‘Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes’: the Kevin Ayers masterpiece that captured the hippie counterculture
A cultural revolution fueled by lentil stew and LSD, the hippie age changed popular culture forever. Witnessing an explosion of inventive and defiant artwork, poetry, fashion, and, of course, music, the hippie counterculture drove a wedge between the generations, as post-war youth sought to establish their own cultural identity. Along the way, hippiedom challenged conservative social attitudes, protested against the war in Vietnam, and, above all else, attempted to achieve peace and freedom. Nobody captured that desire for freedom quite like Kevin Ayers.
Hailing from Kent, thousands of miles away from the psychedelic haven of San Francisco, Ayers was an essential figure in establishing the revolutionary sounds of hippie psychedelia in the United Kingdom. Beginning with his work in Soft Machine during the mid-1960s, the songwriter penned a plethora of timeless anthems for the age of peace and love, in addition to embodying the spirit of the genre through his own life. Ayers always marched to the beat of his own drum, refusing to conform to the demands of the music industry or to stay in one place for too long.
It was this lifestyle which largely prevented Ayers from achieving the same mainstream success as some of his 1960s peers. You see, anytime that Ayers was on the brink of achieving mainstream success, he had a habit of relocating to sunnier climes for months or years on end, only to return once everyone had largely forgotten about him. In fact, after the demise of Soft Machine in the late 1960s, it was only his self-imposed exile on the sun-soaked beaches of Ibiza which spurred him on to pursue a solo career.
During the early years of that solo career, Ayers’ work was utterly revolutionary, with albums like Joy of a Toy and Whatevershebringswesing completely subverting the expectations of the psychedelic era, or indeed the progressive rock era which followed. The peak of the hippie counterculture had largely subsided by the time Ayers released Whatevershebringswesing in 1971, but that did not stop the songwriter from masterfully reflecting the freedom at the heart of that movement.
‘Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes’ is arguably the stand-out track of the album, and certainly the only song that would work as a single rather than an album-only track. Over the course of the song, the narrator tells the tale of a conservative bartender who initially refuses service to Ayers, declaring, “We don’t serve strangers in blue suede shoes.” Within that seemingly simple line, Ayers expertly summarises the attitude of the older generation towards the wild and vibrant world of the hippie counterculture.
Despite this initial animosity, the bartender eventually relents, once Ayers has tempted him over with a “green cigarette”. This not-so-subtle nod to marijuana, reflecting the counterculture’s keen adoption of its herbal powers, causes a revelation in the mind of this stuffy old bartender. “I think I’ll pack my travelling bag,” he announces. “I’m tired of cheating, and wasting my head, and filling the boss’s bag with bread.”
Whether or not the song was autobiographical from Ayers’ standpoint, the transformation of the conservative bartender into a liberated freedom-seeker, chasing the allure of nature and getting out into the sun and rain, is utterly profound. Of course, it is delivered with the unwavering sense of humour that makes Ayers’ work so endearing, but the core of the message is as revolutionary as they come. While other artists were crafting mind-expanding odysseys which often got lost in their own complexities, Ayers was plainly and accurately reflecting the spirit of the counterculture era.
True to his own philosophy, Ayers soon packed his travelling bag himself, spending much of the late 1970s and 1980s basking in the sunshine of warmer climes, away from the demanding, money-hungry music industry. In that sense, no other musician reflected the hippie world so all-encompassingly as the Kent-born songwriter, and nobody has done so since.
