I first heard Keith Tippett in my early teens on King Crimson’s 1970 album In The Wake Of Poseidon. A guest player, he made his presence felt, spilling dissonant, deliciously incongruous piano lines across their otherwise Beatlesy single “Cat Food”. And on “Bolero: The Peacock’s Tale” from Lizard (1970), he suddenly breaks the faux-Iberian mood by hammering a single staccato chord over and over before scrambling up the keyboard. These were strange offerings from a rock group, leading to an abiding fascination for Tippett’s playing and composition, encompassing the singular approach to jazz taken by The Keith Tippett Group, groundbreaking large ensembles such as Centipede and Ark, and solo free improvisations.

The Bristol born virtuoso’s influence resonated well beyond jazz. When we first spoke, by phone in 2014 when I was researching my book A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s, he told me that back in that era he was a near neighbour of David Bowie in Beckenham, south east London. He knew Robin Lumley who was briefly in Bowie’s band in 1972, and who told him that the singer enjoyed Tippett’s playing with Crimson and referred to him as the “freaky rock pianist”. And when Bowie directed Mike Garson to take the avant garde route for his solo on “Aladdin Sane”, he had this brand of freakiness in mind. Tippett also noted that Mike Oldfield had attended the premiere of Centipede’s Septober Energy at The Lyceum, London, in 1970, which sowed the seeds for his own Tubular Bells. He also claims to have never been a jazz fusion artist, yet he extended the horizons of Soft Machine Legacy when he appeared with them live in the 2010s, not least by placing bricks inside the piano.

He briefly wandered into a different world when he appeared with King Crimson miming to “Cat Food” on BBC TV’s Top Of The Pops. “I only lived around the corner in Earl’s Court and the record company sent a bloody Rolls Royce to pick us up,” Tippett recalled. “I’d rather have had the money.” Bearing all this in mind, I was particularly excited to be commissioned in 2019 to write a feature for The Wire on Keith and his wife and musical partner Julie Tippetts’ collaborations.

Tippett’s use of speed and repetition gave his playing a thrilling immediacy. On “Tortworth Oak (First Version)” from his solo piano album The Unlonely Raindancer (1980), he moves from a rippling but harmonically static swell into metrically regular lines, which find him obsessively working and reworking melodic material into arpeggios at velocity. This signature approach resists comparison with other jazz piano players, reminding more of birdsong or Evan Parker’s continuous yet intricately detailed flow on soprano sax. Playing in this manner at the very top of the keyboard, he evokes the speedy, twinkling tuned percussion figures on Steve Reich’s Drumming. His style could be spare and meditative as on the 1976 self-titled album by Ovary Lodge and he demonstrated his melodic facility in a series of duets with saxophonist Andy Sheppard, 66 Shades Of Lipstick (1990).

When we first spoke, Tippett displayed humility but without false modesty, and had a clear sense of his music’s worth. I suggested that I’d like to include Centipede in my book although that might stretch the definition of progressive rock. As it was the most progressive music of the era, he replied, it was worth a chapter to itself. “It really does encompass virtually all that was happening on the popular music scene in London at that time and I’d put it up there beside anything,” he concluded.

Robert Wyatt told me of Tippett: “He listened to everybody, was open-minded, never put anybody down and one of his things was to get all these different musicians from different genres together.” The 50-piece Centipede was a prime example of this approach. It included British rock musicians, jazz players and improvisors, and the South African exiles who enriched the London scene, such as Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor and Louis Moholo. Produced by Robert Fripp, the studio recording of Septober Energy was no example of self-aggrandisement and over-ambition. Tippett described it as something written from a position of “innocence” and essentially for his friends.

He didn’t see any dichotomy between improvisation and composition, and his approach to improvising carried a generosity of spirit that set it apart from the rather insular approach of some practitioners. Tippett always sought to communicate. As he told BBC Radio Three’s Alyn Shipton in 2011, “I have a philosophy. I want to move and touch people; I want to remove them from chronological time if possible. And I want to leave them with an afterglow.”

Tippett often said that music must be more than just making money. After Centipede, Fripp asked him to join King Crimson as musical co-director, but there was so much happening in London that he didn’t want to limit himself. “I considered it,” he admitted, “but I told him I couldn’t do it as the only reason I’d be playing with them would be for money, and I respected Robert and the band too much for that.”

He had a brief taste of money and the ephemerality of fame when he was signed to RCA. The label thought that the commercially successful Centipede would be the next big thing, with Keith and Julie the future Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth. RCA even chartered a jet to fly the band over to play festivals on mainland Europe. But when Tippett followed Septober Energy with the low key and completely improvised Blueprint they soon lost interest.

His concerns about being overlooked and undervalued made his relationship with the press difficult. Julian Cowley wrote an in-depth feature on Tippett for The Wire in 2001, but it took a year of negotiation. Initially he would have nothing to do with the magazine as he’d taken umbrage at something that had been printed in the past. In my own case a number of interview requests were rejected. But in 2019, a proposal that I might interview Keith and Julie together at their home in Gloucestershire was finally accepted.

This did not mean, however, that it was all going to be straightforward. Tippett proved a pedantic and exacting interviewee. After his recent illnesses he was clearly in poor health, but in his collarless shirt and waistcoat he looked dapper and surprisingly youthful for a man of 71.

He and Julie were welcoming, but the interview began awkwardly with him announcing what we were going to talk about and in what order, all of which needed some polite and diplomatic redirection from myself. He was defensive and concerned as to how they would be portrayed. He appended a statement about his work in the field of modern composition with a pointed comment: “Essentially I’m a jazz composer, but without changing my musical hat I’ve always been asked to write for contemporary classical ensembles. That doesn’t get the publicity in Jazzwise or The Wire, but it’s going on all the time.” He gradually relaxed and when we were winding down, as is often the case when the interviewee sees that the end of the ordeal is in sight, he rolled out the anecdotes, displaying a particularly dry sense of humour.

Interviews are strange and contrived meetings in which two or more parties can form a deep and quite intense – albeit temporary – emotional bond. I left feeling relieved that I had passed some kind test and was finally trusted. After the piece was published, I received an email on 7 July.

“Dear Mike, thank you for the article. A generous spread... Hope to see you soon... best wishes, Keith.”

Tippett had just resumed playing duets with fellow pianist Matthew Bourne. He was realistic about his state of health but he talked about his strategies for playing live more regularly, culminating in the blunt assertion: “Performing is a big part of my life. I love the communication with the audience. It would shorten my life without any doubt if I couldn’t work again.” Although quite shockingly frank, at the time it also felt like a statement of intent.

Keith and Julie made it clear that I would be welcome to come and visit them again. I had intended to drop in when I went to see friends in Bristol this year, but with lockdown those plans never came to fruition and it was a shock when the news came that he had gone.

He was an innovator, a true original and one of the good guys. RIP freaky rock pianist.