I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away. - Robert Wyatt
If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy. - Robert Wyatt
I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question. - Robert Wyatt
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
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
When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion. - Robert Wyatt
I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology. - Robert Wyatt
In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made. - Robert Wyatt
I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously. - Robert Wyatt
I don't find the business easy. The moment you start talking about the business, you start sounding like someone in Spinal Tap. - Robert Wyatt
I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians. - Robert Wyatt
Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs. - Robert Wyatt
It just doesn't mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends. - Robert Wyatt
I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don't want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal. - Robert Wyatt
Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't. - Robert Wyatt
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
Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world. - Robert Wyatt
I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers. - Robert Wyatt
Love is blind. My politics has been, too. I think you can fall in love with ideas, and you can fall in love with people. It's a very subjective experience. And I'm loyal to that experience. - Robert Wyatt
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
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. - Robert Wyatt
I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper. - Robert Wyatt