''Sweet Deceiver'' is the sixth studio album by Kevin Ayers and his last for

Island Records Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anoth ...

. It is one of Ayers’ more rock-oriented productions, with the first side featuring the progressive material, while the second was more mainstream. Guitarist Ollie Halsall was now a key foil for Ayers and his playing on the opening track “Observations” is a clear demonstration of his dexterity.

Elton John Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...

also joined the sessions, contributing some outstanding piano work to several tracks, including “Circular Letter” and “Toujours Le Voyage”.

Background

By 1975, Kevin Ayers had joined the roster of

’s manager and partner John Reid, who put considerable energy into turning him into a mainstream artist, booking him appearances on early morning children's TV shows. Reid’s concept was to market Ayers as a pretty boy rock star and the cover painting he commissioned for ''Sweet Deceiver'' demonstrates this to shocking effect. Ayers, however, was still a maverick musician and the packaging of the LP was alarmingly at odds with its contents which were some of his more poignant recordings. It was little wonder therefore, that critics like the

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’s Nick Kent (a long-time supporter), dismayed by Ayers’ new image, wrote virulent attacks on the LP. Ayers has subsequently stated in interviews that he was “deeply upset” by Kent's reaction to the album, although he failed to notice how delicately the scales of credibility were balanced within the 70s avant-garde music scene. Kent commented (NME, Dec 7, 1974) that when he first heard the song “Sweet Deceiver” at a Glasgow Apollo concert, “it rhymed ‘rain’ with ‘pain’ to questionable effect.” However, it is Ayers himself who offers the most accurate critique of the situation in “Guru Banana” where he pointedly satirises his own pop promotion; "Who's the one with the grin on his face / Says he's gonna save the human race / He laughs a lot as he climbs to fame / Now what's his name? / Guru Banana! / That's me and I'll show you the light / I've got the answers and they're all right / 'cause I'm divine and you can be the same / Now what's my name? / Guru Banana!"

Track listing

All tracks written by Kevin Ayers.

Personnel

Musicians

* Kevin Ayers –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

fuzz bass Fuzz bass is a style of playing the electric bass or modifying its signal that produces a buzzy, distorted, overdriven sound, as the name implies. Overdriving a bass signal significantly changes the timbre, adds higher overtones (harmonics) ...

, electric and acoustic 6 and

12 string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

* Freddie Smith –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

* Ollie Halsall – lead, acoustic and

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, mandolin, honk

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

vibes Vibes may refer to: * Vibes (percussion) or vibraphone, a musical instrument * Vibes (company) a mobile marketing company * The aura or energy given off by someone Media * ''Vibes'' (film), a 1988 comedy * ''Vibes'' (video game), a 2010 video ...

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

(track 8) Ollie Halsall is credited on the original album as Ollie Haircut.

Additional musicians

* Jacob Magnusson – organ,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

, piano,

clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

, (tracks 1, 3-4, 6, 8), vocals (track 1) * John Altman –

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

(track 2) * Fuzzy Samuels – bass guitar (track 8) *

– piano (tracks 2, 4, 7) * Bias Boshell – piano (track 5) * Chili Charles – drums (track 8) *

Muscle Shoals Horns The Muscle Shoals Horns is an American brass section of session musicians who performed on many rhythm and blues and rock music, rock records between the late 1960s to the present, as well as making their own recordings which included the 1976 R&B ...

–

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...

(track 8) * The Manor choir – backing vocals (tracks 3, 8)

Technical

* Kevin Ayers, Ollie Halsall – producers * Steve Cox –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

* Vic Gamm – engineer *

Joe Gaffney Joe Gaffney is a British photographer who captured the images of figures from 1970s London before moving on to fashion photography with French ''Vogue''. photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

* Tony Wright –

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), music album (album art), ...

References & Sources

*''Ayers and Graces'' by Nick Kent (NME Dec 7, 1974) *''Despair and Temperence in Maida Vale'' by Mike Flood Page (Sounds Jan 25, 1975) *''Cousin Kevin'' by Hervé Picart (Extra RApr, 1975) *Album Review by Paul Alessandrini (Rock & Folk RApr, 1975) *''Soft Centered'' by Pierre Perrone (The Independent Sep 10, 2007) *Original LP sleevenotes {{Authority control 1975 albums Kevin Ayers albums Island Records albums Albums produced by Kevin Ayers