Sometimes
the brightest lights really do hide beneath a bushel.
Kevin
Ayers, who
sadly died earlier this week, was perhaps not the most household of names. He shunned the limelight and eschewed a music business career
to a degree eclipsing even his sometime compatriot Robert Wyatt. His Wikipedia
entry describes him as “a
self-imposed exile in warmer climes, a fugitive from changing musical
fashions, and a hostage to chemical addictions.” Never prodigious
in his output, in the Nineties and Nighties he managed an output of
one album per decade. (Neither of which I've heard, to be honest.)
When
he is remembered now it's as a founder member of the legendary Soft
Machine (though he left after their first release), or for the live
album 'June 1st 1974'. Featuring John Cale, Brian Eno and Nico as well as
Ayers, it's virtually the trump card to bring out when know-nothings
claim nothing happened in Seventies music before punk. Though Ayers
headlined the gig, ironically these days he's probably the
least-known name of the line-up.
You
could call that unfortunate, but really - it was the way it
had to be. Ayers' musical explorations were
undertaken the way previous generations of well-bred Englishmen had their
more literal explorations – the preserve of the gentleman amateur.
Where he was going, that was the only way to get there.
Quality
was admittedly uneven. But the point was to tread the most eccentric
of paths. Tracks were too playful, too song-based to be labelled as
underground, experimental or avant-garde. But they were too quirky,
too idiosyncratic to file under pop. They'd often sound like the
soundtrack to some hip Seventies children's show, broadcast from
behind the looking glass. (See for example 'Girl On a Swing.')
A compilation album was called 'Odd Ditties'
(after the working title of 'Up Against the Dried Fruit at
Tescos' was nixed), which probably sums things up better
than I ever could.
Put
it this way... it was Ayers who started
off Mike Oldfield's career. And I still love him!
