Wyatt)
I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.
Robert Wyatt
The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren't particularly youth culture.
Robert Wyatt
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
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
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
The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
Robert Wyatt
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
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
There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.
Robert Wyatt
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)
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
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
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
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