Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock is a rock 'n' roll surrealist. Born in London in 1953, he describes his songs as "pictures you can listen to." As much a child of Dalí, de Chirico, and J.G. Ballard as of his 1960s musical heroes, he is a master o the absurd, reveling in the beauty of the unexpected. His first publicly visible band, the Soft Boys (1976-81), has remained an influential art-rock touchstone for generations of musicians. Hitchcock has floated at a tangent to the mainstream for nearly five decades, and his songs have been performed by R.E.M., the Replacements, Neko Case, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Lou Barlow, Grant-Lee Phillips, Sparklehorse, and Suzanne Vega with the Grateful Dead, among others. He came of age in the 1960s while he attended Winchester College, an eccentric boarding school in the south of England. This is the subject of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, which is both a popular memoir and an album. Hitchcock splits his time between London and Nashville, TN, with his wife Emma Swift and two cats, Ringo and Tubby.