Robert Wyatt is a retired English musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming paraplegic following an accidental fall from a window in 1973, which led him to abandon band work, explore other instruments, and begin a forty-year solo career.
Wyatt in London, April 2006
Wyatt on VPRO-TV, September 1967
Wyatt in 2013
Soft Machine are a British rock band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966 by Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Larry Nowlin. As a central band of the Canterbury scene, the group became one of the first British psychedelic acts and later moved into progressive and jazz rock, becoming a purely instrumental band in 1971. The band has undergone many line-up changes, with musicians such as Andy Summers, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, John Marshall, Karl Jenkins, Roy Babbington and Allan Holdsworth being members during the band's history. The current line-up consists of John Etheridge, Theo Travis, Fred Thelonious Baker and Asaf Sirkis.
Group circa 1970: l-r: Elton Dean, Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper
Ticket for a 1971 Soft Machine concert in the Deutschlandhalle, West Berlin, supported by Family, Yes and Man.