Robert Wyatt Quotes
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I think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world. The US is the Western empire of the 19th century regrouping in the 20th, not out of wickedness, but because everybody else in Eurasia was so completely destroyed by the Second World War. Economically, that was quite a useful time for the US, so they ended up in the position of enormous power. And like any great power, they're going to act in their own interests. The problem is due to what the business community wants, which is to make as much money as they can out of what other people do and pay as little as possible for it.
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The missing links in my life's work, no less!
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I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.
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What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.
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I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.
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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
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There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.
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It's funny that Chairman Mao's great hero was Napoleon, because Napoleon started out as a revolutionary for the underdogs and then made himself an emperor. In fact, a lot of revolutionary leaders do that, and you think, "Well, that's spoiling your argument. What are you doing?" But on the other hand, the people themselves are enjoying trying out all these different ways to be. I hope that, like the Japanese, the Chinese hang on to their own traditions as well as try out Western ones. I hate it when people just lose so much confidence in who they are that they abandon their own culture.
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I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.
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When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.
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Drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble.
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What I like about popular culture is its accessibility, and I've covered popular songs because they are amazing things.
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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.
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I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.
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I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law.
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People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy."
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Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.
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The United States is a country where everybody can start again.
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It just doesnt mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.
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Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.
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I do think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world.
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People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.
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I consider myself a sit-down comedian really, as much as anything else. I love comedy. Life is a cosmic joke.
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The gap between rich and poor is, in fact, widening enormously. This idea of building up the powers of people who are already powerful and keeping everyone else back is a recipe for endless misery and conflict.