![]() ![]() But it is David Mitchell, so he goes off the rails occasionally. So what we’ve got here is a real writer writing a rock story, and that’s very rare. Just don’t plan on getting rich at the end, then again there was a hell of a lot less money in it in the sixties, and never forget, almost no one made it. Join a band and you can see the world, and I’m not only talking about travel. And in those years are a lot of hopes, which are too often dashed, and detours, and excitement and drudgery. ![]() “Utopia Avenue” moves slower than the average rock level, it’s not “Behind the Music,” an entire act’s history shmushed down into an hour, rather it’s a deep dive into just a few years. Sure, there’s plenty of plot in “Utopia Avenue,” but a lot of it revolves around the band members and their histories and individual dealings. So everybody’s got a family and everybody’s got a backstory.Īnd unlike in the usual rock novel, the book is just not a string of plot points run together. He’s got some backing and the thought of going back to where he came from is anathema. Elf gave up college, Dean starved, Jasper detoured from his privileged upbringing and…Griff was an anomaly, trained as a jazzer he crossed over into rock. Today bands are rare, because not only are they hard to keep together, there’s the issue of the MONEY! Sure, you’re willing to starve for a while, but if you actually hit it you at least want to get rich, at least never have to get a day job again, but that’s not how it was for most acts back then, they were doing it for the music, they gave it all up for the music. So what we’ve got here is the formation of a band in 1967.Īnd it’s very different from today. But Felice was ahead of me, and she was enjoying it, and she acknowledged at times it was difficult, but that it swung back, so I decided to stay the course and keep reading. But then the second night, I was dazed and confused, it turned into a David Mitchell book, with endless words where you weren’t quite sure what was going on, I was ready to give up. So at first I was thrilled and surprised by “Utopia Avenue,” I couldn’t wait to get home from my hike and read the book. Oldham was in it.Īs a matter of fact, almost all of the rock royalty kicking around in the late sixties is in “Utopia Avenue,” from both sides of the glass and both sides of the pond, and I don’t want to ruin the reading experience, but it’s fun when the members of the band Utopia Avenue run into stars, and there are narratives, aligned with truth, as to how these famous names behave. To the point where I got “Utopia Avenue” from the library. (Yes, I know about “Daisy Jones & The Six,” I read it, liked it and even wrote about it: But “Daisy Jones” follows the Fleetwood Mac narrative quite closely, “Opal & Nev” is more original, and chews off more, even though “Daisy Jones” is the easier reading experience.) And he kept bugging me. I’d written about “Opal & Nev” possibly being the best fiction rock book of all time. And I’d like to tell you when I was done with the book I was satisfied, but the truth is I was just relieved, and I swore I’d never read another David Mitchell book again, even though people kept recommending them.īut then Andrew weighed in. No, even longer, do I have to hearken back to 1972, when I had to read “Ulysses”?Īnd I read “Jacob de Zoet” the same way I read “Ulysses.” I just kept on going, I stopped worrying if I understood what was going on. It was my most difficult reading experience of the last decade. And since the film got mediocre reviews at best, I passed.īut then two people sent me David Mitchell’s 2010 book “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” And I was on the fence, but then Don Henley told me he was reading it so I decided to plow through. I did not see “Cloud Atlas.” I don’t think I’d even heard of David Mitchell. When the “Cloud Atlas” movie was released there was a huge buzz, but a concomitant blowback, from Mitchell fans who felt they did not get it even remotely right. ![]() One believes David Mitchell is the bees knees, the best writer working, and the other makes the sign of the cross and runs away from all his words.Īlthough, there is a third breed…people who have no idea who and what I’m talking about and don’t care. There are two kinds of people in this world. ![]()
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