Intuitive Music

30 years ago today, on the 1st of June 1973, drummer and singer Robert Wyatt was paralyzed in an accident.

The fatal accident happened when Robert Wyatt fell out of a fourth-floor window during a the birthday party of Gong’s singer Gilly Smith in London, suffering a fractured 12th vertebra and a broken leg. He was taken to Stoke Manderville Hospital in Alesbury, Buckingahmshire, which was specialised in serious injuries. He stayed in hospital for about six months and stayed bed ridden for 12 weeks, and was finally confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life.

At the time of the accident Robert Wyatt was about to start rehearsals for the third album of his band Matching Mole. Robert Wyatt had previously quit Soft machine back in 1971.

As Wyatt recalls, the doctor told him the he had to have been really drunk to fall in such a relaxed way because if not he would have probably died. Robert Wyatt has said about the accident: “I have a hard time dealing with the way I was before the accident; it’s almost as if the fall affected my mind. I see the accident now as being a sort of neat division line between my adolescence and the rest of my life.”

After the accident and during his lifetime, Robert Wyatt kept playing vocals, keyboards, percussion and winds and has recorded more than 40 albums as a session musician for numerous artists including Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Ultramarine, Brian Eno, Hery Cow, Hatfield and the North, Phil Manzanera, and Scritti Politti, amongst many others. He also pursued a brilliant solo career.