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Alex Kapranos recommended track Lady Rachel by Kevin Ayers in Confessions of Doctor Dream and Other Stories by Kevin Ayers in Music (curated)

 
Confessions of Doctor Dream and Other Stories by Kevin Ayers
Confessions of Doctor Dream and Other Stories by Kevin Ayers
1974 | Rock
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Lady Rachel by Kevin Ayers

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"I’ve always had a soft spot for those artists that came out of the sort of psych-folk scene in Canterbury in the late ‘60s, but of all those performers Kevin Ayers is probably my favourite. “‘Lady Rachel’ has a real Englishness about it, which is kind of alien and almost exotic to me, because it’s a place I don’t really know much about; I never lived there. There’s something so far removed about the way he sings and pronounces words, like he’s from some far-off land. It feels like it’s come from the world of King Arthur and Alice in Wonderland and maybe a little bit of Mary Shelley or something. It’s a little bit Victorian and again, the themes are dark - it suggests death in the water. I liked that section of the ‘60s, where the psychedelic stuff was becoming a little bit more playful and wacky. “I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get really obsessed with songs and hunt down every version I can find of it. With ‘Lady Rachel’ I always felt like no one take of the song completely captured everything that was good about it; instead, each version captures one element of what I loved about it. The one that ended up on the album, Joy of a Toy, is really full and rich and very produced, but it’s played too fast and it loses a bit of the suspense - that glittery other-worldliness that gets lost in the speed of the performance. “There’s an amazing rendition of it that he did on The John Peel Show in 1973. Again, it’s a really beautiful version but there’s just this one line where he kind of steps out of character - he says “at least not very much!” in this kind of dorky, jokey voice and it undermines the mood of the rest of the song. It’s like going to see a play, getting to a critical moment and then the lead actor turns to the audience and says, ‘Hey, everyone - I’m actually just an actor.’ I’m always going, “Oh, man! Why did you do that?” Anyway, what the fuck am I doing, chasing perfection in music"

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