History of the world part two

THE PINK FAIRIES

Vancouver 1969. Mick Farren has been evicted from his own band The Deviants and gone home to London to de-tox and then start recording his solo Lp Mona-The Carnivorous Circus (Transatlantic) while re-toxing with all possible haste (proving that the adage “more haste less speed” is a heinous lie!). The remaining Deviants Paul ‘Blackie’ Rudolph, Russell Hunter, Duncan ‘Sandy’ Sanderson and roadie Dave'Boss'Goodman slowly made their way to San Francisco as a three-piece while Farren linked up with a bunch of itinerant London musos centred around the Speakeasy Club and underground ‘paper IT. Notable bods in this social sphere sometimes included Syd Barrett, often various Pretty Things and others working out of the Blackhill Ents Agency, particularly Steve Peregrine Took who had just been kicked out of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Twink (John Charles Alder) who had left the Pretty Things after helping out on the SF Sorrow LP and various film projects (What’s Good For The Goose with Norman Wisdom for example). The nickname Twink came about during his stint with Colchester R&B bad The Fairies - his curly locks prompted one fan to send him a sachet of a hair curling lotion called.... Twink; how’s that for obscure facts eh? Previously, while drumming for Dane Stephens & The Deepbeats, Alder had gone under the apt moniker of Johnny Flash.

Back to ‘69 and Deviants manager Jamie Mandelkau’s in London and has written a short story concerning some fictional hobbit types called Pink Fairies, loosely based on the friends around him, so when someone asked Farren what he was doing he came up with the answer “The Pink Fairies Motorcycle Club and All Star Rock N Roll Band” basically as a joke. The joke however did coalesce into a drinking club of sorts that included up to around fifty people, centred on the Speak and having a nucleus of the three neer-do-wells Farren Took and Twink. When King Crimson made their London debut at the club they were startled to find their set aided and abetted by stage invaders wearing pink velvet jackets and, in the case of Twink, yelling for “Nadine” (the Chuck Berry song) every time they played a quiet passage. This, and a number of other ‘shout-ins’ sometimes ‘backed’ by Little Free Rock (signed to Transatlantic) were the only performances in the Capital by the original Pink Fairies. There was also an ill-starred trip to Manchester University where the hapless trio, abetted but hardly aided, by Twinks girlfriend Silva Darling on keyboards (which she couldn’t play - she is the young cutey on the back of Think Pink) “played” a set in front of several hundred confused students. Took recalled the event thus: “ I played bass Mick shouted political slogans at the audience and Twink left off playing the drums to stand in the middle of the hall farting in students faces”.

Realising that such a set up had little commercial (or musical) future Twink set about negotiating with the three Deviants who were still in San Francisco, living at the Family Dog commune on Oak St and punctuating a brown rice n soya bean diet with highly nutritious mescaline and PCP (Angel Dust) as well as the odd blast of laughing gas (Nitrous Oxide) which they had discovered in Jerry Garcia’s dressing room at the Filmore West while lending moral support to fellow Brit Stevie Marriot’s Humble Pie. Twink’s appropriation of the Pink Fairies name at this time was one factor which led to a major falling out with Mick Farren, a situation that has not changed to this day (gossip gossip - I will try not to get too personal in this history but this is common knowledge so I am not exactly in the “shock horror” stakes so far... mind you when you get onto the story of the blood on the ceiling - other band members this time - or the vanishing of Maura Wrenchanchor, infamous “Chambermaid”, it is often wiser not to dig too deeply)

Funded by some well paid gigs up north in Seattle’s Trolley Club the four Devies finally arrived home to the UK where decimalisation had since taken place - Russell Hunter recalls Boss Goodman being given a 50p bit instead of a ten bob note and becoming “apoplectic”. Russell believes that Twink had actually only intended Sandy and Paul to become, along with him, the new Pink Fairies, but couldn’t get rid of him (Russell, then often known as Russ) and having seen the Dreadful Grate - uh, sorry, the Grateful Dead, I do love ‘em honest - it was decided that two drummers really were better than one, plus it freed Twink to get up and vocalize on such numbers as Do It! and the Jefferson Airplane’s 3/5 Mile in 10 Seconds while Russell beat the meats. Officially the first Pink Fairies gig took place at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, a wonderful round building previously used as a repair shop and terminus for steam trains and infamous as a hippy venue, in fact the very first PF gig occurred in a flooded basement club in Soho but the Roundhouse, where they were billed as “The Electric Pink Fairies” , was their real “coming out” so to speak. The chemistry (in all senses of the word!) could hardly have been better and with Boss on the sound desk they were quite simply the only real “peoples band” in London (most of Hawkwind being out-of-towners not yr actual City Kids) That first set included numbers from Twink’s Think Pink LP such as 10,000 Words in a cardboard box and a smattering of covers.

