Rock Bottom
The cover on my copy
of the album, the original artwork.
Rather tragically (I
think) Rock Bottom has slipped a bit in the league table. Dropped
down the rankings. The Wikipedia page says this:
“Pitchfork
rates Rock Bottom as the 98th best album of the 1970s.”
If I remember
rightly, it was once (rightly) at the top of the all time NME list.
The later version
cover, also by Alfreda Benge.
It's one of those
mythical things, this album. Wyatt started writing the songs,
composing what he considered his first real solo album, then fell
from a third storey window and was paralysed, using a wheelchair
since that night.
He released Rock
Bottom in 1974, the year he married Alfreda Benge, who contributed
lyrics, vocals, and the original cover art.
I was sixteen in
1974, and I didn't get it. Musically, lyrically, every whichway it
was a mystery to me, and I was properly baffled by the high esteem it
was held in.
Now I listen to it
as much as anything else.
What you have are
six songs, loosely flowing around the album, about forty minutes in
all. It's jazzy in places, dreamy, melodic. It's uneasy listening at
times. I know I've written this before, but at first Wyatt's voice,
just, somehow, tantalisingly not quite there, a little reedy,
English, lisping inflection, seems a weakness. After repeated
listenings, you realise what an essential strength it is. The album
is a thing of immense beauty. If you discount Ruth Is Stranger Than
Richard, mostly composed by others, it was 1985 before Wyatt released
another solo album.
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