Soft Machine
Soft Machine formed in Canterbury, Kent, in 1966 with a line-up of
Daevid Allen (guitar), Mike Ratledge (keyboards), Kevin Ayers
(bass) and Robert Wyatt (drums).
The name came from a William
Burroughs novel and the band played a free-form improvised style
of music and became the main standard-bearers for jazz/rock
fusion.
Their 1967 single Love Makes Sweet Music was penned by
Kevin Ayers after the band had been booked for a week's residency
at the Star Club in Hamburg, only for the apoplectic manager to
pull the plug after just half an hour of the band's typically
uncompromising first night performance.
The B-side, another Ayers composition called Feelin' Reelin'
Squeelin' was an avant-garde maelstrom of fuzz guitar,
flute, organ and was clearly purpose-built for the band's
performances in early 1967 at hip underground venues like the
Electric Garden, Happening 44 and UFO.
The single was promoted in a suitably surreal manner. A press
reception at the Speakeasy featured a jam with Jimi Hendrix, while
Polydor publicised the single in the music weeklies with a
predominantly blank panel, with the legend "this waste of
valuable advertising space comes to you courtesy of The Soft
Machine" scrawled in the bottom right-hand corner.
 Over the course of their career they changed from being a fun,
eccentric psychedelic band, to being jazz fusioneers, to changing
virtually all their personnel until the only thing really linking
them to the spirit and ideas of the original band was the name.
When Kevin Ayers left for a solo career in 1968 he took with
him such songs as Clarence In Wonderland.
His early
albums, such as Joy Of A Toy and Shooting At
The Moon, matched Syd Barrett for unhinged English
eccentricity, yet for some reason he has never received quite the
same acclaim.
Elton Dean passed away on 7 February 2006 from heart and liver
related health problems.
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