Mick Farren is a perfect example of what this series of Facebook posts is all about. Yes, I always talk about an Under-Appreciated Rock Musician or an Under-Appreciated Rock Artist, and I certainly want to let people know about them. But even more, I want to spread the word about truly important and seminal rock musicians and bands that the great majority of rock music fans know almost nothing about.
From my first exposure to his remarkable body of work back in the late 1970's, Mick Farren became one of my very favorite rock musicians. He has released solo albums, and he has been in a number of amazing rock bands also: the Social Deviants, the Deviants, the Pink Fairies, and others. Early on, Farren wrote lyrics for another of my long-time favorite bands, Hawkwind. One of Farren's long-time collaborators, Andy Colquhoun is a past UARA. Mick Farren was also a prolific writer on a host of subjects and published numerous science-fiction novels. The Allmusic entry on him by Chris True begins: "To say that Mick Farren was a 'jack of all trades' is putting it mildly."
Mick Farren's death last July affected me more than that of any musician since John Lennon back in 1980; he died a little shy of his 70th birthday, like three of my four grandparents. I determined to present a testimonial to him after a suitable period of time had passed.
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Michael Anthony Farren was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in England on September 3, 1943. Mick's father, Eric Farren was an RAF bomber pilot who was killed during World War II. In a 1972 obscenity trial involving an underground comic called Nasty Tales, Mick Farren defended himself and used this event in his life to illustrate why such publications should not be censored. As related in his autobiography, Give The Anarchist a Cigarette (2001): “My father and thousands of others had gone to war against Nazi Germany among other reasons to prevent the world from being run by a power structure that could send in the goon squad any time it wanted to close down a nonconformist publication.” (The title of his autobiography comes from a comment by Bob Dylan in the groundbreaking 1967 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker called Dont Look Back – there is no apostrophe in the original title – that was later used as a lyric in one of Farren's songs).
Mick Farren's mother remarried and moved to Worthing, Sussex; Mick attended the Worthing High School for Boys there and later went to Saint Martin's School of Art in London. Of his childhood that was marked by the early loss of his father and not getting along with his stepfather, Mick Farren has said: “I spent a good deal of my life being exceedingly angry. I was constantly looking for trouble and hoping I’d come to the right place” – by which he meant London I imagine.
Mick Farren settled in then-unfashionable Notting Hill with an early lady love, Joy Hebditch; they later married. Like many in that era, Farren discovered the joys of marijuana and fell in with a radical crowd, including Scottish beat poet Alexander Trocchi and a black-power advocate named Michael de Freitas (who later took the name Michael X). Mick Farren called the movement that he helped found the "Psychedelic Left".
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Mick Farren's early writing was for one of the first underground newspapers, International Times (later called IT after threats of litigation by The Times of London); he wrote articles for the newspaper and also edited IT for a period of time. The newspaper was founded in November 1966 and was a mixture of rock music promotion, polemical journalism, and scandalous humor. The London police repeatedly raided the newspaper's office in an attempt to shut them down; IT responded by hosting a benefit rock concert called The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream in April 1967 featuring Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things, Savoy Brown, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, and the Move.
On two of his albums, there is a short interview with Mick Farren at the UFO Club, a legendary London scene where some of the earliest psychedelic rock bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine held court; it was only open for about a year in 1966-1967. In the interview, Farren basically states that he is not a Marxist – he is simply stating that the society isn't working, and that he is trying to create a world where "people can freely enjoy themselves", but adds that "that is where the trouble started".
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Being the man behind the legendary psychedelic rock album by the Deviants, Ptooff! would be enough to put Mick Farren among the giants of rock music; the thing is, he did so much more besides. Allmusic lists 10 albums in the discography of the Deviants alone; Wikipedia has 11.
In 1967, Mick Farren launched his first rock band, the Social Deviants with himself as vocalist, pianist and songwriter, plus Pete Munro (bass guitar), Clive Muldoon (guitar), Mike Robinson (guitar), and Russell Hunter (drums). After Muldoon and Munro left the band, Sid Bishop (guitar) and Cord Rees (bass) joined up, and the name was shortened to the Deviants.
