Some have written that Wyatt took it philosophically. WHatever is the case, he had fallen from a balcony as the ex-drummer of Soft Machine, and he woke up as a solo singer and songwriter. In a wheelchair.

 

When I visited him in the house in Twickenham that the charming (and patron) Julie Christie had given him, in the suburbs of London, I would say September 1979, Wyatt admitted that recording “Rock Bottom”, the album that followed the accident, everything had gone smoothly. Robert had had the opportunity to take some time out of a life that until then had always been lived “in the fast lane,” finding time to reorganize his ideas and write down the first songs of the album even before the accident. When his partner Alfreda/Alfie had dragged him to Venice, because of her work assisting in the production of “A Shocking Red Winter in Venice.” But after he left the hospital the die was cast.

 

Maybe “Rock Bottom” is an album that is in the ranking of the ten greatest musical works of all time, as a representative of the “other rock”, for its being an underground, underwater, slimy rock, from which emerge the influences of black African and British (free) jazz, nursery rhymes and Anglo-psychedelic folk, blues (more as pathos and tension, than anything else), or French composers of the late 19th century, as well as music from northern India. And in addition it has that truly “Dark Side Of The Moon” side, that of being a statement of certain music of a certain time, yet destined to become definitive, immortal.

 

Little Red Riding Hood Hits The Road has always been, without hesitation, my favorite song of this unforgettable album. Why?

 

Harmony plays an important role. The chords start with a pedal of an A major chord (in a way the father of all chords: most instruments tune with a 440 Hz. 'A' note) alternating - hitting in unison with the reversed voice - the A with two A sus chords (A sus4 and A sus9). "Sus" as in suspended: because you can't say they are either a major or a minor chord, since the third is missing from the chord, replaced indeed by a fourth or a ninth. Technical explanation apart, this basically means that the piece begins with three chords that send you into a slight sonic narcosis, with a "major" essence that 'remains between the said and the unsaid.'

 

After this dreamlike pedal, the verse begins with the actual chord progression, and resolutions that invoke the music of the Gods as they slide so well one after the other. The verse is repeated three times: first there is an instrumental one, then Bob's white voice and finally Bob singing the lyrics.

 

At the end of the third verse ("Stop it!") the basic rhythm track is taken and swapped upside down, that is reverse recorded, with the harmonic sequence re-reeled backwards (except for the electric bass, recorded live, which in the last few minutes gives us a little improvisation.) In short, one half of the song mirrors the other. Which translates into this great feeling of further sound alienation, typical of reverse recording, where - because of the structure - you feel like you've already heard the phrase, and in fact it is that one, but spelled backwards.

 

The arrangement of this tune is probably the other feature of this song that ties me to it for life because harmonies are in part played by the trumpet of legendary South African player Mongezi Feza. A melodic instrument to play harmonies?

 

Yes, with overdubs and very long delays, Mongezi creates harmonic drones, skillfully managed by Wyatt and Nick Mason in the control room of the studio. Incidentally Mason in producing “Rock Bottom” brought - from his Pink Floyd - the majestic spaciousness of their sound (they had just finished "Dark Side of The Moon"!) and a sort of ‘definitive’ quality was thus 'loaned' to Wyatt for use with sound material otherwise pretty much outside of the schemes of “entertainment music.”

 

The fact of the matter is that, once you have come to grasp with this alien music, its sounds go straight to your spine and you feel them one by one, and they sound like a different thing, or rather the one thing. For example, at the very beginning of the singing (“Orlandooon’t tell me, oh no…”), the voice appears like a promontory rising from the fog of an rhythmic accompaniment producing a mechanical yet slimy rhythm (the snare drum, played in reverse recording, sounds like having leeches attached to its skin), and then it frays and interpenetrates with the harmony, floating on a sea of screaming, Apocalyptic trumpets, which for the last 40” of the song are busy in composing their own short but delicious piece of minimal music.

 

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