“If I were you, I’d get a haircut and disappear”: When author William Burroughs gave Daevid Allen permission to call his band The Soft Machine

William Burroughs and The Soft Machine.

In 1966, Daevid Allen asked postmodern author William Burroughs for permission to use the title of his novel The Soft Machine for his new band. In 2009 the Gong mastermind (who died in 2015) told Prog why it was such a good match with the Canterbury pioneers’ music.

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