As a teenager, he lived with his parents in a fourteen-room Georgian guest-house, Wellington House, in Lydden near Canterbury. Here he was taught the drums by visiting American jazz drummer George Niedorf.
In 1962, Wyatt and Niedorf moved to Majorca where they stayed with the poet Robert Graves. The following year, Wyatt returned to England and joined the Daevid Allen Trio with Daevid Allen and Hugh Hopper. Allen subsequently left for France, and Wyatt and Hopper formed the Wilde Flowers with Richard Sinclair, Kevin Ayers and Brian Hopper. Wyatt was initially the drummer in the Wilde Flowers, but folling the departure of Ayers, he became lead singer.
In 1966, the Wilde Flowers disintegrated, and Wyatt and Ratledge formed the Soft Machine with Ayers and Allen. Here Wyatt both drummed and sang, an unusual combination for a stage rock band.
In 1970, after chaotic touring, three albums and increasing internal conflicts in Soft Machine, Wyatt released his first solo album The End of An Ear which combined his vocal and multi-instrumental talents with tape effects.
A year later, Wyatt left Soft Machine and formed his own band Matching Mole (a pun on "machine molle", the French for Soft Machine), a largely instrumental outfit. After two albums and a split, Matching Mole were about to embark on a third record when, on June 1st, 1973, during a drunken party, Wyatt fell from a third floor window. He was subsequently paralysed from the waist down.
The injury led Wyatt to abandon the Matching Mole project, and his drumming. He promptly embarked on a solo-career, and with a collective of session musicians (including the poet Ivor Cutler), he released his acclaimed solo-album Rock Bottom. Later that same year he put out a single, a cover version of "I'm a Believer", which hit number 29 in the UK chart.
Wyatt's next album, Ruth is Stranger than Richard, was more jazz-led, with free jazz influences and nods to African music.
In the late 1970s, Wyatt guested with various acts, working with the likes of Henry Cow and Carla Bley. His solo work of the early 1980s was increasingly politicised, and Wyatt became an outspoken supporter of communism. In 1983, his cover of Elvis Costello's anti-Falklands War song "Shipbuilding", the last in a series of political cover-versions, reached number 35 in the UK singles chart. He was infamously denied a performance on Top of the Pops, apparently on the grounds that his appearance might be considered too scary for some children.
In the late 1980s, after collaborations with other ex-Canturbury acts such as News from Babel, he and his wife spent a sabbatical in Spain, before returning in 1991 with a comeback album Dondestan, considered by many to be his best work since Rock Bottom. His 1997 album Shleep was also highly acclaimed.
In 2001, Wyatt was curator of the Meltdown festival, and in 2003 he put out his latest album Cuckooland.