As related in Wikipedia, Mick Farren has stated that the Deviants were originally a community band which "did things every now and then – it was a total assault thing with a great deal of inter-relation and interdependence". Musically, Farren described their sound as "teeth-grinding, psychedelic rock" somewhere between the Stooges and the Mothers of Invention.
With the backing of Nigel Samuel (the 21-year-old son of a millionaire), the band's debut album, Ptooff! was one of the first truly independent album releases and one of the earliest albums to come straight from the Counter-Culture – it was first sold through the British underground press and later became one of the earliest records on the venerable label Sire Records (home of Madonna, among many others) back when their releases were distributed by London Records (original home of the Rolling Stones, among many others). The album has been reissued at least four times, most recently in 2013.
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I can still remember the incredible joy I felt when I first found this remarkable album by the Deviants called Ptooff! that I knew only by reputation. The cover is a comic-book style science-fiction scene with two quotes in "balloons"; one of them – "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake!!" – was adapted from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. What a wonderful subject this album cover would have made for a painting by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein!
The extensive liner notes by legendary London DJ John Peel proclaim the album as "the deviants underground l.p." and present a host of quotes from literary and counter-cultural figures. I had heard of the concept of "underground rock", and here was an album that proudly proclaimed itself as coming straight from the British underground!
Many critics have noted the amateurish, even sloppy nature of the album, and I suppose they have a point; but the album easily transcends any such limitations: The music is earnest and compelling, and the jams always cook. For instance, "Garbage" is structured like a series of gonzo radio or TV commercial jingles, with the product offered always being "garbage"; it opens: "We got garbage . . . we got garbage . . . we got garbage . . won't you buy, buy some garbage . . . ." Another one goes: "Garbage is so good for you, just the thing that you should do." Again: "Garbage can make you feel so good, makes you feel like you think you should, garbage can make you feel so large, put two cars in your garage" – and then after that one, the band immediately launches into a vulgar call-and-response: "Why can't you feel it (why don't you pick it up), why can't you feel it (why don't you hold it your hand), why can't you feel it (why don't you fondle it), why can't you feel it (why don't you stroke it), why can't you feel it (why don't you s--k it) . . ."
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About the longest track "Deviation Street", the website Music-news.com offers this description in its 2013 review of the Deviants' album Ptooff!: "A heavy rock guitar blasts in and goes on for a little while, before all comes to a halt and [Mick] Farren’s voice reveals 'A giant, talking CIA man smiles and hands out candy to the laughing hippies' (chorus, mock laughter and a twaaang guitar sound in the background). Followed by 'And a dirty old man peeps into the window of a "funny" bookshop' (bizarre voices and laughter in the background), followed by 'And the little children play war games in the gutter' (machine gun sounds, aaaargh-I’m-dying-now sounds, shotgun blast, and loud applause in the background). This is a sonic theatre of the sarcastically and fantastically absurd!
"Music takes up again (make that screeching guitars), followed by muffled voices, and the chanting of 'speed, speed, speed' before the pace breaks again. Oh, did I mention we’re only just halfway through the track?
"OK . . . we then get to hear rock music again, with more chanting and percussion in the wings. Suddenly, Farren puts on a mock-African accent and, calypso-style, sings 'I’ve been in dah banana boat all night long, chwalah-laah . . . I wanah get stoned . . .' Right. That would explain a few things at least!
"After further musical oddities, he finishes with the conclusion, “And after all this, I’m sitting here, grooving to the spiritual patterns on my wall . . . "
The quote finishes (if memory serves): ". . . and I believe I can say with perfect clarity that I am a complete and adequate human being".
Allmusic states the musical and historical importance of Ptooff! well in their entry by Dave Thompson: "Talk today about Britain's psychedelic psyxties, and it's the light whimsy of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, the gentle introspection of the Village Green Kinks, Sgt. Pepper, and 'My White Bicycle' [by Tomorrow] which hog the headlines. People have forgotten there was an underbelly as well, a seething mass of discontent and rancor which would eventually produce the likes of Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies, and the Edgar Broughton Band. . . .
