THE DEVIANTS

This article was first published in Zig Zag , No. 5 September 1969, pp.28-29

Mick Farren, singer with the Deviants, talks about the group.

To begin with, basically we were a community band, because in 1967, the entire underground was being run by about 25 people. I was working at IT and UFO, and we were in this band, which did things every now and then - it was a total assault thing with a great deal of inter-relation and interdependence. That went on for a while - there was me and some other guys - then Russ, our drummer joined, and I suppose, in a pop context, we became a 'semi-pro' group, but It didn't really work like that.
  There were Russ and me, and the others were paid pop musicians - but, with the amount we could pay them, they weren't that good. We soon broke up -the Social Deviants as we were then -because it was getting such a drag, and Russ and I were wondering what to do, when we met this 21 year old millionaire cat and he lent us about £700. So we produced an album, pressed it (It wasn't very good but what do you expect for that amount - it had an amazing cover, but the record wasn't too amazing), went through all the manufacturing and into sales. It actually sold about 7 or 8 thousand - it was on the Underground Impressarios label and was Just sold through IT and Oz and mail order and book shops and so on, though Decca have subsequently rereleased it.
  Soon after that we changed bass players, so that then, there were actually three of us in the trip, and we went on with this lead guitarist for about six months - he wasn't any good, and we just drifted apart from him. Then we met Jamie, who started doing the management end of the deal, and he knew Paul from Vancouver, who he cabled to come over. He subsequently turned up In February with Just 2 guitars - he'd decided to dump his clothes at the airport because his instruments took up his luggage quota.
  So then there were 4 of us, and we gave ourselves 3 months to get it all together, doing occasional gigs. Then, having got Paul integrated into the group, we extricated ourselves from a deal with Stable Records, which wasn't altogether satisfactory (we'd made a record with them which was very cheap and pretty bad - we really don't like it at all), and worked out a deal with Transatlantic, with whom we're doing an album which should come out in mid-September. Paul has caused a sort of major revolution in the group - like Sandy, our bassplayer, was more or less feeling his way until Paul came, and brought very much more musical content into the thing.
  We used to be heavily political, but the validity of that sort of statement coming from a rock 'n' roll band Is becoming somewhat questionable. . . it's 01< if you are in a band which is very closely allied to the community, but the community has become so diverse that it's impossible for a group to be that much a part of it. Like the underground, as such, has become very factional - it goes from "Hello sky, hello trees"/Marc Bolan things, right across to us at the other extreme. At the moment, the only community project I'm really closely involved with is a fund raising scheme we're working on with the Hells Angels chapter that's just starting up here.
  Their members are mainly grease, who have slowly come to the realisation that the world didn't actually stop in 1958 after all. They've graduated from Eddie Cochran to Dylan, but they could do with some working on - not in a teacher/pupil relationship, but they've got some things to lay on us too - like how to take care of themselves with cops. 1 mean, the average hippie has no idea how to do that -most of them get busted basically because they blow it at the wrong time. But Hells Angels have a sort of built in rocker cunning when it comes to cops and authority. But they're also starting to get turned on - taking acid and smoking dope - and I think it's rather unfortunate when you have a section of the sort of old time road hippie who thinks he's a bit too good to talk to them.
  But we aren't attempting to identify with the community as a whole. . . in fact, I think this super left .thing that's being put on in England Is somewhat phony -you know, like on all levels, the time is just not right for violent revolution, Just on the strategic manuals of revolution, like Guevara, Mao, Zhukov, and Michael Collins even. I mean you can read any of their books on violent revolution, but the situation is not yet reached when it could happen here.. .and preaching these ideas without any information is just like chanting slogans - it's just not on. There are a lot of people just going around the place mouthing Marxist catchphrases, but the time is not right. There just isn't a cohesive minority group that could stay together under pressure. The only thing the Deviants are interested in, in any quasi-political way, is keeping the audience together. . . by trying to create a good time, party atmosphere at the venue. I mean, when the audience start to dig themselves and each other, then they are in a position to start to resist pressure. But at the free concerts in the park, the reverse is happening - the audience stretches for about half a mile, but the front 500 are probably the only people who are aware of what's going on. I mean there are so many different things happening, tourists taking photos and all sorts of things like that, and that prevents the audience coming together as a cohesive unit. The Stones audience could have taken over London, just like that, but that's not the problem, If Broughton had been in the position the Stones were, he could have got them to take over London. That's great, but the problem is, how long could they hold it? There's no point in putting a defenceless mob in control of some piece of geography, unless they have the assurance that the groundwork has been laid so they can keep hold of it. It's like the Barcelona Syndicate, who took over and then realised that no-one had told them what to do. I don't know the way to get a cohesive audience, but I certainly don't think it'll be done by political catchphrases.   If revolution became fashionable, a lot of people would be selling gift wrapped rope and lamp-posts, and I think that Rolling Stone is into this. ..the fact that they can have a huge feature on the American revolution one week, and then next week Jane Nicholson stands up and says "We are not an underground paper, we are a pop music paper". That's just bullshit baby! If you're going to start talking about revolution, and screwing, and drugs - then you are either the News of the World or an underground paper - because there's nothing between the two. it's like Germaine Greer said about the Underground - it's not just some sort of scruffy club you can join, you're in or you're out... it's like being a criminal.   Morrison is interesting in this respect. The new Doors album is very odd -it's as if, as Jamie reckons, he's gone over the hill into that pleasant land that we're all trying to get to. But the first two albums, Morrison is very strange, because he mixes his political sloganeering with strong sexual overtones. # to 1' is typical of this because you can't really work out whether it's a political speech or if he's trying to pull a chick. And I think that Is possibly the direction to go in, but Morrison seems to have blown it to an extent - certainly on 'Soft Parade' - and I think the Miami thing was strategically a pretty bad move, but I don't suppose you consider the strategy when you're out of your mind.

