Give the Anarchist a Cigarette

by Mick Farren

  As the Angels ‘protected’ us, we found that a crowd formed, pushing forward for a look, which in turn caused the Angels, who had been well bored up to this point, to push back. The long, narrow scrum escalated until we found ourselves moving on a cleared path, between two flanking lines of motorcyclists, straight to the artists’ beer tent, with a curious mob looking on. I think I saw Robert Wyatt ruefully shaking his head. He knew what we were up to. It was the best display of backstage swashbuckling they were going to get that day.

  ‘Ready in ten minutes, okay?’

  By this point I’d been handed joints and beers, and much of the public-execution fantasy had abated. It was time for nerves and business: 70,000 people were out there, stretching all the way to the trees, but stagefright had to be put on hold while we defined our objectives. In Hyde Park the only one we had to worry about was the Edgar Broughton Band. The Soft Machine were topping the bill, and that was their righteous place. Pink Floyd might be heading for the stadia of the USA, but the Softs had more respect than you could load into a freight train. A band called Quintessence, as far as we could tell, were from Narnia, so hardly relevant. The target for the day was the Edgar Broughton Band.

  The Broughton Band had an easy crowd-pleaser in ‘Out Demons Out’, a mantric call and response, originally conceived by Allen Ginsberg and the Fugs as a magical means of halting the war in Vietnam by raising the Pentagon ten feet in the air. (Some claim the Pentagon did rise, but so briefly and suddenly that nobody noticed.) Edgar had taken this beatnik performance piece and totally rocked it into a psychedelic soccer chant that could have every malcontent boggie in Christendom up and roaring his lungs out. Since we didn’t stoop to community singing, we had to prevail by sheer raucous determination.

  By the luck of the draw, Edgar had gone on first and we knew the furore level we had to top. As we climbed the thirteen steps to the scaffold (the public-execution fixation had not totally gone away) we discovered that we were benefiting from another piece of luck. The setting sun, still some way above the trees on the horizon, was directly in our faces. It was at exactly the right angle for us to cast long gunfighter shadows and generally come on hyper-dramatic, standing proud against the light that would all too soon fail. Not only were we working in a golden sun-haze, but looking pretty cool that day in assorted lace, leather and velvet, and with Russell as close to being in drag as he could get without actually wearing a dress. Suddenly the peaks were breaking in our favour.

  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 on its feet and doing the dirty boogie? We had played other largish festivals, but they had been at night, when the stage was the brightly illuminated focal point and the crowd was little more than indistinct, almost abstract shapes, in the outer darkness. Here, in broad daylight, it was a bloody awesome biblical multitude, and us without a loaf or a fish. Rudolph, who very rarely spoke directly 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 rabble-rousing from the Broughtons, pastoral psychedelics from Quintessence, and the Soft Machine would be giving them class, so we were expected to bring the anarchic fun to the party. That the normally reticent Rudolph had made the move also changed the dynamics. It was no longer me – it was us. Despite all the angst, we were suddenly a unit again. I guess, with the subconscious knowledge that Hank Williams’ Lost Highway was no longer stretching to infinity in front of us, it meant that we could come solidly together for a last epic stand. Boss said it was the best that line-up ever played, and I believe him.

  A dark-haired young woman, bombed as Hiroshima, baring most of herself in something negligée-like, sheer and revealing, was suddenly beside me, shaking her stuff, intent on exhibiting her breasts – and more – to the assembled throng. I was happy to dance with her during a Rudolph solo, but the bikers weren’t having any and hustled her away as though she had defiled the sacred stage of rock & 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 arrived and she and I had our picture right there on the cover of the News of the World. This was really the icing on the cake. Got you, Germaine. Front page. Another fifteen minutes of bogus fame. My cup literally ranneth over, spilling Jack Daniels all over my leather jeans.

