- Included in the Other Music Posts List.
- On the Bomp! website is a quote from Mick Farren: “Rock is not something you understand, it is something you feel with your body, and you know.”
Martin Winfree
August 8, 2013 ·
On the Bomp! Mailorder website – http://www.bompstore.com/servlet/StoreFront – there is a quote from the late, very great Mick Farren (1943-2013), best known for his long-lived hard psych band the Deviants, who died several days ago:
“Rock is not something you understand, it is something you feel with your body, and you know.”
Sure I know that there is a lot more to life than rock and roll. Okay: a LOT more. But in those dark nights of the soul, when sleep won’t come and the hours stretch out, when there is an implacable universe on one side and on the other side, a hole in my gut where the elusive meaning of life should be resting . . . what gnaws to the surface of my consciousness to restore my balance and my smile is a passage from a favorite song: several words from a verse, an uplifting chorus, a thunderous guitar solo, a meandering instrumental passage. On many of those occasions (like now – really all week), it is a Deviants song that is playing in my head. I cannot remember being affected by the death of a celebrated cultural figure this much since the assassination of John Lennon more than half my life ago.
I’ll have more to say about Mr. Mick Farren in next month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month post – and I might even have a website set up by then; stay tuned. But oh, does he sum up how I feel about rock perfectly in this quote.
