Soft Machine

Soft Machine – Moon In June

(included in the album “Third”, Cbs, 1970)

 

"Moon In June" sounds highly structured, but in reality it was just a jumble of unfinished songs: instead of completing them, I'd spliced them together. Literally, too: scraps of tape scattered all over the studio! What a mess.

(Robert Wyatt)

As good old Robert Wyatt confessed, with the characteristic humility that sets him apart, "Moon In June" is nothing less than the fruit of an extraordinary work of collage. The story of this immortal masterpiece begins way back in 1967, when Soft Machine had just formed out of the ashes of Wilde Flowers, the Rosetta Stone from which all the bands of the Canterbury scene would descend. The machine's original line-up ran on four wheels: Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Daevid Allen (guitar), Mike Ratledge (keyboards) and Kevin Ayers (bass, vocals). It's with this line-up that Soft Machine recorded a handful of demos, which would remain unreleased until the posthumous album "Jet-Propelled Photographs" came out in 1972, by which point the band had already headed down the road of jazz-rock. Of this early-days repertoire, two songs in particular are worth flagging for the purposes of our story: "You Don't Remember" and "That's How Much I Need You Now". These are two songs whose lyrics would effectively form the lyrical backbone of the future "Moon In June".

Having left those tapes behind, and having lost Australian Daevid Allen at the Dover border crossing, in 1968 Soft Machine recorded their self-titled debut album and set off on a promotional tour supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Forced proximity and the grueling pace of the shows put the band under severe strain, and the first cracks began to show. In effect, by the time the debut album came out, the soft machine had already switched off its engine. The disappointment was so bitter that the three members scattered to three different states. While Kevin Ayers took refuge on the island of Majorca, showing the first symptoms of that flight instinct that would inexorably define his whole career, the serious-minded Mike Ratledge went back to England to finish his musical studies. Not that it was much of a hardship, mind you, since waiting for him was his gorgeous wife, actress Marsha Hunt, the brown sugar destined to steal the heart of Mick Jagger. Robert Wyatt, however, didn't follow the example of the faithful husband, and despite having a wife and child waiting for him too, decided to stay in America, where he was overtaken by the classic kid-on-a-school-trip syndrome. Besides satisfying his libido, in the US the drummer got drunk with Keith Moon and hung around with Jimi Hendrix's crew, who even offered him a bed to sleep in at his mega-mansion just outside Los Angeles.

We're living the good life here in New York State

Ah, but I wish I was home again…

Meanwhile, Robert Wyatt hadn't forgotten his old band, turning down several offers, including one from the New Buffalo Springfield. When he had nothing else to do, he hung around the California studios where Jimi Hendrix was recording. It was in one of those very rooms that inspiration struck, and he cut the first sketch of "Moon In June", which can now be heard on the compilation "'68", alongside a curious duet with Hendrix, who takes on the unlikely role of bassist ("Slow Walkin' Talk"). In the album's liner notes, Robert writes that the lyrics and final title of "Moon In June" originated as a jokey reference to American soap operas.

Wyatt's star-spangled dream, however, was brutally cut short when he was forced to return to the UK due to his expired visa, but above all because of pressure from the record label, which demanded that Soft Machine honor their contractual obligations and get to work on a second album. The "moon in June" was left behind, though, over there in the United States, eclipsed within the walls of the Ttg studios in Los Angeles. Soft Machine had other priorities, including one huge headache to sort out: the ever-elusive Kevin Ayers had gone missing (even though, to everyone's surprise, he actually launched a solo career that very year with "Joy Of A Toy"). The band replaced him with Hugh Hopper, promoted from roadie to bassist, and released "Volume Two" (1969), an album that closes with the "Esther's Nose Job" suite and a definitive plunge into jazz-rock waters.

After releasing their second album, Soft Machine began experimenting live with a new potential repertoire. Only then did Wyatt remember his "Moon In June", though his bandmates didn't seem particularly fond of it. For fun, he often improvised the lyrics on the spot, as happened during a session for the "Top Gear" radio show. It's probably that very evening that the drummer gave his very best, delivering the perfect rendition of an already-perfect masterpiece, as documented on the album "Bbc Radio 1967-71". During the performance, Wyatt name-drops Pink Floyd, Caravan, John Peel, the runaway Kevin Ayers, and even the tea trolley parked in the corridor, much to the delight of his exceedingly composed bandmates. Listening back to recordings from that period, Soft Machine seem split in two: on one side there's the six-piece line-up, fleshed out by the horn section "on loan" from Keith Tippett; on the other, there's Robert Wyatt, off on his own against everyone else, with his pataphysical wit that the rest of the band no longer wanted to understand or indulge. That the mood had soured is also clear from the photo on the inner sleeve of "Third", in which the four members (ed. note: the fourth being Elton Dean) stare listlessly in different directions. Their gazes don't even meet musically across the record, since their ideas are kept in separate, watertight compartments, split into four solo pieces: two by Ratledge, one by Wyatt and one by Hopper.

War for supremacy had been declared. Robert Wyatt duly dusted off the heavy artillery and holed up in the studio to assemble his H-bomb: "Moon In June". The final result is a shining example of Wort-Ton-Drama, an explosive hybrid of jazz, avant-garde, psychedelia, Dadaism and a melancholy mood that's never absent whenever Wyatt's voice is involved ("the saddest voice in the world", according to the British press). What sets "Moon In June" apart from the album's other tracks is precisely the author's eclecticism, playing drums and keyboards alone here, even taking a stab at bass. Breaking free of every genre boundary, Wyatt thus signs off on one of his greatest masterpieces, colliding the Dionysian and the Apollonian, just as in the most perfect of Greek tragedies.

In a dilemma between what I need and what I merely want

Between your thighs I feel a sensation

How long can I resist the temptation?

