Stopsmiling

Stopsmiling ("The magazine for the high-minded lowlifes"!) interviewed  Robert Wyatt  for their issue 26 (2006). I know I have read it before, but can't see that I have blogged it, so here it is - online for you all to read.

Let's just have a couple of examples here. Wyatt on drumming:
"I conquered my fear of what jazz fans would compare white drummers with by watching Keith Moon, who didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t sitting there thinking, “Am I reaching some standard set by somebody else?” Keith freed me from trying to think about standards set by someone else. Moon sustained a kind of momentum on the kit, plus a kind of human uncertainty about what was going to happen next. Which is what I wanted to do with my drumming. So, while I got my inspiration from black drummers, I got my confidence from Keith Moon".

And he is not one to brag about his own music:
"Alfie and I used to frequent Ronnie Scott’s a lot in the ’60s. It was a place you’d go to after you’d done a rock gig and wanted to hear some decent music after all the rubbish you’d been playing".