Almost four decades after his career began, Robert Wyatt remains one of very few drummers worthy of sustained interest and examination.  The great paradox of Robert’s drumming in Soft Machine is that what made him great limited him and what limited him made him great.

To begin with, lack of formal training and technique forced Robert to be more creative and more musical in designing his drum parts for the Softs’ extraordinarily challenging music. These limitations also allowed him to be cliché proof. You simply did not hear him play drum parts that you had ever heard before. That this was an on-going conscious artistic decision is demonstrated by the fact that recording after recording shows no compromise. With Robert there was no borrowing.

This is not to say the Softs did not borrow bits compositionally; they did. For example, on Invocation and Ritual; from Zappa’s first album, Absolutely Free, you can hear the basis for Volume Two’s Pig.  On Tout de Suite from Miles Davis’ Filles de Kilimanjaro you hear clearly the skeleton of Hugh’s ostinato bass and also the theme that opens Slightly All the Time. Still, these borrowings were few and far between, and the astonishing truth is that the Softs’ individual playing did not reflect influences from other players.  Like some reverse birth, by the time of their first album, they appeared almost fully formed. Their sound was theirs alone.  No other musicians sounded like Kevin, Hugh or Mike — and certainly no one sounded like Robert.

On Robert’s sound

Robert always drummed with incredible force and was rewarded with great sound: “I hit the drums so hard I break all of the heads.” 

Robert’s kit from Mitch was oversized, with larger than normal tom-toms. He tuned his tom-toms like little timpani or kettledrums, and because he used no dampening they really rang out. Larger drums are harder to record, and in an almost counterintuitive way, they project less than smaller drums.  Jazz drummers  — such as all of Miles’ drummers, Christian Vander, etc. — used far smaller drums, 18” bass drums, and so on.

Completing the image of timpani, Robert used very thick drumsticks. This impact was two-fold: it allowed Robert the great snare sound as well as a marvelous full cross-sticking tone, producing the effect of a woodblock by laying the stick on the snare drum and clicking it on the rim. This creates a great jazz tonality and Robert used it a lot, with particular effect on Virtually Pt 2 as well as the first section of Slightly. The stick thickness and his striking velocity also impacted the cymbals; when Robert would ride or crash the cymbal you could hear the note decay very quickly, which is unusual as cymbals typically ring.  This became part of the unmistakable Wyatt sound as well.

Another distinctive element of his sound was the use of the snare drum with the snares turned off, making the snare sound like a high pitched tom-tom. No other rock drummers were doing that.  The technique got him away from the normal back beat sound of the snare drum, and he used it frequently on Third and Fourth.

How a drummer tunes his drum set is important as it affects not only the sound but the actual playing. On the first Soft Machine album and his two Hendrix tours, Robert used his black double bass Premier kit, highlighted by two timbales as tom-toms, with a very tight, choked snare drum sound.  They were not warm sounding, but they projected well and had good power. Robert then moved to a more resonating, fuller tone on his gift Ludwig kit from Mitch Mitchell, with a single bass drum and a looser, slightly mushier tone on the Ludwig snare drum.

With Soft Machine he had a tendency to use a single ride/crash cymbal — a technique that was absolutely unheard of now and then. The sticks also made his hi-hat cymbals sound fantastic, with a lot of body to them. More drummers would love to have that tone but they don’t want to work that hard. It’s one thing for the drummer of Kiss or Motley Crue to use big sticks playing stadium rock, but the challenge in driving a fast-tempo jazz-infused 40-minute “heads down Softs medley” is significant.  That boy had some arms.

On Third Robert replaced the Ludwig snare with a Camco snare and brought back the crisp, tighter snare tone. Even with the well-documented limitations of that recording, his tone on Third is fabulous, with a British neo-soul sound more than a common jazz tuning.

On Fourth, Robert’s sound is even better, with marvelous rubbery tom-toms and his classic crisp snare — a sound brilliantly realized on Teeth, for example.  The opening of Virtually is a showcase for Robert’s subtle compelling cymbal melodies within melodies, as he duets with Babbington’s acoustic bass on ride and hi-hat.  Unfortunately, live recordings were sadly different due to that era of recording (other than saxophones, drums suffered the most) and very primitive PA systems even for that time.

Why his drumming is important: bravery and the non-automatic

In a 1968 Downbeat interview, Robert Wyatt described Mike Ratledge’s 13/8 time signature as “duck-uh-dee, duck-uh-dee, duck-uh-dee, duck-uh, duck-uh.” So, how do we interpret this? It is actually the crux of Robert’s drumming.

