If you gotta go, go now… or else you got to stay all night. Mick Farren was a lifelong writer in a full spectrum of disciplines and a former political activist who became a living banner for the psychedelic left, but fundamentally he was a performer at heart. Late in life, he reunited his 60s cult band The Deviants and returned to the stage, as much his true home as the writer’s chair he occupied for the previous four decades or so. Only weeks away from what would have been his 70th birthday, he died a true performer’s death: on the stage of a crowded club on a Saturday night with applause still ringing in his ears. I almost went to that show. I’m glad I didn’t, and was spared seeing a friend for more than forty years die before my eyes.
Charles Shaar Murray, “Goodbye, Mick Farren, activist, rabble-rousing rocker and NME journalist” (The Guardian)
cf. “Memories of Mick” by Suzy Shaw at Bomp!‘
And here’s a classic Kate Simon picture of Farren and Bangs.
RockCritics.com 