"But the deranged psilocybic rewrite of 'Gloria' which opens the album, 'I'm Coming Home', still sets a frightening scene, a world in which Top 40 pop itself is horribly skewed, and the sound of the Deviants grinding out their misshapenR&B classics is the last sound you will hear. Move on to 'Garbage', and though the Deviants' debt to both period [Frank] Zappa and [the] Fugs is unmistakable, still there's a purity to the paranoia.
"Ptooff! was conceived at a time when there genuinely was a generation gap, and hippies were a legitimate target for any right-wing bully boy with a policeman's hat and a truncheon. IT and Oz, the two underground magazines which did most to support the Deviants ([Mick] Farren wrote for both), were both publicly busted during the band's lifespan, and that fear permeates this disc; fear, and vicious defiance."
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After Cord Rees left the Deviants, Mick Farren's flatmate Duncan Sanderson became the new bassist. This line-up produced the band's second album Disposable in 1968. Although the musical ideas and commitment of the band were just as strong as on their debut, the execution was a little lacking in places, so this album is something of a disappointment. The cover shot shows a whole crowd of people, so maybe there was a "too-many-cooks" problem.
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.
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First on the agenda for Mick Farren as the Sixties came to a close was to fulfill his recording contract after he was thrown out of his own band. In March 1970, Farren released Mona – The Carnivorous Circus; essentially, this was Mick Farren's first solo album, although the album is often credited to the Deviants. The album is bookended by the great Bo Diddley song "Mona", though the largest part of the album was the meandering two-part "Carnivorous Circus". There is also a rendition of the great Eddie Cochran song that was later made famous by the Who, "Summertime Blues"; their first release of "Summertime Blues" was on their 1970 Live at Leeds album.
I certainly can't compete with the description of Mona – The Carnivorous Circus provided by Dave Thompson for Allmusic, so I won't even try: "Mick Farren convened a more-or-less all-star band from the same disreputable circles he'd always moved in. Carnivorous Circus was cut, the first essential album of the 1970s, and it's still one of the most unrepentantly nasty, gratuitously ugly records ever made. Rock history loves to bandy those terms around, then apply them to this week's most fashionable long-haired gnarly snarlies. And it's true, the Pretty Things, MC5, the Pink Fairies, the Broughtons [Edgar Broughton Band], any of the myriad '60s freakbeat bands captured on sundry Nuggets and Pebbles type collections, they've all dipped a toe into those malevolently murky waters. Some of them have even swum around a little. Carnivorous Circus goes the whole hog and then some, holding its breath and descending to the seabed. Now it owns a roadhouse and wrestles giant squid for fun."
Mick Farren himself writes that "I was crazy when I did Mona – really mentally ill. If I listen to it I can still feel it. Maybe I should have chilled out for a few months before making the album, but I was a bit depressed, and I thought I'd just do it entirely my own way for the first time."
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The musicians on Mona – The Carnivorous Circus include compadres that Mick Farren worked with over the years, including Steve Peregrine Took (previously in Tyrannosaurus Rex with Marc Bolan, who found great fame after shortening the band name a few years later to T. Rex) and Twink (real name: John Alder), who is best known as the drummer for the Pretty Things when they made one of their most renowned albums, S.F. Sorrow.
In 1962, Dick Taylor was in a band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Brian Jones was recruiting members for his own band, and these three joined up along with Ian Stewart. Jones came up with the name Rollin' Stones for the band; they went through several drummers before Charlie Watts joined the line-up.
The name of the Rolling Stones is taken from a truly great blues song that Muddy Waters recorded as early as 1948 called "Rollin' Stone"; it is on almost everyone's short list as one of the greatest popular songs ever. The lyrics (not to mention the music) echo through dozens of rock songs over the decades since: "Well, my mother told my father / Just before I was born / I got a boy child's comin' / He's gonna be, he's gonna be a rollin' stone."
