Australian musician, singer and poet. As well as his music, Allen published a number of collections of poetry, beginning in the 1960s. He published two autobiographies tracking his career in progressive rock bands Soft Machine and Gong.
Allen worked in the Melbourne University Book Shop and ran a jazz society in the 1950s. In 1960 he travelled to Europe, first to Athens, then to London and Paris. In Paris he met William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin and formed a jazz group for a musical and theatrical version of Burroughs' novel The Ticket That Exploded.
In 1966 he was one of the founders of the British progressive rock band The Soft Machine, but after a time in France with the group in 1967 he was refused re-entry into Britain, ending his involvement with the band.
Allen spent the May 1968 riots in Paris but left in the aftermath and formed the band Gong. Robert Lort in his article on Allen (published on the Retort website) comments: 'For almost a decade Gong's, "anarcho-pataphysical hippy idealist revolutionary nursery-rhyme" style of rock was to become the forefront of the ultra weird hippy psychedlica set.' Allen played with variations of the band in the 1970s as well as performing and recording solo.
He returned to Australia in 1981. In Australia Allen performed poetry in streets, markets, pubs and festivals and continued performing and recording in groups and as a solo artist.
Gong was reformed in the early 1990s and toured the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and the United States. Allen published a selected work of his poetry, Poet for Sale, and in 2003 formed a new version of Gong with members of the Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple. In the 2000s, Allen continued to play and release material as a solo artist and in collaboration with other groups including his California-based band, University of Errors.
Source: Robert Lort, 'The Acid Gong Temple Awaits', Retort website, 2005.
Australian Writing and Rock Music affiliation: songwriter, vocals, bass, guitar.
