The Social Deviants were founded by singer/writer Mick Farren (born Michael Anthony Farren, 3 September 1943, in Gloucester, Gloucestershire) in 1967 out of the Ladbroke Grove UK Underground community, featuring Pete Munro on bass; Clive Muldoon on guitar, Mike Robinson on guitar and Russell Hunter on drums (born Barry Russell Hunter, 26 April 1946, in Woking, Surrey). The band shortened their name to "The Deviants" after Munro and Muldoon left and were replaced by Sid Bishop on guitar (born Ian Bishop, 17 December 1946, Balham, South West London) and Cord Rees on bass. With the financial backing of Nigel Samuel, the 21-year-old son of a millionaire, whom Farren had befriended, the group independently recorded their debut album Ptooff!, selling copies through the UK Underground press before it was picked up by Decca Records.
Rees left the band in June 1967 to be replaced by Farren's flatmate Duncan Sanderson (born31 December 1948, in Carlisle, Cumbria) and the band released a second album Disposable through the independent label Stable Records.
When Bishop married and left the band, Farren recruited Canadian guitarist Paul Rudolph (born Paul Fraser Rudolph, 14 June 1947, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) at the suggestion of Jamie Mandelkau. This band recorded and released the album The Deviants 3 through Transatlantic Records.
During a tour of North America's west coast the relationship between Farren and the musicians became personally and musically strained, and the band decided to continue without Farren, who returned to England where he teamed up with ex-Pretty Things drummer Twink (born John Charles Alder, 29 November 1944, in Colchester, Essex) and Steve Peregrin Took (born Stephen Ross Porter, 28 July 1949, in Eltham, South East London) to record the album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus, an album interspersed with interviews with members of the U.K Hells Angels, before concentrating on music journalism. The three remaining musicians - Rudolph, Sanderson and Hunter - returned to England, and teamed up with Twink to form the Pink Fairies.
In the mid-1970s, Farren was offered a one-off deal by Stiff Records to record an EP, Screwed Up, which was released under the name Mick Farren and the Deviants. The musicians on this record included Rudolph, former Pink Fairies/Motörhead guitarist Larry Wallis, former Warsaw Pakt bassist Andy Colquhoun and former Hawkwind drummer Alan Powell. This band, without Rudolph, went on to record the album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and the non-album single "Broken Statue", both credited to Mick Farren rather than The Deviants.
The now defunct Farren website Funtopia described this album as a collection “of Deviants/Farren outtakes, remixes and alternate takes is the closest most of us are gonna get to hearing some of Mick's more hard-to-find recordings. Topped and tailed by new Farren/Colquhoun compositions, Fragments runs the gamut of Mick's work 'twixt the demise of the original Deviants and the stellar psych/jazz/metal poetry of the late 90s.”
