On July 26, 1974 Robert Wyatt released his second solo album "Rock Bottom".
As the album's name suggests, it came out during Wyatt's worst time, when he hit rock bottom, after an injury that left him paralyzed in his lower body. Just imagine how a drummer (in the bands "Soft Machine" and later in the private project he founded "Matching Mole") becomes paralyzed in his lower body at his prime time in the age of 28, and you will understand what pain this album was created from.
As well known, the best albums ever created come out of a tragedy that leads to a tremendous burst of creativity, but in this case, most of the album's songs were written by Wyatt before his injury. Despite this, the atmosphere that surrounded the recordings and the fact that it became his solo project (the songs were originally written for his band "Matching Mole"), recorded during a period of pain in which he was dealing with his new condition, gave this album the "added value" that would make it a masterpiece.
At the beginning of 1973, Wyatt arrived in Venice together with his partner Alfreda Benge, known as Alifi. Alifi was an assistant director of a film that was shot there. Wyatt used his free time to write most of the album's songs which he initially intended for a new lineup of his band "Matching Mole". When Wyatt returned from Venice he even began working on the songs with the new "Matching Mole" lineup, but that creative process was interrupted on June 1, 1973 and since then took a surprising turn that resulted in this masterpiece album.
On that fateful evening of June 1, 1973, Wyatt and Alifi arrived at a birthday party of Gilli Smyth (from the band "Gong") and June Campbell Cramer (known as Lady June) at the latter's home. Kevin Ayers, Nik Turner, David Bowie, Mike Oldfield, and Keith Richards were present at the party. In the midst of the party, a drunken Wyatt fell from a third-floor apartment window and broke his spine, leaving him paralyzed in his lower body. He was in the bathroom with one of the party guests and when his Alifi found out and knocked on the door he panicked and tried to get out through the window, while holding the gutter with his smooth hands, until he fell down.
Wyatt lay in the hospital recovering from his injury for months. During that entire period, Alifi was by his side and supported him. Even in the hospital, Wyatt's burst of creation continued, but this time he realized that it was going to be different and that he had to reinvent himself given his physical condition.
Recordings for the album began shortly after Wyatt's release from the hospital. Wyatt managed to surround himself with the first-class musicians who accompanied him in the recording of the album, including: Nick Mason as producer, Mike Oldfield, Richard Sinclair, Hugh Hopper, Fred Frith and Laurie Allan who replaced him as drummer in "Soft Machine".
Indeed, Wyatt reinvented himself here with a strange, trippy and magical album whose style cannot be defined at all. A combination of Canterbury (the scene from which Wyatt emerged), progressive, psychedelia, jazz and more. Mixing loops, synths, trumpets, violins and voices... vocals that resemble a musical instrument that only Wyatt can produce.
This gem has only 6 songs, but each of them leads us on a unique musical trip like no other.
The album opens with "Sea Song", one of the most magical and special love songs ever written, the first and not the last Wyatt wrote for Alifi on the album. A mix of strange piano and synthesizer sounds, a little unsynchronized with a background of monotonous percussion and Wyatt's cracked voice accompanied by trippy background vocals. But somehow this musical chaos manages to connect to a magical, wonderful and mesmerizing song.
The second piece "A Last Straw" is a hallucinatory and psychedelic song with distinct jazz influences. Wyatt builds here the trippy and floating style, which is unique only to him, with strange vocals that even include an imitation of a trumpet.
The first side ends with the trumpet blast of "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" and the jazzy influences are prominent here as well, but they are overshadowed the psychedelic loop of the trumpet layers and Wyatt's indistinct mumbling.
The second side opens with two connected tracks "Alifib" and "Alifie" which are nothing more than a tribute to Wyatt's lover to whom he has been married since 1974 to the present day. The bass playing at the beginning of the first section sounds like an accompaniment to a classical piece. Here tooת the psychedelia screams out with confused and sometimes a-melodic guitar and keyboard playing. Even when Wyatt begins to sing, these are broken and unclear syllables, but then they become a moving melody dedicated to his beloved. The second section continues the first but is darker, more confused, with harsh sounds of saxophone and clarinet over only strange synthesizer sounds.
This one-off album ends with "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road" which opens with Laurie Allan's Marsh drumming later going wild on the drums. It is impossible not to recognize here Mike Oldfield's amazing guitar playing that accompanies the first half of the song with a typical guitar solo, but then, a change! The music fades away and is replaced by the sounds of a fiddle reminiscent of a Scottish bagpiper, which sets the background for the speech of Ivor Cutler, the Scottish poet and Wyatt's friend, who takes us to the end with his maddened laughter.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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