Wealth & Money Quote by Robert Wyatt

A certain kind of rock-star myth depends on hunger: bigger stages, bigger checks, bigger everything. Robert Wyatt punctures that myth with the calm of someone who’s already seen what the machine does to the people inside it. The line isn’t a saintly renunciation so much as a refusal to let the market narrate his life. “High-profile” and “big money” aren’t condemned as evil; they’re dismissed as irrelevant, like an argument he no longer needs to have.

The intent is practical, almost domestic: “enough to live on” sets the bar deliberately low, not because he lacks ambition, but because his ambition points elsewhere. Wyatt frames music as ongoing work (“what I do”) rather than a ladder to climb. That phrasing matters: it demotes fame from a goal to a side effect, and in doing so, it turns the usual power dynamic on its head. The industry offers validation; Wyatt answers with self-definition.

The subtext is also about control. Big money comes with big obligations: branding, touring cycles, press rituals, the slow replacement of friends with “contacts.” His last clause lands hardest because it’s so unglamorous: “hang around my friends.” Not network, not collaborate, not be seen - just be. For a musician whose career touched prog excess, avant-garde stubbornness, and politically charged art, this reads like a boundary line drawn after experience: a commitment to art made at human scale, where success is measured in time, autonomy, and chosen company rather than in headlines.