Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt

Marcus O'Dair

Serpent's Tail, 2015 - Biography & Autobiography - 460 pages

Robert Wyatt started out as the drummer and singer for Soft Machine, who shared a residency at Middle Earth with Pink Floyd and toured America with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He brought a jazz mindset to the 1960's rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves' garden in Mallorica, Spain.
His life took an abrupt turn in 1973, when he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralyzed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom, which he followed with an idiosyncratic string of records that uniquely combine the personal and political.
Along the way Robert has worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Bjork, Jerry Dammers, Charlie Haden, David Gilmour, Paul Weller and Hot Chip. Marcus O'Dair has talked to all of them--indeed anyone who has shaped, or been shaped by, Wyatt over five decades. This is the first biography of Robert Wyatt and has been written with Robert's full participation. It includes illustrations by Alfreda Benge and photographs from Robert's personal archive.

About the author

Marcus O'Dair is a writer, lecturer and musician. He writes on music for the Guardian, Independent and FT. He is also a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 3 and BBC 6 Music. He is also one half of the Ninja Tune act Grasscut, who have performed at the Pompidou Centre and across Europe.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt
• Author: Marcus O'Dair
• Contributor: Jonathan Coe
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2015
• ISBN: 1846687608, 9781846687600
• Length: 460 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts; Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Music