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

The followers - this book is not for you.
The salt of the earth - this book is not for you.
The worthy - this book is not for you.
The ideologists - this book is not for you.
Hedonists and bohemians - this book is not for you.
The middlebrow - this book is not for you.
The highbrow - this book is not for you.
Dilettantes - this book is not for you.
1970s middle school RE teachers - this book is not for you.
The England football team (women’s and men’s) - this book is not for you.
The litanists - this book is not for you.
Gatekeepers - this book is not for you.
Gamekeepers - this book is not for you. (Not even for the poachers...)
The curators - this book is not for you.
The left, the right - this book is not for you.
The list-makers - lists are for shoppers not rockers, and this book is not for you.

This is not a list - this is a manifesto, and this book is for ... the Freaks.

Musician and author Luke Haines embarks on an odyssey through the ages, exploring how the ’freaks’ infiltrated modern culture - and almost won the rock ’n’ roll wars - only to lose to the rise of Cool Britannia and TV ’talent’ shows that turned the strange and the outsiders into fodder for laughter.

In this ultimate celebration of freakdom, Haines tells the story of pivotal freaks - including Johnnie Ray, Gene Vincent, Hank Marvin, Syd Barrett, the Incredible String Band and Big Youth - through the prism of rock ’n’ roll and explains how freaks infiltrated wider culture through history in the form of the Cathars, the Ranters, Hells Angels and the Yippies.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Freaks Out! is a righteous alternate history of rock ’n’ roll.

Luke Haines is a London-based writer, visual artist, singer-songwriter and founder member of the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder.

A prolific artist, he has released nineteen albums in the twenty-first century, most recently his 2022 collaboration with REM’s Peter Buck - All the Kids Are Super Bummed Out.

He writes a regular monthly column for Record Collector and is the author of two critically acclaimed autobiographical books: Bad Vibes (2009) and Post Everything (2011).