Marcus ODair - Different every time: the authorised biography of Robert Wyatt

DIFFERENT EVERY TIME REVIEWS

Music Books of the Year

Different Every Time was selected as a music book of the year by the Guardian, Independent, Times, Sunday Times, Standard and Uncut. It was also adapted as a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week.

Robert Wyatts story is a kind of alternative cultural and political history of modern Britain, one of freewheeling experimentation, fun, dissent, laughter and conviction. Marcus ODairs wonderfully warm but incisive book gives the great man the biography he deserves.

Stuart Maconie

Meticulously researched.

Uncut

The strange, varied and very English career of Robert Wyatt is done full justice in this authorised life ... the book gives a fine sense of Wyatts personal and musical evolution.

Louis Wise, Sunday Times

Exceedingly well written ... an honest determination to get under the skin of his subject ... without dodging awkward facts.

Morning Star

What makes this biography so compelling and entertaining is the broadness of its context, as the narrative moves through pop, jazz and avant garde music, drumming styles, psychedelic culture, songwriting, revolutionary politics, cultural history, pataphysics, disabled access, and the changing face of Britain from the 1960s to the 90s. Wyatts opinions are never just pat and he always has a cogent explanation for his singular takes on the world.

Mike Barnes, Mojo

From the viewpoint of Britain in 2015, Robert Wyatt looks as intriguing as he is needed. A quintessentially English creativity with an internationalist outlook, always manifested with a soulful feel that makes his writing and performance one of the high marks in individual human expression.

Gilles Peterson

A fascinating biography.

Jeremy Harding, London Review of Books

Different Every Time is a wonderful read. Its brilliantly researched, comprehensive and written with love and compassion. Wyatt really makes his fans feel and think about the world were in, not just through his music but through what he says. I learned so much more about Robert Wyatt from reading this book, and it has informed my understanding of his life and music greatly. It is a generous book in the same way that Wyatt is a truly generous and thoughtful person.

Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip

An informative biography that makes thrilling reading.

Mark Hudson Daily Telegraph

A fascinating portrait of a musician who became a national treasure by remaining gloriously out of step with the world around him.

Alastair Mabbott, Glasgow Herald

ODair relates [his story] with insight and flair. His prose style rarely attracts attention to itself, but he proves ashrewd music critic, diligent researcher and sensitive interviewer, eliciting hours of unguarded testimony from Wyatt and his collaborators. The reader is left with the sense of having borne witness to an extraordinary life.

Peter Murphy, Irish Times

Wonderful and a huge pleasure to read ... brilliantly researched and well told. Marcus ODair has written the book that Robert and Alfie deserve and I cant give higher praise than that.

Jez Nelson, BBC Radio 3

An extremely well-written and well-researched book on the genius that is Robert Wyatt it would be appreciated by any serious music fan.

AllAboutJazz

Different Every Time renders all other Wyatt books unnecessary.

Wesley Stace, TLS

Copyright Marcus ODair 2014, 2015

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published in the UK by Serpents Tail, 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Design by Henry Iles

SOFT SKULL PRESS, an imprint of Counterpoint

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.softskull.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-676-6

For Charlotte, also terrific when sober

CONTENTS

George and Honor, London and Kent

Dei and The Wilde Flowers

Mister Head and The Soft Machine

Touring with Hendrix: the Softs implode in America

Volume Two and a Pataphysical introduction

Moon in June and upside-down jazz-rock

The End of an Ear and moonlighting with The Whole World

Matching Mole and Robert meets Alfie

The Little Red Record and calling time on Matching Mole

Venice and the fall

Rock Bottom and marriage to Alfie

Drury Lane, Top of the Pops and Henry Cow

Other peoples records and the CPGB

The Rough Trade singles

Shipbuilding and Work in Progress

Old Rottenhat: English as a foreign language

Dondestan: Pataphysical postcards from Louth

Shleep and the thaw after a very long winter

A moment in heaven on Londons South Bank

Cuckooland: ditties from the Fitties

Comicopera and getting on the wagon

The eight bars Robert got right

by Jonathan Coe

This fine biography will tell you all that you need to know about the story of Robert Wyatt. So, having been asked to write a few words of introduction, I think Ill just say something from a completely personal perspective.

A few minutes ago this page was blank. I was staring at it, not knowing what to write. Then I closed my eyes and waited to see what was the first thing that came into my head when I thought about Robert Wyatt.

It was an image of my desk. A small pine desk I bought in 1991. It stood in the corner of our bedroom in the little flat we rented for a few months just off the Kings Road in Chelsea. On it sat a brand new Toshiba laptop, my pride and joy. I used to boast to friends that this laptop had a hard drive with a capacity of 20 MB big enough to hold the entire novel I proposed to write on it.

And so I began to write the novel. I already had a title What a Carve Up! and a pretty solid idea of the plot and structure. It was an ambitious book, and the main ambition was to write something intensely political which didnt make readers feel that they were being harangued. To combine anger with warmth and humanity.

Could it be done? For a long time I wasnt sure. I sat at my desk every day and every evening, and wrote what I could, which wasnt much. And then, later that year, pretty much on the day it came out, I bought Robert Wyatts album Dondestan. It was his first proper album since Old Rottenhat, some six years earlier, and suddenly, hearing that voice again, entering that soundworld, being welcomed into that lyrical space where political engagement had always co-existed with generosity and humour, a realm of possibility was opened up to me. The inspiration Id been searching for had been under my nose all the time.

It had been there on Roberts 1974 album Rock Bottom, when his extraordinary, wordless vocalising on the playout to Sea Song had provided the consoling soundtrack to many an adolescent romantic disappointment. It was there on