Theatre Royal Drury Lane 8th September 1974

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Theatre Royal Drury Lane 8th September 1974 is a 2005 live album by English musician Robert Wyatt and his Friends. It captures a concert on 8 September 1974 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The show came a year after Wyatt fell from a fourth‑story window and was left paralysed from the waist down; he has used a wheelchair since. This was Wyatt’s first and only headlining solo concert.

The performance featured a large, special backing group called Robert Wyatt & Friends, including most of the musicians from his Rock Bottom sessions and other guests: Dave Stewart, Laurie Allan, Hugh Hopper, Mongezi Feza, Mike Oldfield, Nick Mason, Fred Frith, Julie Tippetts, and Ivor Cutler. John Peel introduced the event. Ivor Cutler and Phyllis King opened the evening. The set mixed Rock Bottom material with two Hopper songs, Julie Tippetts performing her own Mind of a Child, and an extended live take on I’m a Believer. The famous wheelchair photo of the band was used for posters and press materials.

Wyatt and the ensemble drew positive reviews, though the performance also highlighted his anxiety about live shows. After this concert, Wyatt rarely performed as a headlining solo artist, due in part to the difficulty of organizing a band and his stage fright. The bootlegged recordings circulated for years before an official release. Hannibal Records released Theatre Royal Drury Lane 8th September 1974 on 10 October 2005; the sound quality is uneven because about half of the original recording was lost. The album was reissued on vinyl by Domino in 2008. Critics generally praised the lineup and Wyatt’s vocals, while noting some sound issues and the omission of certain material. The release remains an important document of the Canterbury/prog scene.