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The Only Ones: Their Unbelievable Story!
1:00 PM GMT 06/02/2009
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON CD with the sound quality they deserve, and featuring rare and unreleased tracks, the albums cut by The Only Ones between 1978 and 1980 re-emerge this week. The Only Ones (1978), Even Serpents Shine (1979) and Baby’s Got A Gun (1980) reintroduce a band admired by Johnny Marr, Kurt Cobain and more, and flesh out the reputation of one of the most chaotic and adventurous of Britain’s punk-era rock groups.
Funded by singer Peter Perrett’s booming ’70s drug business, fuelled by his darkly sardonic songs and set ablaze by volatile, folically-challenged guitarist John Perry’s psychedelic axe-maulings, they’ve set aficionados’ hearts aflutter since their debut brace of singles, Lovers Of Today and Another Girl, Another Planet fizzed into the ether during 1977 and ’78.
Yet The Only Ones appeared to throw every obstacle in their own path, with drugs, personality clashes, more drugs and a startling run-in with the Stateside law putting paid to their progress. Now the classic line-up of Perrett, Perry, bassist Alan Mair and former Spooky Tooth drummer Mike Kellie are back together, gigging widely, recording even, and thanking their lucky stars for the remaining shreds of their health.
Looking rather better than the last time MOJO encountered him, at 2007’s MOJO Honours List ceremony, the spindly Perrett has put on weight thanks to a chocolate milk drink he gets on prescription and approached our interview with gusto. Perched on a chair in Alan Mair’s North London cottage – with that MOJO Award on the mantelpiece – Perrett prepares to tell his hair-raising tale, one he imparts with hard-won wisdom and disarmingly frankness about the punk-era heroin scene and the junkie life he lived for so long.
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 1:00 PM GMT 06/02/2009
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The Only Ones with a psychedelic guitarist ?
The abuse of the word , psychedelic continues .Even the antithesis of all things psych ie Punks are now described as psychedelic by lazy journos
Posted by naezlig at 8:33 AM GMT 13/02/2009 Report Abuse
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RE: naezlig
Naezlig- you know nothing about psychedelia. Peter P was influenced hugely by Syd Barrett, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, likewise the guitarist John Perry. The Only Ones were never punk, and not really new wave their roots were in 1960s psychedelic rock
Posted by Syd's son at 12:00 AM GMT 26/02/2009 Report Abuse
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