The first glue-sniffing party at the Shirley’s barn may have inspired Phil Mayall to start a journal, but it also inspired Mark Warwick to write a song that soon replaced Jim Cole’s “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” as the Finchley Boy’s signature song.
You can tell from the artful pose that Mark had quite a lot of style. Those wide surfer-stripes were considered super-cool at the time. That’s about as long as his hair got back then, as he was the only member of the band who submitted to haircut rules. Mark was exceptionally talented and his psychedelic masterpiece, “Only Me,” expressed a firm belief in the intoxication of sacred substances as the true path to enlightenment.
It’s hard to explain today, but the garage-rock movement was an intensely spiritual event, more powerful, in fact, than our exploding libidos. And while the Finchley’s were all about scouting the fun vibe, they also reached deep into their hearts on occasion. Sure, Cole could make the girls swoon with a Stones ballad like “Lady Jane” (a phenomenon Flick Ford would later call “the pooey meter), but when they rocked hard, the band was more like an icebreaker or Sherman tank, leading our forces into the battles of the Generation War. It was at those shows that our tribe first collected and realized itself. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking vibes are something individuals control, but actually the most powerful vibes are always group emanations. That’s why great artists initially emerge from tribes. The really great bands are injected with energy from the crowd and become reservoirs of that energy, which is why all the girls wanted to rub up against the Finchley’s so bad.
Remember I told you there were two paths at the birth of the ’60s? (See “Reflections on Older Brothers.”) Well, Faber and Cole represented those paths perfectly. Warwick was on a similar path as Faber.
Please don’t think any of this stopped those guys from being best friends, and nobody was aware of these energy fields back then, but Mark’s song was clearly suited for Faber, not Cole, and Faber would put an incredible spirituality into the song. He’d recently gotten a copy of a book on yoga, and was into health food and meditation. The song was so powerful it quickly moved to the encore slot, and Faber would start by assuming the famous “Tree” position. I was instantly transported to a most reverential church-of-my-mind. I’m sure any adults that might have been attending might have considered us hypnotized zombies, such was our devotion and zeal during this song.
I’d be amiss if I didn’t also point out that the drummer, Mike Powers, was a tremendous part of the success of “Only Me.” In fact, he opened the song with a drum solo on mallets, and eventually added a large gong. Mike would take a long solo with mallets at the climactic moment of the song. He was a important part of the song’s spirituality.