Kevin Ayers "The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories" (4*)

In my reading of the Kevin Ayers story, three albums into his career Ayers had gone for something approaching mainstream success with his fourth (Bananamour), largely, I think, on the basis that if certain of his notional peers could do it (and here we note the relative successes of Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells) why couldn’t he? A bit of tweaking around the edges and, well, you never know. Stranger things have happened...

And when Bananamour once again failed to move significant quantities you might conclude the problem lies with the label and start looking at a switch. Island Records were known to lavish money on developing and promoting their own artists, but that sort of generosity usually comes at a price and the price usually involves supervision and a degree of diminution in the old artistic freedom.

In this case that meant Ayers was absent from the producer’s chair, with his place taken by  Rupert Hine. It also meant there was money to throw around, which goes a long way to explaining the presence of a few more notable names alongside the usual suspects. Mike Ratledge and Mike Oldfield are back, but they’re joined by a substantial array of session players.

Mike Giles (ex-King Crimson) gets to sit behind the drum kit, but there are three bassists (John Perry, John Gustafson and Trevor Jones), three other guitarists alongside Oldfield and Patto man Ollie Halsall and a whole slew of keyboard players and backing singers. Throw in Lol Coxhill on sax Geoff Richardson’s viola, Ray Cooper on percussion and a guest vocal appearance from Nico and Ayers has plenty of sonic elements to work with.

The commercial aspirations are fairly obvious from the start of Day By Day, full of funky pop elements, with punchy backing vocals and a catchy hook, and See You Later definitely channels the Bonzo Dog Band before running straight into Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You, one of Ayers’s all-time classics, with a superb guitar solo from Ollie Halsall. Up to that point I was unconvinced about the changed approach, but here we’re back in a familiar environment with added punch from the female chorus. Ayers at his best.

Not quite in the same boat, but definitely in familiar territory Everybody's Sometime And Some People's All The Time Blues matches a typical Ayers ballad with a subdued bluesy treatment and a delicate guitar solo (Oldfield this time around). Equally familiar is the introductory lyric in It Begins With A Blessing / Once I Awakened / But It Ends With A Curse, a much more bombastic reworking of The Soft Machine’s Why Are We Sleeping, complete with night club interlude (alto sax by Lol Coxhill) and a grandiose hard rock church organ climax that needs something after it to settle things down. Thirty seconds of Ballbearing Blues might be a throwaway of little consequence or substance but it does the job.

The album’s showpiece, however, is the four part suite labelled The Confessions Of Doctor Dream that starts off with Irreversible Neural Damage but actually isn’t a suite at all, rather four distinct songs segued and crossfaded to create a larger entity. This is presumably the result of pressure from higher up the pecking order since Ayers has gone on record as stating it wasn’t his idea.


A vocal duet with Nico, Irreversible Neural Damage runs over the top of a layer of acoustic guitars and spacey synthesised sound effects, delivering a creepy atmosphere that’s as sinister as the title is presumably meant to suggest before an electric guitar lick segues into Invitation, another moody piece that morphs into The One Chance Dance, complete with childish chorus and freak out before Ratledge's organ takes over the running.

The final section, Doctor Dream Theme matches a menacing vocal to a threatening riff, a five minute psychodrama that gyrates slowly and was presumably intended to pick up some of the Dark Side of the Moon audience. When it’s done the album proper runs out with Two Goes Into Four, an acoustic ballad that winds things up as it morphs itself into Hey Jude.

Non-album singles kick off the inevitable bonus tracks, with The Up Song bopping along quite pleasantly, though one doubts it was ever likely to garner massive airplay. After the Show seems to be about a groupie or similar creature, but, again, one doubts the actual commercial. The B side, Thank You Very Much, is a subtle reflective whisper, while four tracks recorded on 7 July 1974 at the BBC's Maida Vale studios (mightn’t start off very promisingly with a snippet called Another Whimsical Song (Really? Who’d have thought?) before a masterful acoustic rendition of The Lady Rachel. Ollie Halsall’s lead guitar shines on a reworked Stop this Train and he’s even better on a total shredding of Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought of You, a definite keeper if ever I heard one.

Ayers mightn’t have held the album in high esteem, and from where he was sitting (having watched while his artistic instincts were seemingly overruled, that notional four-part suite and all) you can see where he was coming from, but...

Having worked through the first five Ayers albums in some depth, having landed The Harvest Years 1969-1974 set, however, what we’ve got here is the most commercial outing of the five, and the switch to Island definitely seems to have been made with a view to maximising sales and/or impact. It mightn’t have worked out quite the way he’d hoped or anticipated, but, for mine, it worked out pretty well.

