Patrick Campbell-Lyons, musician who was co-founder of the original Nirvana in the Sixties

Patrick Campbell-Lyons, who has died aged 82, was a musician who co-founded the British band Nirvana, unsung heroes of the late-Sixties psychedelic scene; the first band to create a rock opera, they were later paid to allow the use of their name by Seattle’s kings of grunge.

Patrick Campbell-Lyons was born on July 13 1943 in Lismore, Co Waterford. It was a music-loving household, and he spent countless hours listening to his mother’s 78s. At family gatherings, he recalled, “there was always someone who’d recite, or play the piano, violin or accordion.”

He sang in the choir of his Christian Brothers school and would listen to the Radio Luxembourg top 20 on Sunday nights. When he was 18 he crossed the Irish Sea for a summer job at the Wall’s ice cream factory in Perivale, west London, and though he had intended to go to university in Dublin he stayed on in England, soon forming a covers band who played weddings and pub gigs.

He formed a band, Second Thoughts, which included Chris Thomas, the future producer, and the Thunderclap Newman co-founder Speedy Keen. As well as playing the Star-Club in Hamburg, they were part of the thriving west London rock scene that spawned such luminaries as Pete Townshend, John McVie and Ronnie Wood, and they appeared several times on the same bill as the up-and-coming Rolling Stones (“We were the No 1 band in Ealing and they were in the No 1 band in Richmond,” Campbell-Lyons recalled).

He began making inroads as a songwriter, and while hanging round Tin Pan Alley he met a Greek film student, Alex Spyropoulos, who had similar ambitions. They formed Nirvana – initially along with Ray Singer, another film student, and an aspiring record producer – and signed to Island.

Their surrealist debut album, The Story of Simon Simopath (1967), about a lonely boy’s dreams of being able to fly, was produced by Island’s founder Chris Blackwell, and can lay claim to being the first rock opera, predating SF Sorrow by the Pretty Things, Tommy by The Who and Arthur by the Kinks; Melody Maker called it a “science fiction pantomime”. Musically, it evokes Donovan, Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and the Incredible String Band; the word “simopath” was taken from Naked Lunch, defined by William Burroughs as “a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian”.

They followed it up in 1968 with the album generally known as All of Us – full title The existence of chance is everything and nothing while the greatest achievement is the living of life, and so say ALL OF US. Its swirling, phase-heavy opening track Rainbow Chaser made it into the singles charts, and was later sampled by Rizzle Kicks on their track Dreamers, and several tracks were later covered by other artists, including Jimmy Cliff and Françoise Hardy.

There were attempts to recruit a band, but Nirvana essentially remained a two-piece – “Which retrospectively probably was a big mistake, because if we’d had a proper group I do believe that we’d have been a world-famous band very quickly,” Campbell-Lyons later said.

But there were highlights along the way, such as appearing on French television with Salvador Dalí. “He was dressed in a bright red velvet suit and wearing riding boots of dark red leather and he came on with two blondes on his arm and pulling two Bengalese baby tigers on a lead,” Campbell-Lyons recalled. “It was mad, mad, mad.”

Dalí sprayed black paint on them while they performed Rainbow Chaser. Campbell-Lyons kept his splattered jacket but regretted that Dalí did not sign it. Island reportedly sent the artist the bill for cleaning the cello of one of their backing musicians, Sylvia Schuster (who went on to become principal cellist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra).

In 1971 Spyropoulos departed, leaving Campbell-Lyons to carry on alone. More albums followed before they reunited in the 1980s.

When Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana hit the big time in the early 1990s the originals took them to court, winning a $100,000 payment and an agreement that both groups could carry on using the name. The English version were even planning a covers album, Nirvana Sings Nirvana, which was abandoned when Cobain died.

Campbell-Lyons carried on recording, as well as working as a producer and A&R man; he latterly lived in Greece with his family. In 2012 he published a memoir, Psychedelic Days.

Patrick Campbell-Lyons, born July 13 1943, died April 12 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]