He is principally known as a songwriter and musician and for co-writing and recording "Karma Chameleon", one of the biggest hits of the 1980s era with Boy George and Culture Club during his tenure as keyboard player and backing vocalist for the group on every live performance throughout the world during the 1980s.
Upon hearing an early arrangement of an obscure Peter, Paul and Mary album track, the then relatively unknown "Leaving on a Jet Plane" that Pickett had curated and was now performing with his folk singing partner Paddy Maguire at "Mother's" in Erdington 1968, Warner Bros executives Ian Ralfini and Martin Wyatt arriving from London to audition the duo.
Around this period Pickett also worked with Vanda and Young, playing on many of their early tracks and also wrote a number of songs with Scott English and BA Robertson, all of them E. H. Morris songwriters in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
(Thirty years on, in 2006, 'Champagne' was again heavily featured, this time in a TV advertising campaign for Marks and Spencer accompanied by some of the world's top supermodels and widely attributed as a major contributory factor in the High Street retailer's successful renaissance and rebranding exercise).
This incarnation featured Pickett's bandmate Henry Marsh and newcomers, brother and sister duo, Virginia (Ginny) and Gavin David, Serpell having left to become a teacher.
In a Playboy interview at the time, the Beach Boys' Carl Wilson, who later sang with Pickett on one of the Caribou recordings ("Whatever's in Your Heart") named Dressed For Drowning his favourite album of that year (1980).
Another of his songs, "Don't Send Flowers" was covered by Sheena Easton as the opening track of her debut triple-platinum album Take My Time, considerably adding to Pickett's growing reputation as a pop songwriter in that year.
Upon agreement to the generous terms negotiated by Pickett, the band were immediately signed up by Haas to play 100 concerts during 1993–94 and performed their music to bigger audiences than in their entire hit-making career throughout the early to mid-1970s.
[2] On returning to England from the US in 1982 Pickett, by now in demand as a session player and arranger, joined Boy George's band, Culture Club on keyboards and backing vocals initially co-writing "It's a Miracle" and "Karma Chameleon".
The latter song, according to Sir Richard Branson (in Losing My Virginity) to whom his label Culture Club were signed "Became Number 1 in every country in the world that had a chart, selling 1.4 million records in the UK alone".
"Karma Chameleon" was featured in Boy George's production of the Taboo musical in London's West End (2013), and the track is consistently employed as a ubiquitous 1980s presence in countless Hollywood movie soundtracks and TV advertising campaigns throughout the world.