Talk:Kevin Ayers

Year of birth
The year of birth was first given as 1945. Noticing that Ayers' (quasi?) official website gives it as 1944, I corrected it to 1944. I've since seen it given as 1945 in the monster Guinness encyclopedia of pops. I'd presume that the website is correct. . . but I'm not sure. Hoary 02:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC) [rewritten for clarity Hoary 09:15, August 17, 2005 (UTC)]


 * I see that it has now been re-corrected back to 1945. No objections from me, but it would be good to have an authoritative reference for this. (And can't KA be bothered to fix factual mistakes on his own site?) -- Hoary 09:15, August 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * Kevin doesn't have a computer-- User:mhspiper 08:15, July 1, 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.244.213.139 (talk)

URL of Ayers' website
www.kevinayers.info is merely a vanity URL, a zero size frame sending people -- or anyway those whose browsers handle frames -- on to www.ping.be/~ping8683/. This in turn has a bit of gimmickry, an appeal to use the vanity URL, and no other content. Pressing the button to enter takes one to www.ping.be/~ping8683/contents.htm, with content. For this reason, I gave this rather long URL rather than "www.kevinayers.info" as the URL for Ayers' site. It was changed the other day to the latter, vanity URL; today I've changed it back. -- Hoary 08:38, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Stop Press: The official website http://www.kevin-ayers.com/ has recently been created as part of the promotion of Kevin's new album Unfairground due in 2006, and the old website is no longer available. I just discovered this new site, and it contains some interesting stuff. --Timonroad 06:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Wretched web design, isn't it? The first page has two graphics but no content. So you have to press to "enter" (a quaint old 20th-century "killer website" misfeature that I thought had been laughed out of existence). You then reach a second page that has links, and a pretty but unnecessary photo that could be a compact JPEG but instead is a 384kB GIF. I'm underwhelmed by the quantity of "interesting stuff", too. -- Hoary 09:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Duhh - I'll admit that there isn't a huge amount in there, but frankly when you're interested in the music of a semi-recluse you take what snippets of information you can get without worrying too much about the kind of container his agent puts it in. All I can say is, its better than the previous site. Anyway, thanks for rationalising the links I put in. I actually prefer having a "note" type reference for external sites than an in-line hyperlink but I'm not going to argue :-) --Timonroad 06:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Like you, I don't want to argue, but I prefer the underlined-text links: they're easer to see and easier to click. Really, I'm interested: what advantage to the note-type references have? And (this time in a slightly argumentative mood) why link from this article to KA's daughter's site? -- Hoary 15:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Erm. Sorry for late reply. I'm not an obligate Wikipedian, and only just came back to this. To try and answer your two questions (1) I have a vague preference for a format that makes it easy to distinguish between internal and external links. And I'm unfamiliar with Wikipedia enough that I forgot that even inline links are clearly distinguishable as being external or not. (2) As to the link to Kevin Ayers daughter's site, I assumed that anyone who is interested in Kevin would also be interested in the music of his offspring, and that the link would be useful. However, since it is available on the man's own site it is not absolutely necessary (but then are any "other links" necessary when you can always Google them?) etc. No worries (slightly defensive but not feeling strongly enough about any of this to argue about anything being changed, certainly not with someone who does obviously does feel strongly about it) --Timonroad 23:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No, I just have strong opinions on web design. (I'm not entirely happy with the design of this site, but it's far ahead of most commercial sites, which are crap.) Thanks for telling me (1); yes, with the browser that I happen to be using right now the visible difference between internal and external links is minimal, so I understand your confusion; however, external links almost never appear in the main text of an article (when they do, they're usually introduced by a newcomer or a spammer), while of course internal links never appear under the rubric of "external links". KA's daughter: well, I for one am interested in his music and I'm mildly interested to hear that his daughter plays; but I feel distinctly queasy about the way WP often provides coat-tails to people who have the good luck to be relatives of those who are written about. If his daughter is verifiably a notable musician, then she merits her own article should anyone care to write it; I'd then be inclined to write just Ayers' daughter Galen is also a musician. My view on coat-tails may be unusual: clearly some WP editors think that some people are notable merely for their genes, though this may be conflated with the belief that WP must compete with the tabloids. -- Hoary 09:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

POV
Currently this article seems to be riddled with (mildly) POV statements, and also the text seems to just peter out in 1974. I am not familiar with Ayers work / life, but know it has more of a story and history than the page currently indicates. Anyone care to edit and expand accordingly ? Derek R Bullamore 20:52, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Loose talk
You can't say that somebody ran off with somebody else's wife (as this article did until a couple of minutes ago) unless this has been reported by a reputable news source (and preferably more than one): it's potentially libelous. And if there are sources, you have to specify them, very clearly. (The best way is to use  .)

As there no sources, were specified, I deleted this.

Incidentally, a lot more in the article besides this needs point-by-point sourcing. -- Hoary 15:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It was more of a one night stand than a running off, I believe. I think it's documented in Cale's autobiography What's Welsh For Zen?, although I haven't got my copy to hand at the moment. BTLizard 11:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Last interview
I hope that this interview has not escaped the attention of people writing the article on Kevin Ayers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/21/kevin-ayers-final-interview. Mark in wiki (talk) 17:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Gong reference added
After learning of Kevin's passing via Gong's website, I have quoted some text from the article in their News section...

Kevin was to all intent purposes a member of Gong in 1971 when the band first toured the UK. He also played an instrumental role in Steve Hillage appearing in Gong's Universe in 1972 while Steve was touring France as a member of Kevin's band. (Citation #11).

Can someone more involved in the admin of this page perhaps weave this info more into the timeline. Currently, it is placed in the Solo section.94.197.139.229 (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Donald?
Kevin Donald Ayers? Is there a reliable source for that middle name? Mark in wiki (talk) 20:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy
Is there a special reason why this would be listed as a Kevin Ayers album? I'd say that this is an album by Lady June (as the article about the album states) with collaborations by Kevin Ayers, Brian Eno and others. I propose to delete it from Ayers' discography and list it in a special section: "Collaborations". Mark in wiki (talk) 12:46, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. -- Hoary (talk) 14:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Partly done. I'm not sure which among the list of compilations and live performances are better called collaborations, and I therefore expanded its title to include "collaborations" and added to it both this LP and the June 1974 one. &para; Incidentally, Mark in wiki, I think that by "collaborations" you have in mind collaborations by KA as an equal or junior partner. Joy of a Toy and the other key LPs were also made as collaborations, with KA as the primary (or possibly at times just equal) partner. Not sure how best to word this, so I didn't attempt any kind of reclassification other than that involving the two LPs (Leprosy, June 1974). -- Hoary (talk) 05:10, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a difficult question that I hadn't thought about yet, to be honest. But since there is no agreed-upon working definition of the word "collaboration", I feel that this discography has improved. Thanks! Mark in wiki (talk) 09:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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no mention of his marriage to Cyrille, nor of his heroin addiction?
Both major oversights. Heroin effectively destroyed his later life. HammerFilmFan (talk) 08:38, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This still has not been addressed by some Ayersphile. It is very lightly mentioned when in fact heroin totally derailed him for some 18 years. There are many sources - let's get this patched up, as this article is far too POV at the moment.HammerFilmFan (talk) 06:12, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified one external link on Kevin Ayers. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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