Roy Ayers

We couldn’t let the day go by without paying tribute to Roy Ayers, the coolest guy we ever met. Roy Ayers’s drummer, Dennis Davies (also drummer for David Bowie), was told to look for an electronic Vibe as Roy’s was not working and he had a gig at Blackheath London the next evening. Wernick Musical Instruments happened to be exhibiting at a music show in London that day that Dennis checked out the gear and he phoned Roy to say there was one at the show but smaller. He said to get it to the Dorchester hotel asap. Will Wernick drove it over and It was a real struggle to get it into the lift as it didn’t dismantle easy being only a prototype. He entered Roy Ayers’s bedroom when Roy was on the phone to his wife and she wanted to know what was going on. Roy tried the Xylosynth Mk2 and liked it straight away. Will didn’t want any money but comps for the gig which Roy agreed to. On the evening Will wanted 14 comps, a serious blag! But Roy also wanted Will at the rehearsal as well as the evening… if anything went wrong. Roy had to improvise on the 2 ½ Octave rather than a 3 Octave he was used to, and made a point to lift his arms when he’d run out of bars to hit. The bars mounted on a metal tube was novel and went with his ‘Mad Max’ outfit. Nothing did go wrong and audience loved the gig. Only Roy Ayers could have pulled it off in such a situation, but everyone around him was there to support him as well. What a Diamond Geezer, we’ll love you forever….

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