Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English composer Kevin Ayers.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
Kevin Ayers was an English singer-songwriter who was active in the English psychedelic music movement. Ayers was a founding member of the psychedelic band Soft Machine in the mid-1960s, and was closely associated with the Canterbury scene. He recorded a series of albums as a solo artist and over the years worked with Brian Eno, Syd Barrett, Bridget St John, John Cale, Elton John, Robert Wyatt, Andy Summers, Mike Oldfield, Nico and Ollie Halsall, among others. After living for many years in Deià, Mallorca, he returned to the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s before moving to the south of France. His last album, The Unfairground, was released in 2007. The British rock journalist Nick Kent wrote: "Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them."
England is so defined, the class system, your education. I think what was unique about the Canterbury scene.
I can't write songs unless I am in love.
These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.
If I am not in love, nothing is meaningful to me. I have no energy.
The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.
The thing about 'Soft Machine' and me was that I never considered another profession.
That was something. As opposed to nothing.
Honestly, I just assume that whatever is going to happen to me is going to happen. There it goes: someone is there, someone isn't there. This girl is here. This food is here. I think the clever people are the ones who do a little as possible.
I think that the basic philosophy was very good. It was just be nice to each other, and don't step on other people's toes and infringe on their freedom.
We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it.