The Pink Fairies made one of the most monstrous rackets in human history. Theirs was a sound more barbaric than the Battle for Stalingrad, more hammering than 40,000 jackhammers going at once, and fuzzier than my Aunt Edna’s chin. Drummer Russell Hunter made as big a thumping noise as the giant crushing machine—run by a grotesquely fat man named Tiny—back at the Littlestown Foundry, guitarist Paul Rudolph played all fuzz and nothing but the fuzz, and Duncan Sanderson once nearly swamped the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein (which is double-landlocked) by creating a tidal wave with his brutal booming boot-stomp of a bass.
In short, Ladbroke Grove’s finest were fucking fantastic, mayhem-makers and the kind of fun-loving Radico-Freeks who promoted anarchy, drugs, and free music for all. And who played songs with titles like “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout” that went on forever, frazzling your eardrums and shivering your timbers with their feral, in-your-face druggy din. If you live for fuzz and feedback the way I do, The Pink Fairies are Mecca, because they didn’t make them part of their musical palate—they were the band’s entire musical palate. Making a big freaky-deaky hullaballoo was all the Pink Fairies knew how to do.
For the reasons cited above you will rarely find an album with a more appropriate title than Finland Freakout 1971. Recorded at the Ruisrock Festival in Turku, Finland—which, as we all learned in elementary school, was the site of the Åbo Bloodbath in the aftermath of the War against Sigismund—this was a typical Pink Fairies show, only FASTER, because pre-gig a Canned Heat roadie turned the Fairies onto enough speed to keep a kindergarten class wide awake and drawing perfect crayon circles within circles within circles for a full year.
A history of unparalleled brevity: The Pink Fairies were formed after Rudolph, Sanderson, and Hunter, then with Mick Farren’s The Deviants, had the audacity to ditch their own boss during an ill-fated U.S. tour. After that things get confusing, what with hobbit-lover and former Tyrannosaurus Rexer Steve Peregrin Took joining and then quitting the band, along with various and sundry other folks whose tenures were similarly short-lived. The Fairies finally wound up a quartet, member four being Twink, former drummer for The Pretty Things. But then Twink split too, leaving the band a trio and depriving it of what must have been a truly devastating two-drum attack, or three-drum attack given that Hunter sounds like two drummers bashing away at once.
Finland Freakout 1971 has only four songs (plus a very hippy-dippy introduction), but it’s about 14-hours long (or so you’ll think, listening to it) because The Pink Fairies liked to stretch ‘em out, and I mean way, way out. Anti-Minutemen who loved to jam and jam some more, the PFs piled feedback atop fuzz and fuzz atop feedback to the extent that, at the Ruisrock Festival, seven tractor-trailer trucks were needed to haul the piles of feedback and fuzz away. (In Finland, they’re used to make ladies’ hats. In England, orthopedic socks.)
The Pink Fairies’ cover of The Beatles’ great (you won’t hear me put “The Beatles” and “great” next to one another very often) “Tomorrow Never Knows” sounds like “Tomorrow Never Knows,” only with enough fuzzback heaped atop it that it might as well be a Chia pet. The Fairies’ cover is the most tremendously cool song in the world and goes something like “Frazzzzzzzzzzarrrraggghhhh!” for six and a half minutes. Oh, and Rudolph’s vocals are far-freaking out! The band follows “Tomorrow” with original “The Snake,” which features drums like a freight train—seriously, I’ve never heard anything like ‘em; I even like the solo—some rapid-fire vocals, and a great chuk-a-chuk guitar. But mostly it’s Rudolf going about the business of playing setting his amp alight with sheer sonic overload, and it’s, it’s, the most tremendously cool song in the world too!
They then pull out what Rudolf calls their “cosmic rock’n’roll number,” namely “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout,” which chug-a-lugs along at the beginning with Rudolf singing about dope and Sanderson’s bass producing immense quantities of hat-making fuzz. Then Rudolf takes off on guitar, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to describe every twist, turn, and permutation in his extended and most righteous solo. Suffice it to say that people talk a lot about psychedelic music but this is the real psyche-deal-ia right here. No kooky sound effects or cheesy head trips or nonsense like on Pink Floyd’s goddamn Ummagumma, which I had to listen to about a billion times in college until I wisely managed to get myself kicked off campus—just one nasty blow after another to the open mind with an iron butterfly that’ll melt your chocolate watchband, shrivel up your electric prunes, and leave you lying in a pool of vanilla fudge on a moving sidewalk in a purple haze.
The Pink Fairies close the show—after Rudolf delivers a paean to brotherhood only to end it with a wonderful “etc. etc.”—with their “interpretation” of The Venture’s great “Walk Don’t Run,” or more accurately of Tommy Leonetti’s version (he added vocals!) of said tune, which as we all learned in elementary school follows the Andalusian Cadence. I guarantee you this: you will never hear the Ventures’—or anybody’s—version the same way ever again. Because The Pink Fairies defile all that early sixties’ “surf’s up!” innocence by transforming the tune into a vicious guitar blowout of epic proportions, 13-minutes of sonic savagery that bears only the slightest traces of the original. Hunter outdoes even himself in the pummeling department, while Rudolf plays some of the most spazzed-out, freak-on-a-rampage guitar you’ll ever hear. This song is so whacked it almost makes me forget about The Velvets’ “I Heard Her Call My Name,” which I have always considered the high-water mark in guitar spazzmosis. And I hereby solemnly vow to include this tune on every mix tape I make until I die in a plane crash, or after foolishly giving up cigarettes, which are nutritious and delicious and absolutely essential to a healthy body and mind.
The Pink Fairies aren’t for everybody. If you enjoy a little calm between storms you won’t like them. If it’s delicacy and subtlety you seek you’ll hate them. And if it’s structure you crave you’ll loathe them. But for me, they’re the answer to a prayer. On Finland Freakout 1971 they descend into the fuzz and the feedback and the drum pummel like divers into the deep, and to follow them you’ll need a bong, a bathyscaphe, and two fracas-friendly ears, because The Pink Fairies make a bigger noise than 100 pods of horny humpback whales, and smoke better dope too.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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