1968 and the rock ‘n’ revival as pursued by The Who was in full-flight with ‘Shaking All Over’ and three Eddie Cochran covers added to their set, while The Move, having put ‘Weekend’ on their debut album, issued another Cochran song on their live EP ‘Something Else’. Mick Farren and his pals kept the flame burning bright in the underground press and with his Deviants kept the faith. He also teamed up with Brighton’s Unicorn Bookshop for a run of posters sold under the tag ‘advertisements for peace’ . . . and there was nary a Teddy Boy in sight among these rock history mavens.

Numbers 1–3 are part of a long-ago acquired batch of posters bought by Vinyl Head, Ramsgate. Each is 30 x 20 inches, published in 1968 by Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton with ‘Production: by Mean & Filthy’.

Unicorn Bookshop was situated at 50 Gloucester Road. It was opened by American Bill Butler and ran circa 1966–1974. Its psychedelic–beat–counterculture goods were advertised by a mural that covererd both sides of the shop front and which has recently been restored to its original glory.

There are a number of blog posts on the shop, John May’s site has one of the more detailed accounts [HERE] and there is also a Butler biography by Terry Adams, which gives some background on the selling and distribution of the posters, but there’s little to be found on their design.

Mean & Filthy was a front put together by Mick Farren and Steve Sparkes – Rich Deakin’s Keep It Together has the lowdown on their activities. A revised version of #2 for a Roundhouse gig (with Deviants 3rd on the bill) is reproduced, along with a Dylan, also a Mean and Filthy production, in Mick Farren’s Get On Down history of the rock poster. Based on a cover for Oz, the Dylan was a big seller, designed by Vytas Serelis, artist, sitar player and friend of Marc Bolan.

As Deakin points out, Farren had laid out the thinking behind the series in a piece for IT. . .

Guevara, Dylan, Hendrix and Eddie Cochran – heroes of the revolution

Paul Kaczmarek, who worked with Bill Butler, has very kindly provided the following information about the various rock related posters the shop printed and sold.

There were only three titles directly related to the ‘Rock Revival’ series:

Rock Revival 1 - Gene Vincent (2,622 printed)

Rock Revival 2 – Elvis Presley (2,565 printed)

Rock Revival 3 – Eddie Cochran (2,500 printed)

These three, along with the Dylan and Hendrix, were the only Mean and Filthy productions – all first published March 1968. There are three variants of the Dylan poster (black/grey, orange and green versions). They were heavily reprinted in the early 1970s with some 10,000 in distribution. The numbering system used related to the sequence of release and was not a continuation of the Rock Revival series, so Jimi Hendrix was Unicorn’s 14th poster (with two variants), it was also based on a Vytas Serelis illustration. Other posters that are of interest include:

#8 – ‘Beatles scene’ (drawing by Richard O’Mahoney)

#36 – Paul McCartney (PK has found references to this but has not seen a copy).

#37 – John Mayall

B1 – Maharishi and The Beatles (drawing)

C1 – Eric Clapton (PK has not seen a copy only references to it in sales invoices)

The three Rock Revival posters link effortlessly with Farren and Barker’s Watch Out Kids and with the aesthetic of Ian Sippen and Peter Shertser’s Union Pacific label [HERE] . . . This was greaser rock ‘n’ roll for the new generation and Mean and Filthy had their bedroom walls covered.

My thanks to Phyll Smith, Don Lickley, Paul Kaczmarek and @heaven_mirror for feeding me with material and insights. Paul’s book, Poetry, Publishing and Prosecutions – Bill Butler and Unicorn Bookshop is due to be published in 2023

April 1968, The Who have added three, count ’em, three Eddie Cochran numbers to the set-list for the Filmore East gigs – ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘My Way’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’. In 1967, between the release of ‘Pictures of Lily’ in April and The Who Sell Out in December they laid down two studio versions of ‘Summertime Blues’, the first as a potential single, the second, alongside ‘My Way’, for possible inclusion on the album. What was it with The Who and Cochran that led one American journalist to report that Townshend carried tapes of the rocker wherever he goes?

The band were not alone in making a down shift in gears back to rock ’n’ roll as a reaction to the swerve taken during the high-days of psychedelia. The Beatles, the Stones and The Move, among others, felt the curve away from the music’s founding roots was too steep and attempted a recalibration, but if The Who were following a general trend then their latching on to Cochran, if not unique, had a depth and reach that exceeded the likes of Blue Cheer.

Nik Cohn thought Cochran played ‘pure rock’, whatever that might be, and he was ‘a composite of a generation . . . a generalised 50s blur’. Greil Marcus considered ‘Summertime Blues’ the ‘grammar book of rock ’n’ roll language’, but you might say the same of Gene Vincent and ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’. Or maybe not, Vincent was too much of a greaser, much more of the pool hall punk than Cochran, whose performances and songs spoke more clearly to a suburban teenage dissatisfaction than to an urban disaffection. Cochran wrote teenage anthems, he worked the high school beat and the soda hop, Vincent came from the world of juke joints and honky tonks, he smelt of reefer and whiskey. In Cochran’s world, dad busted up your fun. Vincent was sui generis, without parents: it is unimaginable to think of him sitting down to Sunday dinner with mom and pop. The differences are there in their individual performances in The Girl Can’t Help It. Cochran is projected into the family home via the television set, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps are playing in some downtown rehearsal space uninvited to the party.

You might pull on Vincent’s leather jacket, like countless British rockers did, but you could only mirror back his stance and hang on to the microphone stand in a pose that mimicked him. You couldn’t better Gene Vincent at being Gene Vincent. But Cochran, his stance and pose, The Who could own. They could remake him to fit their purpose, with Townshend incorporating, as Charlie Gillett wrote, the rock ’n’ roller’s ‘chunky, resentful guitar’, while Daltrey and Entwistle could play teenage parts with a knowing wink as a counter to Moon’s arrested development.

a very rare tri-centre promo edtion . . . a homage to the original London release I believe