In September 1966 a bohemian troupe of young musicians who had newly christened themselves The Soft Machine were booed offstage a few songs into what was meant to be a three-night residency at the Star Club in Hamburg. The last song attempted reportedly contained the line “I should have know it wouldn’t last.”
But last Soft Machine has. One guitarist in that unfortunate crew – one Larry Nowlin – had had enough after the Hamburg “complete disaster”, but the remaining four players, then three, then four again, persisted, emerging to create the Softs’ first acknowledged great album, Third, and bask in the classical world’s scepticism as the first “pop” band to play the BBC Proms in August 1970.
Thus progressed a pioneering musical journey, from psychedelic pop through prog, avant-garde jazz, jazz-rock fusion and more, through splits (30 or so members in passing), dormancy and splinter groups that takes us to 2026. In March comes the release of the impressive Thirteen, the – yes – thirteenth studio album under the Soft Machine name, which manages to look forward while acknowledging the band’s tangled past.
Current custodians are guitarist John Etheridge (joined 1975), saxophonist and keyboardist Theo Travis (joined Soft Machine Legacy in 2006) with bassist Fred Thelonious Baker (2022) and drummer Asaf Sirkis (2023). The latter two replacing longstanding members Roy Babbington and John Marshall.
In damp Hampstead, Etheridge’s home turf, I meet up with the guitarist and Travis, who report Soft Machine as a happy place to create music. Gone is the feuding of the past (more of that later) and so is the suffix Legacy (2004 to 2015) from their name – so no one thinks the quartet is some sort of nostalgia-drenched tribute act.
Travis says the band suits his writing: “Soft Machine has covered a very broad range of music – broader than most bands – which is great because it gives you a wide range of what you can do. But it still needs to fit the people involved.
“The huge change for me is in writing for Asaf instead of John Marshall [who died in 2023]. He’s got the same free, spontaneous thing but he’s got super-precision too.”
Etheridge adds: “It’s changed because the people we’ve got now are more up for all sorts of things, so you can write anything. I remember in the Seventies putting a composition in front of [bassist] Hugh Hopper and [saxophonist] Elton Dean and as soon as I put it in front of them – the look on their faces – I realised I’d made a mistake.”
Thirteen journeys through jazz, improv and ambitious multi-section prog rock (for want of a better term) with touches of electronica, and it’s the best yet from the Etheridge-Travis lineup. There’s a poignant tribute to founder member Robert Wyatt (now 81), Waltz For Robert, written by fellow drummer Asaf Sirkis.
“Asaf knows him quite well,” says Travis, “and was in touch with him. He asked if he’d be interested in contributing and he’s not well so he wasn’t going to come up.” “I’d heard he has good days and bad days,” adds Etheridge.
Further connection with Softs past comes with the album closer, Daevid’s Special Cuppa. Aussie beatnik Daevid Allen was a founder member, but visa problems forced an early exit. Travis played with the late guitarist in Gong for ten years and had unused recordings of his glissando guitar style. “He was pretty well a catalyst for Soft Machine. He was the sort of person who just arrives and makes stuff happen. He did their whole long American tour with Jimi Hendrix but did not make it to the first album. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to make a nice track – a bit belated after 60 years – on a Soft Machine album.”
The Soft Machine name still gently resonates internationally. In recent years they’ve visited Japan; America too – though the cost, time and labour involved in obtaining visas for the USA infuriates Etheridge. “It’s ludicrous. You can see an American musician in London and the venue will pay about £60 and fill in a form. If you try to go to America it’s 20 pages, it takes six months and thousands and thousands of pounds. So much for the special relationship … Last time we went it was almost like you’re touring the Soviet Union. People are amazed that you’re there.
“Europe’s all right. When I was in the band in the Seventies, Italy and France were big markets. We had 8,000 people in Rome once. All those European countries are good now – not sensational, but it shouldn’t be. Nobody’s coming along thinking they’re going to see [original members] Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Kevin Ayers.”
Which begs the question: what if Soft Machine had taken off like fellow heroes of the Sixties underground Pink Floyd and become stadium monsters. Both bands wrote whimsical, psychedelic pop (the Softs’ Love Makes Sweet Music, Fred the Fish …); both specialised in trippy improvisation and freaking out at the UFO club.
Etheridge says: “Pink Floyd and Soft Machine were almost the same. Who started singing in cockney accents? Was it Syd Barrett or Robert Wyatt? They were playing together, obviously influencing each other. Almost at the same time they got rid of their iconic person. Pink Floyd got rid of Syd Barrett and Soft Machine got rid of Robert. But Pink Floyd carried on with songs. This is the essence, and Soft Machine went jazz – the road to ruin!” Etheridge – as he is wont to do – laughs heartily.
Travis adds: “Pink Floyd had a joint vision. They had a visual thing with Hipgnosis, a collective musical ambition. Soft Machine was a bit individualistic, a bit jazzy. Everyone wanted to express themselves, doing their own thing.
“Pink Floyd could subsume their egos – at least for a bit,” says Etheridge. “With Soft Machine, as the jazz influence grows, you’re herding cats.”
Hugh Hopper once described Wyatt as “intentionally obstreperous” and hard to get along with. “These were young men in the 1970s. I mean young men can’t get on, especially when there’s pressure from work and touring and success,” says Etheridge. He recalls the classically trained keyboardist Mike Ratledge. “He was a forbidding character. He was a good friend from 1983 but not when he was in the band. He was a powerful, old-fashioned intellectual, he did not like Hugh but most of the others in the band he wasn’t keen on either – and they weren’t keen on him.
“When I was in it in the Seventies it was really tough socially. Nobody spoke. Everybody disliked everybody. Except I was the new guy and everybody came to me and moaned about the others.” More laughter.
Such tensions were no bar to creativity (Etheridge cites the Alive & Well: Recorded in Paris as a peak of guitar-driven Soft Machine). “I accepted the social difficulties because I was playing with these guys I admired so much – Ratledge, Babbington, Karl Jenkins.”
Is he surprised at Jenkins’s rise from Soft Machine stalwart to Britain’s most popular living classical composer and Classic FM fixture?
Not really, says Etheridge. “He was very serious about the idea of being a composer and gradually withdrew from improvising … His style of composition was already there, then you hear it in Adiemus and so on.”
“It’s a cyclical thing,” says Travis, “a pattern that develops with interlocking parts. Like in Out of Season or The Floating World.”
Today’s Soft Machine is evidently a happier berth. “Since we re-formed as Legacy it’s been very harmonious,” says Etheridge. “A lot of that is to do with age. Since Theo joined there have been no personal issues.”
In the old days colleagues did not make an effort to get on because, with money washing through the industry, there was always another gig. “People like Kevin Ayers used to get an enormous advance, go back to Majorca, piss it away and then come back.” When, pre-Soft Machine, Etheridge joined Darryl Way’s Wolf in 1972, he says the advance for a three-album deal was enough for the band leader to buy a house outright in Windsor. “And we were playing instrumental semi jazz-rock! We didn’t realise that we were living in a kind of wonderful garden. So kids in the garden pull up the plants until it’s too late.”
Streaming may have since pummeled recording profits and the bot-fuelled fakery of AI is looming. But Etheridge rejects fashionable gloom – the Softs will march on. “Live music may no longer be mainstream but the future for small-time live music is very healthy. People will still want to come and see real music being created by real musicians in the moment in front of them.”