Robert Wyatt
There are people I would like to work with. It's a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I can't really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.
The world of culture in my head that I come from... it's to do with just people pegging away for a lifetime at their craft.
The voice is an amazing instrument. I can't leap arpeggios up and down the keyboard like a tenor saxophone, but at the same time, the voice has all these consonants and vowels and, in combination with words, there's really a lot it can do.
The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren't particularly youth culture.
The only excuse I have for the feebleness of the record is that it was an attempt to do nearly all-original material at a time when our friends were doing covers of one thing or another, whether it was pop or jazz.
The one that I actually got on best with-he was very very kind and generous to me, and good company-was the bass player, Roger. I know they all fell out later. But I liked =him and the others so much. I was very sorry that they fell apart.
The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
The last time I went in the studio, I spent a few days in the studio, and there wasn't a single thing I came out with that I could use. This can happen.
The jazz singers I used to listen to weren't the official singers but were very often musicians, like Dizzy Gillespie, who sang as well. There were certain people in jazz who sang in ways that no one would call proper singing but it still would work.
The appearance of variety is a complete illusion. It's like somebody who's got a dartboard in his room, and there's darts all over it, but all I was trying to do was hit the board. That's all I've ever tried to do.
The '60s are a washout to me. It gives me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I remember the whole era. It's like trying to ask somebody on the Titanic if they had a good time until it went down.
Pianists like Gil Evans and Duke Ellington-people who are playing but actually thinking about something else half the time-influenced me a lot.
People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?
People associate those songs by Otis Blackwell and Big Mama Thornton with Presley. They think of them as his songs, and quite rightly so, because they're no better than the originals, but they worked as Elvis Presley songs. So they're his songs, because of his voice.
People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.
On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.
My real feeling of lack of freedom comes from the fact that I have to be anything at all, specific.
My heroes are people like Picasso and Miro and people who at last really reach something in their old age, which they absolutely couldn't ever have done in their youth.
My harmonic and rhythmic ideas really don't come from rock at all. I do feel pleased that I'm just old enough to remember the great music of the '50s. I saw Duke Ellington, and Eric Dolphy playing with Coltrane and with Mingus. To me, that's completely unmatchable.
Maybe people really feel they had their moment. I don't think they're any the worse for that.