Luke Haines - Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll

  by Eoghan Lyng

published: 19 / 1 / 2024

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In ‘Raging Pages’ guest reviewer Eoghan Lyng enjoys The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder Luke Haines’ satirical overview of pop in his first book in a decade, ‘Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll'.

The book opens with a warning as Luke Haines informs Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Keir Starmer and Mumford and Sons to search for literary entertainment elsewhere. His first book in over a decade, Haines casts his rapier-sharp net over the lexicon of pop, to exhibit that's more nefarious than anything Noel Gallagher would have you believe. ‘Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll’ opens with a second warning, this time with a confession from the writer that he has always been, and always will be, a freak of some sorts. One of the wittier rock writers of his generation, Haines oeuvre has traditionally veered towards the more agitative side of journalism, and some of his works recall Hunter Thompson's writings. In some ways, this is the closest Thompson fans will get to The Rock Diary, especially since that's the only title comparable to Haines' work in the American writer's canon. In keeping with the Gonzoesque approach to writing, Haines flits between genres, from his valiant assessment of Jim Morrison as a "lizard king", to the devilish undertones readily apparent in early rock & roll. Haines language is guttural, immediate and mercifully irreverent to the England he grew up in ("All of my generation think they have land rights to growing up in the worst cess-dump in Britain," he notes,) although he never shows anything less than interest in the music that excited him as a lad, and continues to enthral him as an adult. There are diversions - a jab at James Joyce seems to say more about Haines than it does about fans who read Ulysses on an annual basis - but these sidenotes add to the frenzy, anarchy and sense of candour within the depraved world. Humorously, Haines devotes a chapter of his book on Australia's imprint on England, suggesting that The Go-Betweens were as important to the mystification of Brisbane as Mark E.Smith had been to the North. The IRA's stronghold on the "Big Smoke'' was met with typical British ambivalence: "‘It’s just a bomb threat on the Northern Line, needs must.’" Haines relates some of his truth to the musicians he writes about:much like the fiery Les Rallizes Denudes, he too was prone to polemical outbursts (although unlike Les Rallizes Dénudés' bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi, Haines never conspired to hijack an aeroplane.) The quiff signified trouble for Britain, which might explain why Johnny Marr was so adamant to get rid of his in 1987, as he vacated himself from a band who were abandoning ridiculousness for pastiche. In 2011, Haines embarked on a musical with songwriting guru Cathal Coughlan and Australian author Andrew Mueller in a piece that compiled the wackier outliers of life, Irish criminal Martin Cahill chief among them. And rather than push the book up to eleven as Spinal Tap might do, Haines slows down by the eleventh chapter to pen an emotive eulogy to Coughlan, who died in 2022 after a battle with cancer. "Like Roy Keane, Cathal was a Cork man," Haines notes. "We became firm and easy friends." In its effort to avoid lazy pigeon holes, ‘Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll’ jumps from style to style to create a world that's as almost as Quixotic as the one you and I live in. An expert stylist, Haines acquits himself nicely to the various genres of writing, although it's never at the expense of his trademark humour. Make no mistake, Freaks Out!: Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll is one of the funniest rock books in recent times, and doubtless readers will spend as much time counting gags as they will laugh at them.

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