The record industry of the time was in a state of confusion. Psychedelic pop music had proved to be a passing fad, the Stones had re-emerged with Jumping Jack Flash and fresh aggression was in the air. Labels desperate not to miss out were signing “underground” bands willy nilly in a “see what sticks” fashion. Unfortunately the PF’s chose not to sign with Island (who would have been a much better choice) but accepted an offer from Polydor, home of James Last and other such icons of the revolution. Think Pink was licensed from Seymour Steins Sire records in the States and put out as a budget release on Polydor as a sly introduction to the Pink Fairies. Stein was the total opposite of Polydor - Peter Perrett of the Only Ones recalls an evening where he introduced Stein to the concept of “Hot Knives” when you burn hashish between red hot blades and suck in the smoke, Stein collapsed unconscious on the floor and Perrett immediately signed up! Polydor however didn’t know how to cope with four very hairy stoned anarchists who maybe on the lam from sundry cops and immigration officials (Paul Rudolph was facing a deportation order and the Maida Vale flat he shared with Farren and Boss had been raided by the Bomb Squad because Farren had published letters from the Angry Brigade in IT - they found a lump of lebanese hashish in Rudolph’s sock and gave it back!) and so Polydor demanded that the band get a manager as a go-between. Jamie Mandelkau came and went and was finally replaced with

a variety of assholes all of whom apparently took the money and ran, leaving our boys with little more than loose change (read back issues of UHCK for the sordid details and the story of the pretty pink piglet who was hired from a farm in Kent and then left in a certain Robert Orbach’s garage to shit all over the Mercedes in revenge for his theft of Fairy Funds. Finally a studio was booked and the band went in to record a single. Paul Rudolph’s riff had evolved into “The Snake” which he also “sang” with enormous gusto. The other side of the single, written in good friend Joly’s car on the way to the studio, was sung by author Twink and was inspired by John and Yoko’s apparent apathy when they were asked to write a song for some real rock n roll anarchists instead of rich hippy playboys/girls. Named after Yippie (later Yuppie) Jerry Rubin’s puerile book “Do It!” became one of the PF’s best loved songs. Wrapped in a paper poster sleeve the single is now a real collectors item and very hard to find but it rocks like a motherfucker. To accompany it’s release Polydor paid for the band to go on the set of the movie “Oliver” and make a 16mm promotional film. Never shown in public this is one of those “holy grail” type artifacts that UHCK is dedicated to uncovering. To boldly stagger where no sane person has ever stumbled be...be.. beam eye baybee.

The single was a success in musical terms, representing the band well although their true home was the stage, but the LP which followed was less well recieved. Many of us, myself included, really do love it dearly and still listen to it 30 yrs on, but contemporary reviews are mostly unanimous in their dissapointment - it wasn’t NOISY enough, several of the tracks reflected the more hippy-trippy moments of Think Pink and the production (by blues archivist Neil Slaven) was very low key. The album certainly has it’s moments but for those who had seen the band in full flow live on stages outside festival gates or in seedy converted strip clubs it was a real let down and didn’t represent the live set at all - where was 3/5 mile? where was Tomorrow Never Knows? Where was Walk Don’t Run (that would have to wait for the next LP). Originally pressed in red vinyl the first issue had a plastic outer sleeve with blue print which partially obscured the inner sleeve in a 3D effect. The actual poster sleeve opened out to show on one side a bunch of pixy/fairy types sitting on a planet smoking a pipe (the standard sleeve picture without the text) and on the other similar creatures climbing a tree against a vivid pink backdrop. Unfortunately the pink vinyl caused terrible surface noise and the issue was swiftly withdrawn. Boss Goodman surely rues the fact that he gave away around one hundred of these - they are now worth an absolute fortune. Polydor withdrew the rest, melted them down and used the vinyl to press up the first edition of Jimi Hendrix posthumous “Cry Of Love” LP (also extremely valuable in its coloured state). The inner sleeve housing the actual disc was a yellow bag with a picture taken in Kew Gardens of five faces peering through a bush (the fifth face being Bosso). Later editions dropped both the 3D sleeve, poster cover and the inner bag - thirty years later so far only one Japanese CD version, long deleted, has been issued: a criminal oversight by a company apparently staffed by morons, thieves, and the kind of so-called people for whom music is just a ringin’ Till.

