In any case, there were chemical issues entering the equation, and as the seventies passed into the eighties a string of patchy albums every couple of years (Rainbow Takeaway, That's What You Get Babe, Diamond Jack and the Queen of Pain, Deià...Vu and As Close As You Think) and a predilection for sunnier climes saw him increasingly sidelined from a mainstream that he probably never felt part of anyway.
1988’s Falling Up, however, received favourable reviews and for anyone else might have been seen as part of a resurgence, but given the mixture of his own predilections and his personal/chemical circumstances he was never likely to head back into commercial or critical acclaim behaving withdrawn almost completely from anything that resembled a public profile.
He did, however, return to the stage in 1992 following the release of the largely acoustic Still Life With A Guitar (recorded with Fairground Attraction) and the sudden death of his long-time musical partner Ollie Halsall, the victim of a drug overdose and the mid-nineties saw him teaming up with Ultramarine and Liverpool's Wizards of Twiddly but by the end of the decade he was living a reclusive life in the south of France.
A friendship with American artist Timothy Shepard set things up for the record contract that resulted in Ayers’ final album The Unfairground, recorded in New York City, Tucson, and London in 2006 with contributions from some of his contemporaries (Robert Wyatt, Phil Manzanera, Soft Machine’s Hugh Hopper and Bridget St John) alongside some of those he had influenced, including members of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Neutral Milk Hotel and Teenage Fanclub.
That, however, was as far as any hoped-for revival went. Requests for interviews were met with rebuttals and according to rumour Ayers was battling illness and found the prospect of talking to the media increasingly alarming. He passed away, seemingly in his sleep, on 18 February 2013 at his home in the medieval village of Montolieu in south-west France, aged 68.
A note found by his bed reportedly read You can’t shine if you don’t burn, which is probably a fitting epitaph for a man who, according to British rock journalist Nick Kent, was (along with Syd Barrett) one of the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them."
Legendary DJ John Peel described him as the “most important, under-acknowledged innovator in contemporary popular music in Britain” and remarked that his talent was "so acute you could perform major eye surgery with it."