Rock Bottom (album)
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| Rock Bottom | ||
 |
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| Studio album by Robert Wyatt | ||
| Released | 1974 | |
| Recorded | 1974 | |
| Genre | Progressive rock | |
| Length | 39:31 | |
| Label | Virgin | |
| Producer(s) | Nick Mason | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| Robert Wyatt chronology | ||
| The End of an Ear (1971) |
Rock Bottom (1974) |
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975) |
Rock Bottom is the second solo album (the first post-Soft Machine) by Robert Wyatt. Although Rock Bottom is technically Wyatt's second solo LP, he has stated in several interviews that he considers its predecessor The End of an Ear as juvenilia and not part of the recognised "canon" of Wyatt solo records [1].
Preparations were under way for a third Matching Mole album — probably featuring earlier versions of some songs which ended up on this record, such as "Sea Song" — when, during the course of a raucous party on the night of 1 July 1973, Wyatt drunkenly fell from a fourth-floor window and was seriously injured, permanently losing the use of his legs. Forced by the accident to give up the drums, Wyatt abandoned the Matching Mole project and instead changed the project into a solo album featuring more vocals from Wyatt himself; his time in hospital recuperating from the accident was spent refining and completing the songs which would form the Rock Bottom album. Although the music itself is intense and often harrowing, and the lyrics to the songs are dense and obviously deeply personal, Wyatt has denied that this was a result of the accident and the long period of recuperation. Indeed, much of the album had been written in Venice in early 1973, where his partner and future wife the poet Alfreda Benge was working as an assistant editor on Nicholas Roeg's similarly haunting and intense film "Don't Look Now". [2]
Enlisting friends and luminaries such as Fred Frith, Ivor Cutler and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason (who would end up producing the album), Wyatt recorded the bulk of the album shortly after his release from hospital and it was released to great critical acclaim in the summer of 1974. Cutler's performance (reciting a semi-nonsensical narrative halfway through "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" and intoning the same poem in a flat baritone voice at the end of "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road" to close the album) was marked out for particular acclaim, and resulted in his being offered a three-album deal with Virgin Records.
The finished album contained six songs, some of which have more traditional song structures (for instance the opening "Sea Song" or "Alifib"), while others are less defined, more expressionist pieces showing more of a jazz influence (as in "Alife", or the album's centrepiece "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road"); the latter, featuring an insistent uptempo rhythm, jazz trumpet and reversed tape effects, is reminiscent in places of the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew. Side two starts with a medley of sorts ("Alifib/Alife"), with Wyatt first singing and then disjointedly reciting a set of lyrics apparently dedicated to Alfreda Benge, who herself replies with her own vocal retort at the end of "Alifib". The LP closer, "Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road", is divided into two parts; the first is a melodic progressive rock song featuring prominent electric guitars and a chant-like vocal refrain, while the second part — bearing no resemblance to the first — features only a droning harmonium, harshly-scraped violin and guest vocalist Ivor Cutler flatly reciting bizarre lyrics.
The album sold better than expected, and reviews were uniformly positive; the record and its attendant good publicity established Wyatt as a respected solo artist independent of his history with Soft Machine. Wyatt also released a non-album single, a straight cover of "I'm a Believer", at the same time which reached the British Top 30. Aside from the almost immediate follow-up Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard — made up of material written before the accident — Wyatt would not release another studio album of new material until 1985's Old Rottenhat.
[edit] Track listing
- "Sea Song" – 6:31
- "A Last Straw" – 5:46
- "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" – 7:40
- "Alifib" – 6:55
- "Alife" – 6:31
- "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road" – 6:08
[edit] Notes
- ^ King, M., Wrong Movements - A Robert Wyatt History (1999), ISBN 0-946719-10-1
- ^ From Wyatt's own liner notes to the 1997 CD reissue of Rock Bottom on Hannibal/Rykodisc
