On Friday (the 13th) Daevid Allen died in Australia. He was 77 years old. Like Terry Pratchett, who died the day before, Allen was a figure whose whimsy masked a more serious core. His death was a surprise when I read it in the NYTimes obituaries this morning. I hadn't been paying attention and he had seemed immortal, the Keith Richards of the art rock world.
Allen was born in Melbourne Australia in 1938 and left his home country at the end of the 1950s to live the life of a beatnik in France. In later life he was highly critical of the conformist, conservative culture of 1950s Australia. Both his 'wacky' eccentricity and his strong advocation of love and tolerance were probably generated in reaction to the culture in which he grew up. In France he became acquainted with luminaries of beat culture such as William Burroughs and composer Terry Riley.
However it was his association with a group of English teenagers that pushed him the direction that would define the rest of his life. After meeting Robert Wyatt and Hugh Hopper in the early 60s Allen ended up moving to Canterbury in southeastern England where both Hopper and Wyatt went to school and were part of a loose group of unconventional jazz lovers. The three of them formed the Daevid Allen Trio with Allen on guitar, Hopper on bass, and Wyatt on drums. This was a short-lived jazz rock affair and was the very first band in the 'Canterbury Scene'. Allen left England again and Hopper and Wyatt became part of another, more R&B oriented band the Wilde Flowers.
Here is a surprising clip showing scenes from a 1964 Spanish film in which Allen and Wyatt appear as extras. They are seen leaning against a wall and smoking (Wyatt is the short blond one and Allen the tall dark-haired one) and then dancing and Allen is playing a recorder or something on the boat.
Wyatt, Hopper and their friends were artsy types and very into jazz but had lived fairly quiet lives before meeting Allen. Allen gave them direct exposure to counter culture life. As Pete Frame remarks in his genealogy of the Canterbury Scene, in 1962 Allen was a fully fledged freak: he had long hair, he knew major figures in beat culture, and he had taken acid; all before the Beatles recorded 'Love Me Do'.
In 1966 Allen returned to England in the company of former Wilde Flowers member Kevin Ayers. They had met an eccentric American millionaire who had given them a large sum of money to buy equipment to start a band. The band was originally called Mr Head and then renamed Soft Machine after the William Burroughs novel (Allen asked Burroughs' permission to use the name).
Allen's tenure in Soft Machine was brief but memorable. They recorded an initial single (which was commercial flop) in the start of 1967 in the same studio where Jimi Hendrix was recording his first single. A few months later they recorded an LP's worth of demo tracks. These have been released numerous times over the years. Allen declared himself mortified over the quality of his guitar playing but said that Robert Wyatt's vocals made the release worthwhile.
The jazzy psychedelia of the Soft Machine made them favorites of the London underground scene in the spring 1967. During the 'summer of love' the Soft Machine hung out in France where they were received enthusiastically. However in September the band returned to Britain. Allen (an Australian) was denied entry based on 'passport deficiencies'. That was the end of his membership in the Soft Machine.
Returning to France Allen began to form his own band which eventually became Gong in 1969. Gong was led by Allen and his then-wife Gilli Smyth and featured a constantly changing roster of French and British musicians. I find Gong almost impossible to describe so I'll just include a couple of videos from appearances on French TV. They recorded all of their music on nights with full moons. The album covers were created by Allen and featured whimsical cartoons of the Gong mythology. Gong was not only the name of the band but the name of an 'invisible green planet' populated by pothead pixies who travelled in flying teapots. Band members were given names such as 'Submarine Captain' and 'Dingo Virgin' (Allen himself also known as Divided Alien).
Initially records were released on French labels but Gong was among the first bands signed to Virgin records and released several albums in what was probably Allen's most commercially successful period in his long career. Allen and Smyth both left Gong in 1975. From this point the history of Gong and Daevid Allen become way too complicated to document. Gong continued without Allen, broke up and reformed with Allen several times. Several spin off bands were formed from Gong (Pierre Moerlen's Gong, Mother Gong, and New York Gong). The latter was Daevid Allen's flirtation with New Wave which released an album, 'About Time', in 1979.
Allen roamed the world, living in Majorca, and eventually returning to Australia. He formed bands with local musicians and then moved on. He is the only member of the Canterbury Scene I have ever seen in person (at a poetry reading in Chicago in the early 90s). He was someone for whom the 1960s never really ended. He continued touring and making music until very recently. For fifty years he was a force for a saner, more loving world and and for being whimsical and as weird as you want to be. A great legacy.