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Mick Farren

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Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren(born 3 September 1943, in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the so-called "UK Underground".

Music

Main article: The Deviants (band)

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 mid-1970s, he briefly revived his musical career, releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.

He has sporadically done musical work sincethen, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.

Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" during the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.

Singles

  • 1976 – Mick Farren – "Play With Fire" / "Lost Johnny" (Ork records)
  • 1977 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – Screwed Up EP (Stiff Records)
  • 1978 – Mick Farren – "Half Price Drinks" (Logo Records)
  • 1978 – Mick Farren – "Broken Statue" / "It's All In The Picture" (Logo records)
  • 199? – Lunar Malice – "Gunfire In The Night" / "Touched By The Fire"

Albums

Compilations

  • 1996 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – Fragments of Broken Probes
  • 1996 – The Social Deviants – Garbage (Alive Records)
  • 1999 – The Deviants – The Deviants Have Left The Planet
  • 2000 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – This CD Is Condemned (Alive Records)
  • 2001 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – On Your Knees, Earthlings (Alive Records)
Also Appears on
  • 2002 – He’s A Rebel: The Gene Pitney Story Retold (To M'Lou Music) (The Deviants perform "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance")

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 main stream 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.[1]

To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who subvert the Constitution.

Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and much poetry.

From 2003 to 2008, he was a columnist for the weekly newspaperLos Angeles CityBeat.

Fiction

  • 1973 – The Texts of Festival
  • 1974 – The Tale of Willy's Rats
  • 1976 – The DNA Cowboys Trilogy: The Quest of The DNA Cowboys
  • 1976 – The DNA Cowboys Trilogy: Synaptic Manhunt
  • 1977 – The DNA Cowboys Trilogy: The Neural Atrocity
  • 1978 – The Feelies
  • 1981 – The Song of Phaid the Gambler
    • part 1: Phaid the Gambler
    • part 2: Citizen Phaid
  • 1985 – Protectorate
  • 1986 – CORP*S*E (aka Vickers)
  • 1987 – Their Masters' War
  • 1988 – Exit Funtopia (aka The Long Orbit)
  • 1989 – The Armageddon Crazy
  • 1989 – The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys
  • 1990 – Mars – The Red Planet
  • 1991 – Necrom
  • 1996 – The Victor Renquist Quartet: The Time of Feasting
  • 1999 – Back From Hell: Car Warriors #2
  • 1999 – Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife
  • 2000 – The Victor Renquist Quartet: Darklost
  • 2001 – The Victor Renquist Quartet: More Than Mortal
  • 2001 – Short Stories (1972 – 1973)
  • 2002 – Dead Cats Bouncing
  • 2002 – The Victor Renquist Quartet: Underland
  • 2004 – Kindling
  • 2006 – Conflagration

Non-Fiction

  • Watch Out Kids
  • Get On Down
  • Elvis In His Own Words
  • The Rolling Stones In Their Own Words
  • The Rock & Roll Circus
  • Elvis – The Illustrated Record
  • The Black Leather Jacket
  • Elvis And The Colonel
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to Elvis
  • The CIA Files
  • Conspiracies, Lies And Hidden Agendas
  • Give The Anarchist A Cigarette
  • Gene Vincent: There's One In Every Town
  • Words of Wisdom From the Greatest Minds of All Time
  • Who's Watching You?: The Chilling Truth about the State, Surveillance and Personal Freedom
  • (Who put the) Bomp! Saving the World One Record at a Time
  • Zones of Chaos (an anthology)
  • Speed-Speed-Speedfreak: A Fast History Of Amphetamine

Counterculture activity

Farren organised the Phun City Festival in 1970. He has long been associated with the Hells Angels (UK) who provided security at Phun City; they even awarded Farren an "approval patch" in 1970 for use on his first solo album Mona.

He was a prominent activist in the White Panthers UK movement, a group that most notably organised free food and other support services for free festivals from the Windsor Free Festival onwards.

References

  1. ^ The Titanic Sails At Dawn, NME, June 19, 1976, pp. 5-6 [1]
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