Mick Farren

Michael Anthony Farren (3 September 1943 – 27 July 2013) was an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the United Kingdom Underground Farren was the singer with the proto-punk band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. During 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before ending his music business to concentrate on writing.

During the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He later wrote for the mainstream New Musical Express, for which he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he considered the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music and which described the conditions that subsequently resulted in punk

Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London. (Read more at Wikipedia)

Links to Peel
Peel mentions Mick Farren frequently in his early journalism and on his radio programmes of 1967-68, especially the Perfumed Garden. Of the editorial group which fouunded International Times, Farren was the only member with a close connection to, and knowledge of, pop music. He formed a band, the Social Deviants (later the Deviants) who failed to impress audiences at the time but have been seen as pioneers of punk music. At the same time he contributed reviews to International Times before Peel began to write for the paper, and was also doorman at the UFO Club, where Peel may well have met him during his periods of shore leave from Radio London.

Peel and Farren seemed to become friends for a while, sharing sympathies for the underground culture as well as a love of classic rock and roll. THe DJ interviewed him for Dutch TV in autumn 1967, and again when Farren was a studio guest on one of the early Night Ride shows in the spring of 1968. No recording of the show has been found, but according to Robert Chapman (Selling the Sixties, pp.268-9)


 * Mick Farren, the International Times journalist and member of the Social Deviants politico-rock group, ponderously informed listeners on an early programme that “pop music as such is ceasing to exist”, that rock was making politics obsolete, and that Pete Townshend propelling his arms while playing his guitar had a definitive dialectical meaning which “the kids” instinctively understood.

As the underground scene grew, different factions emerged. Mick Farren became a prominent figure as "Minister of Information" of the British branch of thw White Panther Party which, like the US party, advocated street-level revolutionary anarchism. Peel wasn't unduly impressed, telling Jonathan Green (Days In The Life, p 328)
 * There were only two White Panthers and Mick Farren was the leader. I went round to his flat one day and Mick was always telling me about all this ‘property is theft’ stuff. He had some Gene Vincent LPs that I was rather keen to own, so I said, ‘I don’t feel as strongly about it as you do, but I’ll take these Gene Vincent LPs, but it turned out that property was theft except for Gene Vincent LPs.

The DJ also voiced criticism of one of the disruptive activities organised by Farren, when the premises of Release, the charity which helped young people who had been arrested on drug charges, were smashed up, with the slogan "Give Release back to the people" :


 * It’s a bit like the whole Release business where people I used to know, like Mick Farren, don’t seem to be acting in the way that their ethic could lead them, for example by blowing up police stations, because they’re frightened to do that or anything else which might land them inside. There may obviously be many things wrong with the way Release is run, but it seems a bit pathetic that the new pop revolutionaries can only find a place like that to pick on. They go and attack it because they know no-one will punch them on the nose.

Despite Peel's differences with Mick Farren, he continued to play tracks by the singer and his various bands, long after the underground era had ended. He also featured sessions by the Pink Fairies, the band which succeeded the Deviants after Farren left.

Sessions

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Other Shows Played
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