Mick Farren

Biography

Michael Anthony Farren (3 September 1943 – 27 July 2013) was an English rock musician, singer, journalist, and author associated with counterculture and the UK underground, who had a significant influence on the development of British proto punk garage rock music.

Early life

Farren was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and after moving to Worthing, Sussex, attended Worthing High School for Boys, which was a state grammar school. In 1963, he moved to London, where he studied at Saint Martin's School of Art.

Music

Farren was the singer with the proto-punk garage rock R&B 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 single "Play With Fire×Play With Fire1977 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 2 tracksAPlay With Fire3:33BLost Johnny3:33" featuring Marky Bell (later in The Ramones), Jon Tiven, and Doug Snyder, the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money×Vampires Stole My Lunch Money1978 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracksA1Trouble Coming Every Day3:22A2Half Price Drinks3:30A3I Don't Want to Go This Way2:33A4I Want a Drink1:45A5Son of a Millionaire2:59A6Zombie Line2:41B1Bela Lugosi2:06B2People Call You Crazy2:49B3Fast Eddie2:06B4Let Me In, Damn You3:11B5(I Know From) Self Destruction3:03B6Drunk In The Morning4:03 and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow New Musical Express (NME) journalist Chrissie Hynde, Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson and the original Motörhead guitarist, Larry Wallis. He also contributed song ideas and music for short-lived Ladbroke Grove ensemble Warsaw Pakt's 1977 Needle Time LP.
He sporadically did musical work after that, collaborating with MC5's 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 provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He collaborated with Ian Fraser Kilmister (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 the Guitafternoon. 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

Solo
1976 – "Play with Fire×Play With Fire1977 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 2 tracksAPlay With Fire3:33BLost Johnny3:33" / "Lost Johnny" (Ork records)
1978 – "Half Price Drinks" (Logo Records)
1978 – "Broken Statue" / "It's All in the Picture" (Logo records)
Other appearances
1968 - The Deviants – "You've Got to Hold On" / "Let's Loot the Supermarket" (Stable Records)
1977 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – Screwed Up EP (Stiff Records)
1987 – Wayne Kramer & Mick Farren – Who Shot You Dutch?
199? – Lunar Malice – "Gunfire in the Night" / "Touched by the Fire"

Albums

With The Deviants

Solo
1970 – Mona – The Carnivorous Circus (Transatlantic Records)
1978 – Vampires Stole My Lunch Money (Logo Records)
2005 – To the Masterlock – live (Captain Trip Records, Japan)
Other appearances
1991 – Wayne Kramer – Death Tongue (Progressive Records)
1993 – Tijuana Bible – Gringo Madness
1995 – Mick Farren and Jack Lancaster – The Deathray Tapes (Alive Records)
2013 – Mick Farren and Andy Colquhoun – Black Vinyl Dress

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)

Writing

During the early 1970s he contributed to the UK underground press, including the International Times; he also established Nasty Tales, which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He later wrote for the mainstream New Musical Express, for which his work included the article "The Titanic Sails At Dawn", in which he considered the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music, and described the conditions that subsequently resulted in punk.
He wrote 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy described a post-2000 United States dominated by fundamentalists who subvert the Constitution. He began writing fantasy literature in the 1970s.
Farren wrote eleven works of non-fiction, including 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 newspaper Los Angeles CityBeat.
In his 3 May 2010 Doc40 blog, Farren announced that he was writing another Victor Renquist novel, with the working title of Renquist V.

In 2013, he worked with digital imprint Ink Monkey Books on audio inserts (with Andy Colquhoun of The Deviants) for reissues of The Texts of Festival and the DNA Cowboys sequence.

Jeb Stuart Ho

Also known as The DNA Cowboys Trilogy.
The Quest of The DNA Cowboys (1976)
Synaptic Manhunt (1976)
The Neural Atrocity (1977)
The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (1989)

The Victor Renquist Quartet

The Time of Feasting (1996)
Darklost (2000)
More Than Mortal (2001)
Underland (2002)

Novels

The Texts of Festival (1973)
The Tale of Willy's Rats (1974)
The Feelies (1978)
The Song of Phaid the Gambler (1981), reissued as:
Phaid the Gambler (1986)
Citizen Phaid (1986)
Protectorate (1985)
CORP*S*E (1986), aka Vickers
Their Master's War (1987)
Exit Funtopia (1988), aka The Long Orbit
The Armageddon Crazy (1989) aka Armageddon Crazy
Mars – The Red Planet (1990)
Necrom (1991)
Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife (1999)
Road Movie (2012)

Story collections

Short Stories (1972–1973) (2001)
From the anthology – Dead Cats Bouncing, edited by Gerard Houarner and GAK, Bedlam Press (2002) a short story: Dead Cat Meets Slide
Zones of Chaos (2009)

Nonfiction

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 was long 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.

Death

Farren died in 2013, aged 69, after collapsing while performing with the Deviants at The Borderline in London. The cause of death was stated to be a heart attack.