Robyn Hitchcock
The Egyptian, Soft Boy and presiding spirit of English psychedelia.
By Victoria Segal.
Surreally saying something: Robyn Hitchcock – “a more psychedelic Ray Davies” – in 1988.
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FOR THOSE fond of neat rock taxonomy, The Soft Boys presented a challenge. Formed in Cambridge in 1976, the band – singer and guitarist Robyn Hitchcock, guitarist Kimberley Rew, bassist Andy Metcalfe (from 1979, Matthew Seligman) and drummer Morris Windsor – were neither punk flesh nor hippy fowl, their fluidity a hard sell in tribal times. “I never sought to be on Top Of The Pops but I didn’t necessarily seek the degree of obscurity that we have,” said Hitchcock in 1991. “We were middle-class kids with long hair playing psychedelic music. It’s not necessarily going to go down well, is it?”