BY CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY
“. . . and then the greasy ’oodlums arrived!”
MICK FARREN IS A MAN OF MANY PARTS, AN IMPRESSIVE number of which are still working despite the natural wear-and-tear incurred by decades of research and recreation. First and foremost amongst these are brain and fingers, and this book is evidence of the excellent use he’s made of those particular bits from 1967 (the so-called ’Summer Of Love’) right up to the more-or-less present day.
At various points along that timeline highway from Young Punk to Grand Old Man Of The Counterculture, he’s been—often simultaneously—a critic, commentator, novelist, journalist, polemicist, political activist, lyricist, rock performer, screenwriter, poet, memoirist, raconteur, life and soul of many parties and a member in better than good standing of the Most Honorable Association Of Cultural Infidels.
Or—to misquote an old Kris Kristofferson song memorably recorded by one of Mick’s primo heroes, Johnny Cash—he’s a poet, he’s a prophet, he’s a preacher and a pilgrim and a problem when he’s stoned, he’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction . . .
And he’s also—as you can discover for yourself by randomly opening this book at virtually any page—very sharp, very funny, very perceptive and possessed of a highly distinctive prose style: simultaneously hardboiled and self-deprecating. And it all comes from a POV as unique as said prose, which is: a rockin’ way of knowledge. Farren is of the generation which encountered rock’n’roll when it was brand new, when white kids just hitting—or, to be more precise, getting hit by—puberty encountered something which had never previously existed in the world of American white-picket-fence conformity and English net-curtain-land suburbia. Something which was marketed as entertainment but which manifested, no matter how spuriously, as liberation. Hence the famous line, often heard during drug-fuelled downtime chitchat around the NME offices during Farren’s now-celebrated seventies tenure there, about how everything was boring . . . “and then the greasy ’oodlums arrived!” Said greasy ’oodlum invasion was spearheaded by Elvis Presley—hence this book’s title—rapidly followed by the likes of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and many more. They transformed lives—where would John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Lord Keef Richards, Jimmy Page ad-bleedin’-infinitum have been without them?— but for Micky they kicked down not one wall but many, providing a point of entry into whole worlds of art, culture, literature and politics. As I said: a rockin’ way of knowledge, of which he turned out to be both its Carlos Cas-taneda and its Don Juan. Just how rich and varied those worlds turned out to be can be gauged by the extraordinary breadth of scope covered by the present collection; just how deceptively rigorous the intellectual processes involved turned out to be can be likewise gauged by the consistency of worldview displayed in a collection of pieces addressing so many different topics and written over such an intimidating span of time.
I’m not going to recount Micky’s life story: he’s already done it himself, and quite brilliantly, in an autobiography entitled Give The Anarchist A Cigarette, and it comes very highly recommended indeed. All I’ll tell you is this: Micky managed to attain a ranking position at the London forefront of High Hippie whilst having no truck whatsoever with the whimsy of Flower Power: no bells around his neck, mate! He favored mirrorshades, studded belts, motorcycle jackets and cowboy boots, all topped off with a spectacularly broken nose and one of the half-dozen best whiteboy ’fros in the known universe: part biker, part urban guerilla. He absolutely looked like a rock star, though whether he sounded like one is highly debatable: he fronted The Deviants, a band so heroically unlistenable (by 1967 standards, anyway) that their music made no sense whatsoever until the arrival of punk almost a decade later.
Within these pages you’ll meet—via the occasional interviews—the likes of Frank Zappa, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry and Gore Vidal, and steam open correspondence between the author and Pete Townshend. And, much more importantly, you’re about to go one-on-one with a world-class raconteur. Micky once described his Doc40 blog in terms which apply at least as appropriately not only to the present collection but to any significant period of time spent in the actual real-life face-to-face presence of its author as his “Own Cosy Leather-Jacket Gin Joint, 24-Hour Global House Party And Medicine Show, offering sharp conversation, bad ideas, cheap stimulation, dirty concepts and links to revolution . . .”
Sounds like a good time to me. If this kind of mess-around seems like your cup of meat, then prepare your relaxant of choice, kick back and dig in. The greasy ’oodlums are at your door.