  Thumbs in their belts, doing their head ducking, shoulder jerking, ritual dance, the bikers, plus a crew of radical European gay guys who had maybe taken our name a little too literally, played a crucial role that day in the park, generating the first shot of Reichian energy. As a nod to the London Angels’ Billy Fury roots, we played our deformed version of Buddy Holly’s ‘Midnight Shift’ about the girlfriend who takes up hooking. By this point the power was palpable, better than any drug I’d ever taken, moving back and out, spreading from Loser, Gnasher and Nasty Pete in their studs and Nazi regalia to the main body of the crowd, only to be remetabolised and quantum-looped back to us, pushing us to greater efforts. We were winning, we were fucking winning! Vindicated – and it was wonderful. This was why we did it!

  Weird Scenes on Chemical Row

  I was sitting on a washed-up, sand-scoured log, on another beach, looking at another night-fog-shrouded sea. This time it was Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, Canada, and the sea was the Pacific Ocean. I was out of the band, 7,000 miles from home, hallucinating out of my mind on acid and about as low as a man could go. The other three weasels had finally found the courage to stage their coup d’état, but they’d waited until I was far as possible from any support; even then, the miserable bastards had been scurrying around having secret meetings in laundromats for days, before they came right out and faced me. In all fairness, I was no innocent victim, but I did feel that more humane tactics could have been employed. To get me that far from home and drive me three parts mad, before hammering in the stake, still strikes me as cruel and unusual, not to say a trifle excessive. You’d think I was actually formidable.

  That all in the New World was not as Jamie had advertised became apparent immediately we cleared customs after the long Air Canada flight. The old DC9 had been almost empty, and we’d behaved like flash little rock stars, hitting the booze cart and flirting with the cabin attendants. We came down to earth, however, with a unique and vengeful bump. We hadn’t expected a limousine, but the stinking, beat-up van waiting to collect us could only be looked upon as a disheartening omen. And indeed it was. I was in North America, the place I’d always wanted to be, sitting on a plastic milk crate, unable to see a damned thing in the back of the closed and lurching van. The van conveyed us to the next unpleasant surprise. The contract had guaranteed us a hotel, but had not specified the quality. I’ve always had a taste for old and funky wino hotels, but this fleabag, hard up against the Canadian Pacific freight yards, was beneath even my tolerance of rough urban charm. Later, by way of conscious revenge, I managed to set fire to the bed in one of the shared rooms and actually got us thrown out of this palace of derelicts, Thunderbird Wine and vomit.

  Jetlagged and awake a little after dawn, I exited the flophouse and breakfasted on pancakes and sausage in a greasy spoon full of marginal Charlie Bukowski characters. This first American meal left me in no doubt that we had landed in the heart of skid row. As I poured the maple syrup, I reflected with a certain grim satisfaction that no one could hold me responsible for this fine mess. Vancouver was Jamie’s and Rudolph’s turf, so they could field the shit when it hit the fan. For a while things did improve. An actual car showed up to take us to a radio interview and a morning-show promo spot on a local TV station. Although a battered, fifteen-year-old Chevy, it wasn’t t
he stinking van of the night before. On the street, in downtown Vancouver, we also found that we cut a high-profile swathe in our London lace, leather and velvet.

  ‘Hey, are you a group?’

  ‘Damned right we are.’

  We also found that attractive young women made excuses to talk to us. In a town where most of the male hipsters dressed like Davy Crockett, we constituted an exotic diversion, and during our less than happy stay in the city we shamelessly made the most of it.

  At the radio station we picked up one more disturbing titbit of information. The joint where we were booked to play, the Old Colonial Music Hall, had been closed for some years and we were to spearhead the re-opening. We were going into a place with no regular audience – in other words, a completely unknown quantity. The next stop was the venue itself, to check out the equipment and do a soundcheck/rehearsal. The place smelled of mildew, mummified rodents and other things we didn’t care to identify, and looked as if it had been boarded up since the Klondike Gold Rush. I know all our hearts sank, but Russell was the first to act out our collective disappointment. As we started into the try-out song, no drumming materialised. Russell sat immobile. ‘I hate this fucking tune.’

