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NME review of The Tale of Willy's Rats by Charles Shaar
Murray, April 12 1975, p.33 |
Anybody want a rock 'n' roll novel that ain't too pretentious, is
written by somebody who knows what he's talking about, has a totally
absurd cover and is bascially just good trashy entertainment?
No? Okay, the Gig Guide is on page 36 this week. Go!
The rest of you can line up on the left and get a whip-round
going to buy "The
Tale of Willy's Rats" which has just become my second all-time
favourite rock novel. (The one that beats it is Nik Cohn's "I
Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo", which deals, in a
typical Cohnian way, with rock as myth and allegory, is actually attempting
something entirely different from "That (sic) Tale of Willy's
Rats", with which it shares nothing but its subject matter.)
The only other real contenders are Thom Keyes "All
Night Stand" which is very '60s and lack sthe kind of laconic
verisimilitude whic Farren brings to this book, "Groupie"
by Jennie Fabian which is merely autobiographical in see through disguise,
and the "Stardust", "That'll Be The Day" and "Flame"
adaptations.
The narrator of the book, Lou Francis, does his homework
to "Heartbreak Hotel", plays bass in a pseudo-Shadows youth-club
band, pays his dues as Dylan freak and itinerant folkie and makes
it in the mid-'60s.
Farren, thankfully, makes no attempt to convince the reader
that Willy's Rats (taking the group's name from a William Burrough's
"Naked Lunch" is a nice touch of authenticity are the best
and biggest group of the decade.
They are succesful, but not on a scale that would involve
reorganising history a la "Stardust". They get to be about
as big as Uriah Heep, in fact.
In a sense, Willy's Rats are Farren's ideal rock band.
They're nasty and evil in a kind of Stones/MC5/Blue Oyster
Cult way; they're politically aware without taking da re-vo-lu-shun
too seriously, they were into whips and make-up a little before their
time ('67 by Farren's chronology) and they have an awful lotta
chicks and do an awful lotta drugs (get in there, sensation-seekers.
This is the novel that rips the lid off the filthy., stinking, corrupt,
mindless pop scene!!!!!).
There's some fairly subtle rock-criticism-by-implication
installed at various strategic points in the novel, and what's more,
it's accurate.
Unlike most of the klutzes who attempt to write novels
about rock and roll, Farren has been around for a long time as fan,
critic and (gawdelpus) lead singer of a rock band, which enables him
to avoid most of the pitfalls caused by ignorance of the subject (for
reference, consult "Song Of The Scorpions" by Paul Tabori,
which demonstrates all of them).
"The Tale of Willy's Rats" ain't exactly ready
to be engraved in gold, but it's a considerable improvement over Farren's
first novel "The Text's Of Festival," which fell spectacularly
flat on its ass despite an intriguing central thesis.
Plus it's a must for that long train journey.
Micky, you'll get my bill in the morning.
Charles Shaar Murray (1975)
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Funtopia review: |
Life on and off the road with the bad boys of English rock 'n' roll,
Willy's Rats. Unique in the Farren oevre for using the device
of a first-person narrator, the book inhabits a genre apart from Farren's
better-known stamping grounds of sci-fi and horror, its true peers
being the That'll Be The Day/Stardust movies and Richard Allen's
Glam, except with considerably more balls than either.
The first few chapters have lead singer Lou Francis
recounting his way through the liftoff of the early 60s British Beat
Boom, and Farren delineates beautifully both the cataclysmic sense
of release that rock brought to postwar teens, and the lamentable
tameness of much of what was passed off as "rock" in early
60s Britain.
As the 60s proceed, Lou Francis finds his true
metier as vocalist in England's raunchiest band, and gradually descends
into the wilder terrain of LSD, gangster managers, rabble-rousing
psychedelic revolution, a hippie death cult, assassination threats,
and – always – copious amounts of weird, experimental sex.
There's no denouement as such: Willy's Rats are
going to go on forever, because they're the Ding an sich, the
Platonic form, of the loud, yobbish, long-haired, totally goddamn
irresponsible rock 'n' roll band that we all know and miss so much
as the Millenium ticks over. No "We Are The World" for these boys;
no Perrier and jogging, no cosy all-star collaborations with Eric
and Whitney and Bono. Willy's Rats are self-sufficient in their depravity,
a rude shout down the years from a time when we employed our pop stars
to tell us how to misbehave.
PJ |
