The Softback Version of this Essential Reading Book.

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Product Description

Through a long and chequered career, Mick Farren has functioned as a writer, poet, rock star, recording artist, rabble-rouser, critic and commentator, and even won a protracted obscenity trial at the Old Bailey. After resisting the idea for a long time, he has finally written his own highly personal and insightful account of the British counterculture in the 1960s and '70s, from the perspective of one who was right there in the thick of it. With a continuing and unashamed commitment to the tradition of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, he recounts a rollercoaster odyssey - sometimes violent and often hilarious - from early beatnik adventures in Ladbroke Grove, through the flowering hippies to the snarl of punk. He gives a firsthand, insider's account of the chaos, disorder and raging excess of those two highly excessive decades. At the centre of the book is Farren's career in the underground, as the man on the door at the UFO club, driving spirit at IT and, of course, lead singer with the Social Deviants. He describes his encounters with the celebrated and the notorious, who range from Jimi Hendrix and Germaine Greer to Julie Burchill and Sid Vicious, and concludes that the pop history of bohemian culture does not neatly divide itself into easy decades, but continues to this day, perhaps in different guises, but frequently with the same goals and motivations.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105489 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"In some quarters, I was regarded as a highly suspect, self-publicising egomaniac." There is little in Give the Anarchist a Cigarette--a self-aggrandising but hugely entertaining memoir--that would lead you to form any other opinion of Mick Farren. His unabashed egotism is present on every. Farren, who ran the door at the now legendary psychedelic club UFO and worked on the underground paper International Times--even successfully defending it against an obscenity charge--was a key figure in London's 60s and 70s counter-culture scene. In an era not known for restraint, he imbibed extraordinary quantities of drink and drugs and generally indulged in the kind of sexual gymnastics that now carry severe health warnings. Former lovers included Germaine Greer and Julie Burchill. His band, The Deviants, were, as he rather tirelessly points out, punk years before the Sex Pistols. They played Hyde Park, toured with the Pretty Things and a fledgling Led Zeppelin and cut a series of influential albums. As flower power gave way to the three-day week Farren concentrated on writing, working for the New Musical Express and penning a series of fantasy novels--the latter he informs us are now regarded by one critic as the "definite forerunners" of cyberpunk fiction. Assessments of his own contribution to contemporary culture may be inflated but Farren's candid, amusing and intelligent book offers a vivid and insightful portrait of rock & roll's finest decades.--Travis Elborough

About the Author
Now in his early fifties, Mick Farren currently lives in Los Angeles. With some twenty books to his credit, plus a number of film and TV scripts and a wealth of journalism, his written output remains prodigious. He also still records and performs, and a recent tour of Japan with his band, the Deviants, culminated in the live CD Barbarian Princess. His most recent novel, Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, was published in the US in 2000.

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Customer Reviews

Counterculture Hooray
A hugely enjoyable memoir of the 60's and 70's. You get an idea of how colourful Mick Farren's early career (as a musician, journalist and agitator) was by looking at the his own entry in the index: ''at House of the Chinese Landlord, 3, 5-13... selling clockwork jumping dogs, 5... transvestite gunfighter period, 65... running door at UFO, 77-83... meets Jimmy Hendrix, 97-8... oral sex at Roundhouse, 100-1, 103... police work over, 134... Great Nitrous Oxide Heist, 320-2... Synaptic Manhunt, 354... affair with Julie Burchill, 368-70...' He tells some wonderful anecdotes, like the one about a gang of grunting bikers getting into a hippie club with the intention of beating up some 'freaks', but getting seduced by a crack team of peace-keeping flower-goddesses before they'd thrown a single punch. It's amazing how easy it seems to have been back then to put together a band, record an album, start a club, publish a newspaper, or organize a rock festival, on a whim. I've never read a better evocation of the era.

Hilarious Anecdotes
This book is nothing like I expected it to be. The hippy counter-culture subject matter of the book provides perfect material for a skilled raconteur such as Mick Farren. If you can relate to the subject matter and enjoy listening to somebody who can tell a good story then this book will make you laugh.

Wreckless
Farren is at his best when recounting stories that are not directly about himself - like first seeing Dylan or Jimi Hendrix in concert, or attending the IT launch at the Roundhouse, or the Technicolor Dream in '67. In his colourful and descriptive, often humorous style, he imparts a sense of having been present at delicious moments in cultural history. Unfortunately this only fills about 10% of his book. The other 90% comprises his opinions, judgements, contradictions and stories about his band - all presented in a macho aggressive style that appears to mask a deep insecurity. (He is at his most likeable when he comes close to acknowledging this). That he is still edgily re-justifying actions he took 35 years ago suggests that deep down he isn't really sure about the value of what he's done at all. Ultimately his drunken, out-of-it, often plain wreckless 60's and 70's deeds, and the gung-ho re-telling of them, position him not as counterculture agent du change, but as spiritual godfather to that most questionable of cultural movements : laddism.