Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren (born 3 September 1943, in
Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire) is an English journalist, author and singer associated with
counterculture and the
UK Underground.
Music
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 since then, 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
1967 – The Deviants – Ptooff! (Impressario/Decca Records)
1968 – The Deviants – Disposable (Stable Records)
1969 – The Deviants – The Deviants 3 (Transatlantic Records)
1970 – Mick Farren – Mona – The Carnivorous Circus (Transatlantic Records)
1978 – Mick Farren – Vampires Stole My Lunch Money (Logo Records)
1984 – The Deviants – Human Garbage – live (Psycho Records)
1987 – Wayne Kramer & Mick Farren – Who Shot You Dutch?
1991 – Wayne Kramer – Death Tongue (Progressive Records)
1993 – Tijuana Bible – Gringo Madness
1995 – Mick Farren and Jack Lancaster – The Deathray Tapes (Alive Records)
1996 – Deviants IXVI – Eating Jello With a Heated Fork (Alive Records)
1999 – The Deviants – Barbarian Princes – Live In Japan
2002 – The Deviants – Dr. Crow (Track Records)
2004 – Mick Farren and The Deviants – Taste The Blue – live (Captain Trip Records, Japan)
2005 – Mick Farren – To The Masterlock – live (Captain Trip Records, Japan)
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 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.
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 newspaper Los Angeles CityBeat.
In his 3rd May 2010 Doc40 blog, Farren announced that he is writing another Victor Renquist novel, with the apt working title of Renquist V.
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
External links
Funtopia This is the new url of Funtopia website.
Interview with Mick Farren by Rich Deakin on the subject of the UK underground press.
Mick Farren Bibliography (Last available Internet Archive snapshot of http://www.myunicorn.com/bibl3/bibl0311.html as at February 19, 2005)
Trouser Press Discography with the Deviants
Trouser Press Solo Farren Discography
3:AM Magazine Interview September 2002
L.A. Weekly Interview November 2001
Biography at RocksBackPages.com
Doc 40 Mick Farren personal blog
MICK FARREN: The 1997 Your Flesh Profile Interview - good biography up to 1997.
Category:1943 births
Category:Living people
Category:People from Cheltenham
Category:Cthulhu Mythos writers
Category:English anarchists
Category:English rock singers
Category:English writers
Category:English journalists
Category:English biographers
Category:Pink Fairies members
Category:Protopunk musicians
Category:Collectivist anarchists
