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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.

Robert Wyatt

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Robert Wyatt
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: January 28
Composer
Drummer
Musician
Recording Artist
Singer
Bristol
Gloucestershire
Robert Ellidge Wyatt
Write
Dance
Night
Songs
Composers
Two
Months
Saturday
Play
Records
Composer
Writing
Challenges
Fantastic
People
Five
Radio
Times
Challenge
Song
Record

More quotes by Robert Wyatt

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There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.
Robert Wyatt
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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?
Robert Wyatt
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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.
Robert Wyatt
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Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.
Robert Wyatt
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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.
Robert Wyatt
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I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.
Robert Wyatt
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Because of my politics, people think I'm anti-American. But I was quite the reverse. What I don't like about the United States is when the government acts like an old, imperial 18th- or 19th-century European power.
Robert Wyatt
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The United States is a country where everybody can start again.
Robert Wyatt
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There are people I would like to work with. Its a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I cant really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.
Robert Wyatt
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I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so.
Robert Wyatt
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Im not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.
Robert Wyatt
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I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
Robert Wyatt
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The missing links in my life's work, no less!
Robert Wyatt
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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
Robert Wyatt
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The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
Robert Wyatt
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People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.
Robert Wyatt
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Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.
Robert Wyatt
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We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.
Robert Wyatt
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I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.
Robert Wyatt
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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.
Robert Wyatt