The Deviants 3 is the third and final album by the UK underground group the Deviants, recorded and released in 1969. Lead vocalist Mick Farren regards the album as the beginning of a divergence between himself and his fellow musicians, stating “I had one idea and the rest of them wanted to be a kind of Led Zeppelin guitar band”. Soon after the band would split, with Farren going on to record the Mona – The Carnivorous Circus album before leaving the music business, while the others continued as the Pink Fairies. (More from Wikipedia)
Next, Sid Bishop got married and exited; the band recruited a Canadian guitarist named Paul Rudolph and then put out their third album, Deviants #3 in 1969. The gatefold cover shows a nun and a young boy curled up on the ground. The nun is clearly a man in drag; both people are sucking on multi-colored Popsicles that I have only ever seen in that creepy Stanley Kubrick movie, A Clockwork Orange (although that film didn’t actually come out until 1971). I am not sure exactly what the cover is supposed to mean, but it is rather disturbing.
While not nearly so classic as Ptooff!, Deviants #3 has some great moments. The oft-quoted lines that open “The People’s Suite” (which lasts all of 2½ minutes) sum up every parent’s fears about the New Left and the Counter Culture and indeed rock music:
We are the people who creep in the night
We are the people who hide from the light
We are the people who pervert your children
Lead them astray from the lessons you taught them
We are endangering civilization
We are beyond rehabilitation.
The opening song “Billy the Monster” is also brilliant and cracks the door into the myriad musical visions that Mick Farren would produce in years to come. In actuality, Farren was moving in a different direction from the rest of the band; and the Deviants would break up during their tour to support this album. But not for good, thankfully.
The three remaining members of the Deviants at that point – Russell Hunter, Duncan Sanderson and Paul Rudolph – became the core members of the Pink Fairies, though not immediately.
