“I occasionally wondered if O’Dair has got too close to the couple; the second half of the book needs more critical engagement with the latter-day music. (Wyatt is a great defender of the emotional uplift of “mere” pop music – and I can’t be the only fan who wishes he’d recorded a few more tracks like his glorious overhaul of the Monkees “I’m A Believer”.) If the book’s second half inevitably feels a bit becalmed, compared to the madly social and tension-filled 70s, at its best you get a real sense of a life almost interchangeable with one man’s love of music, as well as the lived fibre of his remarkable relationship with Alfie. Mention is made of recent troubles, when Wyatt’s drinking has pushed their relationship closer to breaking point than ever before. The drinking seems to have been partly bound up with some kind of crippling performance anxiety – even a solitary microphone filling Wyatt with flop-sweat fear. Is it only coincidence that a newly sober and otherwise happy Wyatt, 70 in January, has now announced he’s through with public music-making? If you reach the end of the book with the tiniest feeling that maybe things were sometimes darker and more difficult than O’Dair paints them, it seems a fair enough trade for this meticulous and vivid account”.
Ian Penman, reflecting on his read of the Authorised biography of Robert Wyatt.