The Pink Fairies were the oldest and hairiest band on Stiff Records – and released the second single on the indie punk label.

Stiff Records owe their place in music history to punk, as the indie label that put out the first punk single, New Rose by The Damned.

But the first single on the label was by old timer Nick Lowe and this was the second, released in September 1976.

It’s punk in sound and attitude – a breakneck thrash of amphetamine-fuelled garage rock’n’roll – but it’s by the oldest, hairiest and druggiest group ever to feature on Stiff.
Sheep in lamb’s clothing, you might say.

I can’t profess to have known The Pink Fairies before this. They occupy a place in my mind near The Pretty Things (with whom they shared drummer Twink) and Hawkwind.
They emanated from the same squatter scene around Ladbroke Grove as the latter, with a shared “philosophy” that Wiki describes thus:

“They promoted free music, drug use and anarchy, and often performed impromptu gigs and other stunts” – such as plaing for free outside the gates of music festivals.

The Pink Fairies formed from the ashes of a Sixties band called The Deviants who had sacked their singer Mick Farren, who went on to chronicle the emergence of punk in his new career as a music journalist.

Very much an underground band, they recorded a trio of cult albums – Never Never Land, What A Bunch Of Sweeties and Kings Of Oblivion – before breaking up, re-forming, breaking up again and recruiting Larry Wallis (from UFO) as their new lead guitarist alongside the original trio of Paul Rudolph, Duncan Sanderson and Russell Hunter.

Then they broke up again soon after this solitary single – about as far removed as you could get from their infamous set closer, an 11-minute jam called Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout – with its equally punky B-side, Spoiling For A Fight.