Around this time the band linked forces with Ronan O’Reilly (or Rahilly according to some) who was the brains behind Radio Caroline and later managed the last throes of the MC5. He paid for the band to go into a studio in Fulham where they played a full set for the benefit of the cameras - again this unique film is apparently lost but would make any Fairy- fiend orgasmically happy should it ever re-surface. The four piece Pink Fairies, who had made up with Mick Farren by this time, became virtually the IT house band and were also closely linked with Frendz - another underground paper from the top end of the Portobello Road whose graphics department was run by the late very very talented Barney Bubbles. BB became designer by appointment to Hawkwind (it is worth noting that Frendz ran a piece about the PF’s one week calling it Kosmik Rock n Roll and followed it with a piece the next issue on H’Wind which was perhaps the first time the loathsome term “Space Rock” was used - certainly Twink believes this to be true - and those “nosser hippes” (to quote Boss G) became running partners with the PF’s. They toured together, did club gigs together, protested against lots of very right on causes together, they made a fine team.

Saturdays and Sundays under the Westway running over the Portobello Road just over from Ladbroke Grove tube station by the green would frequently be enlivened that summer of ‘70 with the sound of the Fairies and Hawkwind creating merry hell with their over-amplified speed pot acid pcp and mandrax fuelled musical mayhem. (a 1987 interview in the NME had Twink claiming that the PF’s had little to do with drugs - Russell immediately disagreed and I have to concur, to us fans drugs were central to the whole concept of the PF’s, in fact I blame them for my own ‘problems’ which have endured almost 30 years!!! ho ho ho) A notable column in OZ magazine at the time written by Germaine Greer before the cocktail set got her gives fine insight into the mood of the times (see archive section of this site). Out of the two bands frequent gigs together a third unit known as Pinkwind evolved which was an assortment of whichever band members were still standing having a “jam” - a polite way of saying “making a fucking outrageous racket and stretching the concept of audience tolerance to new extremes”. A rather lamentable new Pinkwind was put together by Nik Turner and Twink in the early 90s but had very very little in common with the old unit beyond a certain musical incompetence, certainly that is the stated view of one of the main guitarists who is a close friend of mine so I’m not just being snide, the original concept was a whole lotta fun, the 90s version only had the two original members and really wasn’t up to scratch. During this period the two bands would sometimes switch members, Twink playing a two string guitar on one occassion in place of Dave Brock in Cambridge and drumming on several other gigs. Another prodigal was Steve Took who I saw playing in Sandy’s place at one gig and who played the Westway afternoons several times, once in tandem with Sandy on 2nd guitar.

One person who will be making many appearances in this story later was also to be seen hanging around the IT offices at this time and indeed had earlier noticed a drunken trio of loonies in pink velvet jackets dancing to his band at the Speakeasy. The band was the Entire Sioux Nation and the gentleman I refer to is one Larry Wallis - dubbed by IT artist Edward Barker “King Of The Wah-Wah Guitar”. Steve Took was not a full time Fairy but when capable still pursued musical avenues one of which was the legendary Shagrat, so named in deference to Took’s Tolkien fixation - he’d also appeared on Farren’s Mona LP as Shagrat The Vagrant and once said he was the human equivalent of a river rat (and actually owned a pet rat called Charlie after it’s main diet of cocaine). Although they only actually played one gig - the Phun City festival in Worthing of which more anon - they made a number of fine recordings some of which surfaced on the specially formed Shagrat label ten years after Took’s untimely death by cherry. Larry Wallis was Shagrats guitar player during their brief but hectic life, the band saw a number of incarnations with Took and Wallis the only two constants. It is often thought that Took played guitar too but in fact he would normally play bass - as they only did the one gig (despite being advertised elsewhere several times) it is unsurprising that confusion arises, in fact confusion could well be the Pink Fairies families middle name.

