FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
The Deviants were the people who perverted your children and led them astray
07.13.2019
10:13 pm
Topics:
Tags:



 

“This is British amphetamine psychosis music and if you don’t like it you can fuck off and listen to your Iron Butterfly albums”—Mick Farren onstage with the Deviants in Toronto, 1969

 
Although I’d generally sworn off binge drinking by my mid-20s, there was one (and only one) person who I would happily consent to get shit-faced with whenever the call came. Mick Farren, the legendary counterculture rabble-rouser, rocker, music journalist, TV columnist, poet, sci-fi novelist, etc., etc. ... could drink. A lot. And he could drink it very, very quickly. Out of, I guess respect, or at the very least wanting to synch up our respectives buzzes, whenever Mick was on the other end of the phone line suggesting a “refreshing beverage or two”—20 refreshing beverages was far more likely—I would always say yes, knowing full well that the next day wasn’t gonna be pretty. Mick was good company and as you might expect, quite the barstool raconteur. He and I got along great. Our political leanings were very similar. Mick had no qualms about stating his belief that certain people could be improved with a bullet and I don’t disagree. His aggressive polemic in the NME and Trouser Press had a huge influence on me during my formative years. I never got tired of hearing his stories and I was a good audience for him. I really adored Mick. He was my kinda guy.

We’d almost always meet at the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax—within walking distance for Mick, who did not drive thank god—smoke a joint in the parking lot and then head for the bar in the middle of the older section of the market. In my entire life I have never seen anyone neck a pint faster than Mick Farren. It was impressive. I never attempted to seriously keep up with him. That would have been foolhardy, if not simply impossible and anyway I really wasn’t interested in achieving real-time liver damage. If on average we’d meet and hang out for around three hours, Mick would drink about eight beers every 60 minutes. And he’d have to take a piss constantly. Luckily (?) my own bladder is ill-equipped for heavy drinking, so we’d carry on conversing at the urinals and walking back and forth from the men’s room. That would happen at least three times an hour. Anyone reading this now who’s ever met Mick for a drink knows this drill well.
 

 
One afternoon when we met at the Farmer’s Market, Wayne Kramer was playing a set there and we sat at the bar talking about music. Mick wondered if I’d ever heard any of the Deviants’ albums. Of course I had. “The third one is the one I like. It’s easily the best,” I told him.

“IT IS NOT!” he replied, his voice rising an octave. “We were exhausted, creatively and of each other, by then. We couldn’t even come up with a decent title, hence Deviants #3!”

“No way. The first two were far too derivative of the Fugs and Zappa. The third album is definitely the best one. And it’s got that fantastic cover.”

Mick looked dejected. “I really wish you wouldn’t have said that!”

“Why?”

“Because I had very little to do with that album! I quit the Deviants—or they quit me, I suppose—right after it came out.”
 

 
To be candid, I wasn’t wrong. Deviants #3 is obviously the best Deviants album. Perhaps not Mick Farren’s best album—that would be the unhinged Mona The Carnivorous Circus recorded with former Pretty Things drummer Twink and Steve Peregrin Took (Marc Bolan’s ex-partner in Tyrannosaurus Rex) soon after his departure from his band. But with Mick out of the way (he wasn’t really a musician so much as he was a poet/spoken word performer/ranter) the other Deviants became the vastly superior Pink Fairies, so this wasn’t really such a bad thing for rock and roll. Still, Deviants #3 has a lot going for it. The group’s malevolent, amphetamine-fueled freakbeat is tight, evil and scary sounding and Farren’s familiar themes of social unrest, disreputable characters and apocalyptic street fighting took matters quite a bit further OUT than almost any other band of the late 60s (think Stooges, MC5). Here’s a sample lyric: “We are the people who pervert your children, lead them astray from the lessons you taught them.” Imagine if the PR campaign that posed the question “would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone” was asked instead about having a Deviant as a son-in-law? None of this was a pose for these dirty, rotten scoundrels. They really fucking meant it. The Deviants were the first anarchist rock band in Britain. They lived and snorted their politics.

Fifty years after its original release and Mick’s withering opinion of it aside, Deviants #3 is a monster of an album—a minor masterpiece of the psychedelic era, even—and has aged quite well. Real Gone Music have done a quality rerelease of Deviants #3, the first time the album’s been available on vinyl for many a moon. The special black and white “nun’s habit” pressing is in a limited edition of 1000 and the mastering is particularly good. All that and one of the single best album covers of the rock era. I rate this a must-own.