Rolling Stone magazine is also named after "Rollin' Stone", as is Bob Dylan's signature song, "Like a Rolling Stone". The song is a bridge from the raw blues of Robert Johnson directly to rock and roll; while it is basically a straight blues song, there are startling changes in the beat and cadences over the course of "Rollin' Stone". Within the blues world, it is a direct antecedent to Muddy Waters' 1954 recording of the Willie Dixon song "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" (Steppenwolf included "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" on their 1968 debut album Steppenwolf, among numerous other covers by various rock musicians), Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" (1955), and Waters' answer "Mannish Boy" (also in 1955). I suppose that Bo and Muddy had a pretty good rivalry going back then, but on several occasions, I saw a performance of "I'm a Man" by Muddy Waters in later life on a series of films on TV called Living Legends of the Blues – that rendition even leaves the cover of "I'm a Man" by the Yardbirds in the dust.
Dick Taylor played bass guitar with the nascent Stones but quit after several months when he was accepted at the London Central School of Art; his replacement in the Rolling Stones was Bill Wyman. While there, Taylor met Phil May; and together they founded the Pretty Things in 1963. The band is still active and still vital, and Dick Taylor and Phil May have been there the whole time as far as I know. Ugly Things magazine, which published my article on Milan year before last, has something on the Pretty Things in almost every issue. The band name – and that of Ugly Things magazine for that matter – is taken from yet another Bo Diddley song that is not so well known, "Pretty Thing" – about as close to a love song as the great man ever got.
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The murky beginnings of the Pink Fairies – a more guitar-driven psychedelic rock band that eschewed the political stances of the Deviants – are hard to untangle; stories vary, and I don't have any of the books that have been written on and by the bandmembers. According to the liner notes on an early retrospective album by the band, Pink Fairies, the original Pink Fairies were Mick Farren (vocals), Steve Peregrine Took (guitar) and Twink (drums). Together with Twink's girlfriend Sally "Silver Darling" Meltzer (keyboards), Wikipedia reports that they "hooked up in October 1969 for one shambolic gig at Manchester University, billed as the Pink Fairies". The three men later worked together on Mona – The Carnivorous Circus.
Mick Farren left the fold shortly afterward, and Twink and Steve Peregrine Took formed a band called Shagrat with Larry Wallis (guitar) – who later appeared in several incarnations of the Pink Fairies – and Tim Taylor (bass). The band name is taken from a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Took is credited on the Mona – The Carnivorous Circus album as "Shagrat the Vagrant". Twink left the band after a short while, and Steve Peregrine Took became the bandleader with the other two plus Phil Lenoir (drums), and later Dave Bidwell (percussion). The band is often called Steve Took's Shagrat and was the springboard for Took's solo career.
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I picked up a 2001 CD by Shagrat called Pink Jackets Required, and it is a delight. This music was evidently made by the earliest lineup of the band. In the review of the album for Allmusic, Dean McFarlane gives it four stars and reports: "This album was recorded in 1969 just before Tyrannosaurus Rex embarked on their first U.S. tour and was completed on [Steve Peregrine] Took's return. Although it is in effect a collection of demos, and some of the tracks will be known to fans of Think Pink – primitive takes of 'The Coming of the Other One' and 'The Sparrow Is a Sign' will be familiar – in fact, Pink Jackets Required is one of the most astonishing albums either of the pair recorded, and in popular opinion and rock-evidence surpasses the Twink Think Pink album. The name Shagrat was bounced around for an incarnation of one of Twink's other groups with members of the Pink Fairies, but that unit was entirely different from the genius brilliance of the project with Steven Peregrine Took. Simply, this should be tracked down and given serious attention by those who love A Beard of Stars [by Tyrannosaurus Rex], Deviants, Pretty Things, and early T. Rex."
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Whatever else might be said of the Pink Fairies, the name and the "pinkness" clearly come from Twink; besides suggesting the name, he had been a member of a hard-rocking R&B band called the Fairies that formed in 1964. I first encountered this band on the Pebbles, Volume 6 LP – evidently the only LP in the entire Pebbles series to feature British music – that was subtitled "The Roots of Mod". Three of the tracks on the LP and also the later CD, English Freakbeat, Volume 6 were by the Fairies; this was the first time in the series that a band got that many songs on an album. One of these songs, "Get Yourself Home" was later included in the second box set in the Nuggets series, Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969.
