| Rock Bottom | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Robert Wyatt | ||||
| Released | July 26, 1974 | |||
| Recorded | Delfina's Farm, Little Chalfont (basic tracks), February 1974 - The Manor Studio, Oxfordshire and CBS, London, April–May 1974 (overdubs) | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock Canterbury scene |
|||
| Length | 39:31 | |||
| Label | Virgin Records 2017 | |||
| Producer | Nick Mason | |||
| Robert Wyatt chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Alternative cover | ||||
|
Cover of the 1998 re-issue
|
||||
Rock Bottom is the second solo album by former Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt. It was released on July 26, 1974 by Virgin Records. 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] The album was produced by Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason.
Contents |
Matching Mole disbanded soon after the release of Little Red Record and Wyatt began composing the material that would appear on Rock Bottom. The albums' preparation, however, was interrupted by an accident on the night of 1 June 1973. During a raucous party, at Vale Court, Hall Road, Maida Vale in London, an inebriated Wyatt fell from a third-floor bathroom window and was seriously injured, permanently losing the use of his legs. Wyatt has used a wheelchair ever since. He later called the event the beginning of his maturity and in hospital he continued to work on the songs that would appear on Rock Bottom "in a trance." "I was just relieved that I could do something from a wheelchair," Wyatt confesses. "If anything, being a paraplegic helped me with the music because being in hospital left me free to dream, and to really think through the music." [1] Within six months he was back at work in the recording studio and appeared on stage at London's Rainbow Theatre with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, who lent financial support by playing a benefit concert for him. 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 the material was a direct result of the accident and the long period of recuperation. Indeed, much of the album had been written while in Venice in early 1973 prior to Wyatt's accident, where his partner and future wife (the poet Alfreda Benge) was working as an assistant editor on Nicolas 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 most of the album shortly after his release from hospital. In the summer of 1974, the album was released to great critical acclaim. 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 singled out for its brilliance, which resulted in his being offered a three-album deal with Virgin Records.
Intense yet also oddly mellow and soothing, the record's abstract sketches of pain, loss and suffering are shot through with vivid flashes of love and renewal, inspired as it was by his relationship with Alfreda Benge, whom he married on the day of Rock Bottom's release. They went to live in Lincolnshire where they've stayed ever since, with Benge providing the artwork for all his album covers and considerable lyrical assistance.
Rock Bottom 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 displaying a jazz influence (as in "Alife", or the album's centrepiece "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road"). Side two starts with a medley of sorts ("Alifib/Alife"), with Wyatt first singing and then reciting in a disjointed manner 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 little resemblance to the first—features only a droning harmonium, harshly-scraped violin and guest vocalist Ivor Cutler reciting bizarre lyrics in a monotone voice.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Robert Christgau | (B+) link |
| The Independent | link |
| Mojo (magazine) | link |
| Piero Scaruffi | (9.5/10) link |
| Pitchfork Media | (9.0/10.0) link |
| Uncut | link |
Rock Bottom sold better than expected, and reviews were positive; the record and its attendant good publicity (including what was to remain his only major live appearance as a solo artist, at London's Theatre Royal in September 1974) established Wyatt as a respected solo artist independent of his history with Soft Machine. Concurrently, Wyatt also released a non-album single, a straight cover of the 1960s pop tune "I'm a Believer", which reached the British Top 30. After the almost immediate follow-up Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (of which he composed very little, concentrating on lyrics and arrangements) Wyatt would not release another studio album of his own material until 1985's Old Rottenhat. Rock Bottom placed 98 on Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s.[3]
All songs written by Robert Wyatt.
| Side one | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Sea Song" | 6:31 | |||||||
| 2. | "A Last Straw" | 5:46 | |||||||
| 3. | "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" | 7:40 | |||||||
| Side two | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 4. | "Alifib" | 6:55 | |||||||
| 5. | "Alife" | 6:31 | |||||||
| 6. | "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road" | 6:08 | |||||||
The artwork for the cover of the album, both the delicate drawing for the 1974 original and the colourful painting for the 1998 re-issue, were by Alfreda Benge.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||