Keep It Together!: Cosmic Boogie with the Deviants and the Pink Fairies [Paperback]

Rich Deakin (Author), Mick Farren of The Deviants (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2008

"This is British amphetamine psychosis music and if you don't like it you can f*ck off and listen to your Iron Butterfly albums" Mick Farren of The Deviants in Vancouver "The Pink Fairies make me sick" Peter Jenner, manager of the Edgar Broughton Band KEEP IT TOGETHER! is the remarkable story of London's communal bands of the 1960s and 1970s, from the perspective of its most crucial exponents, off their heads on Methedrine. The Deviants and the Pink Fairies were bands of the people, gate-crashing festivals and playing for free on a flatbed truck on some days, while on others they would share a bill with supergroups Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. KEEP IT TOGETHER! tells of the Deviants and the Pink Fairies' place in a scene that had been swinging but was now ugly and heavy. It is a tale of hard drugs, bad acid, street politics, VU bootlegs, Irish pubs, Hawkwind, the Pretty Things, MC5, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Motorhead, Canned Heat, and a host of influential bands and pilled-up geezers desperate for revolution, or at the very least, Top Of The Pops. Introduction by Mick Farren of The Deviants.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vividly captures the spirit of the times"--Record Collector

"This is British amphetamine psychosis music and if you don't like it you can f*ck off and listen to your Iron Butterfly albums"--Mick Farren of The Deviants in Vancouver

"Keep It Together! is far from a litany of mega-successes; rather, it's the story of a mob of reprobates that made every mistake imaginable and seemed destined for self-immolation but somehow, against all odds, keep coming back for one more try."--Ken Shimamoto, I94bar.com

About the Author

Born in Leicester, UK, 1965. After leaving school Rich Deakin became a full-time wastrel and occasional disc jockey, before he completed a Masters thesis on the British underground press. He now works in a university and lives in Cheltenham, UK.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Headpress (October 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190048661X
• ISBN-13: 978-1900486613
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #547,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars people call ya crazy when ya write like that!!, February 11, 2008

By 

Steve Redman (london,england) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keep It Together!: Cosmic Boogie with the Deviants and the Pink Fairies (Paperback)

The City Kids / Deviants with a cast of thousands. Lives and crimes finally put to print whooooowhooo... at bleeding last! I suppose Farren couldn't really do it being a Fairy himself "no pun intended", so it needed a man of good standing, not an insider nor a music hack but a fan yes a fan in the form of one RICH DEAKIN and what fitter tribute could be embellished onto (the underground crusaders from Ladbroke grove popular peoples freedom front) or as a python sketch may have said "wot did the hippies ever do for us!!? Well pigs from Uranus this bunch of sweeties did quite a lot. I got into the fairies at the tender age of fifteen 1975 (see my biog, PEOPLE CALL YA CRAZY WHEN YA TALK LIKE THAT) yep cheap arse book plug ...but hey Rich plugged his on my review. Anyway as you probably know the Fairies broke up and got back together more times than a Nick Cotton meets the Dingalls in a street fighting pig punching brawl in Eastenders and never got round to recording as much material as we the fans would have enjoyed but hey ho that's life. But I still shiver at Larry Wallace's metallic guitar riffs Paul Rudolf's long long feedback solo's that you just cant get away with these days "mores the pity being a bit of an old plucker myself" and Sandy's sturdy bass keeping the sometimes chaotic live set in order, not to mention the drummers Twink unt Russell Hunter. There's an introduction by Mick Farren,and if you look around theres a spoken word format available. The biog itself is written in great detail from the early beginnings of Farren's Deviants with all the references to squat culture, drug culture, the ins and out's of the underground press "IT" of which Farren was the editor for a while the bizarre and hilarious way the records where recorded in all the confusion of drugs "n" stuff, anarchy in all its glory well before the Pistols ever reared the monster that would be and spat the mothers milk of west London home grown amphetamine/tuinol laced anarchy back in the face of its surrogate mother. Up to the post punk and beyond bands such as the Rings, kicks, Lightening Raiders etc, telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth be it good or bad. Some people come off better than others but all in all I think "as only being an outsider fan myself" it's very well documented and as accurate as you need to get. A story long over due and needed telling with some great insight and story telling from all the usual suspects from the hippie days to the birth of punk and so on. So I'll stop bigging MR DEAKIN up... press the BUY IT NOW button "God knows the royalties will be well, well, well received". I'll stop quoting titles from Fairies songs and you can give a copy to ya grandkids as a history lesson. So that's it and as in the immortal words of Twink's wisdom DON'T THINK ABOUT IT IF YA AINT GONNA BUY IT!!!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Probe of Broken Fragments, July 19, 2008

By 

The Seth Man (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keep It Together!: Cosmic Boogie with the Deviants and the Pink Fairies (Paperback)

Drawing sense out of a chaotic time of two equally chaotic bands, this comprehensive probe of broken fragments by Rich Deakin shows how the underground London rock scenes of 1977 and 1966 were not as far apart as it may have seemed at the time with this saga of The Deviants/Pink Fairies family. Both bands were responsible for blazing a trail of defiant, independent noise and attitude that would provide a template for generations to come. Flying high not only a spirit of rebellion but musical statements that (more often than not) proved to be ahead of their time, their efforts only assured them a place of respect long after their respective demises and after years of ignominy.

A coherent work on two bands that were rarely anything but, this book is the first ever book dedicated exclusively to The Deviants/Pink Fairies family tree and is written with a thorough knowledge of its subjects. By not blindly overlooking or exaggerating the flaws or missteps that crossed the swerving paths of both bands (of which there were many) but through dedicated and thorough research, Deakin works up both a sense of the times and the chaotically-woven personal fabric of both bands into a consistent and engaging read.

Along with many previous unseen photographs, the author corrals together most of the facts, small tales, big myths, medium-sized yarns of humour, drug-induced mania and paranoia that remain burned into the collective memories of those responsible.

In Mick Farren's introduction, he states exactly why the story of the Deviants' and Fairies' strange odyssey from the late sixties into the seventies remains so compelling to the present day: "The story you are about to read is neither one of triumph or tragedy. If it's about anything, it's the grim appreciation that one is keeping it real when reality is at its most elusive. Which, deep down, where the spirit survives, is what the hardest core of rock'n'roll is about." As a book on Rock'n'Roll, "Keep It Together" is a success. And one measure of that success is in the way it'll send you back to your music stack digging out "PTOOFF!" or "Kings of Oblivion" if you know these records -- or ordering them online immediately if you don't.