On the one hand, how fabulous is it that you have a self-taught rock drummer brave enough (and that is the word) to want to sound and move differently through musical passages in order to create New Music? Not jazz, not rock, but true, new music.

Odd time signatures by themselves don’t mean anything. They can be a novelty (see big band leader Don Ellis); they can be a hook (see Take Five by Dave Brubeck); but they can also create a flow that changes everything for the soloist. That is exactly what the early Softs learned. Odd times create rhythm that can turn corners, resist cliché and allow bass, horns and organ to intersect, move together and then fall away in more interesting ways than with 4/4. Odd times allow the ensemble to create cyclical music with its own internal micro-rhythms a la Terry Riley. All good things. Yet there is a big downside: IT IS REALLY HARD.

Odd times are typically the most difficult for the drummer for two reasons. First, the drummer is blending (hopefully with precision) two feet and two arms, bass drum, hi-hat, snare and ride cymbal in a coordinated, independent, movement-rhythm. Whereas the bass player, as an example, can play a single repeating ostinato figure that remains in perfect time, such as the bass parts in Out-Bloody-Rageous or Slightly All the Time.

Secondly, without a chart it is all memory. Robert is either counting the beats or mantra’ing or feeling “Duck-uh-dee-Duck-uh-dee-duck-uh-dee-duck-uh-duck-uh” as he navigates the backdrop to some blistering fuzz organ solo. Which is fine until it is time to do a fill, a roll, a deviation and then HAS TO COME BACK IN ON THE ONE.

He is also counting the measures in order to hit the changes properly. Some time signatures like 6/8 have a natural feel even though they are not four beats to the measure. This is where Robert could insert his vocal parts in the early days and still be able to drum. The trio part of Moon in June is an excellent example, as is Hope for Happiness on the first album.

But it is the true odd times that are so dicey.  One solution is to employ repetitive patterns that fit the time perfectly. The drum part behind the long organ solo on Slightly is a good example. Robert comes in and plays that great 9/4 drum pattern without change until a minor build into the slow theme. But Robert’s passion/curse is that he never wants to repeat his parts. For all we know, the last time he played that same part was on that track. He will not take the easy way out; he will not compromise his artistry to be “a human jukebox.”  Robert’s approach is that he continues to learn about the piece while playing it. So, it remains difficult, and sometimes it works and flows and sometimes it doesn’t.

With the peer and financial pressure of recording, Robert was more exacting and more careful.  He had to be. But he still played with abandon, and the final section of Slightly proves that even in a studio recording he was brave enough to take a lot of musical chances.  In fact, it wasn’t until the live stuff began coming out that one realized that Robert or Elton ever made mistakes. Amazingly Hugh and Mike rarely faulted even live.

What limited him made him great

This leads us to the back half of Robert’s crux. Formally schooled drummers will navigate with more precision, typically because they will learn the chart by reading. But that process can reduce creativity. If you think that is harsh, I would suggest to any Soft Machine fan that they recall in their frontal lobes a portion of any Robert Wyatt drum part: Slightly, Facelift, Save Yourself, Teeth — it doesn’t matter, they are fairly easy to conjure up.

Now do the same thing with any John Marshall drum part.  Not so forthcoming. Why? They are not as interesting, and therefore not as memorable. Yet in many ways they are more musically exact (no glares from Granny glasses). John Marshall is an excellent drummer. But as he could read Mike’s charts he was not forced out on a performance ledge where he had to conjure up a “part” that fit the same way.

What often transpired with Robert were drum parts that were less formulaic and, frankly, more musical. As an example: no schooled, high-technique drummer would have come up with the hi-hat / bass drum rhythm that propels the floating, fast second section of Slightly All the Time. The double-tracked flutes are playing a cyclical, repeating figure; piano and bass are locked in their own intersecting pattern. Everything is flowing forward because Robert is flowing forward. It is perfect. Is it musically perfect, beats to the measure perfect? Um, no. Do I, as the listener care? Um, no. Why? Because it is boasting a different type of perfection. You have never heard that rhythm before nor have you heard it since, and it works completely.

What made him great limited him

As often as Robert felt inspired and comfortable, enjoying the process and challenge immensely, I can also guarantee you that if he didn’t feel it, hear it, could not count it…it was HELL.

A telling Robert Wyatt quote shortly before his departure in Graham Bennett’s book, Out-Bloody-Rageous:  “I had the feeling that I was drowning — I couldn’t get any breath. It was all too much. Mike had written some things I thought I couldn’t play. I tried to play them but I didn’t understand them at all. I just panicked.”

