A slightly famous reclusive ex-pat died recently way down south near Carcassonne. Kevin Ayers was one of those reluctant rock stars who shied away from fame. His prime motivation seemed to be just to create music. And, in order to do so, he needed love in his life. If I am not in love, nothing is meaningful to me. I have no energy. When he had the energy, he wrote deceptively slight, whimsical songs almost as if apologising for the emotions they reveal.
He sung them in a voice that was as rich and fruity as that of Vivian Stanshall, the eccentric front man of the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. It was apt that he should end up spending so much of his life in France, where they still quietly admire an essential British-ness that alas seems old-fashioned and out of place back home.
He came to my notice as a teenager largely due to his connections with favourites like Caravan and the Soft Machine and the so-called Canterbury scene. I remember listening to an album his Whole World group made called Shooting At The Moon in my bedroom at the top of our house in Belfast, probably stretched out on the bed to concentrate on the stereo separation, with curtains no doubt drawn for atmosphere.
My dad knocked and poked his head round the door and told me that the music was surprisingly good, as if realising for the first time that there was life after Frank Sinatra.! Paralysed from the waist down, Wyatt has spent the rest of his long and distinguished musical career in a wheelchair.
Kevin Ayers, however, went to ground. It seems that he had an unhappy, unstable childhood and the Wanderings of Kevin surely reflected a restless and fruitless search for some degree of stability in his life. Having given up on the Soft Machine when fame and fortune seemed to beckon to flee to Ibiza, he disbanded his Whole World group just as it, too, threatened to take off.
