Mick Farren was born on a wet night at the end of World War II and has been complaining prolifically about it ever since. For the duration of his professional career, he has divided his time between music and literature, although with certain digressions into psychedelic agitprop, like editing the underground newspaper IT, and defending both his liberty and the comic book Nasty Tales at a protracted obscenity trail at the Old Bailey.
His tabloid heyday as a commentator on popular culture was in the 1970s, when he was part of what is now called (by some) the NMEgolden age, during which time he helped explain punk to people who still thought Rick Wakeman had merit. The next decade found him in New York City where, among other adventures, he drank more than was good for him, wrote TV columns for the Village Voice, a monthly rant for Trouser Press, a number of books about Elvis Presley, eight science fiction novels, the cult hit The Black Leather Jacket, and the off-Broadway musical The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz.
Since here in the twenty-first century, Farren, for the most part, writes only about performers who are either dead or born well before 1960, you won't find him in too many of the current rock magazines. His major output now comes in book form, either as works of non-fiction, as the endless stream of decidedly odd neo-gothic novels that flows from his computer, or as the occasional - and even more odd - CD of his music and poetry, usually with his floating rock & roll crap-game, The Deviants.
No comments:
Post a Comment