Interesting reading the official Robert Wyatt biography to find that this one-time highly individual drummer and latterly remarkable singer has long been plagued by feelings of musical inadequacy and anxiety dreams of the onstage shit hitting the fan.
Maybe he's just particularly honest in owning up to it... Since there are many more musicians who experience such worries...
Wyatt was there from the beginning with The Soft Machine – named after the William Burroughs novel of the same name – and he probably appreciates as much as anyone that this reference to the human body as a soft machine is apt. The human machine can do amazing things, but its software is often vulnerable.
Even though 'Different Every Time' is an occasionally hagiographic 'authorised' book, it does not shy away from the vulnerabilities of this particular soft musical machine. And it's an excellent read.
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