Robert Wyatt

With his surreal songwriting, eerie delivery and experimental compositions, Robert Wyatt stands out as an eccentric, cult figure of the British music scene and a huge influence on the likes of Thom Yorke, Brian Eno and David Gilmour. Taught the drums as a child, Wyatt was a big figure of the post-psychedelic Canterbury Scene of the late-1960s, when he founded chaotic prog rockers Soft Machine and became notorious for his boozy hell raising with peers such as Keith Moon, Syd Barratt and Jimi Hendrix. His partying caught up with him, however, in 1973 when he fell from a fourth floor window while drunk and became paralysed from the waist down. Forced to leave the band and take up a more percussive form of drumming without the use of his feet, Wyatt enlisted the help of Mike Oldfield, Ivor Cutler and Nick Mason for second solo album Rock Bottom (1974) and had a surprise hit with a cover version of Neil Diamond's I'm A Believer, more commonly associated with the Monkees. His quivering, high-pitched vocal style created a melancholic, vulnerable style and his staunchly left wing political views came to the fore when Margaret Thatcher was Britain's Prime Minister, culminating in his iconic rendition of Elvis Costello's anti-Falklands War song Shipbuilding. Releasing his fourteenth album For The Ghosts Within in 2010 and working, in his later career, with artists as varied as Bjork, Paul Weller and Graham Coxon, he became an unlikely national treasure.

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