[3] A key player during the formative years of British jazz fusion, psychedelia and progressive rock, Wyatt's own work became increasingly interpretative, collaborative and politicised from the mid-1970s onwards.

My father didn't join us until I was six, and he died ten years later, having retired early with multiple sclerosis, so I was brought up a lot by women.

"[10] Wyatt attended the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, Canterbury,[11] and as a teenager lived with his parents in Lydden near Dover, where he was taught drums by visiting American jazz drummer George Neidorf.

[5] He participated in the fusion bigband Centipede,[5] performed at the JazzFest Berlin's New Violin Summit, a live concert with violinists Jean-Luc Ponty, Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Michał Urbaniak and Nipso Brantner, guitarist Terje Rypdal, keyboardist Wolfgang Dauner and bassist Neville Whitehead,[12] and formed his own band Matching Mole (a pun, "machine molle" being French for 'Soft Machine'), a largely instrumental outfit that recorded two albums.

On 4 November, Pink Floyd performed two benefit concerts, in one day, at London's Rainbow Theatre, supported by Soft Machine, and compered by John Peel.

In the same interview, Wyatt also observed that his accident probably saved his life – although he did not drink at all when he was younger, he quickly fell into a pattern of heavy drinking while touring the United States in the late 1960s supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and that he often caroused with heavy-drinking colleagues like Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding and especially Keith Moon (who introduced him to the practice of alternating shots of tequila and Southern Comfort).

By his own estimation, he was an alcoholic by the early 1970s, and he felt that, had the accident not intervened to change his lifestyle, his heavy drinking and reckless behaviour would have eventually killed him.

Wyatt subsequently sang lead vocals on Mason's first solo album Fictitious Sports (1981), a suite of songs composed by American jazz musician Carla Bley.

[21] Throughout the rest of the 1970s Wyatt guested with various acts, including Henry Cow (documented on their Concerts album), Hatfield and the North, Carla Bley, Eno, Michael Mantler,[5] and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, contributing lead vocals to lead track "Frontera", from Manzanera's 1975 solo debut Diamond Head.

In 1976 he was featured vocalist on Mantler's settings of the poems of Edward Gorey, appearing alongside Terje Rypdal (guitar) Carla Bley (piano, clavinet, synthesizer), Steve Swallow (bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums) on the album The Hapless Child and Other Stories.

[5] In 1984 Wyatt provided guest vocals, along with Tracey Thorn and Claudia Figueroa, on "Venceremos (We Will Win)", a song expressing political solidarity with Chilean people suffering under Pinochet's military dictatorship, released as a single by UK soul-jazz dance band Working Week, also included on their debut album released the following year.

In the late 1980s, after collaborations with other acts such as News from Babel, Scritti Politti, and Japanese recording artist Ryuichi Sakamoto on his 1989 cover of the Rolling Stones' "We Love You" which had additional backing vocals from Brian Wilson,[25] he and his wife Alfreda Benge spent a sabbatical in Spain, before returning in 1991 with a comeback album Dondestan.

[3] Wyatt contributed "Masters of the Field", as well as "The Highest Gander", "La Forêt Rouge" and "Hors Champ" to the soundtrack of the 2001 film Winged Migration.

He can be seen in the DVD's Special Features section, and is praised by the film's composer Bruno Coulais as being a big influence in his younger days.

In 2006 Wyatt collaborated with Steve Nieve and Muriel Teodori on the opera Welcome to the Voice interpreting the character 'the Friend', both singing and playing pocket trumpet.

Wyatt released Comicopera in October 2007 on Domino Records, who went on to re-release Drury Lane, Rock Bottom, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, Nothing Can Stop Us, Old Rottenhat, Dondestan, Shleep, EPs and Cuckooland on CD and vinyl the following year.

In promotion of the book Wyatt appeared at the Wire's "Off the Page" festival in Bristol on 26 September, and at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 23 November.

[6] In January 2015 Wyatt's biography Different Every Time was featured as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, abridged by Katrin Williams and read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.

As a further tribute to Wyatt, on the B-side of the single, Orzabal performs a cover version of "Sea Song", from the Rock Bottom album.