The Underground press in the early 70s was not in too bad a shape all things considered - apart from a dubious paper shortage, both OZ and IT had good distribution and good sales (Enhanced in OZs case by ace street seller Felix Dennis, close friend of the Pink Fairies and rated each year in the Times newspapers’ list of the wealthiest people in the UK - he paid the bar tab at Edward Barker’s funeral wake which cannot have been cheap as we all drowned our respective sorrows). Out of IT sprang the UKs typically sedate equivalent to America’s White Panther Party

-something of a joke to those who saw the US version orchestrated by such figures as Jon Sinclair, manager of Detroit’s MC5 and currently one of the guys behind Alive/Energy Records who put out much of the recent Fairies & Deviants music, nonetheless the UK White Panthers - motto “Dope Rock N Roll and Fucking In The Streets - had IT as a proper gander (ho) machine and Mick Farren as one mouthpiece. The Isle Of Wight festival 1970, put on by the ‘weekend hippy’ dumbos known as the Farr Brothers whose descent into abusing thousands of people minutes after flashing peace signs was hilarious pathetic and symbolic, saw the Panthers at their peak. An issue of IT at the time said that they “brought their message to the streets through high energy rock n roll bands like the Pink Fairies’ and although in this case it was in a tent in a field the observation was certainly true. While Farren put together printed bulletins of the Undergrounds attempts to undermine the capitalist bullshit surrounding the festival, culminating in the Panthers, the Hells Angels ( led by Buttons, subject of a book by Mandelkau!) and a bunch of French Algerian anarchists tearing down the festival fences, the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind had taken charge of a large inflatable dome tent outside the main gates and were playing non-stop cosmic boogie for free and providing food and shelter to the many penniless hippies already ripped of by the evil brothers Farr. Although the Fairies left the island half way through the festival claiming they had to play a fete in Worthing (?) their presence had been crucial to the anarchic energy which brought home the bullshit of hippy capitalism in fine style. Pinkwind had played long and loud when other band members were too tripped out (Huw Lloyd Langton of H’Wind vanished for 3 years after the fest having taken too much lsd) and Nik Turner appeared on the cover of Vogue with his face painted silver (check the Hendrix set... “for the cat with the silver face” ... that’s Nik, and Hendrix was gonna jam with Pinkwind but thought he’d “spoil the vibes”, Twink had in fact jammed with Jimi twice in the past at UFO and at the Speakeasy). It was incidents like this, which was repeated at the Bath festival that featured Zeppelin and the Airplane and later at Weeley in Essex too - giving their music free in the face of pampered pop queens posing as rebels for big bucks - that really established the Pink Fairies as a peoples band. Twink had originally boldly declared that they would only play for free in the first 6 months, a policy not strictly adhered to but one which saw them perform dozens of benefits and consolidating their good name.

IT was in financial trouble (surely not???) and in a desperate effort to raise some readies Mick Farren and Boss Goodman had a brainwave: why not take horrible revenge on Farren’s childhood home town of Worthing by hiring some fields and putting on a festival of their own? A whole separate website is now devoted to Phun City but it cannot be overlooked here. Paul Rudolph described it as “the best party I’ve ever been to” and many Hells Angels, dope dealers, freaks and brethren would agree - even William Burroughs was there doing on the spot cut ups with his tape machine. Farren arranged for the MC5 to come over from the USA (they played their all time best UK show available now on CD) and among the myriad other bands were Steve Took’s Shagrat (first and only public appearance) and the Pink Fairies. In the end chaos reigned, the festival was declared free and nobody got paid (the only band to turn it down were Free!). In a fit of celebratory excess it was decided that the Fairies would live up to their name and play the set naked... in the event only Twink and Russell, the two drummers (and you know what they say about drummers!), actually stripped off although Sandy got his tits out, but it was a magic show, perhaps their best ever with this line-up (Boss votes for the Red Lion Fulham in the same period) and the event caused quite some stir in the media. The Pink Fairies were taking the Deviants ethos even further - total individual freedom, constant internal revolution. It sounds rather pompous now, after all we are only talking about a pop group, but the Fairies actually meant it - nobody is gonna turn down a dollar but the Pinks were not for sale in the normal sense, they had integrity see? Getting naked only confirmed their commitment and actually led to them

being asked to do it all over again so the pix could be used as the backdrop to a John Osbourne play.

