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

by Rich Deakin

Overview

This is the remarkable story of London's communal bands of the 1960s and 1970s, from the perspective of two of its most crucial exponents. Fuelled by amphetamine psychosis, the DEVIANTS and PINK FAIRIES were bands of the people, gate crashing festivals and playing for free on a flatbed truck, and on some days sharing a bill with Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. KEEP IT TOGETHER! tells of the underground movement that was key in shaping a London that had been swinging but was quickly moving toward more brutish territory. It is a tale that includes the Pretty Things, Hawkwind, MC5, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Edgar Broughton Band, Motörhead and a host of other influential bands and pilled up geezers desperate for a revolution. Or at the very least, Top of the Pops.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781900486996
Publisher:	SCB Distributors
Publication date:	10/23/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Born 1965, in Leicester, England. Rich Deakin was influenced by punk in his formative years, and left school as soon as he could. For the next twelve years he dedicated his time to being a full-time wastrel and occasional disc jockey, until he reached a crossroads, and made the pivotal decision to re-educate himself. He eventually went on to a complete a Masters thesis on the British underground press and now works at the University of Gloucestershire. He lives in Cheltenham with his long-time girlfriend and two Persian cats, Maumau and Owsley.

Read an Excerpt

From the Introduction by Mick Farren:
I don't know if any of us ever really believed the traditional fantasy. I can almost imagine one or two still do, and feel deprived it never happened for them. The idea was that you acquired a cheap Japanese guitar, graduated to a Fender, then you had a hit, a forty five on the charts with a bullet, and you bought your mum a house, then lived in luxury ever after, drinking Rebel Yell whiskey, and getting laid more than Elvis Presley.
And that was the great dichotomy of rock'n'roll in the time of revolution. Fame, fortune, and the urgent overthrow of Western Civilization could be a highly contradictory, not to say conflicted, triad of goals, especially when the voice of Mr Natural - Robert Crumb's cartoon avatar - was also whispering his famous slogan in your sleeping ear. "Quest into the unknown." And Larry Wallis was walking around in a t-shirt that read "Fuck Art, Let's Dance." The times were not only changing, but also becoming damned confusing, frequently surreal, and, on a bad night, when the stains on the barroom floor were legible hieroglyphics, starting to make terrifying sense.
One tried and true recipe for keeping at least a portion of one's sanity was to approach the vagaries of time, place, and the rock'n'roll profession as one mighty, never ending roll of the dice. Every so often, life and the cosmos might cut a boy a break, and the bones would turn up a natural seven-come-eleven, but on others, the devil himself would wink, just as he'd winked at Gene Vincent and poor Johnny Ace, and you'd find yourself looking at a bad dose of snake eyes. Mercifully, though, the instants of good fortune and the moments of dire catastrophe were the exceptions. Most of one's time was spent trying to roll a four the hard way. Often, it seemed, uphill, and with the tip of one's nose.
The story that you are about to read is neither one of triumph nor tragedy. Some of us who have survived would not even admit that the tale is entirely complete. Maybe the bulk of the drama has been played out, but there is always room for one more round while the boys can hold their cards, and engage in one final and maybe defining scene before we fold and take the ultimate bow. The narrative is one that talks of both inspiration and desperation - and players in the drama soaked in perspiration - the stage sweat that's a given....

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher