The Fuzztones: Preaching To The Perverted

I wish it could be 1966 again.

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There’s a case for saying that the 1980s saw the real psychedelic era, and that the brief flowering of acid rock between 1966 and 1969 was a false dawn.

From LA bands like The Three O’Clock and The Rain Parade to the mental mandala flowering of Spacemen 3, there was never a better time to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. This milieu spawned The Fuzztones, close kin to The Cramps, sounding as though they had overdosed on the entire Pebbles series at a Famous Monsters of Filmland convention.

Nearly 30 years on they have stayed true to the world of wobbly Farfisas, recording with all the needles in the red and the reverb up full, and songs about drugs and zombies. Change is for squirts.

Tommy Udo
Tommy Udo

Allan McLachlan spent the late 70s studying politics at Strathclyde University and cut his teeth as a journalist in the west of Scotland on arts and culture magazines. He moved to London in the late 80s and started his life-long love affair with the metropolitan district as Music Editor on City Limits magazine. Following a brief period as News Editor on Sounds, he went freelance and then scored the high-profile gig of News Editor at NME. Quickly making his mark, he adopted the nom de plume Tommy Udo. He moved onto the NME's website, then Xfm online before his eventual longer-term tenure on Metal Hammer and associated magazines. He wrote biographies of Nine Inch Nails and Charles Manson. A devotee of Asian cinema, Tommy was an expert on 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano and co-wrote an English language biography on the Japanese actor and director. He died in 2019.