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).