  But I'm sidetracking a bit too much here. To get back to the Deviant5, we have also been doing some record producing ourselves, since Paul's been over here. We've just completed two albums outside of the band, but with most of the band playing. The first one Is a sort of country album by Trevor Reid -It's a bit like Nashville Skyline and goes through things like Donna and That's alright, Mama, and progresses through Guthrie's Plane Wreck at Los Gatos, Dylan's Please Mrs Henry and some of his own material. It might sell quite well but it's not really earthshaking in terms of ideology.
  Then I've just finished producing a solo album with Twink of the Pretty Things - and that's got Paul, Russ, Steve Took, Viv Prince, a couple of the Pretties, & all sorts of people on it, and I really think It's going to be a phenomenal record because it's got such good stuff on it. It's coming out around October on Decca.
  But we've found now, that there are enough musicians In London now, so that we don't need to piss around with the 55 year old shortsleeved, pipe smoking Musicians Union cats, who are only Interested In playing written arrangements and taking tea breaks. a waste of time even bothering with those sort anymore.
  I mean belonging to the Musicians Union Is what, half a crown a week, but It's Just a waste of money...in fact it's worse because it imposes so many restrictions on you. It's just getting more and more of a drag. They're only bothered about looking after the NDO -there's no benefit for us at all - it's run by out of work Palais musicians who still talk about all this "three chord junk". Alexis Korner Is trying to get an Electric Musicians Union together - all he needs is someone to provide some financial backing.
  But as well as these old studio musicians being pushed aside, agencies like Blackhill are taking over that side of the business. The old type agencies are those left over from the Larry Parnes era, and they can't realise that these days the musicians are as Intelligent, if not more so, than they are. . . and that's why they're failing, unable to keep their bands. It's the same with the old style record producers - they're being squeezed out now. And the record companies are making their last moves now, by decentralising their product into little labels - they're not fooling anybody. For instance, Harvest Is Just a Joke. Some of their product is good, but there's still a big credibility gap between them and the consumer. It's not all friendly, and Stonehenge with the sun coming up; it's Manchester Square and it's raining.
  That's why we're pleased we signed with Transatlantic, because they leave the musicians to get on with it. If Nat Joseph thinks you're sincere, he Just lets you get on with it your way. You see, where the big companies fail is on the fact that their whole system is worked on a product profit basis, not on a label profit basis. For Instance, Jac Holzman runs Elektra like this: he has, say, four bands and may lose money on three of them. . . but the fourth is, say, the Doors, which more than wipes out his deficit on the others. And he's pleased because he's been successful - and that way, he caters for minorities as well. That's what underground music is about. . . and that's how Transatlantic works - their financially successful records subs I disc their minority Interest product, which they really like putting out. Big companies would cut out the ones which hadn't made a profit.
  We'd gone to Stable, basically at the instigation of Simon, and also because we needed a deal and there weren't that many openings then. But we found out that they weren't exactly as we'd imagined, like their promotion wasn't at all satisfactory - so we activated the blow out clause in the contract.
  So we're really happy the way things are going with Transatlantic - we have real faith in them. They're a real label, like they're releasing the Bizarre material over here because Pye put it out - they didn't think there was a market for the Mothers or Lenny Bruce. Pye are one of these companies who really don't know what's going on.
  In fact, recently I was talking to the chief A & R manager of one of the big corporations and he was really under the impression that the Mothers and Doors albums were just novelty records. He fondly believes that there are only about 8 hippies, they all live In Notting Hill, unwashed and ragged, and never buy any records. Unbelievable.