Kevin Ayers "Bananamour" (4*)

Coming at the end of Ayers’ first stint on Harvest Records, his fourth studio album came with a new rhythm section (drummer Eddie Sparrow and bassist Archie Legget) and delivered some of his most accessible recordings, apparently intended to break Ayers to a wider audience (he was on the verge of switching management to John Reid, who was looking after Elton John's career at the time).

Given the fact that we’re talking Kevin Ayers here, you might baulk at that suggestion of wider audiences, at which point I’d ask how else you’d explain the presence of the British music industry's premier session vocalists (Liza Strike, Doris Troy, and Barry St. John) to flesh out the vocal sound and deliver a healthy dose of Dark Side Of The Moon to the proceedings.

Their presence, and that influence is obvious from the first chorus of the Beatles-tinged Don't Let It Get You Down and the chorus swells as it modulates through the chord progression. There’s a definite nod towards the pop end of the spectrum, a great horn section and an arrangement that delivers an almost perfect opener. Shouting In A Bucket Blues follows it up very nicely indeed, with tasty Steve Hillage licks under the vocal in a tongue-in-cheek exercise in intelligent pop song. Hillage soars, Ayers does a passable impersonation of Leonard Cohen and all’s well with the world.

That changes When Your Parents Go To Sleep which comes across as an exercise in writing something that doesn’t suit Ayers’ vocal timbre, which (presumably) is why he hands the vocal duties over to bassist Archie Leggett. It’s the sort of move that might well work in concert (give the front man a break territory, folks) but doesn’t make much sense here on a Kevin Ayers album. It’s not that the vibe doesn't fit with the rest of the album, the horns work fine and the previously noted backing vocalists are working the same territory as they have been earlier in proceedings, but this little Stax knockoff would probably have been better as a single B-side or as an Archie Leggett solo piece. It works, but doesn’t quite work here, if you catch my drift.

With a distorted vocal that sounds like the singer is out on the periphery rather than front and centre, Interview lines up rugged guitar (Ayers) with spacey psychedelic organ (Ratledge) over an odd minimalist funky percussion rhythm to create some of the trippiest moments on the album, crossfading into Internotional Anthem, which does another odd bit of lining things up. There’s some of Don't Let it Get You Down (For Rachel) matched with some lyrics from Interview, delivered by the Dark Side of the Moon backing vocal ensemble, which sounds like a bit of a hodgepodge but works as a lead in to the eight minute drone of Decadence, Ayers’ portrait of Nico, ex-Velvet Underground chanteuse and creator of The Marble Index and Desertshore: Watch her out there on display / Dancing in her sleepy way / While all her visions start to play / On the icicles of our decay / And all along the desert shore / She wanders further evermore / The only thing that's left to try / She says to live I have to die.

It’s undeniably the album’s set piece major artistic statement, and quite an impressive achievement, an atmospheric exercise quite unlike the rest of the album, and several light years from Ayers’ regular territory though he’ll be back in the same neighbourhood on Confessions of Dr. Dream. There’s an almost Krautrock vibe (hardly surprising given the subject matter) with Steve Hillage's spacy guitar over a bed of hypnotic guitars, droning synthesisers and metronomic beats.

By contrast, his tribute to Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, Oh! Wot A Dream, comes across as almost flippant, though that’s as much to do with the duck quack and clinking glass that runs through the rhythm track. Well, he’s referring to aquatic sojourns through Cambridge water meadows, more than likely with imbibing involved, so that’s probably appropriate, but still...

After those decidedly odd percussion effects Hymn‘s percussion click track is rather conventional as Ayers’ multi-tracked vocals and Wyatt’s restrained harmonies hover over a melismatic melody in a gentle ballad that’s as charming to the same degree that its predecessor was odd.

Finally there’s Beware Of The Dog, a minute and a half of swelling orchestration by David Bedford that finishes the album proper with a rousing finale and the observation that She said 'you're not happy, you're just stoned', which was, of course, probably true.

As far as the bonus tracks go, Clarence in Wonderland gets a reggae makeover on Connie On A Rubber Band, and the result is a cheerful bit of fun, as is Caribbean Moon's melodic calypso. Not much substance but a fair bit of levity. Take Me To Tahiti is slightly more serious but still good fun. A Bob Harris session from 11 April 1973 provides live versions of Interview, Oh! Wot A Dream and Shouting In A Bucket Blues that are quite acceptable without adding anything to the originals.

AS his final release on Harvest before jumping ship and heading to Island, Bananamour delivers some of Ayers’ most accomplished and accessible work, and lays the foundation for The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories’ quest for mainstream success.

It didn’t quite work out that way, of course, but here Ayers managed to combine his Mediterranean muse with enough concessions to glam rock and the mainstream rock market to suggest that it just might.