Odd times. The great trade-off of ‘creativity versus the automatic’ continued to create tension and stress within Robert and his relationship to the others. Confidence, approval, the lack thereof, resentment, his acting out and the drinking all had helped destroy the few personal and musical relationships that remained within the band. But for Robert it all had culminated with his feeling that Mike Ratledge in particular was creating music that was beyond his ability to play.

Based on the timing of that quotation, as well as of Robert’s departure, the pieces in question were obviously compositions that appeared on Fifth:  All White, Drop, As if.  Frankly, none of these pieces appears to be more daunting than anything on Fourth but something non-musical was occurring that made them appear to Robert to be beyond his command.

So, the age old debate: creativity vs. technique. The formally trained WHO CAN PLAY ANYTHNG as long as they are reading vs. the creative players who often come up with more interesting and less predictable parts but ARE NOT AUTOMATIC.  This is why Ratledge and Hopper and Christian Vander and Dave Stewart and so many other musicians are worthy of our amazement: because they were both.

The subtext allure of Soft Machine: their intelligence

It was not show biz stage presence.

It was not sex appeal (Lord knows).

It was not musical pyrotechnic flash.

It was that they had obviously thought this music through, both execution and composition. Not too common in 1969. The great thing about interesting bands — any band really — is that they create a portable village that goes out and exports its culture. Single performers can’t do that. With bands you know almost immediately by hearing them or seeing them if you would like to live in their village. Hatfield and the North and Henry Cow all projected that sense of a distinctive musical culture.

What was evident with Soft Machine was the invention of the playing and the composition, the Yin-Yang of the band, the internal balance between bubbly emotional, vocal, blond Robert and somber, dark Hugh and Mike. But they were all smart; the entire village was smart.   Soft Machine was not about smarmy show biz, but above all it was the first musical group in that era that had Marshall stacks, fuzz tones and dignity.

Dignity might be a strange adjective to apply, but it is the correct word: dignity in the sense that classical music has dignity because it is about only the music.  With Soft Machine you knew there would be no musical tricks, there would be no stage banter, and no one was going to drop to his knees in a feigned moment of musical ecstasy. You knew you were going to hear “rivmic melodies” and unbelievable solos.  Someone had thought this through.

Fans who become intrigued investigate the portable village, then and now.  For example, Soft Machine song titles reference Thomas Pynchon, the greatest and most difficult American novelist of the back half of the 20^th century.  In reviews critics reference Terry Riley, inventor of musical minimalism with La Monte Young.  On and on. You read interviews with the band and you are not surprised to see that they are all quite articulate and possess active points of view.

They might not look fun (they weren’t) but they are very, very smart (they were).  And they play very, very loud (they did).  And it all makes sense (even now).

On Fuzz

Raucous rock and roll distortion equates to musical aggression. The Kinks All Day and All of the Night (the poster child number) or any number of rock classics, however great, really are informed by the dynamic of kids’ identity vs. adults, musically acting out and defining turf, which is fine.

However, fuzz in the hands of sophisticated musicians meant something else again entirely. It was not an aggression tool, as the music was too sophisticated for that; it was actually more subversive. It delineated old versus new, and in the right hands it was also a point of pure sonic pleasure.

Tasteful fuzz bass, in particular, allows the instrument to transcend its nature and become something different and apart. It is industrial, it is mammal, it is electronic envelope. Tone becomes as important as note. Hugh Hopper is the master of that as was John Greaves. Beyond the ability to turn a rhythm instrument into a lead instrument  — no more low-volume obligatory jazz bass solo — it moves the instrument into the realm.

For the organ it also changes everything. In pre-synthesizer world, keyboards meant either piano or organ. Non–fuzz organ as a solo voice was a limited option: either the Hammond B-3 Brian Auger / Keith Emerson tone, which was acceptable but established, or pure old world cheesy Jimmy Smith / Booker T Green Onions Hammond. But fuzz organ is a different animal.  It is a fabulous tone and totally empowering. When Ratledge hooked up his Duo-Fuzz and got the balance right he could cut through like Coltrane, like Hendrix, and it changed everything. It was New Music.

This is why other Canterbury bands logically began to imitate Ratledge — the sound worked completely. It is interesting, however, to hear how much the Lowrey organ alone could generate that marvellous reptillian tone, far more unique than fuzz Hammond. A total random element but an important one to note.  Great players like Dave Stewart followed with friendlier Hammond fuzz organ tones, yet the Lowrey’s reediness and Ratledge’s technique and knowledge of different scales always kept him apart. Ratledge never sounded like anyone but Ratledge. His solos alone conjured up the image of some creature writing a long letter from the bottom of a pool.