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Mick Farren, Steve Peregrine Took and Twink had actually teamed up a few months before their October 1969 gig as the Pink Fairies, during the July 1969 recording sessions for Twink's first solo album, Think Pink, which was released in 1970. Farren produced the album, Took was on guitar and vocals, and Twink was on drums and vocals. Paul Rudolph, previously in the Deviants and later in the Pink Fairies, played guitar and bass and also provided vocals.
Also present at the sessions was John (Junior) Wood on bass; Wood had been a member of one of the earliest British psychedelic bands, Tomorrow, along with Twink, future Yes guitarist Steve Howe, and Keith West, who appeared in the early rock opera masterminded by Mark Wirtz called A Teenage Opera. West's single "Excerpt from a Teenage Opera (Grocer Jack)" was an instant hit when it was released in July 1967 and became part of the soundtrack of the Summer of Love.
Standout songs on Think Pink include "Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box", "The Coming of the Other One" and "The Sparrow Is a Sign". Dean McFarlane in his Allmusic review also gives Think Pink four stars and writes: "Think Pink is an incredibly varied album with no two songs resembling each other, but then one assumes an acid masterpiece like 'Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box' will stay on high rotation for at least a week on the stereos of most psychedelia fans, so overall album flow may not be such an issue. This is pure psychedelic acid rock of the highest order. If one can imagine a fusion of the Incredible String Band, Deviants, early Pink Floyd, and a fair dose of Twink's heredity as a member of Tomorrow and the Pretty Things, you get an idea of what he was up to. Not known for doing things in halves, he shows little restraint in the assembly of a group designed to tear the roof off the psychedelic scene."
Think Pink was another thrilling find for me; my copy was marked up in ballpoint pen (apparently by a DJ) including a note describing the album as "Underground".
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The Pink Fairies proper began to take shape when Twink connected with the three remaining members of the Deviants after Mick Farren was sacked: Russell Hunter, Duncan Sanderson and Paul Rudolph. This line-up produced the debut album, Never Never Land (1971). The album features classic Fairies tracks like "Do It", "War Girl", and "Uncle Harry's Last Freak-Out", but not the early single that is probably their best known song, "The Snake" (yes, that is a penis reference).
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After Twink left the band, the remaining trio in the Pink Fairies recorded What a Bunch of Sweeties which includes another song on my All-Time Top Ten, "Marilyn". This album was at the top of my Want List for decades before I finally mail-ordered a copy – just in time for Hurricane Katrina. The album also includes covers of two familiar 1960's tracks: the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" and the instrumental "Walk, Don't Run" (originally by the Ventures). As described by Wikipedia: "The sleeve came in a gatefold cover by Edward Barker, the front showing a box full of goodies mostly taken from roadie David "Boss" Goodman's personal collection of underground badges etc." The album is mostly a sonic assault that also includes the playful song "Pigs of Uranus" – but even that song ends with a fabulous electric guitar solo.
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Mick Wayne replaced Paul Rudolph on guitar in the Pink Fairies, and this line-up recorded a single, "Well, Well, Well" b/w "Hold On". For the band's next album Kings of Oblivion (1973) – by far the easiest Pink Fairies album to find, at least in this country – Larry Wallis was brought in as the guitarist, and they also pressed him into songwriting duties; the credits list Wallis as playing Big Guitar.
Mick Farren stayed around just long enough to help found this amazing band; one Allmusic review that I can't find now included a passing reference to the Pink Fairies as being the perfect 1970's British rock band. However, Farren was still closely associated with the band; he co-wrote one of the best songs on Kings of Oblivion with Larry Wallis, "When's the Fun Begin". Mick Farren also wrote the liner notes for the Pink Fairies' comeback album, Kill 'Em and Eat 'Em (1987).
Several Wikipedia articles indicate that Mick Farren also co-founded Shagrat, but I don't believe that; the information that I have establishes that Shagrat started as a collaboration of Twink and Steve Peregrine Took.