I've got my girl, you've got your man

So who else do we really need?

Up until the ninth minute, the song follows a rather catchy melodic theme, with Wyatt's voice hovering somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a lament, though more restrained than in the BBC live version. The opening lines already lay out his "dilemma" between homesickness and adventures with some intoxicating stranger. As if it were a kind of sonic ablution, Wyatt then confesses his infidelities to his first wife Pam, justifying himself with the line that "living is easy in the state of New York". More than a musician, he seems almost like an actor stepped out of a Godard film, especially when he stares boldly into the camera and addresses the listener directly, shouting: "Oh, wait a minute!". It's Wyatt himself who warns us that he's about to "move on to the next part of the song", marked by a "background noise for people plotting, seducing, rebelling and teaching". This device of "mimicking" the song's narration would later resurface in his solo career and in Matching Mole, especially on "Signed Curted", where he lists off - singing them - the song's various verses.

From the tenth minute onward, "Moon In June" turns into an orchestral puzzle dominated by a vibrant organ solo from Mike Ratledge, which carries through to the poltergeist of Veleroy "Rab" Spall's violin, haunting the closing coda with a diabolical sound, disfigured by tape effects. In the second half of the track, alongside Mike Ratledge, Hugh Hopper's distorted bass also bursts in, just to remind the listener that - after all - this is still a Soft Machine record. The door, however, remains firmly shut for Elton Dean, with whom Wyatt had had the fiercest arguments over the band's jazz turn. But Wyatt doesn't just silence his bandmates with his voice, on what would effectively be the last sung song in Soft Machine's history. As the minutes tick by, Robert also throws himself into rather complex rhythms, showing off all his virtuosity on the drum stool. His anger reaches its peak at the song's close, delivering the final dagger-thrust as he hums - like a lost wolf under the moonlight - some words taken from two Kevin Ayers songs, "Singing A Song In The Morning" and "Hat Song". The lines he uses are anything but random:

Cantando una canzone di mattina

Cantandola di nuovo alla notte

Non so bene di cosa sto cantando

Ma mi fa sentire bene…

Dici che ti piace la mia camicia

Dici che ti piace il mio cappello

Oh ma non dici mai che ti piaccio io

O qualcosa di carino.

Cosa ne pensi di me?

Wyatt thus exorcises his own unease, poking fun at the fact that he isn't accepted by his bandmates, who insist on seeing him as nothing more than a straightforward jazz drummer à-la Billy Cobham, dismissing his equal talents as a superb singer and pataphysical improviser. Kevin Ayers, on the other hand, is particularly taken with the tribute, and doesn't miss the chance to thank him during the recording of "Shooting At The Moon" (1970). In "Clarence In Wonderland", which he used to perform as a duet with Robert Wyatt himself in the Softs, the line "Miss Juliet Kate/ queen of the moon" magically becomes "Miss Juliet Kate/ queen of the MOON IN JUNE".

After "Third", where Wyatt's piece had provided the perfect trait d'union between the band's psychedelic past and the cerebral jazz-rock of its future, Ratledge's vision would, as we know, ultimately win out, reducing the drummer to performing "Fourth" with the spirit of a mere session player. Robert would go his own way, first with Matching Mole, then carving out an extraordinary solo career all on his own, one that not even the accident could stop. Over the years, Wyatt would repeatedly look back on "Moon In June" as his first true solo album: and it's hard to argue otherwise, given that within its 19 minutes it packs in enough ideas for an entire other musician's discography.

On a dilemma between what I need and what I just want

Between your thighs I feel a sensation

How long can I resist the temptation?

I've got my bird, you've got your man

So who else do we need, really?

Now I’m here, I may as well put my other hand in yours

While we decide how far to go and if we’ve got time to do it now

And if it’s half as good for you as it is for me

Then you won’t mind if we lie down for a while, just for a while

Till all the thing I want is need

You are the thing I are, I knew

I want you more than ever now

We’re on the floor, and you want more, and I feel almost sure

That cause now we’ve agreed, that we got what we need

Then all the thing us needs is wanting

I realized when I saw you last

We’ve been together now and then

From time to time – just here and there

Now I know how it feels from my hair to my heels

To have you haunt the horns of my dilemma

– Oh! Wait a minute! –

Over – Up – Over – Up – Down

Down – Over – Up – Over – Up

Living can be lovely, here in New York State

Ah, but I wish that I were home

And I wish I were home again – back home again, home again

There are places and people that I’m so glad to have seen

Ah, but I miss the trees, and I wish that I were home again

Back home again

The sun shines here all summer

Its nice cause you can get quite brown

Ah, but I miss the rain – ticky tacky ticky

And I wish that I were home again – home again, home again…

Living is easy here in New York State

Ah, but I wish that I were home again

Back in West Dulwich again

Just before we go on to the next part of our song

Let’s all make sure we’ve got the time

Music-making still performs the normal functions –

Background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teaching

That’s all right by me, don’t think that I’m complaining

After all, it’s only leisure time, isn’t it?

Now I love your eyes – see how the time flies

She’s learning to hate, but it’s just too late for me

It was the same with her love

It just wasn’t enough for me

But before this feeling dies

Remember how distance can tell lies!

You can almost see her eyes, is it me she despises or you?

You’re awfully nice to me and I’m sure you can see what her game is

She sees you in her place, just as if it’s a race

And you’re winning, and you’re winning

She just can’t undertsand that for me everything’s just beginning

Until I get more homesick

So before this feeling dies, remember how distance tells us lies…

Singing a song in the morning

Singing it again at night

Don’t really know what I’m singing about

But it makes me feel I feel all right

You say you like my shirt

You say you like my hat

Oh but you never say you like me

Or something nice like that

What about me?

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

22/03/2026