RIP Mike Ratledge, composer and keyboardist primarily for Soft Machine, who has left us at the age of 81. Ratledge possessed one of the more formidable bits of rock’n’roll facial hair—albeit I think he may have been trumped on that front by his later Softs bandmate Karl Jenkins—and I will confess to being amused that the Instagram post where I got the above picture also included this one of the early band where he wears neither the ‘tache nor the shades that he was otherwise known for:
A couple of musical examples, then. Any of the first three albums are good value, but I have always held this up as their masterpiece:
And here’s him plus fellow Softs Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt guesting for Syd Barrett:
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