Radio Gonzo

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 Jimi Hendrix. He brought a Bohemian and jazz outlook to the '60s rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves' garden in Mallorca. His life took an abrupt turn after he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralysed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom that has brought him a loyal following not just in Britain but in France, Italy and Germany. For about a decade he was a member of the Communist party, and in the early eighties his solo work was increasingly political. October last year saw the release of Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt by Marcus O'Dair. 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. A co