SO FAR it’s been a confusing summer for NME’s own elder statesman of rock Mick Farren (44).
   It all seemed to start about the time that this redoubtable veteran appeared onstage with Lemmy’s Motorhead at the Marquee three months ago; since then, Farren (53) has conspired to have his first record in seven years released, has had what the man describes as a “breakdown”, has appeared in amateur happy snapper David Bailey’s fanzine Ritz (twice), has finally made “Pseud’s Corner” in Private Eye, has had a warrant issued for his arrest, has been involved in a physical fracas, and has seen a major portion of his living room go up in smoke.
   To the beginning . . fresh from the giddy delights of cutting his first record in years (for New York’s super-chic ORK Records) while on working holiday in the Big Apple, Farren (21) returned to his penthouse apartment in London’s bohemian Ladbroke Grove to file the several American reports that NME readers have recently been privilege to, to work on his latest trilogy of novels, to continue with several science fiction stories and a projected coffee table book on great rock’n’roll hotel damage bills, to update the twentieth volume of his collected memoirs and gaze meditatively on the placid face of his stuffed aardvaark (really).
   It was apparently while coping with the particularly hazardous mental exploration involved in scribing the latest Farren novel that things started to get out of hand. A fiendish double suicide sequence apparently tipped the balance of the Farren grey matter into the abyss whose depths the author bad dared to sound. Fiction and fact blurred. The artist suffered from what might commonly be called a case of the terrible whirling pits.
   Yeah, dig man, I’m having a breakdown, piped the distinctive Farren tones in the phones of the NME offices late on Friday afternoon. I can’t review Dolly Parton and I’ll be out of circulation for a while. (No relation).
   For several agonising days, nothing more was heard from the Farren eyrie
   beyond rumours that he had been engaged in several all-night verbal workouts in the cosmic gymnasium with ex-Dr Feelgood guitarist, the scorpionic Wilko Johnson (47), who consoled Farren with the information that it happens to me every three days. Don’t worry about it.
  Farren’s first re-entry into rock‘n’roll London’s swinging social circuit was at the Ramones jubilee bash in the King’s Road, where the fellow’s appealingly forthright social manner accosting people with a brandished bottle appeared to upset several younger members of New Wavedom.
  A few days -later he was sighted again, this time displaying another notch in the weathered visage, the apparent result of a contretemps with an over-zealous punter in downtown Camden’s less-than-exotic Dingwalls niterie.
  Then came Private Eye, bearing at the closing section of Farren’s Notes Towards Defining Minimalism In The Ramones as an entry in Pseud’s Corner, a feat only achieved once before by an NME scribe, when Tony Tyler made the spot in 1972 with a piece on Vinegar Joe (Vinegar Joe?? -Ed)
  Then, the same morning as an ORK Records discography flopped on the Ass. Ed’s desk, proclaiming the release of a picture sleeve single by El Farren (Lost Johnny / Play With Fire) with the words that the lord of loudwas back(we didn’t know he’d been away), came the news that the warrant was out for his arrest following his alleged failure to appear in court on a charge of defacing a bridge in London’s Little Venice with spray-can graffiti. It was perfect kharmic vindication of ORK Records’ claim that The Big F helped start British punk rock (so howcum he spends five hours listening to The Grateful Dead? Ed)
  It later transpired that Farren’s non-appearance had been occasioned by a court clerical error, thus quashing speculation that Farren (32) had reverted to 1968 and gone underground.
  At this point, most mortals would be justified in believing that their hail of misfortune had ceased. So did Farren. At least until he awoke to find a pall of smoke issuing from the living room of his sumptuous bohemian apartment. Investigation revealed a portion of the room’s historic artefact encrusted decor to be ablaze. The fire required five buckets of water to douse it, and the ensuing smoke also necessitated the opening of the flat’s windows, an act unrecalled in Farren’s ten year occupation of the pad.
  The aardvark was undamaged.
  At the time of going to press, Farren (207) was believed to be staying in the fashionable Little Poland district of Fulham. Dig, I’m beginning to feel like Ulysses, man, were his last words. Are you still having a breakdown Mick? asked Thrills. I can’t bleedin’ afford to, replied Farren.