  I think that was the moment I caved in. Fuck the tantrums. I wasn’t going to roll this bloody adventure uphill. Of the three nights we played at the Old Colonial Music Hall, the first was sober, shaky and tentatively attended, the second uninspiring, and by the third – which was actually quite well attended – I went into revolt and decided the audience needed setting straight. We hadn’t come all this way to play any Pacific Northwest boogie in this mould-encrusted, one-time burlesque house. This was British amphetamine psychosis music and, if they didn’t like it, they could fuck off and listen to their Iron Butterfly albums. An enthusiastic cheer came from one quarter. It’s funny how attack can, in some situations, be the best means of gaining respect. And then I howled. Free association, non-verbal, veins in the forehead pumping, arms threatening, all the way to primal drooling, and I loved – yes, I loved – every minute of it. A total abrogation of responsibility, and the fracturing of the few rules that remained. So Russell was tired of playing this fucking song: fuck him, and fuck Rudolph and his fuzz-box expertise; and fuck the Robert Plant bel canto that everyone thought was so fucking cool. Free at last, free at last, great God Almighty, I had mastered at least partial synaptic disengagement. Admittedly I was playing to the segment who’d cheered, and they were eating it up, but they were only a minority and the rest of the spectators were looking appalled, but you can’t win them all, right? The ones who knew, really knew. They were actually seeing a human being in neural disintegration, right onstage, without hesitation and shame. Now how often do you see that, neighbours?

  At the party that followed, a guy handed me a pint of Canadian Club and started telling me about a dude called Alice Cooper who was playing clubs up along the US/Canadian border. Seemingly this Alice wore net stockings and corsets and bit the heads off chickens as part of his act. The guy with the Canadian Club seemed to think we should go out together as a double-bill. At least someone had the right idea. On the other hand, others were looking at me as though I might be in need of some restraint, and I believe Rudolph, Sandy and Russell were among them. When I caught them doing it, I treated them to a stare both mad-eyed and enigmatic. I didn’t know at the time that their sole topic of conversation was how exactly to throw Mick out of his own band. What also didn’t occur to me was that this new, mad cunning of mine might not be overly healthy. I was firmly convinced that the state of mind I’d entered was only a dramatic persona, a precursor of Aladdin Sane. It never dawned on me that I might actually be going out of my mind.

  In the cold light of the next day a number of highly disturbing pieces of news reached us. Jamie had unexpectedly flown in the night before, and now he revealed the true depth of the shit. It’s hard to be crazy early in the morning, so I just listened like the others, in the same stunned silence. As we had pretty much figured, the promoter was refusing to pay, claiming he hadn’t sold enough tickets, blah, blah, blah. Promoters have a million ways to explain how they’ve fucked you, but now won’t buy you dinner. Bottom line, this meant that we had no hotel, which was absolutely no loss. We also had no money, except what was in our pockets, and that was nothing short of a disaster. We were broke in Canada, which was about the worst-case scenario, but we also had no money to wire back to pay the rent owed on 212. And we discovered that Jamie had settled for some jive-arse discount return air tickets that had expired before we’d even finished sleeping off the gig and the party.

  I should probably have murdered Ace on the spot, but I was down-and-zombie, mentally immobile, and in no condition to sort out this mess. Jamie could carry the weight. He could organise the only course of action left to us. He could call Seymour Stein in New York, grovel for some survival chump change and find out what we were supposed to do next. As far as taking care of business was concerned, I was out of there. Call me a cab. I was going to get drunk and stay drunk until someone told me, simply and without any long words, what I was supposed to do. From that point on Jamie would attempt to buttonhole me for conspiratorial business discussions, but all I could do was stare at him in glazed horror. I believe he did raise some pittance from the record label, and Seymour told him to sit tight for a few days. He was going to LA and then he’d fly up to Vancouver and sort us out. That much I grasped, but mainly I stared, glazed and uncomprehending, wondering when someone would finally realise that I was emotionally tapped out and had nothing more to contribute.

