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 Deviants at Hyde Park (l - r: Duncan Sanderson, Mick Farren, Russell Hunter, Paul Rudolph) |
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It was then that I looked out at the crowd,
thousands upon thousands of the bastards, stretching as far as the eye
could see, all expecting us to do something significant, to entertain
them, to pull the energy out of the air and get them going. In the first
second, all I could read was an inertia comparable with that of a small
asteroid. How the hell was I going to get this lot up on its feet and
doing the dirty boogie? We had played a few other largish festivals in the
past, but they had always been at night; here we were dealing with a
bloody awesome biblical multitude, and without a loaf or fish between us.
Then, at the very moment that my legs and stomach had decided to turn into
jelly, Paul Rudolph, who very rarely spoke to the crowd, turned from
plugging in his Fender and adjusting his boxes and leaned into the
microphone. "Now we're going to have a little fun." The response was a ragged cheer. They'd had the rabble rousing from the Broughtons, pastoral psychedelics from Quintessence, Soft Machine would be giving them class – we were expected to bring the anarchic fun to the party. The fact that the normally reticent Rudolph had made the move also completely changed the dynamics. It was no longer me, it was us. Despite the terminal internal angst, we were suddenly a unit again. We could come solidly together for one last careless rapture. ALL THE HELP WE COULD GET At various points on their journey to enlightenment, a band needs a friend, a patron, and despite The Deviants' generally mean and filthy demeanour, we actually locked into more than our fair share of boosters. One of the first was Jack Braceland who, along with Mark Boyle, had created the first light-shows for The Pink Floyd back in the formative All Saints Hall days. Jack had converted a basement ex-strip club and shebeen at 44 Gerrard Street in darkest Soho into a psychedelic club and named it Happening 44, and during the time that Joe Boyd wasn't having us at UFO, Jack offered us a residency on Saturday nights. Happening 44 was one of the weirdest hippy dungeons anywhere. The back room was filled with cans of ancient porn loops and bits of bondage |
hardware that were now and again dragged out to be part of the show. Serious
gangsters of the Richardson family in camel-hair coats would shoulder their way down the stairs
thinking the gaff was still a late-night drinker. Fortunately a bottle was
always at hand to keep them happy. I recall getting very drunk with Eric
Burdon, who mumbled that The Deviants were the shape of things to come.
Another time, John Mayall inexplicably stopped by to show off his
hand-carved Laurel Canyon guitar. Of all who stumbled into Happening 44 by
mistake, we were most pleased to see the strippers from the other clubs
who'd sometimes shake it with the band in stockings and G-string like
their equivalent of sitting in. Maybe the most influential characters to aid The Deviants in their rise to notoriety were Phil May and The Pretty Things. I'm not sure why Phil initially semed to take such a liking to us. Maybe he was present at the Speakeasy the night we inflicted audio class war on the trendies by performing our 15-minute dirgelike reading of Dylan's The Ballad Of Hollis Brown, or maybe he just sussed us as kindred spirits. Whatever, an alliance was formed and we started being booked round the country as one of the most mayhem-prone double bills ever to grace a stage, often with Steve Took, Viv Prince and even Legs Larry Smith in additional attendance. A new venue, a new outrage: Twink pelting the crowd with eggs at Chelsea College, madness in Parliament Hill Fields, a scrubber orgy in the top balcony of Newcastle City Hall while Pink Floyd closed the show, and all the while the redoubtable Boss Goodman attempted to keep the gear functioning, preparing for the percussion uprising that was inevitable when some jobsworth pulled the plugs. Those shows with The Pretty Things were close to life savers at times, something to look forward to when the drudgery of the road torpedoed our spirits, and hangover, cold, exhaustion, the need to get laid or just cop some mandies and go to sleep made one more round of the hoarse and ragged vitriol snarl nothing more than an unwelcome chore at the end of a 200-mile drive. Or those funny-afterwards but catastrophic-at-the-time mishaps, as when The Deviants and the early Led Zeppelin cowered in the dressing room at Exeter Town Hall while a hundred homophobic farm boys tried to beat down the door and lynch us for the length of our hair. |
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Another cat who provided us a great deal of moral
support when we needed it was the late lamented Howard Parker, commonly known as
H. While he was guitar roadie for Jimi Hendrix, H always made sure that we got
as close to the man as possible without actually squatting on the stage. Later,
when H was DJ at the Speakeasy, he first turned me onto The MC5's Kick Out
The Jams, demonstrating that, even though they were more proficient than The
Deviants, they were running on the same rails. Later he'd play me The Stooges;
then I knew we weren't alone. WHEN THE FUN BEGINS A dark-haired young woman, bombed as Hiroshima, and baring most of herself in something negligée-like, was suddenly beside me, shaking her stuff, intent on exhibiting her breasts and more to the assembled throng. I was more than happy to dance with her during one or more of Paul Rudolph's interminable guitar solos, but the bikers hustled her away as though she had defiled the sacred stage of rock 'n' roll, or maybe simply to have her for themselves. Later, while in post-gig carouse at the Speakeasy, the early editions of the Sunday papers came and I discovered that she and I were on the cover of the News Of The World. Another 15 minutes of bogus fame.
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Although many of the hippy elite were highly dismissive of them at the time
– and Altamont notwithstanding – the bikers played a crucial role that day
in the park. Thumbs in their belts, doing their head ducking, shoulder-jerking
ritual dance, they, plus a crew of European gay guys who had maybe taken our
name too literally, generated that first shot of Reichian energy that Rudolph
had promised. In appreciation, and as a nod to the London Angels' 59 Club/Billy
Fury roots, we played our deformed version of Buddy Holly's Midnight Shift,
about the girlfriend who takes up hooking. |
