Kevin Ayers

Right? So they have pretty much the jazz rock, experimental jazz rock, and are tied, closely tied up with Mike's work, early work, before he did Tubular Bells.

Because, you know, like, Originally, David Allen, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers were the Soft Machine.

And the Soft Machine was an experimental pop band, let's say, or rock band initially, then turned into some sort of jazz rock.

And Carl Jenkins joined, I guess, sometime in the early 70s.

Yes.

And so Mike knew those people.

Mike played with Kevin, obviously, Kevin Ayers.

And in the first Kevin Ayers band, actually, Robert Wyatt was playing drums when Mike was in the band too.

Manfred Mann, last train to Clarksville.

Kevin Ayers from Banana More and Decadence.

And the dandelion set.

Dark doorway laundrette.

And the fourth member of the band was guitarist Andy Summers.

[clears throat] So a decade older than Sting and Copeland, Summers was a music industry veteran who had played with Eric Burdon and The Animals and Kevin Ayers, amongst others.

Andy Summers's musicality impressed Sting, who was becoming frustrated with Padovani's rudimentary abilities.

[laughs]

oh god

he would say he would say jerome did you listen to that or what do you think of that and and me i would do the same you know i would send for instance uh i don't know um There was an album by Kevin Ayers that I thought he would like, you know, so I sent the last Kevin Ayers album, actually, the last studio album.

So I would send it to him and say, what do you think? You know, he said, I can't believe it's so good, you know, and he would tell me that he would have loved to work with him, you know, whatever, you know.

So it was always discussions about music, just like it did with Jeff.

Okay.

So for this one, I picked a Kevin Ayers song.

Um-

Mm-hmm

[laughs] I love it.

Yeah.

I think it's, it, there's also, like, a thing for me too about it where it's like, it's one of those annoying dichotomies where people are like, "Oh, you have to choose between, like, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers." And it's like, no, you don't.

Like-