Roy Babbington is an English rock and jazz bassist. He became well known for being a member of the Canterbury scene progressive rock band Soft Machine.
Roy Babbington performing in 2018
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.