Ms Faithfull, with whom he worked on putting music to the work of Gregory Corso, the last of the great Beat poets, described as him a "curator of souls, hipster, producer of miraculous albums". He never became an industry giant, but he gained a cult following, the Los Angeles Times said, "revered by a small but passionate confederacy of aficionados, critics and musicians". Like so many who had grown up in the shadow of the second world war, though, he knew that the difference between being ok and not ok was paper thin.

A salute to Michael Pollard, the actor with whom he worked on Terry Southern's "Give Me Your Hump", was followed by one to composer Irving Burgie and Stacey Foster of SNL. Then it was the turn of Monty Python collaborator Neil Innes on New Year's Eve, McCoy Tyner for so long part of the John Coltrane Quartet, and Danny Thompson who played flute, alto sax, baritone sax and bassoon. On March 30th he was sending love to country singer John Prine, who was dying of coronavirus. The next week he, too, died of the virus, just a couple of days after he turned 64; the Beatles, with him to the end.

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