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The remainder of the year 1970 was a busy one for Mick Farren as he began to move into other endeavors. One of the first items in the obituary on Mick Farren in the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph is the November 1970 disruption of the David Frost program: "Farren led the group of hippies which, in 1970, took over the television studio when the American Yippie Jerry Rubin was appearing live on David Frost's show. As Rubin rolled and smoked a joint, Farren harangued Frost from the audience while the Oz magazine editor and future media mogul Felix Dennis squirted the enraged television host with a water pistol."
This incident sums up Mick Farren's political activity, which can best be described as mischievous (that shows through in a lot of his music as well) – as far as I am concerned, he is about as far from a bomb-throwing anarchist as it is possible to be.
On the other hand, Mick Farren has had a lot of friends over the years who were much more radical than he was. For instance, Farren was one of the leaders of the British wing of the White Panthers, a group that Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton encouraged white sympathizers to form. But it wasn't just radicals; Farren also befriended several members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, and one of the quotations in the liner notes of Ptooff! is by Sonny Barger, a founding member of the Oakland, California chapter and probably the best known Angel. Moreover, Mick Farren demonstrated time and time again that he could be a very good friend indeed.
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In 1969, Mick Farren "liberated" the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down. This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Who, the Band, Free, Joe Cocker, and the Moody Blues. But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966. When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Syd Barrett, and Elton John.
One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn't resist attending. Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel. But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.
The following year, Mick Farren organized his idea of what a rock festival should be. Called Phun City, it took place from July 24 to July 26, 1970. Unlike Woodstock and most other similar festivals, there were no admission fees and no fences. After the funding for the concert was withdrawn, the organizers had to notify the bands scheduled to appear that they would have to perform for free. Most of the bands agreed to go on anyway; ironically, one of the few bands that didn't play was Free, best known for their 1970 hit "All Right Now". Rock musicians who did perform included MC5, the Pretty Things, Kevin Ayers, Shagrat, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mungo Jerry, Mighty Baby, and the Pink Fairies; the Beat poet William Burroughs was also there.
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In 1972, Mick Farren published his first book, a comic-book style polemic that traces the development of the youth subculture from the 1950's; the subtitle on the back cover is "How Elvis gave birth to the Angry Brigade". The co-writer with him is Edward Barker, a cartoonist who designed the covers on the second and third albums by the Pink Fairies. The title is Watch Out Kids and is probably adapted from the lyric "Look out kids" in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan.
The online review of the book in funtopia.com – a website devoted to the work of Mick Farren – states: "Farren argues how the establishment soon co-opts any youth phenomenon that is remotely threatening and repackages this rebellion into something more wholesome and saleable to the masses. Therefore, 'the man' would always attempt to find a way of sanitising a movement and taking its threat away (still true of today). In a wider political context an ever increasing theme throughout the book is that the system oppresses us by means of exploitation at work, censorship, and indoctrination by the dominant establishment media, to name a few."
Along with many other figures from the underground press, Mick Farren moved to the influential New Musical Express (NME) in 1974. Quoting again from the Telegraph obituary: "Allowed free rein to explore the outer reaches of popular culture by its editor, Nick Logan, Farren turned in a series of memorable pieces on people such as the motorbike stunt-rider Evel Knievel and the avant-garde film director Kenneth Anger.
"In the summer of 1976, by which time the Sex Pistols were introducing Britain to punk, Farren’s NME piece headlined 'The Titanic Sails At Dawn' [again using a Bob Dylan lyric, this time from one of my all-time favorites, "Desolation Row"] was judged to have caught the mood among the generation of teenagers disaffected by giant stadium acts like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin."
By the end of the 1970's, Mick Farren had moved to New York and began writing for the Village Voice. I was taking a mailorder subscription to the iconoclastic weekly in the early 1980's and saw several of his articles. The first one that I remember mused on why the British had such bad dental hygiene and featured a "quiz" showing photos of rotten teeth that could be matched to a list of the English celebrities that had them. He later moved to Los Angeles and began writing for the LA Weekly.
