Top Of The Box

Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding, The Old Grey Whistle Test,1982

This live performance on the BBC music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1982 is truly awesome. It was such an odd site to see a person in a wheelchair performing on a music show; and his voice was so fragile and sincere.  I fell in love with Wyatt’s music there and then and bought the album Nothing Can Stop Us soon after.

Shipbuilding was written by Elvis Costello; a song inspired by the Falklands War.  Robert Wyatt had become very political around this period and become a member of the British Communist Party.

Robert Wyatt began his music career as a drummer in the 1960’s progressive rock group, Soft Machine, along with Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayres.

In 1973 his career as a drummer came to a sudden end after falling drunk from a third floor window.  He became paralysed from the waist down.