'In those days, many of the people on the London scene were from other places. I adapted very quickly to being a vagabond musician. вЂњI remember Hammersmith and Kilburn and the signs in pubs saying вЂњNo Dogs, No Blacks, No IrishвЂќ That was there. The main thing was that the samba never stopped playing.Д«eing Irish in London in the Sixties wasnвЂ™t always straightforward, he recalls. All of a sudden you hear these bang, bang, bangs. They was beer everywhere - they were selling it from crates on their backs.

There, Campbell-Lyons met original-of-the-chanteuse species FranГ§oise Hardy and was caught in a shoot-out when gunman targeted a samba performance. Nirvana also collaborated withВ future David Bowie producer Tony Visconti, cavorted on television with Salvador Dali and travelled to Rio de Janeiro with reggae icon Jimmy Cliff. ' I started an R'n'B band and before I knew it was playing at the Star-Club in Hamburg. I had some experiences growing that put me off. If you didnвЂ™t become a school teacher it was a doctor or dentist. 'I needed to get away from the indoctrination in Ireland.

I came to London at 18 for a student job. вЂњI was born in Lismore and went to school there. Their sound couldnвЂ™t have been further removed from that of theВ Nineties grunge pioneers вЂ“ the music was ethereal and orchestral, soaked in surrealism. Having considered Birth and Karma as name, they finally chose Nirvana. He went on to meet Spyropoulos at La Gioconda, a cafe on Denmark St popular with rockвЂ™nвЂ™rollers (Bowie, The Kinks and Marc Bolan were among the regulars). They were also the first band toВ release on Chris BlackwellвЂ™s Island Records, which gave them a front-row seat to one of the most thrilling moments in music.ДЄfter moving to London to work in an ice-creamВ factory at age 18, the wide-eyed Waterford lad was soon in the same blues circles of John McVie, later to lead Fleetwood Mac, and shared a bill with an early version of the Rolling Stones. And we were the first band to be called Nirvana.вЂќ вЂњWe were the first band to use a cello live. вЂњWe were slightly before Sgt Pepper, having started on our record a year earlier,вЂќ he says.

It is sure to be an emotive return to a country he departed at the height of its stifling religiosity. As introductions to the psychedelic movement they are incomparable - weird, thrilling and horizon-expanding.Д¬ampbell-Lyons hopes to follow up the re-release with live dates inВ Ireland towards the end of the year. That LP has now been reissued in an expanded edition, along with its 1968 follow-up All Of Us. With their ambitious 1967 debut, The Story of Simon Simopath - about a boy who dreams of having wings - they pioneered the concept album, creating a wide-eyed, sometimes whimsical, template laterВ followed by others. That they have been generallyВ forgotten - and that the IrishВ connection is so little known - is an injustice that may be about to beВ corrected. They were an original of the psychedelic species, an influenceВ on everyone from Pink Floyd toВ The Beatles.

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