On September 20th, 1969 the Deviants played the third free rock festival held at Hyde Park that year (the first featured Blind Faith and the second was the Stones performance after the death of Brian Jones). Also on the bill were Soft Machine, Quintessence, Al Stewart and the Edgar Broughton Band. This would be Farren’s final performance before he was sacked from the band.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.13.2019
10:13 pm
|
Wild early UFO footage featuring Larry Wallis from Pink Fairies and Motörhead
02.03.2015
10:37 am
Topics:
Tags:

UFO Wallis
Larry Wallis is not pictured in the UFO image on the left. He never recorded with the band.
 
Check out this rare footage of Larry Wallis (Entire Sioux Nation, Shagrat, Bloodwyn Pig, Pink Fairies, Motörhead, “Police Car”, etc.) playing with UFO on the French TV music program, Rock En Stock from 1972. It’s a fantastic, fuzzed-out, raw mini-set featuring three tunes: “Galactic Love,” “Silver Bird” and a righteous version of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody.”

Wallis was only with UFO on a 1972 European tour from February to October after original guitarist, Mick Bolton left the band in January of that year. Wallis never recorded with the group and this has to be one of the very few performances of the proto-punk guitarist jamming with UFO ever captured on film.
 
UFO with Larry Wallis
UFO 1972 from left to right: Singer Phil Mogg, drummer Andy Parker, bassist Pete Way, and temporary guitarist, Larry Wallis.
 

Here’s Wallis in a 2002 interview with Tony Rettman discussing his brief relationship and rather hilarious separation from the band:

TR: After Bloodwyn Pig, you answered an ad in the Melody Maker that read ‘Gigantic Rock Band, No Names, Needs A Guitarist. You’ve Got To Look Great.’ Am I correct? 



LW: It was all very secretive for some reason. Eventually I found out it was U.F.O. It was the winter of 1971. I toddled off to the audition. When I got there, Andy Parker (drummer for UFO) and Pete Way (bassist) were there, along with a video camera. No Phil Mogg (singer). He probably had a plumbing job that day. Now, at the time I had the full set up… the long hair… the cool hippie garb. When I came in, Pete said ‘He looks like a star.’ We plugged me in and the day before I heard Hendrix on the John Peel radio show and he’d whacked out something called “Drivin’ South,” so I just started playing my version of that. And that was that. I had never heard of UFO, but I didn’t tell them that. Mark Hannau was our manager. He had just parted ways with the successful Curved Air. We thought the Curved Air pedigree was great until we figured out they must have fired him for a reason. He signed us a publishing deal for 8000 pounds, which was a respectful amount in those days. We were about to go off on a tour of Germany, so naturally we spent the money on a sound system bigger than anyone else’s and a second hand Bentley. The tour ended when the German gangsters running one of the shows nicked the Bentley. Apparently Mark Hannau made them believe we were going to stay in Germany and tour for them. It was then we figured out Mark wouldn’t be giving Peter Grant (Zeppelin manager) any sleepless nights.

When we got back, Chrysalis got involved and gave us a chap named Wilf Wright to look after us. They kept us busy touring Italy and these were great times. One night, I got drunk and told Phil Mogg what I really thought of him and he kicked me out. Pete and Andy were real upset, but whatcha gonna do? The roadies hated me leaving so much they dropped my amps off at my parents’ house. This caused Wilf to have a meeting with me where he said the amps weren’t mine and I would have to give them back. I said ‘No’ and Wilf pointed out it would be a great shame if the police were told anonymously that dope was kept and smoked at my parents’ house. I called him a string of names that I felt suited his behavior and made an exit. Fuck him and the stolen horse he rode in on!

TR: And right after that was when you were asked to join The Pink Fairies. 


LW: I wanted to be a Pink Fairie more than anything in the world.

You can read the whole interview here.

After Pink Fairies (for whom Wallis wrote the majority of the tunes on Kings of Oblivion), Wallis would go on to become a founding member of Motörhead and, as a producer at Stiff Records, a seminal figure in the late seventies transition between heavy rock and punk in Britain.

After working even more briefly with Bernie Marsden, UFO would find a slightly more long-term guitarist in Michael Schenker who stayed with the band until 1978 before taking a long break and returning in 1993.

It’s almost criminal that the Rock en Stock commentator couldn’t have waited until after Wallis’s killer sounding guitar solo on “Galactic Love” to do his spiel! 
 

Posted by Jason Schafer
|
02.03.2015
10:37 am
|