  Or maybe, to be more precise, I had nothing more to contribute to one wretched, graceless and disobliging rock & roll band. It took me about one cab ride to find a bunch of folks who were more than happy to accept my bullshit, and even feed me booze and drugs to hear more of it. I was cashing in my underground credentials and playing the traditional role of the traveller from another land with tall tales to tell. Thank God for groupies and dopefiends, and one notorious street behind a hippie strip of bars, headshops, poster stores and wholefood emporia, known to hippies all over the city and to the RCMP narcs as Chemical Row. Chemical Row was two blocks of run-down, psychedelic-painted frame houses where freaks called to you from the front porch to join them in a bong. Hot damn, I fell for Chemical Row like an albino alligator falls for a sewer. From Chemical Row, bikers took me to bars where my money was no good and a guy who looked like Lee Marvin cut out lines of crystal meth with a buck knife. Robert Crumb blondes in short shorts and Patsy Cline boots gave me a Valium or half a ’lude, hooked me up to the water pipe and had sex with me, which in my state could take for ever and further enhanced my rep as an obliging afternoon caller. For all practical purposes, I became a bouncing-ball basketcase in black velvet and sunglasses, passed from hand to hand, and place to place, a creature lacking will or self-determination. I knew, if you attempted this as a way of life, that your welcome would quickly wear thin, but for the few days it lasted, it was better than Disneyland.

  All went well as long as I stayed away from the rest of the band and they stayed away from me, although we were all denizens of the Chemical Row theme park, so avoiding them altogether was impossible. We kept crossing paths and running into each other and, in public, we had to behave like the best of mates. Even that kind of worked. I mean, I didn’t hate these guys. I was just burned-out on listening to them. Then Boss delivered the word that the band was going to do something. What exactly doing something constituted was a mystery to me, and I made sure it remained so until well after it was over. Boss claims the night in question was the first time I took on a full load of acid. I tend to disagree, for I think what was going on that night had more to do with nerve gas than true psychedelics.

  As far as I can figure out, we arrived at some kind of recording studio with dim lights, Moog synthesisers and other stuff I hadn’t a clue how to work. Equipment had been set up, and it looked uncomfortably like we were expected to play. My memory is of swayi
ng and blinking. ‘Play for what?’ It wasn’t a gig and it didn’t seem like a party. Just a group of affluent-looking hippies in beaded buckskin jackets, with the judgemental air of local counterculture movers and shakers. Why the hell were we playing for these people? Was it some sort of audition? If so, what for? Or were we giving some private show for the city’s elite, and what the hell were we doing anything as humiliating as that for? Were we men or performing monkeys? One guy even reminded me of Joe Boyd, and the vibe was of some kind of trial by rock & roll.

  Russell got behind the drums, Rudolph and Sandy strapped on their instruments and they launched into some spineless funk-shuffle. (By this point I’m operating on totally subjective recall, so what I think was happening and what was really happening may be extremely divergent. Once again I wish I had the tape.) I remember staring at a microphone like it was a live cobra. Paralysed by fear, the monkey was unable to perform, but pretty soon I ceased to be a primate or even mammalian. I was down with the limbic reptile. I opened my scaly phaser ports and fired at will. I commenced raising Lucifer and talking in the tongues of Ancient Evil. An infernal monologue with the reverb of Cthulhu, monstrously atonal and probably unintelligible, and I knew it was reaching the desired depths because, out there, the hippie elite was looking dismayed, disgusted and, I flatter myself, maybe even frightened. The music faltered to a stop and the damned band had the utter gall to look embarrassed. Don’t be embarrassed on my account, you bastards. I’m Mick fucking Farren and, like it or not, we are still the Deviants, and if I decide to do it, it has validity, no matter what a bunch of provincial dope dealers and media hustlers might think. It can be a primal fucking scream, and it’s still art. Ask Yoko. I’ve pissed off better than them.