In all, Mick Farren wrote 36 books, including 11 non-fiction works. I ran across several science-fiction novels by Farren in used book stores, and I read some of them. He is perhaps best known in this regard for The DNA Cowboys trilogy: The Quest of the DNA Cowboys, Synaptic Manhunt, and The Neural Atrocity.
More recently, Mick Farren attracted a lot of followers for his "Doc 40" blogspot: http://doc40.blogspot.com/ . Except for his essential role in making the 1960's what they were, you could almost wish Mick had come along later – he was born to be a blogger. His final post was on July 15, 2013.
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After taking several years off from making music, Mick Farren resurfaced in 1978 with a brilliant solo album, Vampires Stole My Lunch Money. The album opens with what might be the best cover of a Frank Zappa song by anybody: "Trouble Coming Every Day", a seething litany of what's wrong with the world that could surely have come straight from Farren's pen.
Vampires Stole My Lunch Money is a more personal record than his other albums. There are no less than three songs about drinking – "I Want a Drink", "Half-Priced Drinks", and "Drunk in the Morning" – plus a monologue about personal demons called "(I Know from) Self-Destruction". Whether this is just a persona or the actual state of Mick Farren's life at that point – I doubt anyone could tell the difference, the music is that heartfelt. Musicians on hand include Larry Wallis of the Pink Fairies and Wilko Johnson of Dr. Feelgood; supporting vocals are provided by Sonja Kristina of Curved Air and Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of Pretenders (a year and half before their first album, Pretenders came out).
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Also in 1978, MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer was released from prison after a drug conviction, and he was invited by Mick Farren to celebrate by performing at a gig at Dingwalls Dancehall that was run by former Pink Fairies roadie David "Boss" Goodman. To my knowledge, this is the first time (chronologically) that past UARA Andy Colquhoun (guitar) performed with Mick Farren. Others present include Larry Wallis (guitar) and George Butler (drums). This concert helped revive Wayne Kramer's musical career; he has released several more albums over the years and has also appeared in concert with Mick Farren on other occasions.
The tape was thought to be lost for many years but later turned up in a box, marked "Dingwalls"; and several tracks from the show were released by Total Energy Records on a 2000 CD called Cocaine Blues 1974-1978 with an artist name of Wayne Kramer & the Pink Fairies. This is somewhat misleading, as the concert was actually circa March 1979, and only Larry Wallis had ever performed as part of the Pink Fairies at that point in time. The complete tape of the concert was released as Wayne Kramer – Live at Dingwalls 1979 on Captain Trip Records in 2001; I don't have this CD as yet.
Other than a song about oral sex that is a little hard to take, Cocaine Blues is quite good and features renditions of the MC5 classics "Ramblin' Rose" and "Kick out the Jams".
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Otherwise, most of Mick Farren's latter-day music has been released under the Deviants or Mick Farren and the Deviants. The Deviants along with Wayne Kramer returned to Dingwalls in 1984, and a record of this concert called Human Garbage was released on CD – mine is the 1997 reissue on Captain Trip Records. Mick Farren proclaims at the beginning of the show that "we even rehearsed this time", and he is a little hoarse, plus the sound quality is not perfect; but they are in great form, particularly on "Police Car", "Takin' L.S.D." and "Hey Thanks".
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There was a crush of Mick Farren CD's in the mid-1990's. Under the artist name Mick Farren and Jack Lancaster, 1995 brought yet another side of Mick with The Deathray Tapes, a live performance consisting mostly of spoken-word material – but this is no 1960's flower-child poetry reading. Lancaster had co-founded Blodwyn Pig with ex-Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams in 1968; the eclectic band here includes Wayne Kramer and Andy Colquhoun, and actor Brad Dourif plays didgeridoo (!) on one song. "Disgruntled Employee" imagines what might drive someone to shoot up their workplace, with the final straw being an unsuccessful date with a co-worker and then seeing her the next morning laughing with her girlfriends: "And I knew . . . that they were talking . . . about me!!!" Most of the performances go on for 6 or 8 minutes, while "Envy" is just a short verse:
I used to envy Elvis, but then he got fat and died.