Teeth as the pinnacle

Where Slightly All the Time is accessible and delights, Teeth dazzles. How can you listen to this piece and not want to know where it came from?

Teeth is the pinnacle; it is the one. I had always assumed (incorrectly) that the name was taken from a line from Thomas Pynchon’s novel V: “Teeth and metals endure.”  But frankly, I like the Pynchon quote mythology better, because it is more fitting. Sensing their construct was collapsing, that the center could not hold, the Softs created a recording that would endure. It brings to mind a quote from the great musician,Astor Piazzolla, “When we play this record for our grandchildren, they will know what we did with our lives.”

Teeth has and is everything: a highly ambitious composition, large ensemble, great drumming, a nod to café jazz cliche with intro false stops and starts that lead to a first section of acoustic bass / piano/ drums and sax old-world line-up for classic jazz blowing.  A tandem bass line then introduces us to the future: saxophone and fuzz organ repeat interlocking machine melodies, with Hugh moving above and below in industrial whine. They then release into changing spheres of melody, some in floating time, some in little snatches of swing time, culminating into arguably the best Ratledge organ solo on record, as he weaves through and above the rhythmic horn parts in a high speed 13/8 chase over the terrain. He ends it with a lengthy held note, a favorite Ratledge touch, as the exhausted rhythm section comes up once more and then collapses into musical swirl and dissolve.

On drums Robert is brilliant. Quite simply, every single aspect of what makes him great and worthy of discussion these decades later is contained on that track. Beautiful British drum tone, and jazz sensitivity coupled with rock drumming’s punch.  The entire arrangement is fiendishly complex, utilizing odd times, stop / starts, yet Robert is spot on, free yet controlled. When he claims he had no technique (as he often has) someone please make him once again listen to Teeth.  Loud!  Repeatedly!

Influences and Comparisons

Robert credits Mitch Mitchell as being the one who started it all.  And, of course, he is right. Robert must have received a great secondary drumming education from the wings during the eighty-eight times the Softs opened for the Experience. Mitch did pioneer the blend of jazz rhythms and rock volume and sensibility, much more than Ginger Baker and preceding Tony Williams. If there is musical Darwinism, Mitch Mitchell is a living, breathing “Natural Selection.” The first time Jimi Hendrix heard a John Coltrane album with Elvin Jones on drums he looked at Mitch and exclaimed, “That’s you!”

While Mitch (and Elvin) were great overall influences, you do not hear their specifics incorporated into Robert’s playing. Contrast that with early John Marshall drumming in Nucleus, as an example, which is basically a primer on how to sound like Jack DeJohnette, the long-time Miles Davis drummer. High pitched tom-tom, cymbals, loose snare sound, approach, everything. But with Robert no one is visible. No one could sound like him either.

Perhaps the closest stylistically to Robert was Chris Cutler of Henry Cow. It is apparent that Robert had an impact on Chris’ playing both philosophically and on the drum set. Chris would set up drum parts for a certain amount of measures and then deconstruct them, not that dissimilar to Robert, although Henry Cow’s arrangements are far more geared for that.  His approach was to establish a brief, initial drum part that increasingly gets busier and busier and more unconventional until it overflows the musical space while continuing to move the band forward.

Where Robert would have to find small spaces to fit in non-musical clicks on microphones and drum stands as “found sounds,” Chris could have entire passages. Chris’ tunings with low, ringing floor tom-toms are also reminiscent of Robert’s style as is his high-hat work. But their biggest similarity is one of attitude: the rejection of the Buddy Rich high technique drummer as the ultimate ideal replaced by only an interest in furthering the compositional moment or movement of the band, regardless of their part. Both men had Giant Ears.

A final visit to V

As Thomas Pynchon’s novel V supplied both Esther’s Nose Job and Pig as song titles on Volume Two, we will visit it one last time. A character in the novel defines decadence as a “falling away from what is animate.” Once considered, this definition is hard to argue with. This is exactly what happened to Soft Machine when they excised Robert Wyatt from the band. Even without his vocals Robert was the “animate” — the human and emotional element of the band.  Listen to the very machine-inspired, industrial overload of the beginning of Facelift on Third.  It is, of course instrumental, pure machine-speak, but it is full of life.

Compare that to Fanfare on Six.  Post Robert, the slide begins; post Hugh, it is unstoppable. As Mike’s and especially Karl’s compositions are now perfectly executed they become more machine-like, more and more lifeless, in a hollow fulfillment of their moniker. Without Robert’s (undoubtedly annoying at times) energy they fall away from what is animate. They become inert; they become inanimate. Their music becomes decadent.  No Soft, all Machine.

John Trimble /2006