The Birth of Jazz-Rock Fusion: Aussie Daevid Allen disseminates his peculiar Beat Generation ideas (and bohemian habits) among Kent County youth

Australian David Allen was a conduit of Beat Generation-Bohemian ideas and behaviours whose influence on Jazz-Rock Fusion manifested themselves not only in his band Gong's musical exploits but in the number of young British and French artists whose careers he inspired, encouraged, and/or launched.

In 1961 David Allen rented a room in Lydden (near Dover) from the Wyatt family. A cultured and educated man from a nouveau riche farming family, he was already well into his thirties when he reached England. Already a man of the world, a man with a purpose (that was inspired by Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation), he had had quite a run as a bohemian and was quite a proponent of (and quite experienced in) the world of mind-altering psychedelics. He had also had quite along history in the arts: as a stage performer, poet and poetry reader, guitarist and musician, theater actor and chaotic avant entertainer, even self-publisher as a humourist. He had already lived in Paris, but had yet to meet Terry Riley and William S. Burroughs.

Always an avid reader (with experience working in the Melbourne University bookshop in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia), David had learn to use literature and wit to divert unwanted (often uncomfortable) forms of attention from himself. Having had exposure and training to an extensive range of classical musics, in France and England he found himself inspired by the free jazz of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry. The Lydden stay in County Kent was cut short when Robert Wyatt's parents blamed David for their 14-year old son's suicide attempt. This prompted a move back to London peppered with fairly frequent visits back to France (in order to satisfy visa restrictions). Thanks to a connection that the Wyatt family had provided, David forged a life-long connection to the island of Majorca--for a long time using a villa in Deià as a "centre for the international brigade of the avant-garde intellectual elite" (meaning the site of a revolving door of visiting artists--many of them from Canterbury, London, and Paris). Around this time it was the philosophies of Sun Ra that inspired him to start his own band. The Daevid Allen Trio, his free jazz outfit, included the then-16-year old son of his former landlord on drums. 

For a while, the band settled in Paris where they performed theatre pieces based on Burroughs' novel, The Ticket That Exploded. In 1966, back in Canterbury, Daevid and Robert (who was now performing regularly with The Wilde Flowers) started a new band that was eventually named for another Burroughs novel, The Soft Machine. They were able to entice Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge to join them (as well as a mysterious Californian itinerant named Larry Nowlin/Nolan/Nowlan). 

After taking a holiday in August of 1967, Daevid (and girlfriend Gilli Smyth) were denied re-access to the UK due to over-extended visas from their previous visit. So, they returned to Paris and entered the countercultural and musical scene there (on the Left Bank, of course), with Daevid performing solo with his guitar, and as a duo with a "crazy Turk" named Tanner, before forming their first versions of Gong (and Bananamoon).

Obviously, these destabilizing and often unnerving events occurred with enough frequency that it must have frustrated some of the younger, more ambitious or Brit-centric members of David's circle of artist friends. The Soft Machine picked up in England without their founding "father"--even garnering a now-famous tour of the USA (thanks to Mike Jeffrey and Chris Chandler) as the warmup band for Jimi Hendrix. 

Despite David's relatively brief sojourn in England, his flamboyant, bohemian, literate, "elder statesman" presence in County Kent inspired and encouraged many young artists, many of whom would go on to create ground-breaking music and art long after his departure. These include Robert Wyatt, Barry Humphries, Hugh Hopper, Pete Brown, Mike Horowitz, Mike Ratledge as well as many others do to the indirect ripple effect. David's "charmed life" also included so many serendipitous boosts from brief (and long--term) relationships, especially those with the well-connected Wyatt family, William S. Burroughs, Terry Riley, Hugh Hopper, Robert Graves (thanks to the Wyatt family: in his villa in Deià on the island of Majorca), Tulsa millionaire (and benevolent Gong financier) Wes Brunson, Chris Chandler/Jimi Hendrix manager Mike Jeffrey, as well as his mysterious unnamed first wife (an Australia heiress--perhaps Leanne Tracey "Wandana Turiya" Bruce?) Daevid's sphere of influence most certainly spans into the hundreds if not thousands of successful artists.