I used to envy Marlon Brando, but then he got fat and his kid died.
I used to envy Jim Morrison, but then I got out of the tub.
Now I don't envy anyone, because it causes bloating, and far too many funerals.
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The 1996 CD Eating Jello with a Heated Fork is one of my favorite Deviants albums of them all – the band name is given as Deviants ixvi ("96"), and the line-up is basically the same as on The Deathray Tapes. The bizarre imagery on "Three-Headed Lobster Boy" – and his adventures with the "ever hungry bikini women" – has to be heard to be believed; and the Apocalypse feels close at hand indeed on "You Won't Make it Here", "God's Worst Nightmare" and "Rivers of Hell".
Another Deviants CD came out in 1996 called Fragments of Broken Probes and is more of a compilation, with an excerpt from The Beginning of the End (the horror flick about giant grasshoppers) and a description of the Tunguska event, where a comet or asteroid exploded over Siberia in 1908 (a much smaller but similar explosion in Russia was caught on video last year) interspersed among Deviants recordings from a variety of sources. They include what might be their best live performance, of "Half-Priced Drinks"; and other treats include "Outrageous Contagious", "Broken Statue" and "Shock Horror". The closing track, a monologue called "Dog Poet" name-checks the Hashashim – whence came the words "hashish" and "assassin" – and the Anti-Christ in its wild tale of adventures on the outer fringes of humanity.
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Other live albums, plus several retrospective albums by the Deviants.followed – This Vinyl is Condemned and This CD is Condemned (depending on the format), The Deviants Have Left the Planet, On Your Knees, Earthlings!!!, etc. – along with what turned out to be the coda, the 2002 CD Dr. Crow.
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Following the death of her former husband and longtime business partner Greg Shaw in 2004, Suzy Shaw sought to establish in book form his legacy in the annals of rock and roll. She asked Mick Farren to be her co-writer, and they published an excellent overview Bomp! / Saving the World One Record at a Time. Naturally, the book was mostly composed of Greg Shaw's writings, actions and antics, focusing on his early fanzines and the formation of Bomp! Records. But the opening essay by Mick Farren, the modestly entitled "Introduction" not only provides a canny observation of the history of rock and roll, but also Greg Shaw's place in it – concentrating as much on Shaw's ideas as anything else. The Bomp! book establishes that Greg Shaw didn't just assemble compilation albums and press records and publish fanzines, and he didn't just write music history – he actually changed the direction of rock and roll more than once.
About this time, Suzy Shaw had discovered the Wikipedia articles that I had been writing, and I was delighted to see that she had started using some of the copy from them in advertising albums for sale on the Bomp! mailorder website. When I pointed that out, she told me that she was wondering who had written all of that. Suzy even mentioned that Mick Farren had commented to her how good it was – and what could my response be to that except, "I'm not worthy . . . I'm not worthy!" The autograph by Suzy Shaw on my copy of the Bomp! book reads: "Thanks for the brilliant work! Suzy Shaw '08".
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Mick Farren had struggled with asthma all of his life; in the current century, he was stricken with emphysema also. Against his doctors' advice, he continued to record and perform in concerts, although he was often seated and had to tap his oxygen tank between songs. Mick Farren's final years were much like his early years: He lived and he died doing what he loved.
As described on the funtopia.com website: "On his return to England in 2009, he reconvened his band the Deviants along with his long time friend and musical collaborator Andy Colquhoun and original 1960s era Deviants and later Pink Fairies, Russell Hunter and Duncan 'Sandy' Sanderson. They played a number of well received gigs since reforming, including The Spirit of '71 stage at Glastonbury [Festival] in 2011, as well as the Sonic Rock Solstice Festival in Wales, June 2013. The Deviants also released a new single on Shagrat Records in July 2013 called 'The Fury of the Mob'. Mick collapsed on stage whilst the Deviants were performing at the Atomic Sunshine Festival at the Borderline Club on Saturday 27th July 2013. He never regained consciousness."
(March 2014)
