Robert Wyatt

Possessor of one of rock's most inimitable voices -- a fluty high tenor equally capable of sardonic irony and earnest emotions -- and an inventive songwriter and musician, Robert Wyatt became a unique and endearing figure on the British art rock scene by the early '70s. Raised in a bohemian-tinged middle-class household, the son of a BBC journalist and an industrial psychologist, Wyatt settled in Canterbury in the early 1960s and quickly fell into a jazz trio with guitarist Daevid Allen and bassist Hugh Hopper, which eventually morphed into a jazz-rock ensemble called The Wilde Flowers. Unheralded at the time, that group by 1967 spawned the twin poles of the Canterbury art rock scene, Caravan and Wyatt's group, Soft Machine. Musical clashes led to Wyatt's departure following 1971's Fourth and the creation of a short-lived answer band called Matching Mole (a tongue-in-cheek pun on the French translation of Soft Machine, "Machine molle"). In 1973, a drunken fall from a fourth-floor window at a friend's party paralyzed Wyatt from the waist down. Switching from drums to keyboards, Wyatt reinvented himself musically on a pair of classic solo albums, Rock Bottom and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. In the late 1970s and early '80s, Wyatt went through an outspokenly political phase in opposition to England's pronounced rightward tilt during that time: his heartbreaking version of Elvis Costello's antiwar anthem "Shipbuilding" is perhaps his most affecting song. Wyatt's recordings and performances have slowed since the late '80s, but they're consistently interesting.