Kevin Coyne (27 January 1944 – 2 December 2004) was an English musician, singer, composer, film-maker, and a writer of lyrics, stories and poems.

BBC disc jockey Andy Kershaw described Coyne as "a national treasure who keeps getting better" and as one of the great British blues voices.

"[4] In 1973 he appeared on the BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test, performing "I Want My Crown" and "House on the Hill" with guitarist Gordon Smith and percussionist Chilli Charles.

In 1975 Coyne and his band performed at the alternative festival held to protest against the Eurovision Song Contest 1975 in Stockholm; footage from the concert was later released as the 1976 film Musikfilmen.

[7] Coyne's first solo album, mainly with only his voice and guitar, was Case History (1972), released on Peel's Dandelion label.

[9] Coyne got on well with label-mates such as John Lydon, who played "Eastbourne Ladies" on a Desert Island Discs–type show, and the Mekons, who recorded his "Having a Party", an attack on Richard Branson.

"[12] The subsequent tour courted controversy when Coyne suggested, in the theatre presentation of the piece, that the destructive relationship between the two lovers could have been based on The Moors Murderers.

Two performances at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London were cancelled at short notice by Newham Council following negative press reports in The Sun and the Evening Standard.

Against a stage-set of light-bulb, table and chairs Coyne and his partner Dagmar Krause stand at either side; the only accompaniment comes from Bob Ward and Brian Godding, playing electric and acoustic guitar in the gloom behind.

Oldham also went on to form a side project called The Babblers – who strictly played covers of songs from Babble.

Extracts from a performance of Babble, in Berlin, were included in the short German film Herz Aus Feuer (1979) by Claudia Strauven and Wolfgang Kraesze.

He settled in Nuremberg, West Germany and having given up alcohol, never stopped recording and touring, as well as writing books and exhibiting his paintings.

[20] In the late 1980s Coyne acted on stage, playing the small part of a rock star in Linie Eins (Line One), a German musical, at the Nuremberg Opera House.

A reunion with original Siren members Dave Clague and Nick Cudworth happened for a John Peel's Dandelion Records DVD, alongside solo performances by Coyne.

Coyne was infinitely less precious and artistically self-centred than other artists of that era, such as Nick Drake, Melanie Safka and James Taylor, whose primarily acoustic albums appealed more to self-doubting adolescent diarists than fans of heavy metal, jazz-rock and similar genres that dominated early 1970s rock.

The book opens with an epigraph from Coyne: 'anything that rhymes with "me"' (from the song "Fat Girl" as performed on the 1977 album In Living Black and White).

[32] BBC disc jockey Andy Kershaw described Coyne as "a national treasure who keeps getting better" and as one of the great British blues voices.