Psychedelic legend Daevid Allen has died at age 77, a rep confirmed to Billboard. The Guardian first reported the news.
Just last month, Allen revealed doctors had given him six months to live due to cancer. In a statement, Allen said he was “not interested in endless surgical operations” and would not be seeking further treatment. “The time has come to stop resisting and denying and to surrender to the way it is,” he wrote.
“Daevid lost his long battle with cancer, and the world is a little less sunlit as a result,” reads a statement on his death. “Daevid Allen was the kind of mercurial, inspiring individual whose free-thinking nature positively touched the lives of all who came into his orbit.”
The Australia-born Allen co-founded the immensely influential British psych-jazz band The Soft Machine (named after a William S. Burroughs book) in 1966, which produced the self-titled underground classic The Soft Machine in 1968. He also co-founded the British-French experimental band Gong in 1968.
Kevin Ayers, another co-founder of the Soft Machine, passed away in Feb. 2013.
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