With the album Never Never Land out and in the shops the band embarked on a tour that took them all over the UK and as far afield as Finland (where they joined Canned Heat in a Coke fuelled punch up with a bunch of Finnish caterers!). As the name spread - Twink in particular taking delight in spray painting the legend PINK FAIRIES FLY! in pink paint everywhere he went - the vibes got better and better. The Glastonbury festival of ‘71 should have been a real high point, and their set is captured on the triple LP that resulted, however despite having been crucial to the organising of the festival and having woken up most of the campers with a dawn chorus of the “Pink Fairies Marching Drum Band” (obvious what that was...) they were told at the last minute that there was not time to play. Are we not men? Boss and Co rapidly overtook the stage and the Pinks did perform. Most fans will know the LP, many including myself think it is a fantastic show but (and like all good butts it’s a biggun) due to the circumstances it was in fact a lacklustre show by their high standards and it is a shame that it is one of the few examples of this period that have been recorded.

Apart from Twink the other three had already played together for a couple of years as the Deviants with and without Farren, but when Twink (having according to legend sold the publishing rights to three separate companies in one lunchtime -note: this has been in print often before so please don’t get angry dude, I think it sounds hilarious -) ahem - when Twink suddenly up and left the band to go off to Morrocco they had no doubts that they were now the PFs and no longer the Devies. Twink’s reasons for leaving at this point are complex - he has stated that he was “on the run from the mafia” and that it was due to “an interest in local culture”. Fine... whatever the truth, it left a three piece Fairies and for some folks the golden age died then but I have to disagree. Any great band is bigger than the sum of its parts, none more so than the Pink Fairies. In UHCK 7 Russell Hunter outlined what he considered to be the criterion by which a group of musicians could rightfully claim the name and while fans may have their faves there is undoubtedly life in the band beyond the absence of any one member as the years have shown.

Back in Notting Hill fun was being had - Paul Kossoff, Chris Wood, Mick Taylor, Trevor Burton - just some of the names who chose to “jam” with the Pink Fairies during this period, sometimes on stage, more often privately. Paul Rudolph talked of adding a piano player (an odd idea when you think about it) or sax (equally odd) but in fact they remained a trio but for the reasonably frequent presence of Trevor Burton, ex Move and Balls who perfromed both on a radio session (In Concert with John Peel) and on two tracks from the next Pink Fairies LP “What A Bunch Of Sweeties” (Right On Fight On and Portobello Shuffle). Burton was a classy addition and could sing fab harmony but the PFs were never the ShangriLas and his style was only partly in keeping with the Fairy vibe. Perhaps Rudolph - whose technique had developed in the past three years to astounding heights of Hendrix style cozmikality (?) - fancied a musical foil to play against beyond the PF rhythm section. It was not the last time the PFs chose to have two guitar players instead of one but it was not permanent, neither - to the incredulity of virtually everbody, the anger of some, and the heartbreak of very many - was Paul Rudolph.

After Twink left the band actually tightened up quite a bit, with only one drummer things became more focussed as Rudolph (never a totally confident frontman) took over virtually all vocals. Of course this same trio had done the whole States thing as the Deviants so the tightness was already there, as was the family vibe, but drugs can have strange effects on anyone and within the pressure cooker life of a band on the road little things can easily get to be big things pretty quick (and I’m not talking willies here girls so calm down!). Sandy and Russell had a taste for, ahem, chemistry, not entirely shared by our health-conscious dope-smokin’ canadian guitar hero. Rumour has it that Mr Bass Player was also considerably more successful with “the ladies” than yon axeman whose tits and ass humour was part of a package and this too caused friction - also of course Paul Rudolph was a certfied bass tutor whereas Sandy was self taught. To these ears the 2nd LP What A Bunch Of Sweeties is a masterpiece of freak insanity and fabulously out-there improvisation and hip jammimg rock n roll, one of my all time favourite records (and I adore Astral Weeks so I’m not a metal nut - it is not a metal LP anyway)

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